Creating something every day for 365 days
Don’t worry, this is not a liberal rant.
YOU MAY THINK THOSE LITTLE SQUIRRELS ARE CUTE, WITH THEIR LITTLE FLUFFY TAILS AND THEIR DARLING FACES, KENNETH, BUT YOU ARE WRONG WRONG WRONG THEY ARE THE DEMON SPAWN OF BEELZEBUB HIMSELF.
This is what the new grass in the labyrinth looks like:
Dozens of little potholes:
MAY THEY ROAST IN HELL.
Thank you for listening.
Today we did something fun. My lovely first wife had inherited an original engraving of one of her ancestresses:
…and wanted it hung in the more Victorian of the two guestrooms.
Here’s the fun part: the frame had an old, handmade brass loop, like so…
…which mean that whatever it was hanging from would be visible.
Fortunately—and I didn’t know this until today—there is such a thing as a Victorian picture nail. You can see some lovely examples here. Upon seeing them, the LFW asked if we might not make our own. “Use what we have,” is our new motto, and boy, some of you are getting some pretty bizarre objects as gifts for the next decade.
Anyway, I conceived a plan.
First, decide where to put the hanger on the wall. Easy, just hold the painting up to the wall and put a dot where the loop is.
Except the loop didn’t stand up by itself, preferring to slip down behind the painting.
And so…
Loop stabilized, dot made on the wall, and…
That’s right, a plain flat-head screw. Now all we needed was something appropriate…
…like a handpainted Czechoslovakian ceramic brooch.
The reverse:
Hang the etching on the screw. Heat up the hotglue gun, put a dab on the screw, and…
Tada!
Frippery upon frippery, eh wot?
1:32 p.m.:
I’ve been working all morning, just futzing around with some sounds for the opening of SUN TRUE FIRE. Think the opening to Das Rheingold, or to Kevin Puts’ Symphony No. 2. Slow, low strings, building to some kind of crescendo…
I want to structure the entire work around the idea of a ritual: INVOCATION/CALL — AGONS (QUESTIONS, ENCOUNTERS, PROPHECIES) — REVELATION — RESOLUTION. The opening needs to introduce us to the mystical landscape we’re about to enter, and then we will have some great pillars of sound, with a solo tenor calling us: “drunk among them, lead the way a clear voice way…”
Of what I’ve written today, here’s what’s worth sharing: STF opening abortive attempt
(I think it’s nice, and I think it would come after a longer buildup before this point. It may go different paths than what I’ve indicated here.)
9:30 a.m.
I’ve rewritten the Chorale from the Christmas Carol “Christmas Present Street Scene.” Its weirdo chromaticism wasn’t ever really a problem, but the ending was always dicey since the sopranos had to sing high and divisi.
This rewrite had to begin with the same melodic phrase, which reappears before “Hey, boy, what day is today?” in the Finale and which was not problematic anyway. In general, I’ve kept the first parts of the two verses the same, just monkeying with the endings so that they don’t climb too high for inexperienced singers.
So the Abortive Attempt is done. I’ll set it aside and let it annoy me again later.
Oh, you’d like to hear it? Here.
11:36 a.m.
SUN TRUE FIRE. hoo boy.
Lots of scribbled notes—on paper even! Just chords, bass lines, interesting combinations. Nothing serious yet. No real text set, although I think I’m zeroing in on verse IX. Big Case as my first target.
However, here’s a lovely little bit, almost an Easier Piece in its simplicity. It may end up in XI. The Azure Stone (Resolution). Listen.
1:33 p.m.:
Here’s a cute little two-part waltz. I truly am just plopping out random notes without worrying about whether they’re ever going to wind up being usable in SUN TRUE FIRE.
3:05 p.m.:
Lots of little bits, nothing more to share.
It’s time to hit the hot tub for a bit.
More spam email subject lines:
Time once again to flush the old spam filter…
(All capitalization and punctuation exactly as in the original.)
And with that, I’m out.
——
Not quite. I couldn’t resist taking a peek inside that last one.
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That’s poetry. But I’m already years behind on my SUN TRUE FIRE project, so I will resist the urge to turn that into something.
But you can. Be my guest.
Last night I intended to make a shrimp/pasta dish using some basil, kind of a pesto-like Alfredo sauce kind of thing. But then…
After I had prepped the shrimp, the resulting sauce was too good to mess up with additional flavors. Here you go:
Recipe By: Dale Lyles
Serving Size: 2
Ingredients:
Directions:
Yum.
