5/19/2008
Made small painting based on the Arnold Newman photograph of Stravinsky at the piano, replaced with a silhouette profile of a cowboy. I liked this particular image, as it had an interesting framed/cropped geometry. The image of a cowboy (Average Joe) is a generic symbol representing freedom, self-reliance and rebellion. In this piece I am using it ironically, as cowboys are not typically classical musicians... 5/19/2012, Saturday Annular solar eclipse happens today over the southwest. First launch of the Falcon 9 rocket by SpaceX makes space-flight history (however with failure in the last second.) I am getting a good impression that this could be the beginning of something epochal. For several reasons: 1) Billions in private capital, 2) Spirit of adventure by risk takers, 3) the right moment in history. Now we need a formal declaration that we are going to Mars. 5/19/2023 Lyric idea: What does knowledge and skill Have to do with money and power?
Later on I ran it through DALL-E with the prompt "Silhouette of a cowboy on A SpaceX rocket". Interesting: This could be the new Pictures Generation.
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Possible narrative: The bride at this wedding is a radio star in 1932 and her name is Radio Angel. The photographer they hired is Edward Weston. One of the shots taken has the big and golden full moon rising in the background, which is either a good or bad omen. The harmony is super simple and could also be done as a shuffle.
5/17/1932 (The Daybooks of Edward Weston) Weston (begrudgingly) does some wedding photography at Del Monte Lodge. He can't be choosy—it pays the rent. 5/17/1996 Finished mix of One Step Ahead of the Moon. 5/17/2023 First acoustic demos of "Radio Angel" done as Video 45s. Morning routines shift for me quite frequently. I used to do the video riffs, then Songdays, now I go through random Evernote entries and I found this one. This is exactly what's happening when I'm working on something--it's all subject to (or for) change.
11/7/1978, Tuesday (Keith Haring Diary): Everything in this notebook is subject to change. When I re-read an idea two or three days later, sometimes (usually) I have a more defined, altered, or more simple version of the original idea, or a new interpretation of the idea, or a totally new idea that develops as a result of the first one. This book contains thoughts that are spontaneous. Every day I think differently, re-evaluate old ideas, and express my ideas in different terms. Some Dynaxioms that relate. 2628. Creativity is (should be) naturally generative. It doesn't stop when you think you've finished something. 2388. The reason things don't get finished is that they are still on their way to becoming resolved; We can't see them moving. Sometimes they outlive us and evolve into different forms created by other people, but we are still a creator because we were involved in their trajectory. 2163. Once a work is finished, a lot of insights come in retrospect and the more you talk about them in the future clarifies what was ambiguous in the past. 1537. The finishing is (sometimes) somewhere in the doing. (Some things might never get to a finished state). 1398. One of the most difficult things to do is to write a song that sounds finished when you begin writing it. 5/16/2011
Inauguration of Rahm Emanuel at Millennium Park. From a mayor of the silent generation to a Boomer. What is the future of Chicago post-Daley? In my experience, AI is only marginally useful in the humanities. I can't imagine it would be so pervasive that it would change thousands of years of human history, as well as the human universals used for art-making. In fact, if AI ran on a foundation of human universals, it would be attempting to make art based on them. [I still think this way 13 years later. There was an article in the NYT yesterday about the diminishing real returns of AI. Until the point where its usefulness blends into the wallpaper of everyday life, it will remain in an uncanny valley.]
Another Haring entry and song idea. The R&B feel might be wrong, but he was into the Grateful Dead.
5/15/1977 (Keith Haring Journal) "We're on our way to Sacramento in a '62 Chrysler with a dome dash and plastic slipcovers. It's a really neat car. Also, he is blind in one eye and has a cataract in the other and the radio doesn't work right 'cause he spilled a glass of Coke down the front of the dash a few years ago. But we'll get there..." 5/14/1898, Berlin (Harry Kessler Diary)
Kessler lunches with Hofmannsthal. He ruminates on how aristocracies are out of touch with their own people and are only exalting their status by " stoking of ethnic hatred." 5/14/2022 Post-Buffalo massacre investigation obvious finding about racist motivation. It seems Columbine never ended as a violent and horrific paradigm shift in America.
Today's Songday is based on the 5/13/1977 diary entry, apparently when he was hitchhiking from Minnesota to North Dakota.
"Took a bus to 1-94 and caught a few little rides and then a truck ride all the way to the border of N. Dakota where we ate three cheeseburgers and drank some beers. It was all farmers and when I went to the bathroom they all talked about my hair...Rednecks! Then we got a ride from a pilot who likes Bachman Turner Overdrive and then a truck ride into N. Dakota." Today's special Songday uses a Beatles title ("All Together Now"--they were on the studio on 5/12/1967 in the Yellow Submarine sessions) and old song of mine from 5/1992 ("Fly High Veronica"), where I'm using the same chord changes, then using it for a Mother's Day greeting. The original song was about a first date between people with nothing in common. But the alternate story is that they eventually got married and had kids. They might still have nothing in common. https://musescore.com/user/30768085/scores/16709839/s/xBG5nr?share=copy_link
Some of the original lyric: A man in search of love A woman in search of same They meet at the corner cafe To drink espresso and cafe latte She's a cultured artist He's in a labor trade They sit at their table And never have a word to say Her life's a watercolor In his football field of dreams He talks of scores and players She doesn't even know the teams A diary entry in the future, from Reset 2046:
5/11/2078, Brooklyn (Anthony Townes Diary) For the past month the city has been preparing for the total solar eclipse. Throngs of people are heading to the coast for the event, with the total eclipse occurring mid-afternoon. It is an almost perfectly clear day with just a few puffy clouds. The light is already dimming, with maximum in another hour. [There is in fact going to be a total eclipse in New York in May 2078.] 5/10/2022
Lyrics to pop songs seldom mean anything—at least at the point they are written. But they usually gather meaning over time. For example if you just search the phrase, you will get the literal meaning. If you reverse-engineer them, it's the typical hook. The idea must have been the title because it's in the hook, then beyond the first stanza, the rest is love song filler: Hey, girl, stop what you're doin', Hey, girl, you'll drive me to ruin, I don't know what it is I like about you, but I like it a lot... [This is essentially what I'm doing with Songdays, where I cherry-pick words and phrases and then assemble them in such a way that meaning becomes a by-product. In pop music, no one is thinking that every song is a story, and words are sometimes just a form of percussion or are otherwise filling a vocal space with something] 5/10 "lyrics": Ava, Ava Seemed too human Barely born Then deified |
AuthorLee Barry, Musician/Content Producer Archives
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