Zuihitsu

[sasha]

2:38 am - wan moonlight nudges me awake for my nightly pee. I sit, scratch, and look outside. Snow! Is that the season's first snow on the roof of the car?

6:43 am - nope, just frost. The woods are still brown. Soon enough though, I'm sure.

My eternal gratitude to whomever invents a way to get that first kleenex out of the box without at least six others coming along for the ride.

[the mingo]

My Name

my name is man reading newspaper
and the street corner where he stands
my name is his hat
my name is his shoes
my name is the money in his pocket
my name is the sidewalk beneath his feet
my name is the church he went to as a kid
my name is the grave he will be put into
my name is the wind passing over that grave
bending the grass
that grows there

[judih]

wow. This is wonderful, the mingo. Sasha? Are you up to recording this?
@Sasha

[sasha]

wow. This is wonderful, the mingo. Sasha? Are you up to recording this?
@Sasha

Absolutely. I'll be dealing with some family issues over the next few weeks, but I'd definitely like to take a crack at this. Please stand by....

[judih]

wow. This is wonderful, the mingo. Sasha? Are you up to recording this?
@Sasha

Absolutely. I'll be dealing with some family issues over the next few weeks, but I'd definitely like to take a crack at this. Please stand by....

standing. hope all is well with you and your family.

[sasha]

My Name

my name is man reading newspaper
and the street corner where he stands
my name is his hat
my name is his shoes
my name is the money in his pocket
my name is the sidewalk beneath his feet
my name is the church he went to as a kid
my name is the grave he will be put into
my name is the wind passing over that grave
bending the grass
that grows there

 

My Name.mp3

(2.22 MiB) Not downloaded yet

 
(as usual, came together faster than I'd anticipated)

[judih]

metronome, rain storm, thunder, your rhythm, your voice. Brilliant take on this piece.
Hope the mingo enjoys!
Wonderful, Roy.
(maybe next time, you could give yourself credit as the reader?)

[sasha]

Thx, glad you liked this. I'd auditioned some avant-garde musical accompaniment ("Density 21.5" by Edgard Varese; "Remembrances", a piece for flute & tape by Karl Korte; and a few by Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal)... but opted instead for natural sounds - which all came from my own collection.

The sounds didn't need much additional processing. The ticking of my mantle clock had to be amplified by about 18 db, and because my diction is getting a bit indistinct as I age, I crisped up the recitation by boosting the treble above 5 kHz by about 6 db. Other than the usual fade in/out, that was about it. From then on it was just a matter of adjusting the timing of events.

I've included a screenshot of the Audacity work space to provide a visual map of the project. There are 5 layers of stereo tracks, each identified in the boxes at the left edge of the screen. I manually added the annotations in red afterwards. Once I had the events lined up to my satisfaction, I mixed everything down to a single stereo channel (left & right) as an MP3.

Here's the Audacity project layout - click on the image twice to view it in full size....
 

 
I just LOVE creating these virtual sonic spaces....

... (maybe next time, you could give yourself credit as the reader?)

"This... is a Librivox recording... read by..."
 

[judih]

fascinating image. Your patience and diligence are amazing.
Thanks for the back story, and yeah, a Sasharoy recording, read by ....
Perhaps you'll open up a shop!

[the mingo]

Thx Roy & judih - enjoyed

[stilltrucking]

putting the oligarchs to shame
Empire of Pain and the value of a good name installed a new router and all my smart devices have become dumb I got to go around turning on and off lights air conditioners and fans

Christmas spirit tires and barbecue pits and Walmart credit cards alright David Copperfield crap so in between the Mad dashes I have a chance to sit here and write and it's like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders almost it's good staring at the road coming down to windshield new ocean got a notion for motion
Hanuka spirits on a may morning in south central texas feels like a morning in the Shenandoah valley of virginia and i have not road my bike in months sugar flowing in my veins like sulfuric acid other than that everything's okay on studio eight Zuihitsu
Sackler family acts like they have no shame, no class people

[sasha]

3:26 a.m. - I awaken from an odd dream involving an old girlfriend and a steel tower with a hand-driven elevator cage. My mouth is dry - a side effect of forced hot air heat. Without opening my eyes, I grope for the water bottle. I can't feel it, so I scootch over a bit until I can. I take a long, greedy pull from the bottle, then roll onto my side and open my eyes to set it back next to the clock.

I'm now facing the northeast window, and look out into the dark. Without my glasses, I can barely make out the stars beyond the naked trees. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a dazzling pinpoint of light appears, brighter by far than any other star, so bright I think at first it's an airplane - but it's moving way too fast, from west to east, though from my vantage it seems to be falling downwards towards the horizon. An instant later it's gone.

A fireball! I remember now that one of the annual meteor showers occurs in mid-December. I can't remember which one, but I'm enormously pleased that I was able to see the event from the warmth of my bed. It takes me a while to drift back into sleep, because every few minutes I reopen my eyes in hopes of catching a glimpse of another visitor from beyond.

(The Geminids, by the way - last night was their peak, but they're expected to display for a few nights more.)

[stilltrucking]

snow silent snow
woke up with no memory of my name
no idea who I was not a bad feeling somehow I knew it would all come back
have not seen the stars in years not really
a languishing feeling a star longing

at least I still have
eidetic images of the night sky in the deserts out west of here imprinted in memory.
a sunday go to church king of feeling I deal myself when i need religion

Never seen no weather like Texas.swing from the eighties to twenties in a day
Soup weather

[the mingo]

- the trees are shooting at me - I adopt a hellish pen name, pick up a #2 pencil and ... erase the trees - just call me Science Crow as I become a google blur

[the mingo]

the cats around here don't seem to favor that last bag of cat food I bought them - they are eating it but not with enthusiasm and not very much at a time - not like them to be picky - 12 of them here at last count and not one is liking the current menu - fuck 'em, eat or die - I tell them go write a poem about it - maybe they will discover that pictures of cake do not satisfy hunger -

got a fire going - a chill edge to things in here when I woke up - called for heat from wood, not fuel oil - the difference is in intensity - heating oil providing a more diffusive experience - wood is like a nuclear reaction, wild, you have to stay on top of it once you get a bed of coals going - you feed it right it will do you right - you fuck up, get distracted or whatever, you're gonna be cold - wake up, Little Susie, King Arthur is at the door -