In which Mixed Meters Turns Ten

September 16, 2005, was the day I started Mixed Meters.   Ten years have gone by and I'm still writing this blog.  No, this will not be a navel-gazing, soul-searching post in which I ask myself 'Why the hell am I still doing it?'.  Suffice it to say I the hell am still doing it and I doubt I'll stop soon.  Best not to wonder why and just go with the inertia.

Sixteenth of September, it turns out, is the name of a 1956 painting by René Magritte.  I'll let you figure out what the title means.  Here is the painting:

I did the first Mixed Meters' anniversary post at the five year mark.  Back then I added a picture of me on the my fifth birthday.  Here's a picture of 10-year-old me with my birthday cake.  I know it was my birthday cake because the cake says "Happy Birthday David".

These days I don't remember anything about the occasion.   There's no one around for me to ask.   I'm pretty sure this cake picture was not taken on my birthdate because I found another picture of a baseball game with the exact date of my birthday written on it.  It was my Mother's handwriting. 

I remember going to the game in Kansas City. The Internet tells me all the stats: the A's lost to the Boston Red Sox.  I remember the several hundred mile trip on the train.  The train ride has stayed in my memory for over 50 years.  I don't remember the game itself.  Not one bit of it.  Nor do I remember that this happened exactly on my tenth birthday.

Here's some trivia: I don't like baseball and I've always hated birthdays.

Anyway, ever since MM's Fifth Anniversary, I've posted something self-absorbed about Mixed Meters on or near September 16.  Here are the posts:

In which Mixed Meters Turns Five - besides seeing me at 5 years old, you can read the email I sent to my friends when Mixed Meters was a month old.  And there's an annotated graph showing the ups and downs of five years of hit counts.  Here's a quote:

Sometimes I claim that Mixed Meters has only three readers. That's supposed to be a small joke.

A Thousand and One Redheaders -  in honor of the sixth anniversary Redheaders, the random tag lines at the top of every MM page, are explained.  I add more every anniversary.  There are now almost 1400 of them.  Here's a quote:

TagLine[9] = "Mixed Meters - Similar to the intersection of two country roads."

In which Mixed Meters Survives Seven Years - a description of the silly categories I put my music into: 30 Second Spots, 10 Minute Breaks, etc.  And, in a chart, I reveal how many seconds of music I had uploaded for your listening pleasure until that point.  A lot.  Here's a quote:

Do you wonder how long 55,393 seconds is in hours and minutes? Well, go ahead, do the math.

Mixed Meters Is Eight Years Old - without a doubt, my most self-absorbed post ever.  This is where I wondered why I bother blogging.  I discuss expectations, free time, the Four Ws, Garbage Day Periodicity and bucket lists.  There's a whole slough of my pen and ink doodles for you to identify.  Here's a quote:

During my lifetime the U.S. has invented the Tea Party, fracking, Miley Cyrus, megachurches, Shock and Awe, Dick Cheney, Walmart, the NRA, the rapture, Real Housewives, Three Strikes laws, Grand Theft Auto and mass murder in schools - to name just a very few things I would gladly live without.

Nine Years of Blogging - this was MM's 700th post.  I talk about birds, particularly a hummingbird named Red Thor and a nameless crow.  There's a silly moral at the end, it's photography advice.  Here's a quote:

Leslie saw me working on this post and asked "How long have you been married to your blog?

Here's another picture - me again still age ten, about to blow out the candles.  On the left is my Aunt Kate and on the right my Uncle Ben.  We still own the coffee table on which the cake is sitting.

So, that's the past.  And I hear you ask "What about Mixed Meters' future?"  I've hatched a plan for the next four posts.

You see, I have a small backlog.  There are three long essays and one piece of music which I never finished to my own satisfaction.  I never posted them.  These have been languishing in the "I'll get to that someday" pile.  I've decided that it would be a suitable Mixed Meters Tenth Anniversary Celebration to just post them as they are.  This will get rid of them and allow me to stop beating myself up for not finishing them.  Life is too short to have a "I'll get to that someday" pile.

