The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: John Cage

  • Recording Noise

    Going about without making any noise is perhaps the most difficult task of our day. If we try to make sense of the noise, we discover music.

    I was thinking the blog was a silent activity, but then I began hearing my fingers striking the keyboard, padded notes, which, if given time, could be organized into a piece of music.

    The quieter we try to be, the more noise we hear.

    We might think of silent noise, tinnitus, for example, an apparent oxymoron, a noise but silent because it’s not really a sound, but simply the perception of sound, hearing a sound that has no outside source. Others can’t hear it, no matter how hard they listen. But they have their own silent noise playlists.

    The keyboard went quiet as I reread the above paragraphs. I’m in real time for the moment, but my reader, if there is one, will not be in the same time. Thus the blog is like a recording, but the reader will not be able to hear the keyboard as I type, or as I typed, unless I made a recording.

    There are 24 time zones around the globe. They allow for music to occur internationally. But not everyone pays strict attention to the time zones. In China, for example, everyone uses the same time, all the time, regardless of which of the five geographically separated time zones they might be in. What time is it becomes an interesting question, since sunrises and sunsets can occur hours apart, depending on where you are at the time. In other words, to awake at sunrise for one person, could be sleeping in for another, not getting up until noon! For some reason, we try to match our time with the position of the sun. But most people work inside, unlike our ancestors, so what does the sun have to do with it? Circadian rhythms. We can’t hide from the sun.

    I’m making a recording now of the keyboard, using my cell phone. Note the pauses, as I try to figure out what to say. The spaces between the notes create music, because they are separated in time (duration). But is there rhythm? The recording has now gone on for just over one minute.

    A default has given the keyboard recording the title “Voice 0061.” I’ve tried to upload the recording to this blog post, so readers can follow along, hearing the typing as they are reading the paragraph, but I received a message saying I’m unable to upload the file, to wit: “Sorry, you are not allowed to upload this file type.” Thus we discover that learning to play an instrument is harder than we might think. Undaunted, I’ll now try a video, using the keyboard and my cell phone.

    I’ve set the phone against the screen, and I can’t see what I’m typing now, feeling much like the player in a jazz band. But I type on, being video-recorded. I don’t feel much like continuing the experiment, but having pushed on this far, I keep typing. As Cage said, “What we re-quire is silence; but what silence requires is that I go on talking.”1 Similarly, what music requires is that I go on typing. Many mistakes in this typed paragraph, like playing the worong [sic] notes on the guitar or piano, but I’ve gone back and corrected the text, but the mistakes, as recorded, sound just like all the other notes, no problem.

    Now I have the video recording on my phone. Because I set the phone so close to my screen, the video is a white grey cloud, but the viewer can hear the keyboard. Now I have to figure out how to get the video from my phone into this blog post, so readers can listen to it as they read along. Alas, I try to email it to myself, but get a Gmail message saying it’s too big a file. Yet it’s only 1:33 minutes.

    But you can perform your own keyboard music. All you have to do is type and listen. You don’t even have to type real words, but that should probably be the subject of a different blog post.

    1. John Cage, “Lecture on Nothing” (1959), from “Silence” (First printing 1961. Wesleyan Paperback, 1973). ↩︎

  • If you don’t know, who do you ask?

    I’d been asking, like a smart aleck or wise guy school-kid, a couple of Artificial Intelligence apps (Gemini and ChatGPT) questions to see if I could stump them. The apps provide disclaimers. ChatGPT cautions, “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” I questioned ChatGPT what is meant by “important.” In short, important is any fact or idea that you might rely on to your detriment if proven wrong.

    I was also thinking of the Universe, and William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”: “To see a world in a grain of sand….The questioner, who sits so sly, Shall never know how to reply.”

    I asked ChatGPT how many photos had been uploaded to Instagram since its beginning:

    Based on the latest available data, here’s what we know about Instagram:

    📸 Total Photos & Videos Shared

    Instagram has seen over 50 billion photos and videos uploaded since its launch on October 6, 2010 wired.com+4en.wikipedia.org+4time.com+4increditools.com+4earthweb.com+4predis.ai+4.

