Blog

A little instrumental piece I recorded in July 2009. Yet another off of my four track tapes. (See my Nirvana, Phoebe and Huggabroomstik covers.)

Download 4f by Dibson T Hoffweiler

---

Continuing my 2009 tape dumps (see my Nirvana and Phoebe Kreutz recordings), here's a recording of "Suddenly Something's Changed", a Huggabroomstik song. I've played the song many times with the band, but arranging the song around my guitar part gave me a perverse thrill.

Download "Suddenly Something's Changed" (Huggabroomstik cover) by Dibson T Hoffweiler

---

Years ago Phoebe asked me to write a song for her to perform at a sort of variety show that was held at Cake Shop. Phoebe often writes about historical figures, so I wrote a song that would (sort of) fit in her song catalog about Ada Lovelace.

Ada Lovelace was one of the world's first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

That's from findingada.com, which is celebrating Ada Lovelace Day to encourage people to write ("blog") about women in science and technology. As my contribution, I present this demo of my musical tribute to Ada:

Download Ada by Dibson T Hoffweiler

The lyrics allude to Ada Lovelace and Ada the programming language named after her.

Ada, they made you in the nineteenth century, The only child Lord Byron bore legitimately. Your mother was the parallelogram princess. To keep herself sane she taught you math; she was obsessed.

Ada, they remade you in nineteen-seven-nine. Department of Defense named you in four years time After last century's Countess of Lovelace, And then they used your name to enter outer space.

But, Ada, you failed them when you tried to launch that ship. And, Ada, they failed you when they bled you - you were sick, But bleeding cannot cure you of uterine cancer. And spaceships won't fly when they're filled with runtime errors.

So, Ada, we remember you by making up this language, And continuing the works of folks like Charles Babbage.

And I always think of you when using my computer.

---

So I took a lot of images while on the west coast last month, and I couldn't write stories for them all. Here's a batch of photos, unexplained.

---

Continuing my unloading of 4-track recordings from last year, here's a recording of Phoebe's "Bull Run, Beer Run". This was more fun than the Nirvana recording because I got more bold with experimenting with other instruments.

Download Bull Run, Beer Run (Phoebe Kreutz cover) by Dibson T Hoffweiler

---

March 21, 2010 - Buckeye, Arizona

I wake up in a smelly motel room. Time to talk awake, and take a walk. I start on the sidewalk.

Then I take to the road. My destination, a big statue, stands 40 feet tall in the distance.

Walk walk walk.

Stand proud, giant hobo. I wonder who would have put the fellow here.

A plaque sits on the hobo's pedestal...

... and leaves me more confused. It reads:

Hobo Joe Built by and stands in memory of Marvin Ransdale (1928-1988) by his good friend Ramon Gillum July, 1989

Did Marvin build it in his own memory? Did Ramon build it for Marvin? Perhaps they build it together, but come July, 1989 only Ramon was around to remember Marvin's contribution? I'm not sure.

But the hobo lives near a meat processing plant.

I begin looping back to the hotel, and meet an owl guide.

He reveals to me the mysteries of waste and tools left out by citizens of Buckeye.

Done with waste, I continue with the drive thru to the motel.

---

A few years ago I was invited to perform the songs "Something in the Way" and "Endless, Nameless" at a Nirvana cover night. It was a challenge to feel satisfied with playing the songs because I wasn't familiar with Nirvana's music - I only knew a few singles. I didn't even listen to all of Nevermind until last April, when I found it at a used record store in Berlin.

When between apartments in May, I spent some time at my family's home with my 4-track recording some songs, "Something in the Way" among them. That was nearly a year ago. Having that time apart makes the recordings sound more complete to my ears. Still rough, but complete enough to share with other ears, if they'll take them.