The upcoming posts are:

Timeless Music (written circa October 2009)- I explore the notion of calling music "timeless".  I suggest religions exist for that purpose.  I mention famous musicians like Richard Wagner and Michael Buble.  Here's a quote:

Anyone can claim that certain music is timeless because choosing which music is timeless is a personal decision. Timeless implies that anyone, in any decade, any century, any millennium, will find the music meaningful. A genuinely timeless work ought to remain so regardless of changes in culture, economics or politics. It's a tall order.

Two LA Philharmonic Festivals of California Music (written circa January 2010) -  in late 2009 the LA Phil did a festival featuring California composers.  In this post I compare that festival to their previous festival devoted to California composers, way back in 1981.  So this is like a review of concerts 28 years apart.   Here's a quote:

Serious music in California desperately needs some sense of place.  My problem with these two Philharmonic festivals has nothing to do with the content chosen for them.  The differences between them no doubt reflect the differences of the times.  The big issue, however, is the length of time separating the two.

The Ring of Klinghoffer (written circa September 2014) - last year the Metropolitan Opera performed John Adams' opera "The Death of Klinghoffer".  There was a public brouhaha about it.  I tried to write a think piece based on the facts behind the opera.  Did you realize there were actually two murders and two hijackings?  I realized that one opera was not nearly enough to cover the subject matter and I started to outline plots for four operas which I proposed calling "The Ring of Klinghoffer".  I completely floundered on this task.  This is the longest and least finished article in this series.  Here's a quote:

Whatever meaning the life and death of Leon Klinghoffer could have had (should have had) for us has been buried by a war, more terrorism, several more wars and endless political and prejudicial propaganda.  Those things are all too real and all too deplorable and all too inevitable.  This can be an awful world.  No part of this story makes anything better.  Only worse.

Finale - Summer 2014 (short version) (composed in Summer of 2014) - this is not unfinished writing.  Instead it is unfinished music.  My series The Seasons in supposed to have one piece for each season on the calendar as the years pass inexorably.  I was never happy with how the music I composed in the Summer of 2014 turned out.  Time heals all ills, right?  Or some of them.  Here's a quote:

It took me more than 40 years to get around to using these ideas.  I'm old now and I'm allowed to dig around in my past without good reason.  I must have had lots of other ideas back then as well.  These two, for some reason, were never forgotten.

It's funny what gets forgotten and what doesn't, isn't it?

Here's another picture of ten-year old me, possibly taken on another night in another place, although I'm wearing the same outfit.  I think the little girl is my cousin Judy; she would have been about two.  The television is a Motorola.  Made in America.

If you've read this far you can congratulate yourself.  You've survived another Mixed Meters Anniversary post.  Expect me to pull out all the stops for the next major MM celebration, the Mixed Meters Centenary on September 16, 2105.  See you then.

---

René Magritte figured in this Mixed Meters post about rocks.
Here's a post about Ronald Reagan and my Mother.

Garbage Days of Summer 2014

Summer 2014, the heretofore long-lost season in my series The Seasons, is slowly clawing its way into the light of day.

Each Season now has three versions:

• the Long Version - mostly silence interrupted by short bits of music.  I posted Summer 2014 last month.  Read about it here.
• the Short Version - same as the long version but without all the silence.  The short version of Summer 2014 is still to come.  It will be entitled Finale.
• the Garbage Day version - just the music composed on Mondays.  Monday is the day I take out the trash.  You can listen to Garbage Days of Summer 2014 right now.

I'm safe in saying that most composers would not choose garbage as a metaphor for their music.  I however find it an exceptionally pointed image of passing time.  It's a comfort knowing I'm still able to dispose of stuff each week.  Trouble will ensue when I lose that ability.

And waste can be useful too.  Think about those coprolites that help paleontologists determine what dinosaurs ate.   No one picked up the dinosaur's droppings for them.  Here in Pasadena, however, three huge dino-sized mechanical monsters pick up our trash every Tuesday.  They whisk it away somewhere.  As an article of faith I believe they're using it for good.  Hard to know for sure.

click here to hear Garbage Days of Summer 2014 by David Ocker - © 2015 by David Ocker, 133 seconds.

Previous Garbage Days of . .
Garbage Days of Spring 2015
Garbage Days of Winter 2014

A Mixed Meters posts from 2008:
You Can Pet Dinosaurs

Tenuous Connections - Richard Wagner and Bill Cosby

Ring Festival LA is gone and forgotten, pretty much.  Has it really been five whole years since the Los Angeles Opera tried to market their production of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle to ten million people by holding a county-wide arts festival?