    📈 Recent Upload Rates

    Estimates from mid‑2024 to early 2025 indicate that:

    • Roughly 1,074 photos/video posts are uploaded per second
    • That equates to about 95 million posts per day, or almost 4 million per hour

    I retrieved that data a few days ago, so I caution my reader to recheck the numbers with ChatGPT if important. The universe is expanding.

    I then asked ChatGPT about blogs, how many new blog posts go up daily:

    WordPress.com alone sees roughly 2.3 million new blog posts per day.

    All blogging platforms combined—WordPress.org, Tumblr, Medium, Blogger, self-hosted setups, and more—generate around 7.5 million posts daily.

    I then asked, considering social media formats, at what point, a tipping point or a break-even point – what is the number or percent a user can functionally follow other users? ChatGPT’s answer was long and involved, including definitions I had not specifically asked for:

    Tipping Point in Following Behavior
    This is the point at which a user starts experiencing diminishing returns from following more accounts — the quality of their feed drops, content becomes more generic or algorithmically filtered, and they lose meaningful engagement with individuals.

    Breakeven Point for Social Value
    This could be defined as the point where a user’s following count results in reciprocal value — e.g., they follow others and start receiving useful content or engagement in return.

    I might have thought ChatGPT would quote John Cage somewhere in its answer, but it did not. The Cage quote I might have suggested, my paraphrase here: “If you don’t know the answer, why are you asking the question”?

    One     day                                                     down     at
       Black     Mountain     College,
                                                                          David     
    Tudor     was     eating     his     lunch.

                                               A     student     came     over
        to     his     table     and     began     asking     him
     questions.

                                           David     Tudor
                                                                      went     on
     eating     his     lunch.

              The     student
                                         kept     on     asking     
    questions.

                                       Finally
                  David     Tudor     looked     at     him     and
     said,
                                 “If     you     don’t     know,

                                                 why     do      you      ask?”

    Copied from “Indeterminacy,” compiled by Eddie Kohler, here.

    Why, indeed, not to mention who. Who (or what) do you ask? (And before you get your red pencil out, I know all about who and whom, but I’ve my own style book here at the Toads, and I’ve unfollowed whom, so don’t bother.) I first read “Indeterminacy” in John Cage’s book titled “Silence” (1961, 1973, Wesleyan) – from page 260:

    “In oral delivery of this lecture, I tell one story a minute. If it’s a short one, I have to spread it out; when I come to a long one, I have to speak as rapidly as I can” (260).

    Part of ChatGPT’s answer to my question regarding the number of social media accounts one can follow or be followed with meaningful contact referenced “Dunbar’s Number”:

    📊 Data-Based Estimates and Psychological Limits

    1. Cognitive Limit — Dunbar’s Number (~150)

    • Humans can meaningfully maintain social relationships with around 150 people.
    • In social media, this is often expanded because of the passive nature of interaction — but past ~500–1,000 follows, users typically experience:
      • Less meaningful engagement
      • Algorithmic filtering becomes dominant

    👉 Tipping point for meaningful social following: ~150–500 follows
    Beyond that, you don’t “functionally” follow people — the algorithm filters most content out.

    What is meaningful or reciprocally engaging of course differs depending on one’s purpose or goal and the type of social media format one’s using. I did know the answer, but I wanted ChatGPT to confirm and provide some data with support. I was just playing around. But I had not heard of Dunbar’s Number. Dunbar’s Number is 150 – humans can interact meaningfully with 150 others. A further breakdown of Dunbar’s Number as supplied by ChatGPT follows:

    Dunbar’s Number (~150) is more than just a single limit. Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, proposed that human social relationships are layered in discrete tiers, each with its own emotional closeness and frequency of interaction.