Download Something in the Way (Nirvana Cover) by Dibson T Hoffweiler

---

I played tons of video games as a kid; one of my favorite themes was from the Nintendo game "Metroid". Here's the theme if you don't know it. It gets good at 30 seconds if you want to skip. (You can google it, it went missing here)

8-bit Nintendo video game music charms me still. The Nintendo could have five channels of sound, one capable of a sampled sound (thanks, Wikipedia article "Video Game Music"). This restriction lends a chamber music feel to the music that I really missed once game technology improved.

This may be a blasphemous to some, but here's a Bach fugue with four voices for comparison. I would like to hear the Nintendo perform some Bach fugues one day.

What delights me about the game music is also present in chamber music. Chamber music is named as such because it could be performed in small palace chambers. Composers for the game had to cope with a technological limit while composers for the palace had to deal with a spatial limit - but for each the limit was the same. Only so many voices could be happening at the same time. I like how composers for each platform had to deal with the same limit for such different but parallel reasons.

I'm not the first to notice: here's a video of a string quartet performing a medley of themes from The Legend of Zelda.

---

Weeks ago: friend Jon and I walk up 2nd Avenue, and I tell him of a fantasy I have of moving to the woods. Walden comes up, and I say I had difficulty reading it. He recommends Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, saying it holds more relevance to our generation since it's more contemporary.

Today, I haven't finished it even though I enjoyed it well enough. The book contains lots of vocabulary I didn't know - perhaps one of the reasons why I slowed with reading. Anyway, here are some words I learned while reading.

---

insouciant

Definition:

casual: marked by blithe unconcern

Her Usage:

I had just rounded a corner when [the falling bird's] insouciant step caught my eye

---

sere

Definition:

dried-up: (used especially of vegetation) having lost all moisture

Her Usage:

I couldn't see whether that sere rustle I heard was a distant rattlesnake, slit-eyed, or a nearby sparrow kicking in the dry flood debris slung at the foot of a willow

---

bivouac

Definition:

camp: temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldiers

Her Usage:

No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest.

---

sonant

Definition:

a speech sound accompanied by sound from the vocal cords

surd

Definition:

a consonant produced without sound from the vocal cords

Her Usage:

The wind shrieks and hisses down the valley, sonant and surd, drying the puddles and dismantling the nests from the trees

---

hummock

Definition:

knoll: a small natural hill

Her Usage:

the ridges bosses and hummocks sprout bulging from its side

---

eidetic

Definition:

of visual imagery of almost photographic accuracy

Her Usage:

But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information, and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our own pasts

---

frangible

Definition (from wikipedia):

A material is said to be frangible if through deformation it tends to break up into fragments, rather than deforming plastically and retaining its cohesion as a single object

Her Usage:

because a sycamore's primitive bark is not elastic but frangible, it sheds continously as it grows

---

memento mori

Definition (also wikipedia):

Latin for, "Remember you must die"

Her Usage:

That, I wanted to say as I recognized the prize she held, is memento mori for people who read too much.

---

susurrus

Definition:

susurration: the indistinct sound of people whispering; "a soft susurrus of conversation"

Her Usage:

I never merited this grace, that when I face upstream I scent the virgin breath of mountains, I feel a spray of mist on my cheeks and lips, I hear a ceaseless splash and susurrus, a sound of water not merely poured smoothly down air to fill a steady pool, but tumbling live about, over, under, around, between, through an intricate speckling of rock.

---

lambent

Definition:

softly bright or radiant

Usage:

the leaf was so thin and etiolated it was translucent, but at the same time it was lambent, minutely, with a kind of pale and sufficient light

---

A Jean Baudrillard quotation, from Fragments: Cool Memories III

If everything can seem indifferent when you have encountered the most beatiful of things, why don't we regard the opposite situation as equally fateful: having read the worst book, having seen the dullest landscape, having met the stupidest, ugliest woman? There should be a perfection of - and hence an absolute limit to - the insignificant, the useless, the trivial and banal, beyond which, as in the contrary case, there would be nothing more worth waiting for.

In fact, it is not that way. After seeing the worst, you do not say "O time, suspend they flight!" There is no ecstasy of uselessness.

---