Only a few really cared much about the underfunded festival one way or the other.  Opposition centered around the fact that Wagner himself was an antisemitic jerk and also that his music was favored by Adolf Hitler.  Absolutely no one in recent history is considered worse than Adolf Hitler. Although Hitler still serves a useful purpose: eventually almost everyone compares almost anyone they don't like to him.  Adolf is our go-to guy when we need to call something the most evil thing ever.

Supporters of the festival used the arguments that Wagner's music was supremely beautiful and his opera plots were about the power of love.  Neither of these points is even slightly true in my opinion.  I wrote a lot about Wagner and Ring Festival LA back in those days.  It doesn't hurt to mention it once in a while.

The notion that people who create successful, respected, well-loved art and entertainment can be totally awful people in real life is pretty widely accepted.  There are a lot of examples.  And irrespective of the personal qualities or intentions of the creator, works of art can be misinterpreted for evil purposes.  Wagner and his operas, used by the Nazis to promote Aryan superiority, are just one excellent example.

But Bill Cosby?  How does he fit into this discussion?

Cosby's fatherly personal image has abruptly crumbled under the weight of evidence that he has been a serial sex offender.  This has led some people to reassess the real meaning and effects of his iconic eponymous television show.  I came across one interesting article which made this point:  "How 'The Cosby Show' Duped America: The Sitcom That Enabled Our Ugliest Reagan-Era Fantasies” written by Chauncey DeVega.  Go read that now.

Here's a quote:

... the politics and values of “The Cosby Show,” which were so attractive to so many and for such a long time, are based on a distorted and inaccurate presentation of the black community, one that has enabled a pernicious type of right-wing “colorblind” racism to flourish.

Here's another:

... the Cosby family was an African-American version of the model-minority myth, one of the favorite deflections and rejoinders of white racists in the post-civil rights era, where there are “exceptional” minorities and the rest are failures because they do not work hard, are lazy, and complain too much about white racism. While unintentional, “The Cosby Show” enabled some of the ugliest Reagan-era fantasies. 

The idea, more or less, is that The Cosby Show presented America with a very upscale black family dealing with problems any white family might have.  The show avoided specific issues of race that would be unique to black Americans.  As a result those whites who were so inclined could reinforce their racist attitudes against less affluent black families.  (Really, go read the article for yourself.)

I claim even less interest and expertise with Bill Cosby than with Richard Wagner.  The Cosby Show show aired in the midst of a 16-year period when (by choice) I had no access to television.

I do remember seeing one episode.  Dr. Huxtable helps a young boy score points with a young girl by suggesting that he cook her a romantic dinner, cleverly substituting tangy BBQ sauce for the spaghetti sauce.  The flavors, he promised, would really impress her.  In the end Claire Huxtable sees through the plot because Cliff had pulled the same stunt on her years before.  Or something like that.  In light of recent revelations you'd have to wonder what other ingredients, ones unmentionable on television, the real-life Cosby might have considered adding to the sauce.

No matter how little familiarity I claim with that show or with television of the era, I certainly have far far less personal experience with the issues of being black in America.  Like many, in 2008 I expected that having a black U.S. president would inaugurate some sort of post-racial era.  Instead, by his very skin color, Obama seems to have heightened our long-term racial tension.  Somewhere I read a trenchant comment that while the U.S. might be "post-racial" it certain isn't "post-racist".

Being a rapist, however, doesn't make Bill Cosby or his television show or his comedy racist.  The argument here is that he presented himself and his fictional black family in such a way that certain white people could use it to convince themselves, as they looked in the mirror each morning, that they weren't really racists.  Liking the Cosby Show was tremendously reassuring to them as they went about their daily lives actually discriminating against the real, less affluent black people they encountered (and probably others as well.)  Sort of absolution by television.

So, what's the point here?  Is there really a comparison to be made between The Ring Cycle and the Cosby Show?  How can an endlessly turgid grand opera about gods whose petty squabbles result in the destruction of civilization and a situation comedy about the petty daily issues of wealthy New York family who just happen to be black people have anything in common?