    🔹 Dunbar’s Social Group Layers

    These layers form a hierarchy of relationships, expanding by a rough factor of ~3 at each level:

    LayerApprox. SizeRelationship TypeCharacteristics
    1. Support Clique3–5Closest relationshipsDaily contact, deep emotional support (best friends, close family)
    2. Sympathy Group12–15Good friendsWeekly contact, trusted confidants
    3. Close Network~50Friends you would invite to a partyMonthly contact, mutual interest, still emotionally meaningful
    4. Casual Network~150Dunbar’s NumberPeople you know and recognize by name/face, occasional contact
    5. Acquaintances~500Recognizable individualsLow or no emotional intensity, weak ties (colleagues, mutuals)
    6. Faces Known~1,500People whose faces you recognizeStored in memory, but not personally connected

    🔸 What This Means for Social Media

    • Most people can recognize ~1,500 profiles, but only maintain meaningful interaction with ~150.
    • Your Instagram close friends list or Twitter DMs likely reflects the 15–50 layer.
    • Follows, likes, or casual comments beyond the 150–500 range are often algorithmically or socially shallow. 

    I don’t mention any of this to cause or reflect distress, and I think most users intuitively realize a law of large numbers at work with regard to social media accounts, but I want to emphasize the importance, significance, or value of any relatively small number of followers writers may have, or may be following, not necessarily as “follow backs” without ever looking again, but in efforts to maintain meaningful reading and writing encounters, effort that takes time and trust and mutual engagement.

    There is of course much more to this discussion one might pursue (the phenomenom of likes and comments, or lack thereof, for example), but this has been question and answer enough. To follow is not necessarily to befriend; to unfollow is not necessarily to defriend. In summary, I’m reminded of the advice Shakespeare’s Polonius gives to his son Laertes:

    “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3).

    But Polonius, in spite of his reputation for sound advice, is a bumbling fool and not to be trusted, and anyway, who wants to be grappled to another’s soul with a hoop of steel, particularly where grapple means wrestle and struggle?

  • To Have and Have Not

    Somewhere along the way we are taught that writing is hard, and we come to believe that writing is hard. Hua Hsu thinks writing is hard, and he’s a professional writer, and teaches writing to boot, so he should know:

    “Writing is hard, regardless of whether it’s a five-paragraph essay or a haiku, and it’s natural, especially when you’re a college student, to want to avoid hard work—this is why classes like Melzer’s are compulsory. ‘You can imagine that students really want to be there,’ he joked” (p. 24, “The End of the Essay,” The New Yorker, July 7 & 14, 2025).

    Most activities seem hard if you’d rather be doing something else. “It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else” John Cage said, in his “Lecture on Nothing.” But what about Hua Hsu’s claim that college students “avoid hard work”? Is that true?

    Definitions are hard: what is writing; what is work? Is avoidance not hard work? While it might be easier not to write, does it necessarily follow that writing is hard?

    Writing is easy. Most kids by the second or third grade can write. But keeping inside the lines as they are later taught, and writing becomes harder, until finally they quit trying to write and now apparently go to some Artificial Intelligence application where their writing is done via surrogate.

    “A.I. has returned us to the question of what the point of higher education is,” Hsu says (22). It might be too late, as the question seems in the process of being answered in the dismantling of institutions, and the answer for some currently sounds like, there is no point. In any case, the question is not new, being asked, and answered, over time, from John Henry Newman’s “The Idea of a University,” to Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society.” Illich’s ideas seem ripe for our time:

    “Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is ‘schooled’ to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question” (Ivan Illich, “Deschooling Society,” 1973).

    Writing is learned, like learning a musical instrument, developmentally and incrementally; writing is a process of addition, as Francis Christensen taught. His solutions described in his “Notes Toward A New Rhetoric: 9 Essays for Teachers (3rd Ed., 2007) to the teaching and learning of writing are among the best. Verlyn Klinkenborg’s  Several short sentences about writing (Vintage, April 2013) is also excellent and should be used in today’s English 101 classes (if there still are any) – though neither of these solutions do I put forth as absolute. I’ve met veteran classical musicians who cannot improvise, cannot play their instrument without a piece of sheet music to read from.

    Could Hemingway write? And if he could write, or maybe more importantly if you think he could not write, where did Hemingway learn how to write? In the beginning was the essay, English 101. Everyone had to take it, even the math majors. But Hemingway never made it to English 101. He wrote in high school, but it seems he learned to write while writing.

