Today's walk report: 122421

 Merry Christmas. Happy winter 2021-2022.

Another wonderful couple of rainstorms began 12/23/21 at 0140 with rainfall here totaling a whopping 2.42", ending around 10:00 this morning. I left shortly thereafter in search of some picture taking and to get at least a little walking in. Skies were still somewhat foreboding and I happened to get rained on just a tad as I was heading back to my car. That rain apparently wasn't measurable by the campus weather station but it was enough to get me damp and the car wet on the way home. 

I started out looking for birds but I was distracted by pretty colors, sort of rare signs of seasonal change in SoCal, so I made a project of it. Plus everything was so very clean and shiny. This experience was reminiscent of my one and only photo "assignment" here on this blog. That was this. 

It was also a great excuse to show random images without dialogue so here we go...

Colors please grow for me, paint my world rosily,
Keep me just sheltered and warm.
Save my lost blossomy, values I trusted in
Show me ...

Today's walk report: 011714

In 2004...

It was a really introspective walk. It was a beautiful walk. Why did 2004 come to mind? I'm not exactly sure, maybe because it's been 10 years and perhaps it was spiked by incidents of the day. Two things happened to me in 2004 and to dissect the reasons why they happened would take more discourse than anybody reading this would care to read. The idea of my even writing about it is also boring to me--besides I thought about it a lot on my walk and I already overflowed. Briefly though because I've brought it up. For the 1st epiphany in 2004 I was deep inside some creative processes, integrating some visual stuff with a story I had in my head. I decided something. I confirmed something important. I said that I was an artist. I accepted myself as an artist, this was something I had always denied. What kind of artist exactly was a little fuzzy. It still is. Perhaps that I was a master of digital noodling. Nevertheless I saw that I had the sensibility of an artist and I made this affirmation. Thinking artistically for years and my examination of the artistic tools I had chosen to use, that I had chosen to bring to others, and understand, had evolved me into an artist. I also saw my life flash in front of me in a way with the realization that part of me was an artist for a very long time, back into childhood, but it struggled to surface because I spent too much time comparing myself to others.

Which brings me to this other thing that happened to me in 2004. I realized I was in the moment which was now and in this moment, I loved myself for who I was. This had nothing to do with not having faults but was my excepting those too, right there and then just as right here and now. I believed was and am a good person and that I love myself. Why did it take me 48 years? I'm still working on that. Certainly a big part of it was not really knowing that I didn't love myself. A lot of it was simply being young and all of the illusions that go along with youth. Sobriety in November 2000 played a major role too. I was sober for 5 years before that. That's another thing, being sober and thinking sober are two different projects-- it took a second look and several years before some of the alcoholic clutter went away. There's a bunch of baggage that could and did get in the way of... The life which is unexamined is not worth living. -- Socrates.

This is my walk report and that is what it was. Plus, the music I was listening to was speaking to me. I don't generally focus on the lyrics of music especially on my walks but lyrics were coming through like everything had been re-mixed especially for this day. One of the 2 albums I listened to was a band called Sylvan out of Germany and even though the words are in English I hardly ever understand the guy through his thick accent. But not today, it was loud and clear (eh, most of it.)

In the garden. A usual suspect. There are two Anna's hummingbirds, I confirmed that today but I can't seem to get a good look at the other one because this guy always chases it off. Here's a quick turn of the head. These two shots were taken in the same second.

We played a little game. This bird has two favorite spots. Below is the other one. It's directly across a path that leads into the garden. Whenever he would get perturbed by my presence at the Cesalpinia pulcherrina you see above he moved over about 12 meters to here. I usually couldn't find him but all I had to do was to walk over there and once I went back to the Cesalpinia he was there.

The butt shots might have been okay had I not been experimenting with the new flash.

A better flash setting and the closest I was able to sneak up, back on the other side of the path.

My buddy "Big red" waiting on the sunset a little far off at 22 meters. Which reminds me I need to check the diopter on my camera because I wasn't seeing focus properly through the viewfinder. I think this happens when you get older and it's possible I moved the dial inadvertently. I wear the camera at my right hip while I'm walking and sometimes I have to hold it down because I'm moving briskly. I don't think I pay much attention to where my fingers are.

 The Prairie falcon also awaits sunset.

End of another day.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. -- Emerson.

Today's walk report: 091713

Presets.

This was my introduction to the German progressive rock band, Sylvan, in February, 2007. Sylvan morphed over several years under different names, styles and band members, finally settling into the basic incarnation they are today in 1997. The smart move was getting a singer who could sing in English. Although sometimes his accent obscures lyrics for me but then who in rock music hasn't? I also suspect the lyrics may originate in German and then are translated.

Lucy the Cat is about 10 months old here. The song Presets from the album of the same name was playing on a progressive rock oriented Internet radio station via iTunes and I wasn't really paying much attention to it. I was playing with my cat. It was only later when I was in "post" trying to vignette out some of the mess in my apartment that I went... wait a minute, who is this band?!? I'm going to guess it was about 4 months before I ran across them again and had an ah-ha! moment.