The answer is not in the creative works themselves nor is it in the personal failings of their creators.  The answer is in the eyes of the beholders.  And in our ears.  And in our hearts and minds.  And if darkness lives in our hearts and our minds already - be it jack-booted Nazi antisemitism or good old fashioned American-as-apple-pie racism - then an otherwise simple entertainment becomes fertilizer for evil.

And when you mix shit into the earth it helps grow both flowers and weeds.   Sometimes you must wait a while to figure out which are the weeds.  Culture and civilization ought to demand that we do our best to pull the weeds.

Hey, I said it was a tenuous connection.

---

Here's another ending I wrote for this post:

Whether watching grand opera or television sitcoms, whether listening to singers or stand-up comedians, it is a dangerous thing to completely suspend your disbelief.  Enjoying a performance comes with a small bit of responsibility.  It's a really small bit, but it is a real bit.

Sure, it's super easy to give oneself up mindlessly to the massive numbers of seductive entertainments our culture offers us so casually.  There needs to be just a little bit of situational awareness somewhere way back in everyone's mind as they watch and listen.  This would help keep art and reality separated.

So, the next time you enjoy made-up stories about marauding zombies or conspiratorial politicians or young people on their own for the first time seeking love in the big city or black people or mythical gods or just about anything, remind yourself to take a quick step back and reflect on how you're reacting.  Consider whether this entertainment is reinforcing your better qualities - or your worse ones.  Remember that in reality, reality is a lot more complicated than you'll ever see on a stage or television.

Good luck sorting that out.

---

Read Mixed Meters' post Mommy, who is Michael Jackson?
Here are all the MM posts labeled "television"
Here are all the MM posts labeled "Wagner"

Summer 2014 from the Seasons

Mixed Meters Three Readers - if they've been alert - will have noticed that there has been a missing season in my day-by-day, season-by-season, year-by-year composition project called The Seasons.

If you're not one of the Three Readers (or if you're not particularly alert, or both), I'll tell you that Summer 2014 simply never appeared on Mixed Meters.  After I posted Spring 2014 there was a six month wait until Autumn 2014 was posted.  I have a lot of reasons for this.  Or maybe they're excuses.

I resolved to finish Summer 2014 and get it online before I finished composing Summer 2015 which should happen in a few weeks.  Leaving major projects unfinished is a really good way of making yourself feel bad.  I hate when that happens.

I'll explain the reasons (i.e. my excuses) at length when I post the short version.  Real soon now.  Although the Garbage Day version will probably see the light of day first.

I will also explain more about the music.  Much of it is based on a short excerpt of a famous, beloved composer.  Identify that composer for extra points.

click here to hear Summer 2014 from The Seasons - by David Ocker © 2015 by David Ocker 4106 seconds

Pets For Leslie

Leslie spent much of July in Mexico dealing with things wormy. Before she left, she asked me to post one picture of our pets to Facebook every day. When I suggested this might be a form of homesickness she disagreed, suggesting she was merely 'pet-sick'.

After a while, instead of still shots, I created short videos of the pets accompanied by bits of music from my pieces.  There were 18 posts in all.  I called the entire series "Pets For Leslie".

Since most Facebook postings disappear without a trace after about 8 hours I've decided to post everything here.  It's a kind of Pets For Leslie Archive.   After all, Mixed Meters is for ever, sort of.

Dramatis Personae:

Chowderhead as the Big Red Dog

Doctor Pyewacket as the Little Black Kitty

Spackle Puss as The Big Gray and White Cat

Crackle Pop (seen only in video) as her brother The Even Bigger Gray and White Cat

Click any of the stills for enlargements.

I've combined nine of the short videos into this one YouTube post.  I called it Pets For Leslie.  I think the random bits of my music form an interesting pastiche.

This music of Dr. Pyewacket in a Pot is Garbage Days of Winter 2014

Leslie found Doctor Pyewacket in the bushes near our home back in May.  You can see pictures and video of him when he was just a few weeks old in the eponymous post Doctor Pyewacket.

Not enough pet pictures for you yet?  You can still see the many previous Mixed Meters posts about cats and dogs and other animals.   Remember Mixed Meters is (seemingly) for ever.