    “My name’s Laughton,” the tall one said. “I’m a writer.”
    “I’m glad to meet you,” Professor MacWalsey said. “Do you write often?”
    The tall man looked around him. “Let’s get out of here, dear,” he said. “Everybody is either insulting or nuts” (135).1

    1. Ernest Hemingway, “To Have and Have Not,” 1934, Hearst Magazines Inc. Scribner Classics, 1970. 0-684-17952-0. ↩︎

  • Mosaic Cage

    Words are sounds, but are sounds words? Some are, the onomatopoeia ones – word making. Sitting this morning, laptop at the ready, still wondering mid January what to do new with the blog this year, thinking of letting it go, go silent, from minimalist to nothing at all. John Cage can be an inspiration at such moments:

                        There is no
    such thing as silence. Something is al-
    ways happening that makes a sound.
    No one can have an idea
    once he really starts listening.

    John Cage, 45' For A Speaker, Silence, 191

    “this yr” is a poem published in chapbook format in December, 1976, by Stephen Jama. 100 copies were printed. The chapbook consists of three sheets, 6&3/4” by 6”, folded and hand-sewn with red thread. The cover is slightly thicker than the inside pages, the inside paper a bit heavier than standard typing paper.

    To read more about Jama and “this yr” visit the Toads post from 31Dec2010.

    Wondering too what John Cage might have made of a blog. Surely he would have created and maintained one. Others have taken up the call, of putting or imitating Cage online, Eddie Kohler, for example, his app utilizing Cage’s “Indeterminacy“.

    While a mosaic can take disparate parts that from a distance can be appreciated for a new whole, the parts might at the same time be in conflict, interests that compete for one’s attention, time, one distracting from another, broken links. Post no posts on this post.

    Here at the Toads our primary interests remain the essay (literature), music (guitar), painting (including cartoons hand drawn on paper or screen), yet the blogs we often enjoy most have to do with original photography, gardening and cooking, ocean and landscape, construction of all kinds but particularly those focused on the trades (carpentry, plumbing) and arts and crafts.

    WordPress works well as a blogging platform. Their idea of the paragraph being “the basic building block of all narrative” and the “Block” developed from that idea facilitates relatively easy start up and go. But there’s also a cage created by the block form, or format, the screen, that one needs coding expertise to escape from, and one may not want to spend the time understanding or mastering the writing of computer code. One wants to write, not program.

    And isn’t the basic building block actually the syllable? A sound. A note. In any case, what you see is not necessarily what you get, what you see being dependent on the type of device being used: phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, television cast. So that for the blogger who spends time formatting columns and rows, grids, tables, a matrix – formats can change unexpectedly and automatically. So what?

    Indeterminacy.

    Cage orchestrated and choreographed his writings for “Silence.” The formatting in part approximates performance. The written text is like the written text for music, sheet music, a musical score. A representation. “Silence” is a mosaic.
    Whatever Cage you’re in, as Cage said, get out of it.

    Pizza is a mosaic.

  • Old Haunts

    Old Haunts, all with current links, focused on core subjects: art, technology, music, science, and literature, but first, a brief explanation:

    Moving continuously toward more minimalist formats (which if not stopped could result in disappearance altogether), blogs may risk losing some appeal, particularly to readers who enjoy liking, commenting, and linking or sharing – in short, conversing – as well as indulging in pingbacks and reblogging, and who enjoy perusing sidebars, widgets, clicks and plays, slide shows, and sharing up and down the crowded street of social media sites and apps. An example of such minimalist drift, here at the The Coming of the Toads, might be the removal, some time ago now, of listings and links of followed blogs and favorite sites, what I called in the sidebar heading over the list of links: “Back Roads to Far Places,” the title from Ferlinghetti’s book.

