ReCreationwords=>reality | thought=>action | ideas=>lifeby Jonathan Lipps |
 This is an e4 weblog. |
It is the Quiet Saturday before Easter Sunday, when thousands of years ago the universe held its breath, awaiting the vindication of God for the as-yet-unveiled Messiah, Jesus. That vindication came in the most unexpected form--the resurrection of the dead! Long looked-for, but almost overlooked when it did come, Jesus became the firstfruits of that most remarkable of events, the completion of which we still eagerly desire. I am writing at the Tumaini orphanage, near Nyeri, Kenya (where I have extended my stay an additional 5 weeks). From where I am sitting, I can see no end of reasons why we should continue to eagerly await that desire. It is the one fundamental hope that undergirds every other, because it is the hope which defeats the oldest and hardest of all despairs, which is Death itself. I have a lot of reasons (or so I think) to despair at the moment, and when I look at the children who surround me, I know that they have many more and legitimate ones--some have reason to despair even of life, which I know nothing about. But there is one hope, that the one thing which is the most wrong with the universe can be righted. More to the point, it has been, if we have eyes to see. The fact that people still die is now the illusion, the lie struggling to prevail against the coming truth, which is already true, but which will shine forth in infinite clarity at some time yet to come. And, as every despair, no matter how small, really derives its life in some way from Death, so the key to every hope, no matter how small, can be found in this one hope of life regained, and made indestructible. Though I have no other hope to cling to, yet this one hope will prove to be my salvation! And this is true, not just for those like me who have never tasted the true Sickness Unto Death, but also for those who have. It is the one firm rock on which to build my relationship towards the universe--the cornerstone which the builders have rejected, but which has, in time and in its turn, become the capstone. This year, I have not appropriately contemplated all that I could contemplate during Holy Week, nor have I appropriately prepared myself to experience another Easter in the fullest way. However, I am certainly in a place to appreciate and long for the unique comfort which is the hope of the resurrection of the dead (and it is the telltale signs of that future resurrection in Jesus' own resurrection which we celebrate tomorrow). I believe the renewal and serious appreciation of this hope is just what Easter celebration is all about. "Tumaini" means "hope" in Swahili. --- In past years, I have traditionally created some piece of art on Easter to commemorate the day (for instance, the two monologues I wrote for Easter 2003 ). I do not know if such will happen tomorrow, but at any rate think that in view of what the hope of Easter really is, nothing can be for me a more appropriate offering than the Suite Apocalyptique I posted in a recent entry (click here to read about and download it), given that its central theme is exactly this one of resurrection hope. Perhaps it will be of benefit to you in your Easter worship! So, Happy Easter! Christ is risen indeed! I will leave you with a poem, the lyrics to one of the songs in the Suite (Mvmt VI: The Sun Rises): I breathe at last, the work is done Like shining glass, sea and sun Are sharp and real, bright blades of love Which grew to heal the wounds of Night is over now Night is over now The sun is coming up But don’t turn away from the flames These brilliant rays annul our shame The fire burns, but we stand For which we yearn is in our hands When we touch the earth, it sings rejoicing For the day has dawned, and we have returned To ourselves as we were meant to be To the world as it has longed to be I breathe at last, the work is done The shadow passed, and life begun
I have some great Splendour Hyaline news to share! First of all, Paste magazine (my favorite music magazine) has run a short "review" of our new EP, Hope (A Sliver, Like the Moon), in their March edition (with the Norah Jones cover). This is a first for David and me, and we're super excited about it--as it turns out, the review is (in my opinion) overwhelmingly positive! Please go and support Paste by picking up a copy (they should be at places like Barnes & Noble, etc...). Our review is, I'm told, on page 69, right underneath Bright Eyes! Second, if you're interested in purchasing Hope..., it is now available for sale on iTunes! We have pressed CDs as well, but as I'm out of the country for a while, iTunes is an excellent way to get your hands on a copy now. You can preview tracks in iTunes, or listen to full-length tracks at Splendour Hyaline's myspace. If you decide you'd like to purchase the album, simply click the link below. Thanks for your support! If you do buy the album, I'd really appreciate it if you also wrote an honest review on iTunes, describing your reaction to the music. Having a lot of reviews helps us out when people are browsing music!
