Monday, August 21, 2006

City of Ash Trees

After an alarmingly difficult move from Phoenix, including::
two blown car tires,
overheated brakes which failed on our moving truck,
and an unforseen almost week long stay in Bakersfield California,
my fiancee and I made it somewhat safely to Fresno.

We were able to stay with our good friend's soon-to-be husband
for one night in his house before he went clinically loop-de-loop
and threw not only us out, but also his fiancee
on several unsubstantiated "charges of character."


What fun.

So! We found housing with strangers and now
are whittling down our eighty dollars in savings,
with nothing else to fall back on.

Not all is so bleak though!
Not as much as I have just made it sound, at least.


Every week in the coming few will feature something special to me.

Musique Concrete from the local Fresno area,
including spaces like the market,
how does it compare to yours?

Covers of songs that I love and have grown
in my heart and hands,
played on a variety of instruments.

Audio Oddities from rare records that I cultivate,
Ferrante and Teicher, Esquivel, Hawaiian ukeleles
playing 12th street rag, Tchaikovsky on theremin.

The Largest Mash-Up in This Instance of the Universe:
oh yes, I know string theory, and I also know that
Mashed-Up audio is always depth-defying.
I plan to excise over five hundred beloved
tracks of their decency and world-weary
humility by combining them into one
audio file. Sad to hear this plan?
I am sadder to think it.

Instruments Lost to the Ages
I love both acoustic and electric
instruments of all kinds, but the
ones I find the most interest in
are the instruments that have
only survived in literature or
in incredibly rare instances
due to their age, the instruments
that connected man to the
natural and resounding world
before any of us knew enough
about it to find we knew nothing
about it.
I have been looking into building
or collecting hurdy-gurdy's,
aeolian harps, folk instruments
and indigineous instruments
of all kinds, and will follow
each acquisition with as much
detail and audio as I can post.

Memories on Tape
Perusing outlets such as
goodwill and salvation army
can reveal their workers don't
always kick tapes out of recorders,
or would take the time to erase them.
My intention is to find these memories that
someone that I'll never know recorded because it was
important to them at the time, and in the longest of long shots
return the memory to them someday.


These things hinge on
my computer being set-up,
but I will do what I can for now
with my mobile phone.