    I use the WordPress Reader to subscribe to sites, and currently I’m subscribed to 146 – but not many of which post frequently or are still active at all, which sparks the idea behind this post, which might have been subtitled: and Other Broken Links. While I don’t currently post a widget of followed blogs or sites, I do manage my subscribed sites in the WordPress Reader, and I also maintain the “Links” feature in the WordPress Dashboard for my own use. There are currently 33 links. But links don’t always stay current or active, while others click to surprise, a site grown or morphed into other projects or disappeared (Page Not Found), and still others remain useful resources or pleasant places to visit, like old friends. Or the link simply breaks and you get sent who knows where and who knows what’s happened. Sites often change over time, and it can be hard and takes time keeping up with the changes.

    Anyway, I thought I’d share an update of just a few of the sites that do continue to work well and that I try to follow and that offer pleasant visits and are creative and resourceful:

    Marginalia and Gracia and Louise I first discovered in “High Up in the Trees,” a blog by the Australian artist Gracia Haby. It’s now called “Marginalia.” I like everything about it – font work, photography, text content, collage and other art work, the work Gracia and Louise do with animals. And there’s another site they maintain, called Gracia and Louise, full of things to see and wonder at. The sites probably work best on desktop, but the creativity in doing more with the drop-down necessities of on-line viewing is unparalleled (of that, here is a specific example, called Reel).

    McLuhan Galaxy always produces a profoundly puzzling experience in that there seems no end to his ideas and the ramifications of effects of media on society and culture – and yet here we go, linking and following, but where? The Blogroll will keep you occupied for hours of intellectual fun.

    I don’t have John Cage ears, but I’ve always enjoyed his writing, and much of his music I do enjoy. Kuhn’s Blog is not often updated, but the site resources remain available and loads of fun, with several interactive features (try Indeterminacy, for example). The John Cage Personal Library is itself a phenomenal work.

    The Buckminster Fuller Institute shares hope for the world from a worldwide perspective. The site may provide a new awareness for what’s going on worldwide to improve conditions, predicaments, problems – near and far. If your not familiar with Bucky, here’s a good place to start: Big Ideas.

    Words Without Borders features world wide writing in a variety of formats. Browse by country, theme, or genre.

    Old Haunts, all with current links, focused on core subjects: art, technology, music, science, and literature.

  • Post on Nothing

    Wanting for a word of good fit, I’ll ramble through a dictionary, in etymological pursuit. For example, just now I looked up the word pursuit and found that in a physiology context pursuit means what the eyes do, for example, when following the flight of a bird. I then looked up physiology, when what I had started looking up to begin with wasn’t pursuit at all but post. And it occurs to me that readers are like birds, flocks of readers: whodunit white-eared night herons; bibliophile bowerbirds; book-bosomed doves; frizzle-brood chickens; shelved-book house finches. Genres of readers flocked in clubs like a quarrel of sparrows, an asylum of cuckoos, a booby of nuthatches, a conspiracy of ravens, and this old couple who still perform the walk-on-water-dance of the grebes. But I can’t now seem to find the connection between post and pursuit, but perhaps it’s obvious. Even familiar words have family history and we don’t know half the story as we rush to tell.

    To post on a blog is to post in effect on nothing, the original posts one might post to being a mile marker, a signboard, road sign, doorpost, or a telephone pole, for example, on which one stuck a note giving notice, information or invitation or direction, or entertainment or argument, to passers-by, readers at random, on display in a public place. Such posts usually have (though not always obvious) some purpose, unlike graffiti, say, which usually is gratuitous. So far so good, a blog post is just that, what folks used to affix to a physical post, but there is no such real post to a blog post, unless one considers this open space where we seem to be (the internet, the web, the cloud, the blogosphere, the device – whatever it’s called) a post, but not a post like a milled fir 4 x 4, a tree shorn of its branches, returned into the ground, where to post something we might need a fashioned sign and a hammer and a nail.

                          "I have nothing to say

        and I am saying it                     and that is 

    poetry                 as I need it      ."

    And post it. But this, this post, to return to it, is not poetry; this is a blog post, a post on a blog. About nothing. But what is nothing, if not something? Cage also prepared something called “Lecture on Something,” but the above quote is from Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing,” from page 109 in Silence (1961). But then again I hesitate to call this (thing that I write on, post to) a blog. A blog is a form as a poem or a song or an advertisement is a form. What is a form? We grow so weary of nothing (unless we are one of the cognoscenti of relaxation). Nothing to do. Nothing to say. Nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Nothing in the kitty.

