Thursday, October 27, 2011
the theory of the singularity.
It is just an idea.
A theory.
The singularity. The still-hypothetical emergence of artificial intelligence through technological means. An eventual merging of technology and human biology of sorts. A point when computers are no longer in our pockets but rather we ... become ... the computer. Of course we will not realize when this happens and so the very idea of the singularity will form more as what has been termed an 'intellectual event horizon.' We will not see it coming. It will have already happened.
As autumn is now in full swing and I am wrapped up for the next six months indoors it is time to move forward with this project of mine called Carbon. There are three songs on the immediate to-do list. And a fourth close behind. All ideas are both sketched out as well as compiled into some rough samples in Logic.
This is one.
The first. This idea of the singularity. A minute-ten. A chord progression in E minor. An enormous furious piano scales and thousands of notes as fast as I can possibly play. Up and down the keyboard. Hammering on the low end. A raging orchestra. Brass. Strings. Timpani. A huge C major. A symphonic choir. And a voice. In my head still but trying - as in all of the stuff I write it seems - trying to rise above it all.
Labels:
carbon,
crush,
mp3,
singularity
Saturday, October 22, 2011
julian and maddalo.
© 2011 silver star mountain, north cascades, washington |
... and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remember'd friend I love
To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripp'd to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aëreal merriment.
Labels:
poetry
Sunday, October 16, 2011
the loneliest mountain.
Luna Peak in the distance from the summit of Black Peak |
We were sitting at Vivace on Yale sipping white velvets (at least I was ... I think ... it might have been caramel) and I was reading some article in Backpacker magazine about extremes - the tallest tree, place with the most snow, quietest spot and such - and among the list it mentioned what the writer considered to be the loneliest mountain ...
Luna Peak.
I liked the idea. The sense it conveyed. Buried higher and deeper in the Picket Range of the North Cascades than any other peak, the article stated ~
You’ll need determination and navigation savvy to reach 8,311-foot Luna Peak, the rarely visited highpoint of the remote Picket Range. From Big Beaver Landing, it’s a 16.5-mile bushwhack that ends with a class 4 scramble.
I wholly intend to climb it next year for a view like no other - one direction to the southern Pickets the other to the northern part of the range. Fury. Terror. Challenger. Whatcom. Triumph. Despair. All the incredibleness of the most rugged slice of mountains in the lower forty-eight.
Labels:
climbing,
north cascades
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
1955 - 2011.
You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
~ Steve Jobs, Stanford University, 2005
Dude - you changed my opinion of computing. With your OS X system you had me hooked. I remember it - the moment I realized working on a Mac was awesome - beautiful - revolutionary. I've got a dozen or so now all humming away none very new most old still going. Still going.
Wish you were too.
Labels:
apple
Monday, October 3, 2011
prelude in c.
So it was a while ago. Maybe a few months. Practicing Hanon I sort of got tired of it and just started playing this arpeggiated C chord and came up with this little melody I obligingly and I guess quite simply called Prelude In C.
It really is nothing at all. Just rambling when I should have been practicing. I played it too quickly in places during this take. I messed up a note or two.
I hear it all quiet on a huge piano the spaces in between the notes. The rests at the end. The diminished chords. Then launching full-on into the song Isolation a few hundred decibels louder after an interlude with heavily-overdriven guitar.
But for now ... for now I'll leave it with its simple end.
(Prelude In C available for the time being only from that link)
_cheers
(image courtesy of nasa.gov)
Sunday, October 2, 2011
clark.
Friday morning. Ten o'clock or something. My phone rings. An eight-oh-five area code I don't recognize but I pick it up anyway. No one there so I hang up. A few seconds later it rings again. Same number, but this time there's someone else on the other end.
'Hey Thom - it's Clark the piano technician.'
Oh yeah - from Michelle's. Clark ... the sole guy working on restoring my Bechstein. I haven't talked to him in over a month so I was glad to hear from him.
'Just wanted to let you know it'll be two or three weeks before I'm ready to have you come down while I start to voice the hammers' he says.
Not having much to update me with the last time I talked to him end of August this bit of news was exciting. I still miss my piano. A lot. But I had sort of done good putting it out of mind. Getting by with a Steinway sample in Logic. But not the same. Not even close.
