Digital Voodoo

What happened was, I changed the order of things, so that yesterday, which would have been the third in a series of consecutive days with a blog post here, was not that.

But, today, I am starting with the computer, and a glass of kratom, before going to do vocals on the "Calypso" morning song. It is very simple.
Just really simple, but wait until I do digital voodoo upon it; like what I did to the picture to the left.

 I changed the order of things, so that I started with music right away, after coming off of the bed at around noon.

I had fallen asleep with preset 100 looping on the Casio keyboard.

Preset 100 is "Calypso."

So, I sat up and turned the volume up on the thing, which I had just slept and dreamed to. I think Harry Belafonte was on my back and had me pinned down and was trying to drown me in these pristine cornflower blue waters that were so clear you could see all kinds of spectacularly vivid fish in their tie dyed colors and you could see coral reefs as intricate darker shadows against the back drop of the light brown sand; very beautiful; but Harry had my arms against my back and somehow we were in the pirogue from the first chapter of the novel named "Oyster," by John Biguenet -the pirogue that Therese took another character named "Horse" out in the bayou in; and killed him in very dramatic fashion, which involved her seducing him by skinny dipping out away from the boat, at around midnight as it was, and in alligator and crab infested waters to lure him to follow her, and then, after making it back to the boat first (because she was 30 years younger than horse) stabbing him as she was "helping" him back in the pirogue, which is like a canoe -then doing a quick three loops around his neck with the rope attached to the bucket full of concrete, sometimes referred to as a "redneck anchor" sending him downward into the depths by throwing said bucket over. Therese was a very resourceful 17 year old.

But I woke up with a start and off my back flew a startled Harold, who jumped to the table that the puzzle I am assembling is on and, landing there and perhaps realizing that he had gotten himself into even deeper trouble as he found himself riding on a sled of already assembled puzzle pieces, made the split second decision to abandon the table for the safety of under the bed, and in re-launching himself in that opposite direction, swept a good portion of the puzzle pieces onto the floor where they dissolved into chaos. There was a cat sized clearing on the table where there were no longer any puzzle pieces, nor much dust, for that matter.

Ironic that I don't seem to have time to work on the puzzle, yet I am locked in the house with ostensibly nothing but time on my hands.

 

I hadn't really touched the puzzle much in the last few months, since even before the lock-down. *note to self: Google "which word combinations should be hyphenated; which separated, and is "lockdown" even "a word?"

Ironic that I don't seem to have time to work on the puzzle, yet I am locked in the house with ostensibly nothing but time on my hands.

Are the elites who supposedly run the world using the virus to help people get used to working at home and to ultimately reduce the number of cars on the roads worldwide, as more people adapt, who will also realize that all they really need is a good bike with a good basket and they will be able to avail themselves to 99% of whatever they might ever leave the house to go get?

Is this a forced move to take on global warming, skirting public discourse over the matter and putting the planet first, over anyone's opinion?

I wonder if, at around the time this virus goes away, there will also materialize things like solar powered cars, that charge up enough while you are in Walmart so that you can drive home, or let the car drive you home.

Within 20 years, when I look out the window, I will see as many if not more driver-less things scooting up and down Canal street, many of them heavily armored and delivering food to the sally ports of people's houses; the ones with the double doors so that the vehicle can be let into the dwelling and the outer door closed behind it, so that the person can retrieve his groceries and deliveries from merchants worldwide in safety.

When we go out, we will surely wear a bullet proof helmet which will be able to display things to us in the visor which will be something that you can look at, or look through. But most people will be watching the monitor of what they could be seeing if they change their focus, because the picture will be better; it will be adjustable; you could make a grey day look more rosy, for example. It will have a function which will be able to show where all your friends are, perhaps putting you all in a virtual room, where you will be able to say "Hey, Fred" and Fred will hear you in his helmet, and will be able to tell how far away you are because the volume will be adjusted accordingly,

The thing will have night vision, of course. It will be bright as day© technology (BAD) and come preinstalled in all BAD products, as they will be the company that invents the whole Hell Met line of net gear. There will be a "bright sun" setting that will, in the dead of night, give you bright sunlit world, replete with shadows and glare off of nearby shiny objects; you will be able to see as much as you would see on a bright sunny day.