Space Time - Spring 2015 (short version)

Space Time, the short version of Spring 2015 from The Seasons, is now online for your listening pleasure.  Some explanation will probably be helpful.

Last month the Peter Schmid Quartet had a chance to record some of my music with a guest vocalist. This young man is named Elgnis Gnivres Tekcap.  Everyone called him Elgin.  He hails from the country of Abstemia which he said was somewhere in the Middle East.  Or maybe he said it was in the Caucasus.  Far away from California.

Elgnis Gnivres Tekcap

Elgin studied music in his home country.   He was eager to show us the unique Abstemian vocal styles. Despite the vast cultural differences, I think the Quartet did an excellent job of blending with his singing.

We asked him what he was singing about.  He told us he was riffing on one of the ancient legends of the native nomadic Abstemious peoples. This particular legend is called Tixe and the Elevator, which apparently runs to great length.  Modern Abstemian scholars have divided the epic into short segments, called books.  Here's as much as I can remember:

---

BOOK ONE

Tixe Retne lived in the small impoverished country of Teertsllaw, in the basement of the broken down shack belonging to his parents Pu and Nwod Retne.

Poor but honest, Nwod Retne plied the distinctive Teertsllawian trade of goatheading. You see, the local goats in those days grew small extra heads with the unique ability to breathe fire. A goatheaders job was to remove the dangerous second head before the obstreperous little bovid could burn down everything in sight.

Though Nwod found this work somewhat rewarding, the number of biheaded goats in Teertsllaw had dwindled ominously over the years and Nwod was no longer able to support his wife and son by beheading the biheaded.

"Tixe," Nwod said one morning, "you know that you are my favorite son."

"Yes Father. That's because I am your only son."

"Tixe, you must leave Teertsllaw and seek some small fortune with which to support your parents."

"I will do that Father because you are my favorite parents. But where shall I go?"

"Go to visit The Three Diabetes in the country of Gnosnaws. It is said that The Three can see the future. They are magical and will give you good counsel. And take this Goat Head with you."

Tixe look at the shriveled head with alarm. "Whatever for, Father?"

"Few people know this, but Goat's little heads still can breathe fire after they have been removed. But only once. Use it when things look darkest for you."

Tixe took the head from his father with a shiver.

"And here are five drachma - our family'e entire life savings. You may need to buy yourself a drink."

"FIVE drachma?" Tixe objected "That's not even one Euro."

BOOK TWO

Tixe set off immediately, trudging along the road to Gnosnaws, seeking The Three Diabetes, carrying a dead second goat head in a small sack. The five drachma jangled in his pocket. He had never left his home before and was definitely not looking forward to this obviously doomed journey.

As it turned out, Gnosnaws was extremely close to Teertsllaw and Tixe arrived that same day even before the sun had set. He had expected to have difficulty finding The Three Diabetes. Instead he noticed many billboards along the road advertising their magical fortune-telling services.

The first read: "The Three Diabetes - 5 Miles. Learn the future. Guaranteed".

Later: "Don't wonder what will happen next. Visit The Three Diabetes - 2 miles."

Each sign was more elaborate and brighter than the last. Finally Tixe came upon a massive billboard with an animated cat repeatedly pointing to a small run down shack. A mouse could be seen running into the shack. Periodically the cat would try to smack the mouse with a huge hammer.

The sign read "The Three Diabetes!!! 50 feet. Please have your question ready. Price: 2 drachma."

"This can't be right," Tixe thought as he looked at the building, "This looks just like my parent's shack."

Tixe paid his admission fee to a bored blonde Gnosnawsian girl wearing earbuds and was ushered into a small dark room. She handed him a brochure and motioned him to a chair. He sat there alone for a long time. There was no sound.

According to the xeroxed handout, The Three Diabetes are named Glipizide, Glimepiride and Glyburide. For some reason they appear to humans in the form of cats.

BOOK THREE

Tixe waited for The Three Diabetes. He heard what might have been a cat's meow in the distance. Startled, he looked up.

Tixe watched in amazement as two large gray and white cats and one small black one, the last barely more than a kitten, marched through a small cat door in exact formation, every movement identical, each pushing a small cat toy with their paws, their tails straight as arrows held exactly parallel to the floor. They marched in a circle for a long time and suddenly, all at the exact same moment, sat facing Tixe.

