h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK. November 3rd. Hullo November 3rd! First two days on previous thread.

I'm exploring jazz chords on my piano, learning a new chord every day, see where it takes me. Plus other random topics. .

Doing this journal is already affecting my piano playing.



Last night I was so sick of the news, all the cruelty, killing and war and more war, I wanted to break with a grief to sharp to bear, and my link with the world felt like a collapsing bridge made of sharp steel pins.

So I went to my piano and slammed my hands on the keyboard and randomly played, out of which came chords to express this feeling.

I don't think they're in my book .

At first they sounded discordant and awful, but then gradually they started to link together, with sonic strands. And gradually the collapsing bridge became a suspension bridge, able to withstand pressure, all held together with these sonic strands.

Not sure what an engineer would make of it. I think the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol is held up by more than sonic strands. I hope so anyway.



My chord for today is F major 9th. More recognisable, the familiarity is like warm golden honey with veins of sadness. I see my late father standing on a far horizon, laughing and waving, but then it fades to abstract gold.



Conclusion. Making chord shapes is like a meditation. They are sonic patterns, and the vibration from the sound opens up pictures in the brain.

I'm interested in the neuroscience of music, although I don't know much about it. I want to study more.



Saw a great documentary about James Randi last night! Ah, Randi, the great magician, and sceptic, debunker of spoon bending psychics and dodgy faith healers. . He doesn't like seeing people conned, which is great, and thinks that magic is for entertainment only, which is is.

But what do we do with the energy of faith, when it all falls apart?

I wish there were unexplained miracles, I love a mystery.

Perhaps miracle and mystery are still alive though. Chords are a miracle to me. And communication. And lots of things, many every day miracles. And I find faith when I realise that compassion and forgiveness and love are a totally massive powerful force, who needs to bend spoons.

Sort of thing.

Blimey, Nov 3rd a bit intense.

I know the feeling.

When I was in school, and I felt like that, I'd play a song like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EQk8iFDVOQ

(Skip to the faster version, and I played it faster than that. I turned the metronome off, I admit...)

In the summer, with the windows open, I'm afraid I disturbed the whole neighbourhood...

[Amy P]

heheh, yes, I can imagine that, you amazing pianist Mister D friend. I love that tune, faster! faster! I bet you could play all the chords in my book before you were five. Hmm.

And see these little angels who tiptoe into this thread and leave a rose or a smiley or a name or a whisper. Thankyou. When I finally get time to take a tour of all the amazing journals, I think I'll do that.

Right, better type out my notes for Nov 4th, before the midnight hour, when I turn into a tiny white sugar mouse. I don't know why I said that, it's hootoo it makes me drunk.

November 4th

I saw an amazing rainbow today, above the swimming pool car park.



Imagine being a caveman, seeing a rainbow for the first time, and having no explanation for what you saw. They probably had to down a few shots of something strong. . If they had a whisky equivalent, which they probably didn't. I know they had access to some interesting plants, because some of the cave paintings are visionary, with aliens and weird creatures. Did they draw rainbows?

When was the rainbow first depicted in art? Perhaps early Japanese or Chinese zen paintings? . I must find out.





And now, the notes from my piano.

D augmented 5th.

Shiver shiver, filmic fragments.

I meet my friend Ricky in a curious lit-up street with iridescent blue doors. He looks like he used to look, before the bullet took him.

I ask him if he might return one day, in some way, to settle the score.

He smiles in the way he used to smile, and says 'I'm done with scores.'

Then he gently and fearlessly pushes open one of the doors, and walks on through.



I love my filmic fragment, D augmented 5th, even though I don't know what it means. I might add other chords and whisper it into the atmosphere. I don't anyone called Ricky, but it was all so clear. Weird huh.

[Amy P]

November 5th.

I keep missing out words in this journal. . Lots of typos. I think it's to do with the funny curly eco lightbulbs we just put it, that look like insect zappers, but aren't. Or maybe they are. Why are they curly? Nice mellow warm light, but I can't see a thing. Or else it's because I lost my glasses, but I've found them now.

I think all my missing words are assembling in a secret journal entry of their own, somewhere in the hootoo database, and on about November 28th they will leap out at me, and present themselves as a completely incomprehensible journal entry, as if ...(shuddup), , which will make me question my entire life.

And now I used up all my space for the wordly part of the journal, so .....



E dominant 11th (with extra bendy blendy bits) Like a glass bell sound.

