2013 Poem 1: Empty Space is So Intimidating

start at the beginning
it's made to sound so easy.
one moment a blank page
empty space
a few equations, then
a solar system.

dust from dust,
the charnel dust of stars
that spoke the deplorable words.
that shocking, divine hammer.
what would follow?

it's made to sound so easy.
but empty space is so intimidating.

a kilogram of dust
in a million cubic meters.
cairns for a trail
that could go anywhere.

an armful of oranges
scattered through the Astrodome
coming together to make a fruit basket.
six septillion fruit baskets
finding each other
to make our world.

----

OK, I kind of took a weird turn at the end. I had a few different ideas, combined a few, and mercifully left at least one out.  Still, it's a start.  :)

National Poetry Writing Month 2013 (and an offer)!

It's just about that time again. For people who've followed this blog (hi!) or drop in occasionally after Twitter or Facebook prompting (hi again!) National Poetry Writing Month (or "NaPoWriMo") begins this Monday, 1 April (no foolin'!).  The idea is that you write a poem every day of April, in an effort to get people writing. I've done it for three consecutive years, picking a theme each year.  In 2010 it was baseball teams, 2011 was chemical elements, 2012 was solar system objects (but not planets). There's a lot to cover in the solar system, of course, and I plan to make 2013 another solar system year, including the planets this time.  I am once again going to try and keep to the ethic I've had for several years of not spending more than 15-20 minutes per poem (I've grinded them out before breakfast several days) and starting exactly one poem a day (I do allow myself to think about ideas ahead of time, though). I know some other folks will be joining me in NaPoWriMo with space themed poetry, most notably Christine Reuter (aka tychogirl) and Amee Hennig (aka astropoetamee), maybe you can too!

It's been a great year for planetary science poems. Not only have planetary scientists like Jennifer Grier and Michele Bannister had their work professionally published, but the tradition of haiku summaries of LPSC talks has received renewed attention, and apparently has spread to archaeologists!

So, I'm going to make an offer to you. Yes, you too. NaPoWriMo is about getting people to write without worrying about having it be perfect, which pre-empts the whole process. I encourage all of you to write something! In previous years I've come up with free verse, sestinas, sonnets, haiku, and a whole heck of a lot of doggerel. It doesn't need to be a poem every day, it doesn't need to be The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Leaves of Grass. It doesn't have to be anything you share with others, it doesn't have to be about planets or space or science at all. But if you want to try your hand and are willing to share but don't have a venue to post what you want, I'm happy to do so here. I'll post it under your name or anonymously as you wish, with any accompanying text you like. If you can find this blog, you can probably find my contact information either in my profile here, or on Twitter (@ asrivkin) or elsewhere.

Get writing! :)

Oldie and Oldier

But Of Course
Congress St. Blues

In the rush of everything, I seem to have let a couple of song anniversaries slip past me. A few years ago I commemorated the 20th anniversary of Wrong Place Wrong Time with a post here and some old and new versions of it. Today I'll just put on some new recordings I banged out for fun.  This will likely be the last post before National Poetry Writing Month and the annual conversion into a poetry blog, so be warned!

The first song I'll mention is Congress St. Blues, written back in February of 1993. It name checks various Tucson place names (and the never-quite-finalized lyrics sometimes mention The Chicago Store), and was born after an evening gig with Pez Con Pelo at a bar on Congress Street (but not the Club Congress, the First Avenue Entry of Tucson).  I never recorded it for anything but a friend's mixtape, as it never seemed to rise above other songs from that time period. So after 20 years, here's its moment in the sun (so to speak).

The second one is older still.  But Of Course turned 25 years old this month, which is frankly astonishing to me since I don't feel much older than that myself. It was one of the last songs I wrote on my old keyboard (which I never learned to actually play) before starting to write songs on the 41st West guitar (which I arguably never learned to play). I've recorded older songs "for real" (Some Of The Time is from a few weeks earlier, for instance), but I always had a soft spot for this one (as did my girlfriend at the time).  So it certainly merits a rerecording after this one!

A Lost Original and Should've-been-lost Cover

Songs:
Bisbee Blue (demo)
Your Love (cover)

How about another song or two?  That's rhetorical: you don't have any real choice in the matter, though neither are you required to download or listen. But, of course, you know that already.

I just did a little bit of recording to pick up my mood a bit. The first song is an original called Bisbee Blue. I'm not quite sure when I wrote it, other than "mid-90s". The song is named for the town of Bisbee, once one of the largest cities in Arizona but most recently something of a tourist/artist/old-timey attraction. Bisbee blue is a...you know, I'm not sure what it is.  A color, of course, but I'm not sure if it was in local pottery or jewelry or what.   It's the local turquoise.  It's also the name of a song by Tucson band Calexico, though my song was written first. I'd forgotten about it for ages, and only rediscovered it a year or so ago. I may rerecord it for real for the next EP, but I figured I'd bang it out now and post it.