Still in perfect unison the cats moved their mouths. Tixe heard no sound. Instead there were three voices in his head. They spoke exactly together in a strange Gnosnawsian accent.

"What do you wish to know, Tixe?"

What Tixe really wished to know was how they knew his name but he had been alerted by the brochure to the fact that he was only allowed one question without paying additional drachmas.

"I am seeking a small fortune to support my impoverished parents." Tixe paused.

"Please state your question in the form of a question." said the three voices in his head, clearly irritated.  Still in perfect unison.

"How can I earn a small fortune to support my impoverished parents?"

"You must travel to the city of Ringburg in the country of Abstemia. There you must ascend the unclimbable mountain called Mount Foomboom seeking the mythical fire-breathing wooden bird Pegaleg.  Ride on Pegaleg's back and your fortune will be assured."

The Three Diabetes suddenly broke formation and began to scamper about just like cats are supposed to, stopping to lick their paws or swat at one another, completely ignoring Tixe. Even more suddenly, all at once, they ran off through the cat door. Tixe found himself alone again. He heard only the flapping of the small door.

Tixe pondered the information which had cost him 2 precious drachma. When he looked up he saw that the little black cat, the one called Glyburide, or was it Glipizide, had silently returned. It spoke to Tixe in perfect Teertsllawian:

“Should you ever return to ask us how we knew your name," Glimepiride (or maybe Glyburide) said, "Please bring us some decent food. The canned stuff they feed us here is absolutely for shit."

---

The story I heard never had anything about an elevator.

Click here to hear Space Time (Spring 2015 short version) by David Ocker - © 2015 David Ocker - 1174 seconds

The Peter Schmid Quartet is:
Peter Schmid, pianos
Lori Terhune, guitars
Cornel Reasoner, basses
Luis 'Pulpo' Jolla, drums and percussion

with special guest: Elgnis Gnivres Tekcap, vocals

Curious about how the vocals were done? click here.  

Want to hear some real singing? try this.

Music of Space Time reformatted:

Spring 2015, long version

Garbage Days of Spring 2015

Garbage Days of Spring 2015

In my previous post Garbage Days of Winter 2014 I unveiled a new way I figured out for recombining the daily fragments of music I write for my ongoing project The Seasons.  This is the fourth year now and I'm producing music that I find surprisingly enjoyable.  Or maybe it's enjoyably surprising.

The most recently completed season was Spring 2015, written between March 20 and June 20, 2015.  I've already posted the long version.  The short version, entitled Space Time, is nearly ready.  I've been trying to mix the sound so it isn't too embarrassing.  I'm nearly finished with that task.  Space Time should be the next post here on Mixed Meters.  Real soon now.

Do you want an idea of what Space Time will be like?  I've created a sampler.  Or a trailer.  That's 'trailer' like a movie trailer.  It's a two and a half minute piece which might entice you into investing 19 minutes in the full version.   What I did was excerpt one segment from each week.   I used every seventh segment, every Monday, into a shorter piece.  It works as well as any of my music works.  Why?  I haven't a clue.

I called this short teaser Garbage Days of Spring 2015 because around here, Monday is garbage day.  That's the day people in my part of Pasadena take their dumpsters out to the curb for pickup on Tuesday.  On Monday I must remember to clean the cat boxes, take out the recycling, empty the garbage cans: send a week's worth of our suburban waste off to whatever magical land the municipality of Pasadena has decided can make the most productive use of it.

What a privilege it is to live in an era when the disposing our old newspapers, yard waste and pet feces becomes a religious ritual - a weekly veneration honoring the cycle of life.  No, the recycle of life.  No, not life: the recycle of stuff.   If you think about it for a while, you'll realize that taking out the trash is cosmic. 

So either this music is cosmic or it's a shameless exploitation trick to entice you into listening to the full 19-minute Space Time which is coming soon.  Real soon now.

Click here to hear Garbage Days of Spring 2015 by David Ocker - © 2015 David Ocker - 155 seconds

Garbage Days of Winter 2014

I'm always on the lookout for easy ways to reuse and recycle musical material.  And recycling is something you do on garbage day, right?

