Author: Kaade

Composition- Star Whales’ Lullabye

It probably comes as no surprise, if you’ve read anything else on my page, that I enjoy the BBC’s Dr. Who. This piece was inspired by the episode “The Beast Below” (Season 5, Episode 02, 2010.) In the same way I used images from open source science in last week’s fractal post, I used whale recordings to create an sfz-format instrument for this recording, to be able to play whale sounds on a keyboard. Alas, that was at least 14 years ago, so I’ve lost tract of my sources. It features sounds of balaenoptera musculus (Blue Whale), delphinapterus leucas (Beluga Whale), megaptera novaeangliae (Humpback Whale), and orcinus orca (Orca.)

The tuning I set this in is a Korean pentatonic Just Intonation scale, the original name of which translates to the “Wonderful” scale.

Fractal-Iris Iris (with a salute to Gene Kranz)

A largely red background transforms into the visible spectrum across the top. In an eyebrow-like arch across the top are the moon in nine different phases, with the full moon near the center, wher the eye would be relative to the arch is a red sun with solar flares.
Iris Iris

I am running behind- in my self imposed schedule- on my community post, so I am posting my Friday Fractal with some thoughts about the community that made it possible. Most of my fractal art uses only fractals themselves, although I enjoy layering related fractals. This one, that produced a series of darkened circles against what became the background, needed something more. Where that something more came from is part of the story of The Space Program, the promise of the early internet, and a man who understood the potential of both.

Eugene F. “Gene” Kranz is best known as lead Flight Director for much of the Apollo Moon Landing missions, but was also a driving force in shaping what the internet could be. In the early days of the worldwide web, Kranz understood what this tool could mean for humankind and pushed NASA to make as many resources as possible available to the public. The NASA Image and Video Library serves the public as an archive of the history of spaceflight, but also makes the vast collection of astrophotography available to the world to be used by researchers, classrooms, and yes, even artists. Gene Kranz, like many in the space program, was first a veteran (USAF). About a third of the United States federal workforce still are. Most workers in scientific and service fields in the federal government are not there for transactional reasons. They are not trying to sell the skies- and the people who are trying to sell our scientific heritage can’t grasp why workers show up daily “tough and competent” as defined by the Kranz Dictum. Gene Kranz is still motivating people with his speaking engagements at age 91.

 

The Fast Times and Tragic Demise of the members of Bad Exposition

Sometimes I find myself scrolling through amateur literary forums. Among mountains of fan-fiction, there are occasional gems to be found. I don’t usually expect to find those, but what I do hope to find on those sites are the best of the worst, dialogue that is so bad it enters the realm of sublimely brilliant. I hope to witness the next Troll 2 or The Room. If you have to grade or edit such missives, and can’t walk away from it when you have had a chuckle, you have my sympathies, but you’ll also better understand the motifs I’m writing about here. I notice certain patterns in these spaces, and I’m not here to merely criticize bad writing (everyone writes badly until they write well), but to consider what it tells about the way some people organize and categorize the world around them to the point that it becomes maladaptive.

In the opening scenes, there’s usually a mirror. In front of the mirror stands our protagonist. For some reason, the character is thinking of their height down to the very inch or centimetre, because somehow mirrors work differently depending on how tall one is. Next is their build, then features and coloration. Usually this involves adjectives such as “chiseled” or “perky”, or using food or drink to describe the character’s skin-tone. The character’s salary and size of house are established soon after. Then we hear a description of the world in which they live- not by showing a representative experience within that world, but as an external summary- year, location, political factions. Over the course of the story, most of these details are never relevant again. Unlike the gun in the first act of a Chekhov play, the chiseled jaw and perky breasts never shoot anybody by the conclusion. Yes, these expositions are often staple in erotica, but they’re not even very effective there. How many successful relationships start with two people reading each others’ body measurements, or any of the various descriptions with which people define themselves in a top-down manner? So what compels so many bad writers to begin this way?

What we see here are writers using markers of identity as a substitute for exploring the character’s experiences. It is the literary equivalent to asking to “talk to the Manager.” Not only is this bad for writing, but emphasizing these things makes for a less meaningful life. If you’ve ever worked with disoriented people, and certainly if you’ve experienced disorientation, there are different ways to deal with the experience that can correspond to different approaches to writing. If you can’t remember where you and are unable to articulate your name, but your basic approach to establishing meaning is experiential and relational, then you can better recognize in the moment if someone is trying to help you and work with them. Anchoring one’s reality on first establishing status and definitions leads to bitterness as life happens and these things change. Some people will continue to demand “Do you know who I am?’ as a means to establish the hierarchy they need while they have literally forgotten who they are.  Joy has to be found in having an experience without having, or rather pretending to have, a complete summary of what is happening..