A coffee house, tea salon, old fashioned European, with deep sofas and a chandelier made of tinkling twinkling glassy snowflakes. And there are cakes, sparkly white iced cakes.



Mrs Margaret Iris (someone) (who?? I can't hear the surname), actress, psychic and medium, is drinking tea in the corner. She is wearing some magnificent peacock feathers in her hat, like she has done for years, to add glamour her fears of the rational world.

Mrs Margaret Iris (someone), this is your tune.

And...

OK, I have to go now.

Sorry, I missed the chance to say this yesterday, but about cavemen and rainbows...

They liked colour, you know, our ancestors. They did body painting and face painting about 100,000 years ago.

Here's a list of their colours:

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/artist-paints/prehistoric-colour-palette.htm

Very decorative, they must have been.

[Amy P]

What about that then eh? Those early artists. How fascinating about the pigments. The inherent need to make art, for whatever reason, ah yes.

Do other creatures make art? Must find out. If they do, I don't think they have reviewers saying 'but is it art?' .

No wonder being at festivals put me in touch with a long forgotten ancestry. All that face painting and body painting and earthy dancing. . Trouble with body painting at festivals was that you could never get a shower, so you had to spend three days going around painted with stripes and tiger whiskers, and regretting everything.

OK, have to go work on November 6th.

November 6th



E suspended 4th

Mathematical equations again, damn, I wish I understood these. . Drawn with white chalk on a walls of a basement music venue. Filmic. Flickering. Nice venue. Wonder where it is? (in my subconscious mind, I fear) .

Add a haunted poet-angel in a long dark coat, who is staring at the equations like they are a message from home.

(But I added that bit after, for poetic effect. That angel-poet gets everywhere. I love him.)





More coffee.

Fragments. I'm thinking a lot about fragments, with all their associations.

A life smashed into fragments, fragments of a broken dream. A shattered ornament.

Splinters, flakes, confetti, collage. A delirium, a surreal delight, gifts from the subconscious mind.

Sitting beside my mother for the last two weeks of her life, as she held my hand, whispering to me a dialogue made entirely from random fragments of her ailing memory. Strangely beautiful, in a bittersweet way.

Seeing fragments on the pavement, as I walk through town. A sugar fried egg from a sweetie packet, gum and broken glass, a single playing card. It's amazing how often I see a single playing card.

Does the word fragment officially mean a broken piece, split off from a whole? hmm. If it does, I'll have to change my entire world view.

What I mean by a fragment is not just a broken piece, but also something that is whole unto itself, but in a collage type context. Like the three of diamonds, in a pool of rainwater, on a pavement.

They're holons - small, self-contained pieces, maybe.

Here's a holon for you: an animal that makes art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAkKSQXgZUA

[Amy P]

November 7th. NaJoPoMo

Hullo November 7th!

Dear Diary,

Holons. Holons???? Fascinating! (thanks Mister D, dear friend ).

In the 70s I always heard people talking about Arthur Koestler and The Ghost In The Machine, but I never did read it, because I wouldn't understand the first paragraph , but I always wondered about it.



Also I was totally scared of the kind of people who talked about it, because they could confidently discuss philosophy at parties, and I never knew what to say.

So I'd stand there eating peanuts, waaaaay too many peanuts, and wishing I would get abducted by giant mantis aliens, right there and then.



I'm really chuffed right now. Just got back from my first writing group in town, and I didn't leave weeping. No, wait! Not wah. I didn't leave weeping!

I don't get on with writing groups, because I'm not a writer, so I don't know why I go. .

But I love painting with words, so, against my better judgement, I am always attracted to join up with others.

I never thought I could find a live group as good as being with friends on hootoo, because here I learned to have a bit of a laugh and a magic twirl.





So, the group is great. Although we work, they are all people who have decided to leave the more hardcore writing groups, because they have all been flattened by steamroller critique at one time or another, and they don't want to be flat any more. And so we can have a laugh and a word-juggle, nothing to lose, and be the opposite of flat. What's the opposite of flat? Perhaps reconstituted.





A added 6th. Nice chord.

I see a bus ticket, floating gently through silver intertwined, interconnected fibres. A bus ticket?? Yes, a bus ticket. It doesn't mention a destination. Is A added 6th telling me to get on the bus? Even though I called it a nice chord? Hmmm hurrumph.

[Amy P]

just a heavenly, heady journal

*leaves hip flask of slow gin should you need it at point this month*

at any point, sorry missing words

I'm reading too!