It occurred to me that I could excerpt segments from my ongoing daily composition series called The Seasons.  I would assemble these into a shorter piece.  If I selected one segment per week the length would be reduced by about one seventh.

Mixed Meters' Three Regular Readers probably understand the previous paragraph.  If you don't, try getting up to speed by going to The Seasons page and reading and listening and reading and listening.   Good luck.  This project is now in its fourth year and I'm still finding it difficult to explain.

It was easy to decide which day of the week to use.  I've imbued many of The Seasons with a musical quality I call Garbage Day Periodicity.  GDP just means that I try to add some sort of (more or less) noticeable musical change on Mondays, the day I have to remember to take out the garbage.

I picked the season called Winter 2014.  It is based on an extremely early piano sonata of mine.  I deleted everything but the Monday segments.  There was a little work pacing these properly (by adjusting the time between them) and a lot of work mixing the musical elements so everything balanced nicely.  The actual music is completely unchanged.  Just remember that the 13 segments of this piece were never intended to be combined this way.

The result worked out pretty well, in my opinion.  There are lots of little surprises.  It is sort of a time-lapse version.  Maybe movie trailer is a better simile.  I think this gives an excellent idea of the content of the longer versions but still reserving plenty of surprises for the full experience.

Click here to hear Garbage Days of Winter 2014 by David Ocker - © 2015 by David Ocker, 120 seconds

If you're curious about the other versions, here are the links:

Winter 2014   (4232 sec.)   [listen]    [read]

Life Time (Winter 2014, short version)   (814 sec.)   [listen]    [read]

Spring 2015 from the Seasons

This is Spring 2015 from The Seasons. Yeah.  It was composed from March 20 through June 20, 2015.

How does it differ from previous Seasons?  Well, it has vocals of a certain ethnicity.  And a higher ratio of music to silence than any previous Season.  (That is still only about 25%.)

Click here to hear Spring 2015 from The Seasons by David Ocker - © 2015 by David Ocker 4505 Seconds

The Short Life of Some Pasadena Street Art

The artist is named Cali Killa.  Probably not his birth name.  I had never heard of him.  He's a street artist whose work was briefly displayed here in Pasadena.

I have heard of Banksy.  Banksy is also a street artist.  I've never seen any Banksys in Pasadena.   I've noticed other art on my walks around town.  The boy trying to catch a missile with a baseball glove was probably the best.   The huge mural of the old woman's face was pretty neat but that was in Los Angeles.

I discovered Cali Killer's piece on Raymond Avenue, just around the corner from the Fillmore Gold Line station.  The date was May 29.  The low brick building looks abandoned.  There are sometimes people sitting nearby who I suspect might be homeless.  The land is probably pretty valuable considering its proximity to the light rail and to the hospital.  Commuters can pay to park in the adjacent lot.

(Click on any picture to enlarge it.)

The wording on the book held by the young lady in the hoodie is "How to make it in Los Angeles by Cali Killa".   She's also holding what looks like a rifle.  Great art naturally lends itself to many different interpretations.  My first thought was that the artist was telling us that one needs lethal weapons to make it in L.A.

Here's the wider view so you can see the piece in context.

On June 12, two weeks later, I passed the same spot.  Cali Killa's piece had been covered in black paint.

Also interesting: someone had made a little sculpture on the bus bench out of an old rug and a pair of crutches.

I wonder why the art was blacked out.  Maybe Cali considers his works temporary and he himself returned to Pasadena to paint it over.  Maybe the building actually does get minimal maintenance.  Maybe someone was offended by the notion that you need a weapon to succeed in Los Angeles.  Maybe another street artist considers that building his turf and wanted to send Cali Killa a message to stay away.  We'll never know for sure.

If you want to hear Cali Killa talk about his work, there's this video.

Five Reasons Why Serious Immobilities Is Being Performed In New York Soon

If you've been one of Mixed Meters' Three Readers for any length of time you'll recognize the names Arthur Jarvinen and Erik Satie.  And, most likely, you'll recognize the names of their pieces Serious Immobilities and Vexations.  Are you up to speed on these topics?  If so, you're cleared to skip the next two paragraphs.