You are probably thinking of successful exceptions to this rule. Some amazing fiction uses what I am describing as top-down exposition, but let’s look a little closer at why that fiction works. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien establishes and shares significant details beyond the ken of the main character’s direct experiences. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams intersperses details from the titular reference work throughout the experiences of his characters. So, how is this not comparable to the details that Bad Exposition establishes? The difference is that good writers acknowledge that even the Official Story is imperfect. The lore that Gandalf explores is often contradictory and depends on translations and interpretations of each in a long series of scribes. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is remarkably incomplete and not at all concerned with the details that would matter to a human. (The complete entry for all of planet Earth is “mostly harmless.”) The perspectives that glue the narratives together are not the top-down ones, but rather those of Hobbits, who do what they can with what little they know of each situation, or of Arthur Dent, who happens to be the last survivor of planet Earth, not because of any special overarching knowledge.

The need for a set of predefined roles and cosmology before being able to move forward in a literary setting, points to the same rigidity in life: How do you expect me to accept new evidence when the first chapter of my life featured a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis? I bet you can’t even define what a Wookiee is! People in this mindset have to define their status relative to other people before they can interact. Moving beyond this is important for develop writing skills, but also personal skills. Lynda Barry, the author and cartoonist, often wrote from the perspective of kids and non-humans, finding meaning in situations where they held no authority, and where they weren’t privy to “official” details. She encouraged writers at her workshops and at book readings, like the one where I heard her speak, to start writing with no idea where to go next. She gave examples from her own works of stories that she started with no concept of what would happen next until she wrote each part. Her techniques helped free many of the developing creative writers who took her advice from some of the psychological barriers that can lead to writer’s block, but I think it also gave them tools to better deal with life: Just because you can’t know all the official details, you can still make meaningful connections. You might never know someone’s background, or even their name, but that’s no reason you can’t value them as a friend.

Faerielore Music, an overview and preview

Many people familiar with Trad music such as Irish session tunes or Child ballads will be aware of pieces of music with origins relating to the concept of the Otherworld, or concerning the lore about sentient beings with whom humans sometimes share space. I have been collecting examples of these from many places, and to understand why this matters as a distinct subgenre (of many different larger genres of traditional music), let’s explore how common folklore about mystical beings is, and the different intersections these have with music. Then I will list descriptions of forthcoming posts that I have planned, to give more specific examples, and hopefully something  to anticipate.

First, let’s widen the geographic and cultural scope of what many people think of when discussing faeries and other mystical beings, and look at the fuzzy edges of how these beings are categorized in their respective traditions. The perception of what these mystical beings are like – within and outside of one’s own heritage- has been influenced in each area by the power dynamics of prestige and marginalized cultural groups. In the United States, which has a significant role in the cultural diaspora of Celtic-Language nations, it has taken over a century- since the Irish Literary Revival, Walter Evans-Wentz’s The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, and collected balladry before both- to transform the popular perception of faeries, mermaids, and other beings to be based on traditional accounts and experiences, rather than deus ex machina plot devices. The novels currently printed more often depict the fae in terms of traditional folklore. What shifted, along with the many fits and starts among literary circles, was how American descendants began to value and embrace Celtic folklore mirroring the many movements for cultural self-determination that occurred in Ireland and Great Britain. Similar changes to the perception of trolls and other Scandinavian beings has resulted from artistic movements coming out of Nordic areas. Via overlapping media culture, in the form of anime and manga, younger generations of westerners often have an appreciation for some of the denizens of Japanese folkore, like the kitsune, tanukis, and kappas.

Now, as artists and folklorists of these subjects, we have to help grow the perception beyond viewing faerielore as an exclusive phenomenon of western Europe. Most cultures of the world have legends and personal accounts of related phenomena. I will give some examples below as I give you a preview of my posts to come. It is of particular importance to look at faerielore of the Global South and Indigenous communities. A book I would highly recommend to anyone in this field is American elves : an encyclopedia of little people from the lore of 380 ethnic groups of the Western Hemisphere by John E. Roth.

Another major perceptual shift that will help you better understand the scope of what we’re looking at is to understand what the essential categories are, and how they relate to humanity. You may have to rethink  certain notions. In Science Fiction, we have many examples of multiple sentient species interacting. (You can imagine the cantina scene from Star Wars: A New Hope, or various Star Trek scenes, per your preference.) Species is the key word here. The differences between the various creatures is genetic and immutable. In faerielore, the essential difference is exactly that, about essence, and the way one moves through time. Interactions with the Otherworld changes one’s place relative to humanity, and the language used in faerielore reflects this. Troll originated as a term that applied to both humans working magic and to those born within the rules of this magic. Many terms that translate as “witch” or “hag” (gwrag, cailleach) are determined not by which world someone was born into, but by the ability to interact differently with the rules of physics. In that light, and because of taboo, much faerielore loses explicit mention of the supernatural forces understood implicitly to be part of the story. Case in point, Riddle Songs that survive in Appalachia often only contain the riddles themselves, and not the story behind the challenge.