When I last wrote about the sabbatical which is underway (read part 1 here), I was in the middle of my time at Schloss Mitersill, in Austria. That time has now ended! I'm currently writing at a hostel in Oxford, and tomorrow I'll be catching a flight to Nairobi, before heading to Nyeri, Kenya. I'm very happy to report that my time at the Schloss finished well. This, of course, means that I'm certainly sad to see it end. But before I talk more about that, here are some pictures of the Schloss and the gorgeous surrounding area:
No time for a huge entry, but I wanted to post some tour dates. I am hanging out with my friends The New Frontiers on their southeast tour with Manchester Orchestra. At some venues I may be able to play some Splendour Hyaline music. Either way, if you're anywhere near these towns on these dates, come and say hello!
Also, Splendour Hyaline's new album, Hope (A Sliver, Like the Moon) (cover pictured above) has been released and it will be for sale on tour. It will be for sale later via the internet (including iTunes). A long blog entry is overdue--some big news for the next couple months (which most of you all have probably heard anyway), but we're getting ready to drive to Little Rock for the first show. Cheers!
Now that we are in December, and are therefore allowed to start thinking about Christmas (whereas consumer hegemony would have us believe that time was three weeks ago), I am very pleased to present Splendour Hyaline's 2006 Christmas EP, Holy Night:
(To download the album, right-click the above links and choose the option to download the files to your computer.) David and I hope that these songs can accompany your 2006 Christmas season, as our previous Christmas EP did last year; if you have not downloaded those songs, you can get them here. Unfortunately, we had a very limited amount of time in which to record the three songs above (very few takes each), so the performance quality on my part is less than superb. (In addition, I just realized I didn't catch an error in the lyrics of "O Holy Night". Oh well.) Equally unfortunately, neither David nor Rachel were able to add their talents to the mix. David did, however, produce, mix, engineer, and master the whole album, which is happily noticeable. That being said, I think things sound great on the whole, and am excited especially about a few classical guitar interludes in the songs. So, please download and enjoy them and, as always, listen with headphones!
Last weekend, our small church community went on a retreat to a place in San Francisco. As a major part of the time, each person had one or more pieces of art to present on the subject of her "deepest dream(s)". The idea was that something prepared in advance on that subject, then later presented and discussed, would provide an interesting, focused, and perhaps vulnerable manner of getting to know one another more intimately. When I started working on my own art a couple weeks ago, I found that having a deadline for the creative process actually made me quite fruitful, and I ended up having three songs and the start of a short story / novel to share. I won't talk about two of the songs, the novel, or what dreams they represented, at this moment, because they will no doubt receive special treatment when they are recorded / completed. I did, however, want to share one song, an instrumental piece I composed in Logic with my keyboard. The composition took over many long nights, zoned out hammering keys, headphones pressing a wide canyon in the top of my skull. Even all the way through the retreat the song had remained unnamed, but now that I have had some time to think on it, I have decided to call it "The Wayfaring Aesthete Engages the Road in Conversation". (Originally, it was supposed to be called "ReCreation", but I didn't want to inflict on it too great a connection with this weblog, and the storied nature of the final name is much more appropriate). The dream of mine which corresponded to this particular work was that of creating/designing objects/experiences which faithfully and reliably transmit emotion. In a word, "evoking". I long to evoke responses in others the way that good art evokes incredibly deep emotional responses in me. I treasure those experiences as gifts, and desire to give such gifts to others as well. Click on the link below to download the iTunes-format version of the song. (The picture is a screenshot of the song's timeline, with its various instruments). Let me know what you think. Friends who were with us on the retreat--I encourage you to likewise post your creations, which were all excellent!