So he's working out the kinks in the pedals now and sounds like some last tweaking of the action before I'll get another call from him to set up a day to head down to Portland and spend in the shop listening as he sculpts the sound of the Bechstein to my liking before doing a final tuning.
The only caveat being that I am well aware of the fact his shop is not my living room and the acoustics of the place factor a great deal into the sound of an instrument like a piano. But it'll have to do. Mostly I am going to make certain he keeps the quality of the piano that I have always sensed was there but not quite heard since I played the first notes on it years ago. It has always been missing ... which is why I am forking over what I am forking over to him to bring it out. A tenor I can only imagine. A treble that doesn't pierce. A pianissimo like no other. A fortissimo in my living room that will blow away the neighbors down the street.
I am still hoping the sound will blow me away, too.
Labels:
bechstein
annual autumn holiday in one hundred seventy-one words.
23 september.
Campground just outside the town of Banff.
Only one night in the Bugaboos.
Glacier cracking and moaning.
Glacier cracking and moaning.
Weather moved in.
Rain.
Rain.
Drive through Kootenay spectacular.
Light amazing.
Glimpses of impressive mountains with fresh snow.
Glaciers.
Sound of wind through the trees over din of car camping.
Smell of pines.
So much better than a hotel room.
Posh Nemo air mattress.
Pillow.
Poofy down bag.
Going to sleep good tonight.
Finally tired.
Stars.
Up before eight.
Pulled on wool zip-T.
Chilly.
Campground waking up.
Into town of Banff.
Coffee.
Up Bow Valley Parkway.
Moraine Lake.
Hike to Larch Valley.
Throngs of people.
Ugh.
No wilderness here.
Drove Icefields Parkway.
No wilderness there.
Cannot be impressed by glaciers viewed from the sides of highways.
Lots of driving.
Back through Kootenay.
Light less impressive.
No clouds.
No clouds.
No clouds.
Hotel in Idaho.
Shower felt good but miss the smell of outside.
Already.
Wind in trees.
Cozy-warm in down bag.
On puffy air mattress.
Pine sweet.
Stars.
Stars.
More stars.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
wilderness clichéd.
So during our trip to the Bugaboos a week or so ago and a few other Canadian provincial and national parks (Banff and Jasper and Kootenay) I gained some perspective on what seems to be an entirely American notion of 'wilderness.' In addition last night a trip to Half Price Books yielded a find of a large-format book of Ansel Adams' called The American Wilderness.
In time I plan on writing up my thoughts in particular to wilderness from what I gleaned as being the Canadian approach to such and now of some thoughts on the Adams' book, but for this post went back to a journal entry I've up until now left unpublished (if you can call blogging about it 'publishing'). Coincidentally, it was from another annual autumn trip of mine and Jeff's (we do this every autumn - take a trip somewhere and do some backpacking and sightseeing and have visited places from Yosemite to the San Rafael Swell and points in between from the Rockies and Sierras to the southwest and now the Canadian Rockies).
In this entry below I recount our trip last year where we detoured a bit south to the Maroon Bells (on my request to be fair) and my thoughts on having hiked a couple easy miles up to Crater Lake beneath the pair of impressive north and south peaks ...
-----
25 september 2010.
