They might be called Smart TVs for their clever capability to befuddle the old fashioned viewer. Long ago and far away are the days you walked up to the television set, turned a knob to On, turned the other knob to Channel 2, 4, 6, or 10, TV Guide in hand, reached over the set to fidget a bit with the rabbit ears antennae, and slid back to the couch to watch a recorded picture version of what your parents when young had listened to on live radio.
Television has grown, if not matured; still, we haven’t quite reached the television walls Ray Bradbury predicted in “Fahrenheit 451,” where the entire wall is a television, and keeping up with the Joneses means adding additional TV walls until your room is entirely enclosed in TV, the effect being that you are part of the television show you are watching. But the new virtual reality headsets are probably skipping over Bradbury’s wall sets.
One advantage of old television was that at the end of the broadcast day, TV rested – it went off, off the air. A sign off screen appeared. The station transmitters shut down, the Star-Spangled Banner played (absurdly, no game following), then a test pattern with a shrill hum signal, a high E organ note. Nothing more to watch. Midnight. You either went to bed or read a book. Or went out walking, nothing on television.
Not that it matters what’s on television. Whether you’re watching “Masterpiece Theatre” or “All in the Family,” the “Red Skelton Show” or the “Andy Griffith Show,” “The Colgate Comedy Hour” or “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends,” you have to fill in the dots. Television is a DIY proposition.
“The structural qualities of the print and woodcut obtain, also, in the cartoon, all of which share a participational and do-it-yourself character that pervades a wide variety of media experiences today. The print is clue to the comic cartoon, just as the cartoon is clue to understanding the TV image.”
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 151, Signet Mentor
We spend a fair time waiting, waiting for this, for that, for them and those to come and go, to start and end, to rise and fall, full and eclipse. And for Spring to spring, our world coiled like hair in plastic curlers held in place with bobby pins (see F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”).
We don’t wait in Winter, when we freeze in place and live in the cold moment (waiting is Samuel Beckett’s dry theme), but as the great slow thaws finally come we start to wait for a stronger sun and almost believe again in Spring and Spring does come slowly over the horizon and up the sky climbing a ladder of weathered trellises where last year’s climbing vines still cling frozen in place.
We anticipate Spring with its cartoon-like colors unfolding:
What is sound? Tinnitus, from the Latin for ring or tinkle, we hear in our ears, but its source is not external sound. My own tinnitus is louder in my left ear, and if I try to pay attention to it, there are at least two sounds audible, as if an electronic musical duo is playing in my head. The ringing is enveloped under an umbrella of an engine or fan, or the electric rush of a motor, an incessant susurrus, which is balanced between the ears. The quieter my environment, the louder the tinnitus. Tinnitus is noise that is not sound, and it is a common ailment for those with hearing loss.
My hearing loss, in both ears, worse in the left, probably originating from operating the motor pool compressor truck with jackhammers and other pneumatic tools and from firing weapons without adequate ear protection during my Army days and probably made worse playing music too loud over the years, is now augmented through hearing aids. The current pair are state of the art and include Bluetooth capability, which means I can stream an electronic sound source (radio, TV, computer, phone) directly into the hearing aids. But the sound is not quite natural. I hear it in my head, not in the ears, and not precisely where the tinnitus sounds, but when streaming, the tinnitus seems to turn off. It’s a bit like wearing headphones. It can be somewhat disconcerting.
Often, when I think of sound sans sense, I think of John Cage. Cage was a musician and writer. Piano was his instrument, but he became involved in electronic sound and electronic music – experimental music. Cage’s music might sound like tinnitus to some listeners. But any instrument can grate or creak or be made to scream or moan or laugh or guffaw. Some of the early film cartoons used modern music innovations and techniques. “Modern” music is often characterized as atonal or dissonant, and as technology developed as electronically enhanced. An evocation of emotional turmoil. Turbulence and tohubohu is often the sound it conveys, or that I hear, which of course are two different things. In any case, what I’m still calling modern here is actually now quiet old.
What are the differences between noise and music? What is the relationship between sound and hearing? We might spend a few big bucks on music sound reproducing equipment (stereo, speakers, etc.) for home or car. The louder, it seems, the better. But when heard live at a concert, the sound may seem radically altered. And the listener in a front row seat hears a different concert than the listener in the back row, upper level, even if they’re in the same hall at the same time for the same music. In music and in conversation clarity is probably the most important attribute to one hard on hearing. It’s not that I can’t hear, but often that I don’t hear clearly. Increasing volume doesn’t necessarily add clarity. It just adds noise. Cage might say, what difference does it make? Listen to what you hear and disregard the rest. And music is not words.