Anyone who has been around this weblog for long enough has realized that I care a lot about mainly two categories of things. The first is Girls, and specifically how to entice an especially awesome, as-yet-unpinpointed one to eventually marry me. The second is The Stuff I Am Passionate About. This second category is usually seen in long diatribes about how I have so many passions that the thought of finding one thing to do in my life (my life's project, so to speak) is incredibly daunting. I usually think of such pursuits as falling under one of the following headings: Philosophy, Theology, Music, Language, Coding, Writing, or Design. Importantly, I'm interested in the creative elements of each. I often laugh derisively at any suggestion that these things could be combined into a single role or project; for what pursuit can bring together such disparate fields as philosophy and computer programming, not to mention the others? It struck me today that maybe there is such a project: the design and implementation of a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), of which the current most popular example is World of Warcraft. Clearly, since a MMORPG is a piece of software, it involves coding. But it also involves World Design--the overarching story and history of a fantastical place (a la The Silmarillion, my favorite book). Clearly creating such an immersive world involves a foray into philosophy (and probably theology, since worlds without magic or arcane technology are boring). Beyond that, what can provide more immersion than Tolkien's strategy of language creation? Of course, histories of entire civilizations and languages need to be conveyed in as powerful and encompassing wording as possible, thus requiring a skilled writer. Finally, what is a venture into an unknown world without the appropriate stunning visual and audio design? The score would need to be more immense than any 2-hour movie. Well, there it is! It doesn't seem like anything important is missing. And it certainly explains my fascination with the concepts behind MMORPGs in the first place. Unfortunately, I don't know that working for a MMO house would be fulfilling at all to me; curiously, I don't know why. I certainly don't think that a life spent to encourage the use of the imagination is wasted--Tolkien and Lewis are my heroes precisely for that reason. Maybe it's just that my experience with MMORPG culture has made me doubt whether the kind of imagination encouraged is actually of any enduring value. I suppose that at the end of the day I do believe that imagination has a function--that of re-envisioning a broken and fractured reality--and I don't know that World of Warcraft really inspires this, rather than a mindless grind for powerful virtual items that give one a sense of superiority over other players. Maybe that's the difference between The Silmarillion and World of Warcraft--since The Silmarillion is a story, it asks you to enter in and wander around by yourself, unlocking experiences with the imagination. Warcraft, on the other hand, is unavoidably a game, and one not of collaborative imagination as often as competitive un-imagination. (What I mean by unimagination is that many players purposefully de-mystify any imaginative elements in MMORPGs, reducing it to the underlying code systems, so that they might more easily "win" the game. My motivations in playing MMORPGs, on the other hand, are generally rather to have an immersive, imaginative experience). Perhaps there are ways to create a game like this; perhaps that is what real-life role-playing groups find attractive about their sessions (which frankly don't appeal to me, for some reason); however, I doubt that, even given the possibility of designing such a game, that the result would be compelling to enough people to build a multi-million-dollar franchise on top of (which seems to be the point of most computer games). But what do you think, O Reader? Should I go try and get hired by Blizzard? I haven't said anything about the physical pursuits I enjoy (which are also many), or about any actual positive results of work for the poorer and more downtrodden in the world (who might not be able to afford my computer game). What is there to say about that? (But note that I'm not asking the question, "Was Tolkien wrong in writing his novels when he could have been helping poor children elsewhere, very materially?" since I take it for granted that the answer's no.)
Last night I went back to the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco for the second time this month, to see the Smoking Popes / Lovedrug show. It was an incredible experience, and I realized something about myself that is important to share (and might also be an important contribution to Rock Theory in general).
My recent weeks in Orlando were excellent, though not very relaxing. Between intense meetings at Teleios World Domination HQ (we're meeting resistance in certain parts of eastern Europe), and non-stop work on the new album, I got 2-3 hours less sleep per night than my normal. (There was also the fantastic celebration of my dad's 50th birthday party, attended by close family and the uncorking of a very expensive bottle of wine which was a good bit older than I was. Not to mention the less-meaningful but more-rowdy celebration of Cinco de Mayo). The result, at least on the music side, was a brand new 6-song EP that sounds incredible. The performance, production, everything is stellar. My brother David was in charge of the engineering, mixing, production, and mastering, and he is becoming very talented at all of the above.