And since heaven forfend I just post one song, I added a goofy cover of Your Love by the Outfield. Their version is better, of course, but they had the advantage of knowing what they were doing. Even though I either botched the ending or didn't botch it because you can't botch what you don't know, I thought I'd post it, too. 

Both songs are just me and my guitar. For Bisbee Blue I recorded them on separate tracks in serial, for Your Love I just did it live (obviously). 

Dear Kate Bush

Songs at the bottom!

First a bit of near/medium term planning: Thanks to all for the positive response to the "We Didn't Start The Science" video! This post doesn't have any geeky rewritten pop songs, so be warned. :)  I plan to do National Poetry Writing Month again on the blog in April, and also to get a few music posts in before then. In particular, I'm hoping to post the first part of my Ceres rock opera (which is technically not an opera, I think). I've also been toying with a longer-term project of writing Schoolhouse Rock-style planetary science songs. The initial reaction has been positive, but of course that's entirely been from friends on Twitter. :)

OK, today I'm posting two versions of a song that I've been working on for a while but will clearly never put on a "proper" EP or LP like the ones on Bandcamp. I'm not sure exactly what started me writing a song "about" Kate Bush, but I started nonetheless. I wanted it to be a complicated, way-overproduced thing vaguely reminiscent of "Hounds of Love" (in fact, it was a cover of Hounds of Love that helped spur me on).  But I never could sing it worth a damn. I posted an instrumental version of it here (in fact it was one of my very first posts) and thought I'd figure it out later.

And so I did! I realized I should have Meredith sing it and that would work better.  Unfortunately, all of the techno wizardry needed for the various parts (including the 100% auto-tune that I think helps lend...something to the song) mean that the vocals sound odd in an unintended way.  On top of that, the sample of "The Man With The Child In His Eyes" means that I'm reluctant to put it on Bandcamp.  So I'm putting it here (and below) instead.

The second version is just me and my guitar.  I originally recorded it for a friend, and for completeness am putting it up here (and below). It's much much simpler than the way I imagine it (which is more like the "regular" version), so I don't want to put that on Bandcamp either.  And if it's not going to be on a proper release, I might as well put it here. :)

Dear Kate Bush: Meredith vocals, full Gedankenband
Dear Kate Bush: Andy and guitar

Video: We Didn't Start The Science

I do a lot on Twitter.  I'm probably use it more than any other social media site.  My handle is @ asrivkin, though you're much more likely to find this blog via Twitter than find me on Twitter via this blog. 

Anyhow, as I was approaching my 10,000th tweet I thought I'd do something fun. My 5,000th tweet found me at a famous landmark, but timing wasn't working out to do something similar for 10,000. So instead you get a video!  I did the "special effects" with Photo Booth-- it would likely have come out better if I'd allocated more time to the process and some effort into getting some better lighting, but perhaps it fits the DIY nature of things better this way.




"We Didn't Start The Science" appears a few times on this blog and elsewhere.  I of course didn't write the music. Because it's a cover it's not eligible to be on my Bandcamp site, but that doesn't mean I won't point to it and recent releases there anyway. :)

Back on Mars Hill

I've been traveling since, well, 2011 2012. The last few days have found me in Flagstaff, at Lowell Observatory staying in the chalet on Mars Hill. It's really a great place, sort of the Wrigley Field of American astronomy, and it still retains a lot of its late 19th/early 20th century charm. I've been lucky enough to spend two long stints here: a month in 1989 for Astronomy Field Camp, and the summer of 1995 for a graduate student program.

The 1995 graduate program coincided with the yearly undergraduate internships run by several Flagstaff-area astronomy institutions, and there was a group of about 10 of us (graduate and undergraduate, plus a high school intern) who hung out together much of the summer. At one point they heard me play guitar, and humored/cajoled me into playing a "concert" for them one night up on Mars Hill.

Since I'm staying on Mars Hill again, I thought I'd post a few of the songs that they recorded from that night.  They're not great recordings, plus Get Out of My Life is notorious for being a swear-filled monstrosity, but I don't think people listen to any of the songs I'm posting, so I think I'm in the clear. :)

1. Another Margarita
2. The Astronomers Song
3. Get Out of My Life (aka Psychopath) VERY NSFW!!

UPDATE: I should have included a link (or two) to the song I wrote that summer, Crunchy Granola Girl. I didn't perform it since it wasn't written yet, but I did record a 4-track version (one of the first posts on this blog!) when I got back to Tucson and it was the anchor song of Do Not Tip or Rock.



Bonus Anecdote: That summer was also the only time I played an open mic night (at least prior to the AGU one). Get Out of My Life was a crowd-pleaser, though of course the crowd was small. Near the end of the summer, Tim Spahr and I were bowling when a large, drunk-looking biker type aggressively came to our lane. I thought it was to beat us up since we kept having malfunctions, but instead he said "Hey, you're the guy who had that lunatic song!".