The Serious Tower

Before I forget... For a couple years at least, Ella has called the tallest building in Chicago the "Serious Tower". I love that. Well, it is a serious tower.

A Fever

Whenever I get a good fever, it's like I have severe brain damage. While I'm absolutely aware of my identity, my condition, and my location, I am simultaneously, overwhelmingly preoccupied with one fiction or another. It usually takes the form of a feeling that I need to complete some kind of work, something vitally important, but bizarre and indescribable. Last week the whole family had a 24 hour bug, and this time while I was incapacitated, I had the sensation that I had discovered some essential truth. It was something I was convinced would thoroughly impress my family and many other people if only I could commit it to memory and articulate it after my illness. I remember that much quite clearly. It was something scientific or mathematical. Aside from that, I have not the slightest idea what this idea was.

Finger Eyes

Last night I was thinking about the flexibility of the brain, specifically the sensory input substitution discussed by Hawkins in On Intelligence, such as the Bach-y-Rita tongue vision experiments. I wondered, did they put a camera on the person's head, so that the mental image would be like seeing with your eyes? What if there were multiple cameras, facing in all directions? Ignoring the practical issues, assuming it were possible - what would it be like to see in all directions at once? What would the mental image be like, to be in the center of your own field of vision, looking out in all directions?

And what if the camera were elsewhere, like a handheld camera? OK, one more step - what if you had eyes in the tips of your fingers? What would that mental image be like?! Would there be one coherent overall mental image, only illuminated in the directions you happened to be pointing your fingers at that moment? Or could the mental images from one finger, or a group of fingers, be separate from the others?

Z

The letter Z. The English call it "zed". We Americans call it "zee". When I first told Maria that we say "zee" she thought I was joking. (It's "Zed" in German too.) So why did it change here from "zed" to "zee"? Is it the alphabet song? If you sing the alphabet to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "zed" doesn't rhyme. Do English kids not sing the alphabet song? Or do they sing "zee" but say "zed"?

Parisian Thoroughfare

An amazing Bud Powell song. Kocour played a nice version of it at Pianoforte last weekend. It was stuck in my mind this morning, so I dialed up Jacky Terrasson's version when I got to work. This energetic version is in 7/4 meter. I frightened a colleague with some enthusiastic desk drumming. I love irregular meters when done well, for their continuous tension through syncopation.

Tiefschwarz

From the last-to-know department: last week's Buzzin' Fly guest mix included a song "Damage" by Tiefschwarz with vocals by Tracey Thorn (iTunes). This song would have sounded right in place on Out Of The Woods. It doesn't rank with "Protection" but I had to get it anyway. No regrets. Tracey's voice is quintessential.

Michael Kocour

Yesterday afternoon Maria and I saw Michael Kocour perform at Pianoforte. It was not a remarkable show, but a very pleasant one.

Kocour played all standards, plus one original. He was quite capable of incorporating different styles into his playing - at times his playing was sparse like Ahmad Jamal, at other times dense. There didn't seem to me to be anything particularly unique about his playing. Still the performance was entirely enjoyable.

I'm happy to report that the audience behaved far better than last time.

iPod Non Sequitir

A diverse playlist put on shuffle can make for some amusing iPod non sequitirs. This morning, I listened to a clip from Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. She was talking quietly with Dizzy Gillespie, discussing which song they would play next. "Let's play 'On The Alamo'." "OK." Then suddenly, the opening riff to The Who's "I Can See For Miles"!!

Milk and Cereal and Speed Bumps

It was a pretty decent week on the home front. Martin has been cranky again since he got his 1 year vaccinations, and I've been fighting some kind of cold. But three great things happened.

First, we got our first milk home delivery. When I was a kid, we got Oberweis milk delivered, until they stopped delivering (early 80's?). They've been delivering again for some years now. In the last month, since Maria weaned Martin, we've been going through milk like crazy. We checked with Oberweis, and found out we could get home delivery for about the same as buying the Oberweis milk at the Jewel. Done!

Then the speed bumps came. I have wanted them on our block since we moved here, six years ago. Some people seem to think that our block is a little known spur of the Kennedy expressway. This summer, Maria talked with our neighbors, and found that the speed bump sentiment was basically unanimous on our block. She found out how to petition for them, and she and some neighbors collected signatures. A few phone calls to remind the ward office, and now they're finally here!

And then the cereal came. A couple weeks ago, I found out that Amazon lets you subscribe to delivery of non-perishable groceries at decent prices. I could get Smart Start delivered to my home for far less than it usually cost at the Jewel. Now the milk and cereal come to me! It's like a dream.