Questions:
What if, instead of clearing the cobwebs from my mind every morning and then getting down to work, I saved them instead? Neatly stacked and labeled and organized in a portfolio or in manila folders? What dormant treasures might those tangled cobwebs hold?
Why don’t horned herbivores, constantly threatened by predators like lions and tigers, gang up on them instead of always running away?
If rationality will not save us then what will?
Is it true that Pepto-Bismol is essentially flavored clay?
New Orleans:
I’m participating in a benefit at Town Hall in a few days organized by The New Yorker. Reuniting the brass band Les Misérables and myself to do some stuff from The Knee Plays. It’s one of the smaller benefits this week, but maybe will be more relaxed and fun as a result.
Malu sees the evacuation and carnage as “The Day After Tomorrow”, but for real. Real life seen through the lens of Hollywood. Must admit that for myself and many others, on seeing the fireball when the 2nd plane hit, our first reaction was, “Holy shit! — it’s just like in one of those Jerry Bruckheimer movies!”
The foreign reaction has been one of amazement — that the mighty USA can presume to tell everyone else what to do, and how to govern themselves, but can’t save their own people.
They are also amazed at the depth and extent of American poverty that has suddenly been revealed to them, and at the callous indifference to it by the U.S. government. American TV and movies don’t show poor people except as colorful characters or glamorous gangbangers, and these are seen as few and far between, but now the media eye is focused on a whole city mostly abandoned by white people with the poor black people left to fend for themselves without food, water, medicine, electricity — and military sent in not to help the people but to guard and secure the property of the white people. The images say it all. White people with guns pointed at poor black people. You can make up whatever rationale for this you like, but the image is undeniable.
My friend Dicky Landry in Lafayette LA says that the influx of refugee New Orleans musicians into Cajun country may actually have a good effect on the music. New Orleans musicians are famously insular. Their city loves them, they’re appreciated and they work pretty steadily — the food is great, the music has deep roots — why bust your ass for little money taking your music elsewhere? Stay home, make them come to you. And they did.
But this meant that so many great musicians went unheard and unappreciated outside of the NO community that was and is familiar with the New Orleans sound. They had little incentive to spread their music and culture out to the rest of the world — it was always easier to simply stay where you were loved. And why not? Sometimes the world just didn’t get it.
I toured once with Coolbone, a brass hip-hop band from New Orleans. Jesus, what a feel these guys had! Live hip-hop, a concept that is only now becoming accepted. Their record, though pretty good, couldn’t capture the gut (and other parts) moving sound of the tuba playing the bass lines through a sub-harmonic synthesizer, which added extra bottom. Thump. It had to be experienced live. You couldn’t download the experience either.
Anyway, I could see that my audience, though appreciative, just wasn’t as taken by these guys as I was. Open any indie or alt-rock mag and you’ll see what an insular world it is — and it has opened up in the last decade! So, no surprise there.
But now, as Landry hints, this forced exodus, this sudden diaspora, may sprinkle a little funky seasoning on music from St. Louis to Austin, and the world might be better for it. In a perfect world, those dispersed musicians might flourish and be appreciated in those far-flung cites too. They’ll be homesick, but maybe some of them can cook as well.
Dunes are alive with the sand of music
Jenny Hogan - 12.18.04 - New Scientist issue 2478
Famous explorers have witnessed sand dunes roar, boom, squeak and even sing — now one scientist says he knows what all the noise is about
SOME roar, some boom, others squeak and a few even sing. They entranced Marco Polo when he crossed the Gobi desert in the 13th century, and references to their mysterious sounds can be found in 9th-century Chinese literature. Now one physicist has put forward an explanation for why sand dunes hit the right notes.
"Singing dunes constitute one of the most puzzling and impressive phenomena I have ever encountered," says Bruno Andreotti of the University of Paris 7. Andreotti has been studying the crescent-shaped sand dunes of the Sahara desert in Morocco, one of around 30 locations in the world where dunes are known to sing.
The Saharan dunes hum like a low-flying, twin-engined jet, and can be heard kilometres away. Elsewhere, dune sounds have been likened to drums, foghorns and trumpets, among other things. In all cases, the sound seems to be triggered by sand avalanching down the sides.
