new Buchla videos

Buchla Videos

So I've been working on a Buchla 200e for some time but due to technical limitations I havn't been able to make any videos until recently these are my two first Buchla vids.

patch 1


patch 2


I'll make another video tonight.

ch ch ch ch changes

Still working on the Dante Project though lots has taken place since my last post.

my wife and I had a baby! and I went out and got a job apprenticing with a contractor in the interim I have been doing more work now in the studio with the raw audio from last year and creating the first of what I hope will be three CD's worth of music. I will then either have to start paying for my sound cloud account to post all the tracks there and here or I will have to find some other way of hosting them. I'm thinking of going with Sound Cloud because then I can embedd things here and others can find it easier.

anyway more when I have it as well as some new music I hope, that is for the one follower this blog has and whomever stumbles on it by accident.

I think this blog is a failure

I've concluded that this blog as a medium for editing my rendition of the Divine Comedy has been a genuine failure on at least two levels.

first: I tried to use this blog space as a medium to do interactive editing on my version of Dante since I started no one has made a single comment on anything.

second: I've had fewer than ten viewers every day since I started doing this. I've sent this url to everyone I can think of who I thought would be interested in this and I doubt if it's been very interesting to them

third: the snails pace at which I have been transcribing the Comedy has made this blog a very boring place to visit often I have cut up the gaps between installments with youtube stuff which is largely irrelevant to the subject matter (Dante).

I think that this is becoming a useless exercise in naval gazing and is just adding an extra step to my process. A step I thought would be helpful and fun but which is becoming tedious and constantly apologetic. That's not good reading and it sucks to write.

I'm not giving up on Dante and I'm not giving up on Wiresource but I think the two together is like nuts and gum: great on their own terrible together.

I'm not sure what I'll do with this url now but I hope it's more enjoyable than telling you why I'm sorry the Dante transcriptions are late this time.

peace.

modular problems

so I'll spare you the epic version and go with the coles notes:

I ordered a custom synth case that never appeared and had to put the whole music project on hold as a result I'm getting my refund in the mail very soon.

I also got the replacement case I ordered and the past two days have been spent trying to fit everything into it. I think I've got it mostly figured out. It's smaller than the one I was promised and as a result I'll have to dump some modules to get everything to fit but in the end I think this is a good fit. Once I've moved and set up in my new studio I can get back to work on the musical side of this project. in the mean time here's a picture I've named them: the smaller black one is called Dante the larger multi coloured one is called Virgil:

Canto 16 Listen

Listen, a dull roar
As we near the circle's edge
The sound of mad bees

Three souls run 'tward us
They can tell I'm from Florence
As they speak, they dance

Circling clockwise
They were once warriors
They ask me for news

I have none to give
The same wars, new fighters
Do they have remorse?

Eyes fixed, heads turning
I'm supposed to feel for them
In some ways I do

Before they leave us
They want remembrance
It's how they live on

The roar of the stream
Has burned away every sound
We have reached the edge

Hell's Niagara Falls
We peer down through the warm spray
Virgil takes my belt

Tossed over the cliff
It falls with my confidence
to wake up our ride

There's something moving
It's swimming up through the air
The demon of Fraud

I met Sandow Birk yesterday

that's write, one of the translators and the illustrator of the text which inspired me to do my own Dante was in town for an art opening and he met up with me to talk about the poem, he was very encouraging and offered to read what I've got up here he also gave me some names and advice on how to break into the larger Dante community (apparently there is one and it's global!) I could really use that right now. one thing I have been dissapointed over is the lack of real criticism of the cantos I have published here, slowly more readers are trickling in and that's a great thing to see but I'd love for someone to really take me to task over my rendition of the work, I want to get into the meat of this text and create a condensed interpretation which really captures something of the original work while also offering something new and contemporary and poetically integral.

c'mon people who read this blog get mouthy with me over Dante I'm serious, I need poetic feedback and constructive criticism.

more cantos tomorrow

I couldn't resist...

delays again.

I've finally gotten over my recent medical problems but have been slacking on going back to work. I had a serious medical allergy issue with a part of treatment for an illness I have to live with for the rest of my life and going off that particular pill was pure hell I expect I'll have more to update tomorrow I'm ready to start working on this again.

If this guy had been on TV in the 80's we'd all be straightedge

drugs make you do stupid dancing... just say no to drugs

progress held up

I had a very rough couple of weeks dealing with newly discovered medication allergies. I think I'm on the mend now but still don't feel myself I will be away from blogging until I do until then I'm sorry but I can't it's just too intense. gimme a week, I'll be back at it. In the mean time I'm 4 cantos away from the end of Inferno 1st draft and will have more second for you when I'm better.

thank you for your patience.
CR

Canto 15 The Desert in Hell part 2: Sodomy

Fire and steam meet
And cancel above our heads
As we walk the banks

It's high and narrow
The red stream above the sand
Flows through a channel

A pack of dead souls
They stare at us with strange eyes
I see an old friend

He was my teacher
I can barely recognize
His face through the burns

He walks up, greets us
It grieves me to see him here
He taught me to write

He speaks prophecy
As he walks alongside us
And I mark his words

My guide nods his head
In the seething desert heat
I ask who's down here

My old friend tells me
Sodomy is the worst rape
Read Judges 19

Priests, Warlords, whole towns...
I don't ask him what he did
I don't want to know.

