better than keds

We ate tandoori and rented Episode One, on the theory that we will rent Episode Three once we have refreshed our memory. I love the part of a legal examination in which one asks the witness "would it refresh your memory to review xyz document?". I also like the phrase for an exception to the hearsay rule called "past recollection recorded"--it just rolls off the tongue so durably.

This morning I did a remix of a really hip Irish bouzouki and posted it on ccmixter.org. It took me a long time to get what I wanted, as efforts last night resulted in way too many peaking sound levels burning into the "red zone", where sound clips and distorts (and also intrigues me, but that's another post for another day). This morning I finally got my sound levels to an acceptable point, and posted the song for review. The first review, though, said "turn those sound levels down" in a sharply less than perfectly courteous intonation. I had had a stressful day for a number of reasons, and this was not the first time the particular commenter had made a needlessly caustic comment. Although I tend to be immune to comments (a virtue of dealing with lawyers all day), today I found myself in that frame of mind I call "life is too short". I find a ton of people who love to collaborate and interact, so I pulled all my work off ccmixter, and determined to seek out my own new life and new civilizations. It's not that I mind a bad review--I rather revel in the insights one can get from a bad review. Yet there is a grace one can bring to even a negative thing, and the gracelessness one can inflict upon another. This was the second time the person in question had pressed a point a little too firmly. So life is too short. Who knows, though? I dislike excess melodrama. It may be temporary. But today, it seems to me that life is too short.

When gracegiver mentioned that my username googles to a lot of hits (none of which are very interesting, by the way), I googled gurdonark and did learn that my music has been played on some internet radio stations I did not realize I had been played on.
Also, verian sent me a new work for our collaboration--this will be our sixth piece. Once we have an entire album, I hope we will release it on the Open Source Archive. I've enjoyed the exposure that resource provides.

I need a good haircut, a long hike, a few hours of mandatory continuing legal education, a solid hour with asphalteden's ambient music podcast, a good movie, to figure out how it is that all my volume levels out and in as well as my studio sound levels show "normal or less" and yet my recordings come out in the red zone.

Speaking of red, I love the name "Red Wing Shoes". They remind me of Red Ball Jets, which, in my childhood, had the best commercials, which promised that one could not only run faster, but also jump higher. If one had a superball and a pair of Red Ball Jets, I have no doubt that one could achieve a lunar orbit, much like Apollo 8 did when I was 9 years old. I've thought about Apollo 8, and in particular also about the astronaut show stayed in orbit during Apollo 11--circling the moon, which others would explore. That fellow Moses had to look at the Promised Land from across the river. I imagine looking at some promised land, but through a kaleidoscope, so that I see its many patterns slice, refract, and enchant.