My musical experience growing up navigated nicely into progressive rock, jazz rock, jazz fusion genres. This taking form in the early 70's. If you don't know anything about this type of music and you feel like it, click the links and you're well on your way. For me it was a natural progression from a taste for neo-classical and serial music and the dynamics of rock music. Pure and simple.

Over the last 5 walks I've heard Presets 3 times now. They're a pretty obscure band especially in the U.S. so I felt like doing my share to try and promote the music.

Something rock...

Something pretty... This is part of a "rock opera" called Posthumous Silence and it goes into the next song, just not here, so excuse the abrupt ending.

Thanks!

Audio CD sales up in 2020!

I just went online to buy a CD of the latest release from I band I like. I believe the album release date was in January.  I wanted a CD, something tangible, something I could hold in my hand and look at. The first thing I found upon Googling the band name + the album title were a bunch of links to pirated copies. Then I narrowed Google down to "shopping," still with no luck. Then I went directly to Amazon and searched on the same. I found the $9.99 MP3 download version of the album but wait… there was a link to "Also available in CD Format" where I found…

We've been hearing about this, that record companies would be stopping the distribution of albums on CD but this is the first time I've run into it. While I CAN still get a CD, this was a sign. It's a German band, not mainstream music so I'm sure that effects things. I can order it from the band's website for 24.50 EUR ($32.06 at the moment) including shipping and whoever's tax I'm paying but I have to create an account there and log in to confirm all this.

CDs started making a huge impact on distribution and sales of vinyl records once CD players became affordable in the early 80's and they took over market share by the late 80's. By 1991 vinyl records left mainstream album distribution. Thing is, record albums have had a resurgence in recent years, in 2009 almost 3 million records were sold, the most in ten years. Fact is vinyl records as an overall buying experience will never be beat by any other medium. The act of going to the local record store, thumbing through the records was an energizing event.. Even though I grew up in a large suburb of Los Angeles there was always a small independent record store around and you could even make requests to hear some of the music you planned to buy (or just wanted to hear) while you were shopping. During the mid-70s my friends and I would frequent a local record shop called Odd Tunes and Mole Music where we would often have after hours listening sessions with the owner and his lady friend. We'd dim the lights, sit back on a couch and otherwise indulge while listening from an enormous selection. I was exposed to music I may never have heard otherwise. I remember one album in particular, Mountain In The Clouds by Miroslav Vitous-- you weren't going to just hear that--not anywhere. It was a wonderful time when stereos were furniture and not little devices we threw in our pockets or stuff we connected to our cell phones.

Miroslav Vitous, from the album Magical Shepard (not highly recommended-but Mountain In The Clouds is.) Custom double neck bass/guitar by Rex Bogue.

Music wasn't very portable until the Walkman was released in 1979 and it took a year or two before that dropped in price. In 2005 I bought my current Sherwood A/B home cassette deck because I found a box load of irreplaceable recordings I wanted to digitize. I first went shopping at stereo stores but gave up quickly. One salesperson, probably 19-20 years old didn't know what I was talking about. I finally described the tape and said she may have seen one in an older car. That's when she said no, we don't have any of those. I bought the Sherwood online. I used to carry around a rather bulky about 12" x 8" x 4" Panasonic cassette player, AM/FM radio, early 70's. 'Actually taped a lot of music off the radio with that. Really, I'm not kidding. But it certainly wasn't convenient and music listening was much more of a social event than it is today, those portable solutions were mainly used when you couldn't find a place to listen to music without parents around. What was typical was sitting around large pieces of furniture and these pieces of furniture housed our stereo equipment.

My earliest childhood home listening experience was in front of this. This housed Altec-Lansing speakers (8" full range), a Harman/Kardon tube stereo receiver (currently under repair by me) and a Girard turntable. This was brand new circa 1962. That's my cat, Lucy The Cat, sticking her head out circa today.

So, a little math but we'll round off the years for sake of simplicity. Say the CD took over vinyl records pretty completely by 1989 then records had their revival 20 years later in 2009 but there were modest sales coming into play as early as 1998. I'm going to recommend this--hang onto your CD collections and see what renewed value they have out of either nostalgia or just because people like to have stuff. This is going to happen by 2020. Also, by 2040 record LPs will become the Art Nouveau framed and hanging in people's living rooms and music itself will have become illegal a la Frank Zappa's, Joe's Garage. If you think you'll be around then, prepare to go underground.

"Our studies have shown that this horrible force is so dangerous to society at large that laws are being drawn up at this very moment to stop it forever! Cruel and inhuman punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they won't conflict with the Constitution (which, itself, is being modified in order to accommodate THE FUTURE)."
-The Central Scrutinizer
(Scene One, Frank Zappa's, Joe Garage) 

(By the way, if anybody actually reads this and is curious about the album I was shopping for it is the 2011 release by a band called Sylvan titled Sceneries and it looks like I'm going to order from their website.) Look for it on eBay in 2020.