"Write of me Dante
I can not leave them for long"
He turns, sprinting, gone.

Canto 14 The Desert in Hell part 1: Blasphemers and The Old Man of Crete

We piled the leaves
before we set off again
He so loved Florence

The woods surround sand
Like the river does the trees
God's fearful judgment

Pay heed to my words
You, reading of punishments
For I saw terror

I saw herds of souls
Pinned down, in stress positions,
Wandering the sands

A rain of fire
Sparks the desert, violent
Snowfall in winter

Those wandering brush
To and fro against the flames
It is of no use

We see one stretched out
He curses God, his rage burns
Virgil, who is he?

He shouts back at us
"As I was alive, now dead!"
He was once a king.

Oh Capanaeus
You cursed God until you died
And you curse Him still.

We walk the border
Between the sand and the woods
A small red creek flows

Out of the forrest
Like a skid-row gutter stream
The colour of dread

Virgil tells me it's
Unlike anything I've seen
And I ask him how?

"In the wastes of Crete
Stands a mountain with no trees
A god's safe cradle

The mountain has caves
In a cave a statue cries
His tears form Hell's streams

His face set to Rome
He's Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron,
His right foot is Clay.

Cracked from the neck down
His tears are for all mankind
They form rivers here."

Played a gig today

I played the Summer Dreams Reading Festival in Stanley Park here in Vancouver today. a short bit of it was filmed I will post it when it's been e-mailed to me.

I was described after my set as the Al Qaeda of Vancouver Spoken Word I can only assume that this is because my poetry hit like a bomb and scared the shit out of the audience. I like that...

Public Disturbance doing Dante in the park

Canto 13: the wood of the suicides

We entered the woods
No light, black leaves, no fruit, thorns.
The Harpies nest here

Half woman, half bird
They break and chew the branches
The empty woods moan

Virgil knows my thoughts
My questions will be answered
If I snap a twig

A shout, then comes blood
The tree is bleeding, it cries
Why did you do that?

Virgil tells him I
Wouldn't have believed the truth
"Who are you?" We ask

"Pier Delle Vigne,
Frederic II's Counsel was I
Envy sealed my fate.

Liars in his court
Had me blinded and then jailed
I was innocent

Still I killed myself
Please tell my tale, and clear my name."
Pitty silenced me

Virgil asked him tell
How his soul will met judgement
The tree answered us:

"Our bodies returned
Will hang from our souls branches
Unincarnated."

Two naked men sprint
Past us chased by pack of dogs
The slower one hides

The dogs set on him
Howling, eating, man and brush
They tear him apart.

Weeping foliage
We pile the leaves 'round it's roots
He was from my town

We talk, I'm sorry
I hanged myself in my home
This has been zone 2.

I think this came from the subconcious of Elvis Prestly

Canto 12 The Circle of violence against others: Bestiality, Rape, Warmongering

Long climb down steep trail
Landslide, boulders, and ruins
The wreckage Christ made

The first violent zone
Bestiality and rape
The monster of Crete

It sees us. Virgil
Curses at the Minotaur
It goes wild with rage

We slip past unseen
Further down, a blood river
Boils, and froths, and screams

We're stopped by Centaurs
They draw their bows, a rape gang,
A hunting party

Virgil calls Chiron,
Explains our mission and asks
Safe passage across

The river of blood.
We ride the centaur Nissus
Past the Violent Damned

Bush, Cheney, Hitler
Alexander and Pol-Pot
All submerged in blood

As we reach the ford
I recognise many souls
From my life on earth

On the other side
We are left by the centaur
And move on, alone.

Canto 11: answered questions, an explanation of the lowest deeps of Hell

On a rocky ledge
the stench forces us to stop
we sit down to talk

near a tomb that reads
"Here lies Anastasius"
I learn of the depths

So we don't waste time
Virgil explains the circles
Fraud and Violence

The worst in God's eyes
Is Fraud for it comes from man
They suffer deepest

Above them: Violence
Against Self, Neighbour, and God
Each has it's own zone

The first zone is for
The violent against others
Murder, theft, rape

The next zone is for
The violent against themselves
Suicide, Arson...

The last zone is for
The violence done against God
Cursing, Sodomy

Usury as well
those who lend at interest
are in this last zone

Below that is Fraud
First against strangers, then friends
Con-men, Liars

And last in all Hell
The traitors trapped with Satan
Suffer forever.

I ask a question
What about the upper parts?
Why aren't they in Dis?

Recall your "Ethics",
Three Human things Heaven hates
Lust, Vice, and Malice

If you think harder
It will all become more clear
Why God willed it thus

I look to Virgil
Why is usury down here
So far below us?

"It scorns creation
Making men wealthy through theft
From those who labour"

This was his answer
"Now we must start our descent
It is almost dawn"

Summer Dreams Reading Festival

Saturday August 22 2009
starts at noon
I'm on at 1:15pm

Lumbermans Arch Stanley Park
Vancouver BC

This is that gig I wrote about yesterday if you live in Vancouver and you want to come out it will be awsome I'm on the Main Stage!!

more info here at the Pandora's Collective website