“Music as discourse (jazz) doesn’t work,” Cage said. “If you’re going to have a discussion, have it and use words. (Dialogue is another matter.)”
John Cage, A Year From Monday, Wesleyan, 1969, page 12, from Cage’s ongoing “Diary: How to Improve the World (You will only Make Matters Worse)” 1965, which was taken from the magazine Joglars (Vol. 1, No. 3, 1966), where it was presented as: “a mosaic of ideas, statements, words, and stories. It is also a diary.”
What did Cage mean by distinguishing dialogue from discourse? Dialogue is conversation, conversational. Discourse is debate, to run away from. Dialogue is theater. Discourse is lecture. Discussion is an investigation. We are using words; no help, no matter how loud.
Some sounds are empty. What does that sound like? Jazz guitarists speak of getting a hollow sound or tone. One of the John Cage books is titled “Empty Words” (Wesleyan, 1981). “Most of the material in this volume has previously appeared elsewhere,” the listener is told. Where? Sound is ubiquitous, everywhere:
“Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments.”
“The Future of Music: Credo,” from Silence, John Cage, p. 3, Wesleyan 1961, 1973.
Capture this, from the opening section to Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow (Viking, 1973):
“A screaming comes across the sky…He won’t hear the thing come in. It travels faster than the speed of sound. The first news you get of it is the blast. Then, if you’re still around, you hear the sound of it coming in.”
page 3, then 7
The reader is in London where the German V2 rockets, travelling faster than the speed of sound, hit the ground and explode before anyone hears them coming. Before Pynchon’s novel begins, then, an explosion has occurred. Or not, maybe one lands a dud.
In Coleridge’s poem “The Eolian Harp” (1795), the instrument sits on an open window ledge, where an incoming breeze stirs over the strings, making music. How improvised is that! One would need super sensitive ears to pick up such wispy sounds.
…the world so hush’d! The stilly murmur of the distant Sea Tells us of silence.
…Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument.
The wind as guitar pick.
I’ve been playing Gypsy-Jazz guitar lately, by which is usually understood playing in the style created or formalized by Django Reinhardt and his peers and followers. The style is characterized by the use of a different kind of guitar from the classical guitar popularized by guitarists like Andrea Segovia and Julian Bream. They played on a 12 fret neck fitted with catgut and then nylon strings in the treble and silk then nylon wound with metal in the bass. Other differences might include a shorter but wider neck, a smaller box, different woods and internal bracing techniques. Different from what? Basically from the all metal, louder string guitars developed later – what has come to be known as the western or folk guitar, and is used in blues, bluegrass, folk, country. But the Gypsy-Jazz guitar is a different instrument still.
The Gypsy-Jazz (also “jazz manouche”) guitar is louder, played with a guitar pick rather than the fingers with fingernails, has a longer neck, so a longer scale length, and all metal strings. Most importantly, it’s not a solo instrument. It’s designed to be played in a small combo, usually consisting of at minimum two guitars, and often with stand up acoustic bass, violin, clarinet, accordion, and vocalist. Django played in noisy dance clubs before the advent of amplifiers and electric guitars. He needed an acoustic guitar that would project over the racket and clatter and sound in sync with the other instruments. Readers interested in learning more about Django and his music might read Django Reinhardt, by Charles Delaunay, 1961, Da Capo Press, and Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend, by Michael Dregni, Oxford, 2004. Briefly, it’s told that Django, born in poverty and coming of age without any kind of formal education, learned to play violin, banjo, banjo-guitar, and guitar. By the time he was 18, he was playing in bands in Paris and making money. Then he burnt his left hand badly in a fire in the caravan. Recovering, he taught himself to play the guitar anew, using mainly just two fingers from his left hand to fret the notes and chords, developing an entirely new technique. Thus began a new style of playing guitar that has influenced just about every guitarist of all genres since and still begs to be mastered even by those with all their fingers playable.
When asked if he admired Django Reinhardt, Julian Bream said:
“Oh sure. And I played plectrum guitar up to the age of 21, I played frequently in a dance band in the Army. And, yes, I loved playing jazz guitar, but not as a profession, just for fun. You can’t mix the two. I can remember playing steel-string guitar for dances, and it just ruined the sensitivity of your left hand. And I was playing rhythm guitar with big six-string chords all night long. It was a knucklebender!”
“50 Years on the Planks: Julian Bream Talks About His Life and Work,” Classical Guitar October 1996. Retrieved 4 Mar 24.