I Start The Day With Music

I turned up the "calypso" beat and was immediately inspired to put the recorder on and compose "It's A Calypso Morning (It's gonna be a calypso day)" using three chords.

In the past, I would have concluded that a 3 chord song was beneath me, and would have tried to work some kind of complex chord into the arrangement, to try to be more like Steely Dan, but I have since come to appreciate that all 8 million ways that those 3 chords can be used, have not been used yet; and to further realize that there is a 3 chord song functionality going on in every Steely Dan song. They are famous for taking two things which might be moronically simple by themselves and combining them so that something that might have only had 9 possible ways to go now has 81. This would be like a guitar playing simple triads on the top strings that would just be like the chords to Breezin' by George Benson, but then to offset the rhythm so that what you would expect to be the first chord (and the key to the piece) is now the third; and then to have the bass playing anything but the roots of those chords which would make it sound like the Breezin' progression, but now it isn't, because the bass might even be in a different key. The result is a very interesting progression in that other key. Whole books have been written on music theory, but that is my "music theory through the music of Steely Dan" course distilled into an outline....

I soon had a bass line and a melody, to which I only had "It's a calypso morning" as lyrics. But I was actually able to sing the melody

Then I decided to isolate the drums coming from the Casio, from the melody from it, which was another preset for "fretless bass 2."

Without going into all the session details I can cut to my point which was that, 18 hours later, I was still working on "Calypso Morning." The sun had long been down.

And, now I go back to work on it some more; as soon as computer stuff has been done.

Lilly On The Line

Lilly called me yesterday and seemed full of energy. She wanted to make sure she had my address, as she had lost it. Either that or the address thing was the excuse for calling to warn me not to ever watch Newsmax.

She said that they had "taken over for Fox" and that they are trying to reel in suckers, and that, if I wanted to be a fool and watch Newsmax, then that was up to me.

She then went on to paraphrase a lot from the book written by the niece of Donald Trump (Mary Trump, I believe is her name; I saw something about her on Newsmax, I think I recall).

She assured me that Donald wants to be like Putin, who "sits in a bunker while all his people are dying."

I had to argue that Donald isn't the bunker sitting type, because he seems to like to be on TV every day, because I felt like I had to argue, to keep her blood flowing.

She said she knows a lady who said she wished that Trump could stay the president "forever" and that, surprisingly, the lady is a very nice person, with a nice job and a nice family and nice clothes, and Lilly likes her and her family; but the poor soul just doesn't know...
And then she ran down the list of commonly known atrocities that the president has committed, going all the way back to when Lilly lived in Queens, New York in the early 1990's and ending up with the latest CNN headline and the truths behind it...

By the time we were off the phone, I felt like I had been separated from my children and put in a cage. But she sent her love, and reminded me of our times swimming together in her pool.

For the first one of these occasions, Lilly had put together a playlist, by enlisting the help of her millenial daughters, and it became apparent that she had put a lot of forethought into the pacing of our afternoon, as she had kind of started the music when we were having coffee, and then kind of insisted that we get into the pool at a certain point in the music program, and then it was swimming music that played, swimming music like "So Happy Together," by The Turtles, or Herman's Hermits, I forget.

But then ensued wiping off music and then maybe "The Warmth Of The Sun" by The Beach Boys for when we were out and sitting in the sun.

"Another Day," by Paul McCartney became Lilly's general lament as we sipped coffee.

I then understood why she had gotten so upset the one time that she had invited me to swim and I had shown up a bit late. "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" or "Sundown," by Gordon Lightfoot had been inserted into the playlist all for naught as it was already growing dark.