Finally, a word of advice I received from a visiting linguistics scholar when she was discussing fieldwork, on the importance of asking the right questions. When trying to find out how many fluent speakers of a language still survive, a querent received the same answer from most people they asked: only about ten still knew the language. When they started asking people to name the elders who still spoke the language, most of the people each person listed were not the same, and it was determined that many more speakers than anyone presumed could still speak the language. Perhaps her account was apocryphal, but it has served me well as something to consider while doing my own research.

Here are some posts you can expect from me in the coming year. For many of these posts, I hope to interview specialists in that field:

  • How a Scottish fiddle composition changed names and acquired numerous variations as it became shared in the faerielore of various Celtic nations, the Shetland Isles, and eventually became a part of American Country music.
  • A description of the various instruments played by the menehune of the Hawaiian Islands.
  • The influence of waterfalls and the spirits who lived in them on the repertoire of the Swedish nyckelharpa. 
  • The influence of banshees on the piobaireachd repertoire of Great Highland Bagpipes.
  • The Rusalka musical traditions of Eastern Europe, with particular attention to recent folklore research of Ukrainian repertoire.
  • Trollstille tunings and tunes of the hardinfele, a sympathetic fiddle of Norway.
  • Igbo songs from the forest spirits of the Niger Delta.
  • Patupaiarehe songs of the New Zealand Maori.
  • Chinese songs of Fairy Queens and the Immortals which served as traditional music for birthday celebrations.
  • Piping repertoire referenced in a changeling story from Ireland.
  • The resurgence of faerielore music in modern Manx cultural education.
  • Elf music from legends of the Picuris Pueblo.
  • Shetland trow tøns from multiple sources.
  • The Chullachaqui and his role in the nature of cumbia music.
  • Biddy of Muckross and several of her melodies she learned from the faeries.
  • The history of the ballad “King Orfeo” and how it relates to different European descriptions of the Otherworld and the concept of Three Strains of Music.
  • Some history behind Ziryab, and how the djinn influenced his music, which transformed Andalusian Spain.
  • Some repertoire of the Welsh Tylwyth Teg.
  • Notable faerie tunes from County Donegal fiddlers, including Junior Crehan.
  • Huldreslåtten and how it relates to natural overtone scales and instruments such as munnharpe and seljefløyte.

And there’s much more. I appreciate feedback about what you’re most looking forward to learning, and additional subjects you would like me to explore.

Composition: Anansi, you Jazz Spider

Those of you who are familiar with musical history know that Pythagorean tuning is based on extending the ratio of a perfect fifth to create a complete scale. It still works for some current music, but sounds more odd to our ears the more chromatic a piece becomes. This composition is the result of a scale I calculated with the question- what if ancient people created a scale based on a series of perfect fourths instead? The result is a scale that sounds very naturalistic and familiar in certain intervals and chords, and completely exotic to western sensibilities in other intervals. While working on a project that led to this, a particularly large spider scurried across my desk, to which I shouted something that sounded similar to “You Jazz Spider.” The challenge in composing this was the syncopation, meant to suggest the difficult to predict eight-legged motion.

A Cultural Shift for Conventions

CW: referencing sexual assault and transphobia among authors, maternal and infant mortality

For my first post under the “community” heading, I thought about discussing at length my general focus, including why my need to write these lead to shifting to a blog format, but that would be quite a writ for a beginning. I think I should start with some more specific examples.

This is both a prediction and a suggestion, in the hope that what has to change by necessity can be changed with intention. A pattern that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, which has persisted up until now- and while this may have influenced international culture changes, I will be addressing what I observed in the United States- is a top-down structuring of genre events, specifically Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions, or more often “expos.” Yes, commodification and capitalism played parts in this. While The Big Bang Theory purported to portray the culture of these events, they failed in significant ways (at some point I will write about the chasm between the media portrayal of Renaissance Faire workers vs. the actual experience thereof, and the vapid misconceptions, but for now understand that while my suggestions also apply to best practices in the Renfaire community, the examples from that are not as glaringly obvious as they can be in the convention circuit.) While the show portrayed the protagonists as scientists and inventors in academia, they failed to show much of the grassroots creativity for which the older SF/F conventions are known, and the main characters largely functioned as fan-boys in those circles. The impression that many people, who had never been to a convention before watching the show would have, is of hierarchical events, where celebrities are worshipped by adoring fans, lining up to meet them. In reality, even the conventions featured in the show had other vital elements, discussions and interactions which were not portrayed because they didn’t fit the narrative and would require too much background information for a general audience to relate. The economy that was built to cash in on Geek Chic in that era focused more on the fame and less on the creativity, such that many modern expos have little to nothing in the way of workshops for up and coming creators to learn their craft and interact locally. It was against this backdrop of non-cooperation that the worst toxicity in parts of the fandoms was magnified, e.g., Sad Puppies and Gamergate.