I have a strong desire to share all our new songs with everyone here, but a few things remain to be worked out. First, I don't have an "official" CD--David does, and he's in Africa for a month. Second, I'm not naive enough to think that the mix I have will be final. We usually go through rounds of tweaking, and, while things sound excellent, there're always one or two minor changes to make. Third, the album has no title. Fourth, the album has no artwork. I'd like all of these things to be present before I unveil everything officially. So just hold tight for now! I'll probably break down and put one or two up here anyway, since the only reason I feel secure is that I am validated by my peers. Speaking of being validated by my peers, let's go on a tangent: those of you who are e4 weblog owners or frequenters might have noticed that I have added trackback capability to the e4 weblogs. Trackbacks are a cool example of the way the web is supposed to work--now, when you write entries, e4 will check out any links you make, and attempt to send a trackback ping to that site. If the site is trackback-enabled, it'll accept the ping, and people who visit it will see that your entry references the page! Likewise all the weblogs here are now trackback-enabled, so anyone can send pings from Movable Type, WordPress, or wherever. Let's just hope for no horrible spam! (For you e4 bloggers, you can play with the trackback preferences at your weblog config page) Well, I am now officially back in California for a while, so hopefully I'll have time to write some more reflective posts soon. Ciao!
It used to be the case that it didn't take me long to write songs. I'd sit down with the guitar, fiddle around until I came across some chords that seemed good, make up a passable melody, and then move over to the computer and type some lyrics. Usually the process would take at most a couple hours. Then, I'd move straight into recording, bypassing the "practice" stage--the multiple takes were the practice. So I'd go from idea to mp3 in under a day. Somewhere in college that changed...probably after I realized that the quality of both the idea and the mp3 were less than excellent. One of the effects of this realization was a drastically lower songwriting rate--from something like 12 a year at the end of high school to just a couple a year at the end of college. I'd like to think there was a proportional increase in song quality, but still, it was kind of sad to look back on a year and not have a lot to show for it, musically speaking. Although in truth, the songwriting hesitance had less to do with music theory and more to do with lyrics--I was just dissatisfied with everything I came up with; I was no longer writing "worship" lyrics, and I was no longer writing "how I'm feeling" lyrics, which meant that coming up with ideas was much, much harder. All of the above is just meant to elucidate my surprise when, on Friday night, I sat down with the guitar, came up with a part I liked and a vocal melody to accompany it, and then in about an hour also had a complete set of lyrics for the song! I played it for Dav when he got back from hanging out with friends, and we decided to put it in the queue for the album we're recording now. Hopefully that means you'll get to hear it soon. It's fairly original (I think) and is in 5/4, so I get props for that anyway. I called it "The Restless Slumber of Dry Kindling", and I'll reproduce the lyrics here: Rising, a sliver, like the moon Take me right away to doom Hope shouldn't be the end of me Yet whispers say I'm 23 Rugged, the way to sanity A lonely, sad old colony Overlooked by all who've gone before, Easier to sail to other shores More to the point is I don't know Which way it is that I should go Newness, a sharp-lit symmetry Attractive; does reality Speak up, gently colorize Halting the heart's unconscious rise Freezing the blood that wants to stir? Hibernation is a lonely word So wake me up, wake me up Can't stop the fires that are running Through trenches towards me Oh no Ooooooooo If flame is the order of the day Responsibility for fuel is laid With you so don't waste our time I can only sing so many rhymes Love's only if I close my eyes Still I can't help but look to the prize Watchman's vigil in a tower room Spiteful of the brazen rising moon So how long, how long Can't stop the fires that are running Through trenches towards me Oh no Ooooooooo Well, off to do more recording...
