• Tag Archives city
  • Percussive

    Imbolc                                                                           Valentine Moon

    Woke up.  Turned on the phone.  Nothing.  Frozen.  Onto the internet.  Tried several fixes. Nothing.  Over to Verizon. No joy there either.  I’d had my HTC Thunderbolt for four years, so I opted to get a new phone, an HTC DNA.  Another Android phone, in the same lineage as the Thunderbolt so I already understood its basic use.  Not cheap, not outrageously expensive.  Did add one feature to the plan, text messaging.  Yes, after four years of owning a smartphone I’m catching up with today’s elementary school kids.

    Later on Kate and I went into the McPhail Center, a place for music learning and performance, now located very near the new Guthrie and the Mill City Museum.  We were there for a performance by the Bakken Trio featuring the gamelan.  The gamelan is an Indonesian instrument, a percussion instrument played by several people.  It includes gongs, zithers, xylophones and upside down bronze pots that each have a tone and are struck with a mallet.

    The gamelan’s music organizes around rhythm and melody, having as a particular feature density of tone achieved by the layering of one rhythm on top of another simultaneously.  There are no harmonics.

    Joko, an Indonesian gamelan artist who teaches gamelan, has lived in the Twin Cities now for 18 years.  He said that a full gamelan orchestra is the largest percussive ensemble in the world.  (see image above for an Indonesian setting).  Gamelan concerts typically run 8 hours and gamelan musicians in Indonesia may play 8 hours during the day and another 8 at night.  Geez.

    I wanted to see this because I’m fascinated by how other people do things.  In this case, music.

    The concert itself featured quartet pieces by Ravel and Debussy, both influenced by a traveling program focused on Javanese culture, plus a work by a contemporary composer, Louis Harrison.  Impressed with the gamelan music and its difference from the Western tradition Debussy and Ravel both incorporated it.  Especially in pizzicato and in movements with narrow tonal ranges.

    (Ravel)

    Both Debussy and Ravel are in the romantic tradition and, for some reason I can’t explain, I don’t like romantic classical music.  I say for some reason because in painting and literature I find myself a romantic by nature and inclination.  There were some beautiful melodies, especially in the Ravel, his String Quartet in F Major.

    The Harrison piece, though, Philemon and Baukis (for violin and gamelan), was wonderful.  It was airy and spacious, filled with the rapid changing of tempos typical of gamelan music. Harrison builds and plays the gamelan himself.  Philemon and Baukis, btw, is a story found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  It was the only piece in which the gamelan played.

    Following the concert we ate at Sea Change.  We had a miserable experience there a few years back, but tonight was pleasant.  Then back home to the burbs.

    Over the meal Kate and I discussed a possible (probable) move into the city at some point before infirmity strikes us so we can enjoy the city life again.  I’m hesitant about it, having spent 19 years adapting myself and my life to the exurbs, but aging has its own relentless pressures.


  • Kate is Home.

    Summer                                            Waning Strawberry Moon

    Kate is home.  She looks amazing, walking without the characteristic roll she had developed while favoring her right hip.  We went to Lucias, site of our first date, and ate at their outdoor tables.  Kate savored the wind, the freedom and “being on this side of the windows.”  Doc Heller says 2 to 2 1/2 weeks and she should be able to walk without the walker.

    While we had a snack at Lucias, a stead stream of young singles and young couples with children came by, strolling in their neighborhood.  I realized I seldom see this many young adults.  The MIA docents are an older crowds, the Woollies, too; only the Sierra Club, of the groups I see with any regularity has a mix of youth and older adults.

    One of the younger  couples that came by was a young man in scruffy jeans like I wore at his age and a woman in a print dress, black hair done up in tufts, Goth  eye shadow and lip stick, smoking a cigarette and wearing Doc Martens.  She was not happy with the parking ticket the laid back parking meter attendant had given her only a few minutes before.

    Here’s another sign of the shift I’ve made from city boy to exurban man.  The traffic, the crowds, the heat, the buildings felt too close, too vibrant, more energy than I could inhale.  I look forward to breaking free of the urban heat island, the jockeying for position.   Never used to feel that way.  Now I like our little patch of land, the quiet here, our dogs.