I’ve been working to play Gypsy-Jazz style without a plectrum (guitar pick), so fingerstyle, with fingers and fingernails, which some say is not only unorthodox but impossible – to play in the Gypsy-Jazz style of Django. I use a thick gauge string on a Saga Gitane DG-250M model, which I purchased used not long before the pandemic broke out and then had to quit the group workshops I’d been attending. The thicker strings compensate for the lack of pick. I’ve just always played with my fingers, hardly ever flatpicking. And I’m not playing dance halls these days, more like a lute in an open window.
Gitane DG-250MConcert ReadyAmerican GothicDjango’s ChordsGuitar LandBooks referenced in this post.
Rumor has it the pandemic is over, and folks are getting back to the way they were. Sidewalk cafes are filling with hopeful bon vivants, wine bars are recreating the gypsy jazz trio, tea rooms have put out the herbal welcome mats, and down on the corner, a lone violinist is busking the blues away. Movies? Newspapers and magazines? Some things are likely not coming back. But we can’t blame the pandemic for all our ills and woes.
Brick sidewalk cafeBuskerUrban CafeNewspapers and MagazinesCoffee Noir
Pubs are open, and wine bars, bakeries and coffee shops. You’re lucky though if you can find a place to park in between the street seats impromptu platforms, or to find a warm tavern that serves both a hefty microbrew and a tasty pinot noir.
Wanted: A clean, well-lighted place, with polite waiters, a high ceiling and not too crowded or too noisy or too far away, with a live trio that doesn’t require ear muffs, a place that doesn’t mind singles sitting hour after hour over a book and the same cup of frequently topped off java.
Below: A friendly waiter.
And weddings are back in full motion, fashion, with updated attendance rules. Below, what to wear:
Wedding DressCocktail WearCome as you are
Soon Spring will spring, doing its thing, a spring dance fling, prom night, a concert at an old venue downtown.
Spring FlingProm NightAllegro con brio
But some folks might have the post pandemic blues, and don’t want to go out. In a way, the pandemic has set them free. No more shopping sprees. No more putting on the style. But what about a baseball game in the ballpark? There must be some way the afflicted can lose those post pandemic blues.
If we think of planets as globes of fruit, like an apple, orange, lemon, we might see them growing ripe, falling, turning bitter. If we see ourselves as fruit flies, we might caption a big lemon a planet in our sky.
The first planet outside Earth humans visit will probably be Mars. But will there be free parking?
We know there is life in the universe, because Earth is full of life, and it’s in the universe. But are there places in the universe where the sun god on a freezing cold day invites you up for a cup of hot chocolate or herbal tea?
On Earth, nature seems to overseed, replenishing by adding more and at the same time sowing excessively, creating overdensities. Think of pollens on a spring day, the fine flour that sprinkles and saturates and has everyone sneezing to beat the band. On Earth, life is abundant and various, mighty and powerful, strong.
When you look up at night, into the sky, what do you see?
When in the news new worlds are discovered and photographs published, we see tiny dots astronomers claim are actually galaxies thousands and thousands and thousands of light years wide. The point is to find (the scientist like a garden snail crossing the Sahara) another planet where life grows and people enjoy backyards during summer months.
Meantime, back on Earth, we’re still trying to find that place where the moon stands still, on Blueberry Hill. That’s life.
Everybody in a car nary a door ajar. The world is our oyster full of pearls (Shucks! A flat tire!) and perils. A penny for your thoughts - As if we had either.