Maroon Bells. Sitting here at Crater Lake after a two-mile hike with a throng of others. Found a spot above the lake nestled in the quaking aspens listening to the sound of the wind through the leaves over the sound of people yapping down by the lake. The view is astounding. And the aspens have turned their brilliant autumn yellow. There is a dusting of fresh snow. The weather is about as perfect as one could ask for. All ingredients mixed together begs the question can wilderness be a cliché? And in asking that in fact seems to me to be asking the bigger question that I think of often climbing and backpacking the mountains of Washington brutal and honest in their indifference weeding out the throngs of tourists the trails from foggy valley bottom to craggy peaks thousands and thousands of feet high steep ... is clichéd wilderness good or bad? That hordes of people stomp along the the two-mile trail to Crater Lake under the Maroon Bells to eat their fruit and brownies and take their photos under cloudless bluebird skies. Do they really truly walk away with a respect and awe for our natural world having been mesmerized by the sound of the wind through the aspens of the smell of air evergreen forest of the sight of these imposing peaks? Or just a postcard photo of themselves and another place they can tick off a list? Like Delicate Arch the other night. We didn't take the three-mile hike instead opting in the little light there was left for the shorter viewpoint just to see it if only from a distance. Got there right as the sun dipped below the horizon to see - literally - a hundred people lined up shoulder to shoulder tripods and all along the ridge west of the arch perched precariously on a canyon edge. Did they leave with an Abbey-esque reverence for the place or just another stupid photograph of an arch at sunset photographed by millions? Does accessibility like this do more harm than good? Or maybe more accurately simply does it do any good at all? Surely not everyone can have the respect for nature as Abbey and Ruess and their deserts or Muir and Adams and Manning and their mountains. So they just take their photos. Maybe they think twice about sustainability. Of the idea of the seventh generation. Of preserving wilderness rather than exploiting it. Or maybe they just sigh cos they had to take a bus up here to the Bells in an effort to reduce the pollution instead of driving their car cos thirty years ago even then it was obvious all the autos were wreaking havoc on the mountain air and the meadows. Maybe all they take away is a photo of them under blue skies and a kind of place I think is often misunderstood if not at least underappreciated so no harm done but no good either? People tossing water bottles and such on the ground. A kid carving something in the pristine bark of an aspen his mother standing nearby not noticing or saying anything. In the end do the throngs of tourists to these places help or hurt? Maybe I sound cynical or maybe I have turned elitist or into some old curmudgeon. Talked to some climbers headed down the trail behind us they had a go on Pyramid but turned back a hundred feet shy of the summit finding themselves on a bit of ice while their crampons and axes were tucked safely back in their trunk. Oops. But they get it I'm certain. How many now did we pass on the trail who also get it versus how many who did not? Just up there for their scrapbook photo from the lake a hundred feet from the bus stop only to turn around to head back home. Maybe that sounds elitist. Maybe not. I think of the trips I have planned that I hope to make before the snow starts to fall in earnest back home. Kool-Aid Lake in the North Cascades. I'll leave the same throngs of tourists behind lollygagging at Cascade Pass and head up the daunting if not slightly intimidating climbers' path carved into the side of Mixup Peak and then up to Cache Col to drop down on the other side under Mixup and Formidable and Spider to pitch a tent or toss my bag at the shores of Kool-Aid. The other trip of course to the Enchantments like I do every year a grueling ten-mile approach up six-thousand feet in itself weeding out the tourists and the ones who don't really care or don't get it leaving only those that do and who enjoy the solitude of one of the greatest little corners on Earth. Not like the Maroon Bells. Not like Delicate Arch. Bumping elbows with a hundred other photographers all with their tripods and expensive cameras just to take a photo that has already been taken a billion times. Manning writes -
'Wilderness - genuine wilderness - is the sum of many processes of life and death, growth and decay.'
Such places are the last of our primeval landscapes. The few surviving samples of a natural world to walk and rest in to see to listen to feel to comprehend and understand. To care about. There isn't much of it left. What there is (and this is key) is all that all of us will ever have. And all of our children. And so on. It is only as safe as people - knowing about it - want it to be. But do enough people know? So I come back to that question. Are the mothers and fathers with the strollers scrambling off the bus to get a view of the Maroon Bells in fact spreading the good word to their children that this wilderness is here and is finite? Is not safe and needs to be preserved? Maybe they will not take up mountaineering. Or head up and over Buckskin Pass to peer to peaks beyond. Maybe they will never again step into wilderness. But they will have had a glimpse. And is that enough?
-----
It is interesting to read my thoughts from last year given the perspective gleaned from this last trip to Canadian 'wilderness' in the Bugs and a trip into dare I say more traditional wilderness a couple weeks ago up to Whatcom Pass in North Cascades National Park. I feel I have gained a bit more insight into the idea and essence of wilderness since jotting down those thoughts sitting next to Crater Lake amidst all the others who had made the quick trip there, but that still - even back then - perhaps reveals the path I am headed - elitest or not - in my view of wilderness.
Not to jump too much ahead of myself, but pulling a quote from the Adams' book to close seems to sum my thoughts and direction perfectly and as succinctly as possible ~
'We either have wild places or we don't. We admit the spiritual-emotional validity of wild beautiful places or we don't. We have a philosophy of simplicity of experience in these wild places or we don't. We admit an almost religious devotion to the clean exposition of the wild, natural earth, or we don't.'
Labels:
journal,
thoughts,
wilderness
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