Erik Satie was a French composer, an avant-garde beacon of the early twentieth century.  He is most famous for soothing piano pieces with names like Gnossienne or Gymnopidie.   Vexations is also a short piano piece of his.  It is the opposite of soothing.  In fact it's an aggravating, infuriating, maddening whorl of unsettled melody and twisted harmony.  Exacerbating this effect, Satie instructed that the piece should be performed 840 times.  Your mind will wander and possibly you'll hallucinate if you listen that long (like 18 hours).  I'm sure you will love every minute.  You'll definitely learn the meaning of the word "unresolved".

Arthur Jarvinen, a California composer who wrote music of great originality, had many different influences.  These include, to name just a few, Erik Satie, Captain Beefheart, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the Beatles.  He is often associated with the post-minimal Totalist movement which had strong connections to New York City.  Serious Immobilities, however, is based directly on Satie's Vexations. Art wrote 840 distinct variations on Satie's trope.  These take a full day to perform.  Listening is sort of like being trapped inside Arthur Jarvinen's brain while he is trapped inside Erik Satie's.  You'll love it. (Much more info here.)

The big news is that all 24 hours of Serious Immobilities is getting another well-deserved complete performance, the first in 17 years. This will happen starting at eight in the morning on June 20th (that's next Saturday) through eight the following morning at the West Park Presbyterian Church in New York City.  I wonder if Sunday morning services begin immediately afterwards.  I sure hope their pews are well padded.  More details of the performance are provided here.  Here's the New Yorker listing. (I'm blown away that the New Yorker could condense the high points of this story into just over 100 words, even though they made one big mistake.)

The event is presented by Composers Collaborative, Inc. a New York group with a busy 20-year history of presenting new music.   Their press release for Serious Immobilities lists 16 pianists so I guess each pianist will be playing for about 90 minutes.  Jed Distler, described online as President and Treasurer of CCi and elsewhere as Artistic Director, took part in the 1998 New York premier of Serious Immobilities.  He's the moving force behind this important performance.

Serious Immobilities is more than just 840 variations on Vexations by Arthur Jarvinen.  There is another simultaneous layer of music by a different composer.  Randall Woolf, a friend of Art's, called his Vexation variations Spineless Dog.   He has described Spineless Dog as a guided improvisation and he scored it for Midi keyboard, computer and electronics.

(This post will help you sort through the versions and performance history of Serious Immobilities.)

Did I mention that this performance is FREE.  If you're nearby or within easy striking distance, I hope you'll attend.  Go for an hour.  Or two.  Or ten.  Heck, stay for the whole thing.  Maybe they'll let you roll out a sleeping bag so you can dream along with Serious Immobilities.  Although there are 70 minutes of Art's piano variations available on CD (from Los Angeles River Records and from Leisure Planet Music), attending this event is your first chance to hear the entire Serious Immobilities since 1998.

Since I've written so often about Arthur Jarvinen and since both Mixed Meters' posts about Serious Immobilities are among the most often read, I briefly considered flying to New York.  And then I calculated how much sleep I'd lose.  After all, it's not like I'm fifty years old any more.  I'll have to wait for another L.A. performance.

There must be at least five good reasons why a 24-hour performance of Serious Immobilities can happen only in New York and no where else right now.  Were you expecting me to list them?  What's most important to me is that this performance is a significant milestone in Arthur Jarvinen's musical legacy.  I'd like to congratulate all who are involved and wish their production the best possible outcome.

(To close, here's the text from the final variation of Serious Immobilities:)

You aren't likely to do much that's predicated on the depth of a literary fragment, and such a short one at that.

With your total lack of respect for it, and the extent to which you despise it, you were always certain there was ample justification for its moderate brevity, the audiences' not wanting to keep it short notwithstanding.

Denying the possibility of any motif occupying a full twenty-four hours is of course absolutely necessary, although falling even one second short would disqualify it anyway.

As you leave this performance perhaps you can't make up your mind whether or not to plagiarize several rather short works for mixed ensembles, none of which you can actually recall, such as any of those by this composer.

None of them are merely crude approximations of necessarily short motifs, with even one unique, fully-realized idea strictly prohibited.

Serious Immobilities is not deconstructed only from rests and single notes.

You obliterated any new sense of timelessness with widely separated silences; so why Vexations?

And you didn't introduce even one unique event.