Dear Ai! Quick! Quick! Quick! Lickety-split! I need about a 500-word paragraph on how I spent my last summer vacation! I totally spaced this stupid assignment! If I don’t get it in by today the teacher, Mrs. Millgillicutty, not that her name matters much, won’t accept any more late papers! Something about we’re almost to next summer vacation. Anyway, I remember when we first got this assignment, and I was like, I didn’t do anything on my last summer vacation but lay on the beach at El Porto listening to a transistor radio! What’s to write about that! And I watched the surfers come and go and the waves blow all froth like the bottoms of cutoff jeans and the jets from LAX taking off over the bay looking way too fat to fly like the Dodo and the oil freighters off El Segundo and a few sailboats in the offing a word that was on our last vocabulary quiz by the way. Anyway, one day, one of the hottest, ever, you couldn’t even walk barefoot down to the water the sand was so blistering hot and I dropped my towel and jumped on it every few steps to keep my feet from turning toast until I got to the wet sand near the water and all was cool. I don’t like to take a bunch of stuff to the beach. Just my towel and my bag. In my bag I stuff an extra suit, a pair of shorts and an extra tshirt, my transistor radio, a bottle of water, an apple or an orange, suntan lotion, a comb, a Nancy Drew book (I had a summer goal to read 12 Nacy Drew books, and I actually ended up reading 17), a pair of binoculars, a foldup sand chair, a small umbrella, a pair of flipflops, and my purse. Oh, yeah, but I was going to talk about that one day, the hottest on record. I usually get to the beach around noon, after I’ve finished my chores, make breakfast, take out the trash, straighten up, empty the ashtrays. I live up on Gull in El Porto so all I have to do is walk out of the apartment and down to the beach and usually I’m the first down but soon there are the others my friends all strangling down like they had a bad night or something but the reality is the worst they might have done is stay up late watching movies on the all night movie channel. Of course there are parents, or parent, and they can be unsettling, what with their bickering and worrying and criticizing and stopping off at bars on the way home until you have to get your own dinner but not everyone’s home is like that in fact each home is quiet different even if the parents seem the same. Anyway, back to how I spent my summer vacation and the one hottest day I remember it’s like branded on my behind. Jocko the beach’s best surfer ever stops where I’m sitting and asks can he leave his board with me while he goes in for a dip the blackball flag is up and all boards have to be out of the water. I’m stupified. He’s never even noticed me before. But I’m totally chill and like if you want whatever and that kind of stupid self conscious response and off he goes into the water where he stays like three hours! I’m like HELLO! how long am I supposed to watch your stupid surfboard and it was that day I decided how I would spend the rest of my summer vacation and it wasn’t watching some stupid minihunk’s surfboard while he dolls his afternoon away in the waves. I’m not some sort of artificial doll, you know. I’m real. With something real to talk about. About 500 words is all I need! Thanks!
Sincerely, Beach Bum Betty
Dear Betty, Here you go:
I didn’t do anything on my last summer vacation but lay on the beach at El Porto listening to a transistor radio! What’s to write about that! And I watched the surfers come and go and the waves blow all froth like the bottoms of cutoff jeans and the jets from LAX taking off over the bay looking way too fat to fly like the Dodo and the oil freighters off El Segundo and a few sailboats in the offing a word that was on our last vocabulary quiz by the way. Anyway, one day, one of the hottest, you couldn’t even walk barefoot down to the water the sand was so blistering hot and I dropped my towel and jumped on it every few steps to keep my feet from toasting until I got to the wet sand near the water and all was cool. I don’t like to take a bunch of stuff to the beach. Just my towel and my bag. In my bag I stuff an extra suit, a pair of shorts and an extra tshirt, my transistor radio, a bottle of water, an apple or an orange, suntan lotion, a comb, my cell phone, a Nancy Drew book (I had a summer goal to read 12 Nacy Drew books, and I actually ended up reading 17), a pair of binoculars, a foldup sand chair, a small umbrella, a pair of flipflops, and my purse. Oh, yeah, but I was going to talk about that one day, the hottest on record. I usually get to the beach around noon, after I’ve finished my chores. I live up on 44th in El Porto so all I have to do is walk out of the apartment and down to the beach and usually I’m the first down but soon there’s the others my friends all strangling down like they had a bad night or something but the reality is the worst they might have done is stay up late watching movies on the all night movie channel. Of course there’s parents, and they can be unsettling, what with their bickering and worrying and criticizing and stopping off at bars on the way home until you have to get your own dinner but not everyone’s home is like that in fact each home is quiet different even if the parents are the same. Anyway, back to how I spent my summer vacation and the one hottest day I remember it’s like branded on my behind. Jocko the beach’s best surfer ever stops where I’m sitting and asks can he leave his board with me while he goes in for a dip the blackball flag is up and all boards have to be out of the water. I’m stupified. He’s never even noticed me before. But I’m totally chill and like if you want whatever and that kind of stupid response and off he goes into the water where he stays like three hours! I’m like hello how long am I supposed to watch your stupid surfboard and it was that day I decided how I would spend the rest of my summer vacation and it wasn’t watching some stupid hunk’s surfboard while he dolls his afternoon away in the waves. I’m not some sort of artificial doll, you know. I’m real! With something real to talk about!
I was in the 8th grade, taking a multiple choice vocabulary test. I came to melancholy. One of the choices was happy. Another choice was sad. The word melancholy sounded happy. I blackened the circle next to happy with my number 2 black pencil on the Iowa Test page and moved on, but the word stayed with me, and I later asked Sister Mary Annette the meaning of melancholy. Her blue eyes peered out from her starched white habit hallowed in black. Sad, she said. Ah, what does Iowa know, I responded, and ran for the playground.
Cartoon: Scamble and Cramble and the Social Media Adventure
The Coming of the Toads 