You should all be relieved to hear that Dan and I did not die on Mt Whitney. Though the summit attempt was a good deal more difficult than it was supposed to be, due to weather. In fact, on our way up the last 1,000 ft or so, our group kicked off a couple small avalanches, causing the team leader to declare emphatically that conditions were very unsafe. Things were so bad, we descended immediately, packed up camp (at 12,000 ft) as quickly as possible, and rushed all the way down the mountain. So unfortunately, we did not summit Mt Whitney. I did get this great picture of it during a short lull in the rogue winter storm that hit us: It should be said also that we did have an excellent time, were in great physical condition (we rocked the climb and the altitude) and health for the duration, and got back a day early, safe and sound. These are all good things, and the whole experience was overwhelmingly positive. I'm sure Dan and I will be writing a full trip report to post at Summit Whitney, so I'll post here when that happens. At that time we should have a number of awesome pictures, too. About a day after I got back from Whitney, I left for Florida to be at work and with family for a week and a half or so. Since my brother David has gotten in to Duke law school and will be moving to Durham pretty shortly, we decided that Splendour Hyaline (which consists of the two of us) needed to make a new record, and fast. So apart from work, we're pretty much in the studio (Spareroom Studios, that is). So far things are going great--we're planning on releasing a 5 or 6 song EP. The recording quality we're getting, both mechanically and in terms of performance, is light years beyond our previous attempts, so definitely stay tuned; we might post some unofficial mixes here or at our myspace page. On another music-related note, you'll notice a new sidebar on my blog, which consists of recently-played tracks from iTunes. All e4 blogs now have the ability to get data from last.fm if you have a last.fm username and some implementation of AudioScrobbler (downloads here for all platforms). If you've never heard of last.fm, you should check it out--it's a cool web application that tracks your music listening and gives you cool statistics about it, suggests new artists, and connects you with people with similar taste. All that is to say, if I've been listening to iTunes recently (and had an internet connection), you should now be able to see that info on my blog! (If you also have an e4 blog, just go to the weblog config page and put in your last.fm username to take advantage of this feature too).
Since around October, the relentless marketing machine at Apple had been hammering away at the (admittedly thin) walls of my financial restraint such that, a few weeks after Christmas, I decided I absolutely needed a new iPod--a video one. My then-current 60gb iPod, with a color screen and the ability to show photo slideshows just wouldn't cut it anymore. So when I got back to California, I began once again a charming love-hate relationship with craigslist SF. You see, however much I knew I needed the $399 video iPod, I knew that I should be able to get it cheaper. A few days of monitoring craigslist via keyword RSS confirmed this, and I was flooded with ads for new-in-box video iPods, all between $300 and $380. Of course, a large portion of these are scams, and a larger portion are sold within 25 minutes of being posted (supply of unopened and unwanted iPods was high because of recent gift-exchange-based holidays having occurred, so the prices were pushed very low). Nevertheless, a few days and many failed deal attempts later, I found someone willing to meet me somewhere in the east bay to trade a still-shrinkwrapped 60gb video and agent18 case for a price which, when all was said and done, would save me about $100.
As a gift for all of our friends and family this Christmas, my brother David and I (who comprise Splendour Hyaline) recorded a 3-song Christmas EP, inexplicably called "Christmas". Here it is for download in MP3 format (make sure to right-click and Save Target As):
(for those of you using iTunes, you'll see the album art is already attached to the songs. Otherwise, feel free to copy the image from this page) NOTE: Songs are now considered to be the final mix.