Now, we are are faced with betrayals from some of the former heroes of these kinds of gatherings, not the least of which are the heavily documented sexual abuse charges against Neil Gaiman and the blatant bigotry of J. K. Rowling (full disclosure, I have met Gaiman years ago and used to perform at Hogwarts themed events before Rowling revealed her terfdom.) We need to look at how some responses to that will be organic and based on individual decisions, and what intentional collective responses can achieve. A parallel can be seen in how misogynistic draconian changes to U.S. healthcare results in less young adults having sex or relationships. This is a natural result of the circumstances that individuals find themselves in, where the outcomes of sex and pregnancy are more dangerous than ever with reproductive healthcare under attack and the resulting uptick in maternal deaths and infant mortality. At present, rural areas where I have lived and where I have family no longer have medical facilities within hours’ drive that will handle a standard delivery, let alone a high-risk one with complications. Pundits who treat the drop in relationships as a philosophical choice miss that people with no ideology are considering their own safety and survivability. A Lysistrata-like movement could help connect the dots between the social isolation young adults experience in higher numbers now and the reality of how much more dangerous the risks of relationships are in a nation without comprehensive care, but the underlying conditions are what will have to change. Back to the world of conventions: after these betrayals, and the general rise of authoritarianism in society, I expect a psychological backlash to the nature of the celebrity-fan model of genre convention events. People are no longer invested in the idea of meeting their favorite author. They are creeped out by queues of adulation. They are protecting themselves from manipulation. How do we respond to this with intention?

While there can still be toxicity and abuse at smaller events, the shift I hope we can choose can be seen in some of the foci of both older and smaller conventions. Some writers, especially as it concerns the abuse Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer perpetrated, have suggested that any dissolution of boundaries between celebrities and fans is inherently abusive. I not only disagree but assert that an inherent role of in-person conventions is to redefine roles and power dynamics. Every person that attends a Sci-Fi convention has the potential to create a story that other people enjoy, and the workshops available to them should reflect that. A school-child’s art can be displayed next to an award winning fantasy artist- both bring happiness to people who see them and make people think about possibilities. A local crochet artist you have never heard of might make your most treasured memento of your convention experience. Intentionality means we have to ask: how many creators will feel empowered to write, to draw, to record future treasures in this genre decades later as a result of this experience? How do we make more circles and less lines?

Set- Doorways

A flier for a performance: Against a black background, seven different doorways open, arranged similar to a Tarot spread, revealing fractal images behind each- forest scenes, sky scenes, a multi-pointed star, a butterfly, a map, a pathway and billowing smoke. White text reads: Kaade presents Doorways, a multi sensory presentation on dark faermelore around the world. Harp and other traditional instruments, storytelling, fractal art, and full afternoon teat with reservation. Kaade.net

This has been my most recent large set, consisting of seven sections, each covering a different geographic area. I have performed this at the Albuquerque Folk Festival and a local tea shop, so that as many senses as possible can be communicated. Each section uses a different fractal print, but digital projection could also work for night-time/indoor presentations. Some of the music played, with related stories: Traditional Irish wire-strung harp pieces, music mentioned in Scottish witchcraft trials, early Cumbia piece, traditional Igbo melody, Chinese xiao dragon tune, Welsh melody associated with the Tylwyth Teg.

I could conceivably expand this into a larger set of up to thirteen parts, with other performers doing related material between different sections, for a several hour experience.

Some of my instruments

On a bed with a blues spread, a number of instruments are displayed descriptions of musical instruments pictured are in the post text.

Since these first posts are largely introductory, let me introduce you to some of my instruments, starting in the back row:

The Cauldron- a waterphone made by Richard Waters, Cinquedea- a bowed psaltery by Unicorn Strings, Whalebone- a Harpsicle harp made by William Rees and family

Soprano Ukulele, 15 string kantele by Gerry Henkel

Australian bull-roar, didgeridoo by Toca,

Left area: sansa from Tanzania, bamboo jaw harp from Phillipines, ocarinas by Scott Boswell and Dragon Ocarinas, Quena from Mexico, soprano Traumflöte recorder by Möllenhauer, Kalimba by Hugh Tracy Co.,

Horizontal in front of didg: overtone flute made from shower-curtain rod, “Shillelagh” flute by Scott Boswell,  bass recorder by Yamaha, shakuhachi, Bansuri by Nabi and sons, Native American cedar flute by Tommy Lee, second shakuhachi, Melodica by Hohner