    So we create and tend to forms. To blog is to write, but not quite, since some blog posts are devoted exclusively to the posting of pics, often posted without referent rhyme or reason. Content without form. How is that even possible? Anyway, aren’t there enough pics posted already? Yes, and words too. Is a pic a word? If you look up pic, you’ll probably see it’s classified as informal. It does not wear a cummerbund or a gown. But of course a picture is worth a thousand words. And where does that come from, that saying? We can look it up, and do. From advertising, apparently. The ads on the sides of trolley cars, which, passing as they do, a Clanging of Birdsong, provide for a moving post on which to post in pic form enough to imprint on the random viewer in passing a brand, a product, and a suggested desire or want, to follow up on later. Soap, cigarettes, auto parts, perfumes, hats, guitar picks. Are pictures worth more than words? Something called Picture Superiority Effect, from Wiki:

    The advantage of pictures over words is only evident when visual similarity is a reliable cue; because it takes longer to understand pictures than words (Snodgrass & McCullough, 1986[15]). Pictures are only superior to words for list learning because differentiation is easier for pictures (Dominowski & Gadlin, 1968[16]). In reverse picture superiority it was observed that learning was much slower when the responses were pictures (Postman, 1978[17]). Words produced a faster response than pictures and pictures did not have an advantages [sic] of having easier access to semantic memory or superior effect over words for dual-coding theory (Amrhein, McDaniel & Waddill 2002[18]). Similarly, studies where response time deadlines have been implemented, the reverse superiority effect was reported. This is related to the dual-process model of familiarity and recollection. When deadlines for the response were short, the process of familiarity was present, along with an increased tendency to recall words over pictures. When response deadlines were longer, the process of recollection was being utilized, and a strong picture superiority effect was present.[19] In addition, equivalent response time was reported for pictures and words for intelligence comparison (Paivio & Marschark, 1980[20]). Contrary to the assumption that pictures have faster access to the same semantic code than words do; all semantic information is stored in a single system. The only difference is that pictures and words access different features of the semantic code (te Linde, 1982[21]).

    With regard, then, to pics and words, as used in posts on blogs, one (pics) probably is not inherently, or intrinsically, worth more than the other (words). But what’s being measured in terms of worth is the value of advertising. Where pictures meet advertising in a meld (as in to announce, where the announcement and messenger are the same) is Instagram. Originally a place to post pics for folks with a hankering for photography, Instagram has become a wake of buzzards, a commotion of coots, a swatting of flycatchers. It’s an elevator of advertisements, the etymology of advertisement including a statement calling attention to itself and at the same time a warning. An advertisement is a solicitation, to be solicited, the more notoriously so, the better. Advertisement is a form.

    That music is   simple to make   comes from   one's willingness to ac-
    cept       the limitations    of structure          Structure is
    simple      be-cause         it can be thought out, figured out,
    measured       . (111)

    In Cage’s “Lecture on Something” entire pages are left blank. “Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music,” Cage said (128). Nor, if we own a book, do we necessarily have the poetry. Cage often left sections of music blank, too, the better to hear, presumably, the truck passing through the street below the window within a piece. If Cage had had a blog, he might have expressed issues of frustration regarding the “limitations of structure.” And it’s amazing to see what he accomplished with a typewriter. Here on WordPress, poetry, modern poems, often difficult to arrange on a blog page or post, are given, in the so-called “block” format used to make the WordPress page, somewhat easily to the functional white needs of poetry. WordPress predicates the paragraph as the primary foundation (block) of writing. Maybe for prose, but not so much for poetry, and probably not at all for the writing of music or tablature. That said, I’m not an expert at WordPress styles and options. I want to write, not do computer programming, so maybe I’m missing formatting possibilities, but the WordPress Preformatted and Verse blocks seem to work flexibly enough to attempt some creative forms. But the block is self-contained – I don’t see the possibility of a block within a block, where, for example, the typography of one word might change in size relative to the typography of another word in the same line or block, or of letters to letters in the same word.