  • Into the City

    Summer Solstice                                   Waxing Strawberry Moon

    The Woollies gathered tonight at Charlie Haislet’s place in the Rock Island condos, just north and a bit east of downtown.  We gathered, our numbers shrunk by various summer activities to:  Charlie, Warren, Frank, Scott, Bill, Mark and myself.  The conversation went on as it does, checking in on how folks are, what’s going on, but Charlie turned the conversation toward Father’s day.  It seemed to  me, as I listened, that we have all rooted ourselves in family, our nuclear and extended families, and, further, that as we have grown older, those connections have grown richer and deeper, occupying the central spot in each of our lives that the voice of tradition has suggested they might.

    Charlie’s 7th floor (top) condo overlooked downtown; the waxing strawberry moon hung over the glass and stone cityscape, the dying sun reflecting in the mirrored surfaces of the IDS, the Northwest Building and all the modernist architecture there.  I’ve been critical of it as lacking flair and imagination, but tonight, a clear warm summer night, the reflections and the twilight, then the advance of night and the reflections of lights was glorious.  It looked like Oz, as I think of it when I turn on Hwy 610 heading south and see it far away, maybe 15-20 miles.

    Before the meeting, I arrived a little early and took advantage of the time to walk through the neighborhood, a now populous community that is no more than 20 years old.  There was a couple with a young boy in a stroller and a dog, a young man with his white shirt half out, tie askew with his dog, a couple with a puppy, all walking, off work and at home.  The buildings were brick, a few old, like the Rock Island and The Creamette, but many new.

    Some had iron barred and locked fence doors protecting patios which anyone could easily vault onto from the railing.  There were signs: no walking on the grass, dog waste here, guest parking only, towing $260.00.  The green space that existed had a manicured and distant feel, as if its purpose was to recall, to remind rather thanto be.  The windows had blinds and shutters; thanks to air conditioning almost none were open, so the few people I encountered while walking were all I could see other than tailored walls and well hung windows, the odd bit of decor.  It felt, not empty, but not lively either.

    Putting myself there as a resident, I tried to decide if this would work for me.  It has the advantage of being near to the main library, downtown, the shopping around University and Hennepin, the Mississippi and its parks.  There would be neighbors aplenty and the urban feel has a certain up energy to it.

    These days, though, when many folks I know have moved or want to move from the burbs into the city, I’d have to say I surprised myself.  It felt too confining, too many neighbors, too many shared walls, too many signs and restrictions.  Too little room to plant, to have dogs run, to exercise a horticultural or apicultural inclination.  It surprised me because I consider myself a city boy, wedded to political work and aesthetic work that require the urban environment for their realization.

    I’ve changed.  I’m now an exurban man, grown used to the quiet here, the open space, the land on which we can grow vegetables and flowers, have a bee yard, a honey house and a separate play house for the grandkids.  When I drive by Round Lake, I’ve come home.


  • The Ex-Urb

    37  bar steady 29.89 0mph SSE dewpoint 34 Spring

               Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    Still absorbing the arguments from the Brueggman lecture on sprawl.  I want to write more when I’ve integrated his thoughts and decided fully how I feel about them. 

    The exurban life, the one I’ve lived for the last 14 years, has some distinct pluses.  We have enough land that we can alter the landscape in positive ways.  We can contemplate, for example, adding ponds, a gravity driven stream, an orchard, changing out our lawn for prairie grass and wildflowers or fruit and nut trees, even vegetable gardens.  I don’t know how far we’ll go with all this, but the more I learn about permaculture, the more it makes sense, not only for us.

    Also, the relatively isolated nature of our land, both in terms of our neighbors, who are least 2.5 acres away, and  our distance from the metro, over 30 miles, creates a sense of privacy that nurtures creative activity.  As an introvert, I have found this life a perfect fit.

    Anyhow, gotta go.  Discovered late last night I do have a tour today.  See ya.