Over a year ago, I set out on a quest to rate all the songs in my iTunes library. Don't ask me why--I'm a sucker for data, so I had dreams of all the cool scripts I could write and patterns I could find if each song in my library were categorized according to how much I liked it. I'm not sure exactly how many songs I had then, but it was probably in the vicinity of 5,000. So even if I rated one song a second, it would have taken an hour and a half. What I decided to do, though, to be fair, was to listen to each song fully before rating it. If an average song is 3 minutes, we need to multiply that 1.5 hours by 180--270 hours! I was somewhat optimistic that this 270 hours would pass by quickly while I was working or what not. I soon discovered that rating songs one-by-one in iTunes was a somewhat inefficient task, given that the only way to rate something was to go into iTunes and click on the little star for that particular song. Not a bad method if you're already in iTunes, but if you are working on something else and would rather not have your workflow interrupted every 3 minutes, it's less than optimal. So I wrote some software (iRateTunes) that let me rate songs with keystrokes, without going to iTunes. (I also created a little app that showed me info about my iTunes library in the OS X status bar, including the number of songs left to be rated, and the total amount of time I'd spent listening to songs in iTunes. This was so I could monitor my progress) Still, even with these tools, it was slow going. It turned out that the mental energy required to rate song after song was somewhat exhausting, so if I could get 100 done per day, that was good. Most days I got far fewer songs rated, and some not at all, depending on the intensity required by my work. An even more exhausting task was keeping a consistent standard with which to rate the songs. There are all sorts of options--should the ratings be relative to just the songs in my library? Or should it be relative to all the songs in pop culture? Should I try to keep a nice bell curve, so that there are about as many 1-star songs as 5-star songs, and far more 3-stars than either? In the end, I'm not sure I was super-consistent. But anyway. Today, over a year after I began, my iTunesCount status bar reads: "6794/0 | 52.74" This means that I have 6794 songs in my library, and 0 are unrated! Finally! The 52.74 lets me know that the total amount of song air time with this iTunes library is 52.74 days (I created the library in July of 2004). That's 1,265 hours! And I don't let iTunes run while I'm not there listening. Stats per rating category:
Given that I've been feeling the way I described in my last entry, I decided that I needed to write music. For me, writing and recording music is one of the only healthy ways I have to deal with frustration of various kinds. So last night around 1am, I sat down with my keyboard and decided to write and record a song. What happened next was amazing--I composed and played something which, more than any other song at the moment I wrote it, mirrored my thoughts and feelings with infinitely better accuracy than any number of words. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this song, in terms of how it describes my emotional state, is worth a million.
So that I will not be accused of only making lists of heavy and depressing stuff like doubts, here is installment #1 of "Things I Like"! I have put "10-2005" in the title, which implies but does not do anything like promise that this will be a monthly series. The list is not supposed to be particularly deep, so please do not feel injured that I do not mention our relationship, or Jesus, or anything like that. But do remember that I spend most of my days coding, and so a lot of this will be my inner nerd coming out. Here is the list, in no particular order:
This video has been one of my close companions over the last few weeks, reminding me what I love to dream about most. You may have already seen it; if not, an incredible experience awaits!
After the pretty meaningful birthdays of 18 and 21 (at which points my tobacco- and alcohol-related habits were legalized), I'm beginning to realize how much you start to forget about your own birthdays. For instance, mine just snuck up on me. I hadn't really thought about it that much, apart from wondering if some people should get together or something; but that's not what I'm talking about. More the sense of anticipation, that pre-Christmas excitement that used to attend the days and weeks before a birthday...that sense was completely and finally gone this year. It's now September 26 and there is no elation, no feeling of the specialness of the day. It's sad, I guess, but part of the whole thing is that I don't really care that it's sad. Last year may have been the same, except we had a hurricane on my birthday so that made things exciting anyhow. So while September 26 is no longer a cause for unbridled joy and wondering if I may have some good presents waiting, it is of course a good excuse to do things like take a midnight shot of sub-30-degree vodka. Mmmm.
I'm happy to announce the result of an insane weekend of creative coding/design with my roommate Justin: Podornot.com. Podornot is a fun mash-up of the new podcasting trend (internet buzz, anyone?) and the old Internet time-wasting stand-by, Hot or not. The idea is to generate a random audio experience; you never know what you're going to get! But as you go through, you can rate the podcasts you hear, and maybe someday we will use this information to create lists of the hottest podcasts on the web. So go to the site and check it out! Graphic/visual design right now done by me and Justin, hopefully to be improved in the near future. Anyway, it's fun to have an idea, to implement it rapidly, and to see it pretty much near completion in a short amount of time. Go visit!
Don't ask me how, but I recently received an as-yet-unreleased album of music from a very cool Icelandic band. If you know who I am talking about, good for you, and get excited for the official release! It is definitely going to be one of the most amazing albums of the year. Anyway, I just mention it because I listened to the album nonstop on repeat yesterday (imagine that I will today as well), and it is a perfect and moving example of the glorious beauty which, for me, causes sadness and even pain. Unfortunately I don't dare betraying trust by posting an audio sample; you'll have to wait! |  Log in to subscribe.
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