Da Vinci Code vs. Catholic Church

I admit that I read and enjoyed the Da Vinci Code. But it was far from being great literature. It is a simple book, based on an interesting possibility from a couple of historians, and it is far from well-written. It was a fun piece of pop fluff. I enjoyed it. But this brouhaha over it and other books by the Catholic and some Protestant Churches is just ridiculous. It is fiction, and they are arguing against it like it is a historical truth. The latest:

http://www.jesusdecoded.com/

Is another absurdist religious attack on art, if we dare call the book that. Which, actually, I don't.

The web page says: "The Da Vinci Code novel contains a claim that in Leonardo's mural The Last Supper, which portrays Jesus and his twelve apostles at the meal he took with them on the night before he died, one of the twelve is not the apostle John but actually a woman who is Mary Magdalene." And then goes on to argue about it.

Let us dissect this for a moment. "...novel contains a claim..."

It is a novel. Great Jebus help us. Other novels make fantastical claims. We don't argue about them. We suspend our disbelief, and read them. And we enjoy them, they stimulate thought, dialogue, or they inspire. Or not. One of my all-time favorite novels is Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Because of the book's "claims," do I believe that the Templars are about to culminate their evil plans against the world? Or because I love Hugh Lofting, do I REALLY believe that Doctor Doolittle can talk to the animals?

But, I bet the publishers are stoked. It probably is boosting sales of The Da Vinci Code.

Me? I love Duchamp....

It never ceases to amaze me how people get worked up over art.

Here, we have a guy attacking Duchamp's Fountain.

http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0609,saltz,72298,13.html

First he pee'd on it in 1993. (After all, it is a urinal.) Now, the 77 year old French performance artist attacked it with a hammer.

I hate to ask the obvious, but why was he so pissed off at the pisser?

and more tea...

OK, one more link on tea and aging...and the prevention of a mental decline...

Click Here

It totally makes sense: If tea helps prevent arteriosclerosis , most commonly thought of in relationship to heart disease, would it not affect the smaller blood vessels in the brain....? Any ideas out there? I'm certainly not a doctor, so any input is welcomed...

Tea and more...

Many of you know of my love of tea. Particularly white teas, green teas, and pu erh teas. Well, in a lovely morning of drinking organic Tuocha and doing some delightful searching on the internet for information about tea I came across one of the most humorously useless technological experiments ever. An experiment on the functionality of the Chocolate Teapot by PLOKTA zine. (According to Wikipedia, PLOKTA means "Press a Lot Of Keys To Abort," an old way of getting your computer to stop whatever it was doing...

Click here to read about the Functionality of the Chocolate Teapot

I also ran across a nice link about health and tea:

http://www.sevencups.com/tea-health-benefits.php

Also: I regularly get asked where I buy my tea.

I have two places that I shop regularly
Jack and Judy Strand that run Strand Tea are an excellent resource, but their website is a little lacking. Don't let that stop you, their tea is excellent, and phone service unsurpassed. I recommend calling them and chatting about tea and taking their recommendations. If you are lucky, you will get Jack or Judy. Their advice has broadened my tea experience immensely.

My other choice is the Tao of Tea, whose website is easy to use and they also have a great selection of organic teas. And if you go into their tea house on Belmont in Portland, Oregon, be sure to talk with Jonathan Sielaff...his knowledge is vast, and his recommendations always good. And he plays a mean bass clarinet as well.

Saturday Night at Spark...

Wow. A memorable evening. Great music, particularly by Ben Nevile and Andrew Pask and then by Randy Jones. Ben and Andrew did a trance inducing set of interlocking polyrhythms and modal melodies, whereas Randy got more insane dance grooves going while singing about, ahem, "My Little Pony," among other things.

Somehow, at the end of the evening (4am) at our usual hang, the Hard Times Cafe, Roy Carroll (who joined Andrew and I on many adventures this trip) and I heard about a big rave going on. Well, we decided to go. It was pretty insane. Photos to come later. As I dropped my camera and broke it about 6am while grooving to the DJs...Back to the story. As we were walking up, I was joking around speaking faux German to Roy when this hyper-rave-fiend comes up to us and says, "Dudes, are you German, are you? Are you? I love Germans, say something in German!" So I said, "yah, yah, my name is Dieter and this is Heinrich. Is dis das rave?" Well, we led the guy on, and it turns out he was involved in the production and got us in for free....saved us 20 bucks each...also gave us his number in Miami and told us to visit next time we were in the states...

Also...

Many of you that know me, know that for years I have wanted a granular synthesis footpedal for my electronics...Now that I've gone max/msp I have one. One of the gentlemen that I've met on this gig at Spark is Nathan Wolek, he is it when it comes to granular synthesis. And if you've been wondering what the heck granular synthesis is you can download papers at his website by clicking his name or pointing your browser at NathanWolek.com. Or you can start by going to Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_synthesis and read about it...

Friday night at Spark...

Another great day. The highlight for me was DEFINITELY Gregory Taylor and Tom Hamer performing music with Mark Henrickson doing video improvisation. Gregory was using Radial to create gorgeous loops and textures with Tom playing, among his other percussive devices, an amplified pine cone. Yup. Amplified pine cone. It sounded great! Mark continues to impress me with his video. More pics on the way, as soon as I find my connector cable...

Thursday night at Spark

Great night! Since we performed opening night our only job now is to hang out, listen to music, and meet people. I was lucky enough to hang out with Andrew Pask, of course, and meet Ben Neville, Nathan Wolek, Joe Grimm and other very interesting musicians, as well as see the beautiful and engaging Smyth-Wymore Disappearing Acts. One of the most engaging and interesting pieces yet on the program....wonderful. That and the folk-singer/percussion/musical saw (!) duo....REALLY! Haunting folk singing with fiddle and overtone singing accompanied by dark electronics and percussion: "A Conversation with Death" Michael Theodore and Tim Eriksen performed. Tim Eriksen is a bit of a legendary character around here....beautiful day. I can't say enough good about Tim Eriksen, he is the real deal. Check him out by clicking here.

Hardware-Be-Gone

Finally, Spark makes it official for me. No more hardware/stomp box based sound processing...Cycling 74's max/msp is it for me...the versatility and portability combine to make it THE way to go, in my humble opinion. Listening to all these laptop guys and the amazing array of textures and timbres they get is amazing...

Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art 2006

The Choir Boys (me and Andrew Pask) had a wonderful gig at the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis, MN last night...what a great venue. Part of the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art directed by Douglas Geers, we played as part of their Spark Nightlife...a great club, the night was curated by J.P. Hungelmann who was AWESOME. A great guy who took care of our every need (assisted by Mark, the soundguy), from making sure I could hear myself in the monitors (which was a problem, but got fixed right away) to making sure we had our favorite cocktails on the bandstand. His curating was beautiful, flowing from ambient, to the madness of the Choir Boys, to pointillistic laptop and video. Wonderful night. One of the great shows of the night: video artist Mark Henrickson working with Jitter...wonderful video, The Choir Boys hope to work with him sometime. I hope he is reading this. Photos by Roy Carroll an Irishman living in Germany with a wide vocabulary of Canadian slang...he also turned in a mean set on laptop using Reaktor. Check out his amazing grooves at his Myspace Site.