         writing      verse (unblocked words)     on  WordPress 
                      is as             simple as       writing 
    music
               if one        accepts          the 
                          limitations (rules)
                                             of structure
    the structure of limits (that which can't be measured)  
    nothing has no limits

    What limitations was I talking about again? And anyway, doesn’t verse have all the limits it needs, without bringing WordPress into the discussion? Even a piece of doggerel has its limits, its boundaries. But notice Cage said “make” music, not write music, not compose music. One can make music if one has access to any kind of sound making device. To make silence is probably the most difficult challenge. If we take a pic of this post, we’ll find a picture is not worth a thousand words, since we can’t fit a thousand words into the pic, a post of 1,453 words, 8 minutes read time.

    Pic of Post

  • Notes on Sound, Noise, Music, and Hearing

    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-250M
    Concert Ready
    American Gothic
    Django’s Chords
    Guitar Land
    Books referenced in this post.

  • Another Year from Monday

    Sometimes it seems a step backward is the way to go, but I’m not sure painting over yesterday’s canvas is movement forward or reverse. But why think in these lineal terms to begin with? In spite of tidal waves of news pouring in from every mode, it seems keeping informed about what’s going on is ongoingly increasingly difficult. At the same time, as John Cage said in his essay on Jasper Johns, “Why does the information that someone has done something affect the judgment of another? Why cannot someone who is looking at something do his own work of looking?”

    Today, later this evening, to be more precise, is the solstice. If all goes as planned, the days will begin to grow longer again. There’s no keeping still, even if forward and backward amount to the same thing. In fact, I read just last night, the sun has already been going down later in the day in these environs, but the sun has still been coming up a bit later each day, and will continue to do so for some time yet, despite the solstice. So the moment, the epiphanic slice, the exact time of the solstice, when you feel the bump at the top of the amusement ride just before the reverse tilt comes true, you probably won’t feel.

    Nevertheless, we celebrate the solstice, for reasons old and new, and take the opportunity to consider what new lectures and writings, poems and songs, essays and cartoons we might make up between now and the coming spring equinox, which is planned for Tuesday, March 19th (Saint Joseph’s Day, if you’re keeping track of that too). New ways of measuring time are always being considered. But if you adopt a new calendar, you’ll have to then come up with a proleptic view. So we might anticipate objections before they’re even brought up. Remarks.

    The proportion of ideas might be considered important. If an idea is too big, or too small. To warrant further development. I thought I might try some reconnections, might even write a few letters, though my initial attempts at this, very much no doubt excited by the solstice, have met with instant failures to communicate. The art of the steel sculpture. Then again, I’ve never been much of a letter writer, not like the folks in the old days who might spend half the day reading mail and the other half answering mail. Pastime. Mail which had taken days or even weeks to arrive during which time rendered moot much of its news, feelings, ideas.

    Speaking of letter mail, the kind written on paper and requiring a postage stamp, we get very little here these days. Even junk mail seems to have diminished. We’ve received two Christmas cards, both kept on prominent display. Of course, one must send mail to receive mail; not always, but usually. As for blog exchange, comments are problematic. They aren’t really letters in reply, and often say more about the commenter than what’s being commented on. The art of the quip, the comeback, the rejoinder, retort, riposte. But that’s the cynic in me coming out. Get back! Get back! The blog, “The Coming of the Toads,” turns 16 this month. I’m not even sure what a blog is anymore.

    The most effective blogs (or whatever they might be called) seem those dedicated to a single purpose: photography (and photos about something specific – e.g. birds, architecture, surfing), politics, poetry, how to, music, art, opinion, travel. But the personal essay seems the most resilient form of writing (personal essay as illustrated, for example, in Philip Lopate’s anthology “The Art of the Personal Essay.”) I’m not sure where the idea of a pic necessary to accompany every piece of blog post writing ever came from. The Header, I guess. In case you’ve not noticed, The Toads has for some time now sported a minimalist attitude illustrated by a mostly blank white page dotted with black text – might be one way to describe the setup. This allows for the least distraction for both reader and writer. Indeed, blog posts past, I spent more time coming up with an appropriate pic than I did on the writing. Back when the blog began, most readers read on a computer screen. The display of any post is now changed by format depending on what kind of device the reader’s using: phone, tablet, computer – so what you see is not always what the reader gets or what the writer might have intended (a problem which of course is not new to any kind of writing).

    Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to restate a few of the underlying interests of the writing here. It’s original, without recourse, it must now apparently be officially stated, to any borrowing from an Artificial Intelligence (AI). That includes all the essays and pics, cartoons and poems, songs, unless of course specifically quoted and cited yada yada yada. That’s not to say influences won’t be discerned: John Cage, Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, the Beats, Guitar and Music in all its forms but increasingly Gypsy Jazz guitar – to name a few.

    But back to the solstice! Happy Solstice to all of you writers and readers. Please feel free to leave a comment if you still have time.

  • Somewhere Else

    It was last April, in a piece titled “What is Essential,” we again mentioned John Cage, then in the context of the pandemic quarantine discussion:

    In John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing,” we find the following comment: “It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.”

    “What is Essential,” April 24, 2020

    Of course, some places are more irritating than others, some conditions worse, but it seems common to living in any means people like to get away, out of town, go up to the cabin, drive out to the beach, go camping, sail the seven seas, see the world, go somewhere, anywhere, but somewhere else.

    Not talking here about those forced to leave home, from war or famine or wildfire or flood, abuse or political upheaval. Catastrophes are not “irritations.” A catastrophe is sudden and overturning; an irritation is slow and creeping, an itch one can’t quite reach. An earworm. One can live with any number of irritations, but one can not go on as before during or after a catastrophe. “Would like” suggests preference, unrelated to need, not desperate, but a privileged choice.

    “Where should we spend the weekend, in town or in the country?”
    “I don’t know. I’m bored with opera.”

    The COVID19 virus affects different people in different ways, depending on predicament, but literally everyone on the planet Earth has been affected, to one extent or another, slightly or severely. Wouldn’t it be nice to get away? Maybe that’s the attraction of Perseverance, of Mars, of space travel.

    “Earth is irritating.”
    “Let’s go to Mars.”
    “Good idea.”
    “I’ll book a flight today.”

    Can a simple irritation, almost unnoticeable until all goes quiet, grow into a catastrophe? It seems unlikely. Irritations come from within; catastrophes come with the wind. There’s talk of getting “back to normal.” That too seems unlikely. In fact, in any case, wasn’t there something particularly irritating with what was considered normal?

  • What is Essential?

    What is Essential?

    In John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing,” we find the following comment: “It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.” Likewise, we may find that when we are alone, we find ourselves wanting company, but when we are in company, we may find ourselves wanting to be alone.

    As we find ourselves now, confined to quarters, advised to advance toward others (nor permit them to advance toward us) no closer that 6 feet, and even then advised it might be a good idea to wear a face mask and gloves and carry a sanitizer, we are reminded of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Once a lower but more essential need is met, we may climb a rung higher on the pyramid until we reach the nirvana of self-actualization.

    We must now assume that top rung to have a base of 6 feet, so that there is only room for one person, that one being, of course, one’s self. And to be fully self-actualized means being able to stay home perfectly content with staying home.

    But then we find Maslow adding on yet another rung to the top of his hierarchy of needs (even if, in practice, this would mean expanding the original base and subsequently the base of all the other rungs leading up to the top). The new top of the pyramid, reached after self-actualization is achieved, might be described as staying home without staying home, otherwise known as self-transcendence.

    All that work on meeting one’s needs only to discover at the top of the climb one leaves one’s self behind. It might be that only by staying home can we come to grips with the differences between our needs and our wants such that we may find our essentials.

  • Review: “The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online”

    I review “The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online” at Berfrois. Fun for everyone!

    Lots of Fun

    The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online,
    Edited by Houman Barekat, Robert Barry, and David Winters,
    OR Books, New York and London. 203 pp.