mrgoodwraith recently posted a schedule for filk at Confluence, including a panel with the fascinating description: "Filk by Sybil: Writing Better Songs By Suppressing Your Competing Agendas and Alternate Personalities". This sounds like a discussion that could go on for days.

( Let me think )

It's usually difficult, early in the morning, to predict that something I've read is going to be the stupidest thing I encounter all day. However, today I'm really hoping this is it.

The short form is: an insurance company was fraudulently named as the insurer on a fake form and is now being required to pay a claim because -- as best I can decode it -- someone has to. There was no coverage arranged, the company had no knowledge of the policy, and the company had no way of preventing the misuse of their name. They are the victims of a form of identity theft and, worse than that, victims of Ontario governmental bureaucracy.

I note that the organization, Financial Services Commission of Ontario, goes by the initials FSCO. I can't be the only one thinking it's a short distance from that to FiaSCO.

Each year at this time, give or take a day, I make this post to note that I've picked the first few ripe raspberries in our back yard. It fascinates me, how predictable they are. We have cold, hot, wet, and dry springs. We have years of more or fewer bugs or weeds. Other types of plants flourish, die off, or fail to even germinate.

There are raspberries.

Since today is a holiday for the majority of Canadians, a group of locals (Norma, Sally, Karen, Sue, Tom, Jane, and I) got together last night for a music practice. Predictably, it started off with food, including order-in pizza, chicken, and pirogies ... later with cheesecake and ice cream.

Right: music. The idea was to have a practice session rather than a typical (?) filk circle. People tried out songs with different combinations of players and instruments, new songs, songs they were considering as repertoire additions, songs that needed improvements, and songs that they wanted to review for upcoming events.

I like that kind of evening very much. I like hearing comments that make me think about the advantages of one vocal arrangement over another, or consider whether an E7 or Dm works better in a turnaround for a particular song, or decide if I think a banjo part is appropriate. Usually when I do those kinds of things, I do them in isolation -- and that's likely to always be true -- but it's also fun to compare my approach and conclusions to others'.

(I originally spelled a word as 'pierogies'. The LJ spell checker suggested 'parodies', which I'm fairly certain can't be ordered for delivery.)

There exists -- more or less -- a mailing list, moderated by pwl1, that was set up for posting filk lyrics. About once a year it seems, someone decides to get it operational by posting a theme or challenge to inspire subscribers to write a song. About a month ago, I made an attempt, which went more or less like this:
( The basics of the challenge )
I figured that if I was going to ask other people to do that, I should set an example and do one myself.
( My own response )

I'm now taking a lunch break in the middle of seeing how well sweat works as weed killer. Abandoning the garden for the DucKon trip, followed by days of rain and wet, has turned it into a playground for random forms of plant life. (Triffids *are* weeds, right?)

While working, I had a song idea occur to me. I've got half of a verse and most of the chorus worked out ... and a parody. Now, since one of my heroes in life is Jeremy, the Nowhere Man from "Yellow Submarine", it's only natural to wonder why I would complete the original song at all; I could just do the parody and leave it at that.

Wouldn't it be neat, too, to have a song in the community that's well known for its lack of existence? If someone forgot the tune to some other song, we could tell them it goes kind of like [non-song]. If you don't know the key for something, use the same chords as [non-song]. Everyone could parody it or write TTTO [non-song] and when they all came out different we could call it "filk process". Best of all, we could gripe about [non-song] never winning an award and complain that no one sings it anymore ... at least, not like they used to. You know, the way whoever-it-was did on that out-of-print cassette that nobody has?

(OK, back to work.)

As promised, there's now a selection of Saturday and Sunday pictures added to the DucKon 2009 set on Flickr.

Selected pictures from Friday at DucKon are now on Flickr. Saturday and Sunday will be there later.

I've spent the past fifteen minutes trying to sort out DucKon highlights for a report and it's not working. There's too much good stuff competing for space in my head. I declare my time will be better spent in cleaning up photos. So, highlights two-through-n are everything that happened during the weekend except highlight #1.

#1:
During the Dead Duck on Sunday night, I followed "Rich Fantasy Lives" with my parody, "Strange Pussycat Minds". Unknown to me, cadhla had walked into the room just after I started. When I finished playing there was applause, but everyone in the room was looking past my right shoulder. I turned and encountered the best "you are out of your freaking mind" stare that I have ever seen. :-)

Oh, and an honorary mention to hearing S.J. Tucker (s00j) sing live. 'Live' doesn't quite do her justice; she has power and presence that goes somewhat beyond that.

(Flickr pictures coming soon.)

Edit: Photo by Brooke where she caught a variation on "the look".

sexybass and sposter dropped janeg and me off within the last half hour. The travel was OK and the cats are fine. I booked an extra vacation day for tomorrow, so there will probably be some kind of a report and pictures then.

For now, congrats to janmagic and her accomplices for a fine filk track.

In order to promote Filk Fund sales for DucKon, seanan_mcguire ran a lottery where the winner could choose one of her songs that she would guarantee to perform at her concert, subject to a few conditions. Having seen her P.L.D.G. concert at OVFF a few years ago, the upcoming DVD was irresistible so I went ahead and pre-ordered. And I won! Rather than try to negotiate a specific song, I provided a list of current favorites and a comment that any one of them would be fine as my prize.

However, I must say that starting the day with an email from Seanan that begins "Your number came up..." can make one pause and reflect. :-)

Being someone who writes about talking trout and lonely football heroes, I worry that I take songwriting too seriously.

OK, really, the problem is that there's a subtle catch in working at improving your ability in any creative area. If you produce something that you like, that thing becomes your new minimum standard of quality. After that, it's difficult to give yourself permission to do worse, which sets up a tension with reality where progress isn't a straight line. From that conflict can come procrastination and a paralysis of productivity (and maybe even other things that don't start with 'p').

I think it's beneficial to sometimes drop all pretense of depth or meaning and rediscover the fun of being silly. So, if it's always darkest just before the dawn, when is it always brightest?

( Have a nice day, eh? )

A week or so ago I posted a comment on seanan_mcguire's journal that is still causing a few people to respond, providing evidence that I didn't say what I meant. This will be an attempt to clarify, if not for others, at least for me. If history is any predictor, it will be a failure. :-)

( Long, self-absorbed, but *not* a fishing expedition )

Walking downstairs at one point last night, I noticed a place mat from the sun-room table lying on the floor. I brushed it off and put it back where it belonged. I had no doubt, but also no proof, of how it got there. A few minutes later I heard meows coming from the sun-room. Definitely Ashton, but distant and somewhat muffled. When I went to see what was going on, he was sitting on the floor beside the *same* place mat, precisely where it had been when I first retrieved it. I didn't understand his explanation; maybe he should learn not to talk with his mouth full.

(Frippin' OCD cat!)

I'm not really bored yet, but I can feel it coming. Creating the CD kept me in focus for most of a year and getting it out into the world has provided a distraction of a kind, but like a bad novel, I've spent too much of the past month substituting activity for plot.

Almost three years ago, I started a project with the intention of creating reference recordings of the songs I write. For reasons that should be obvious, I called it Project Sisyphus. (i.e. I certainly hope that my writing is always going to be at least part of a song ahead of the recording process.) With about forty original songs that didn't make it onto Rain on the Sand, I think maybe it's time to go back to that idea and use it as a way to learn more about arranging, recording, and mixing.

This is definitely not another CD release project. That being the case, I wonder what I would actually do with recordings if I did carry through with creating them. Putting stuff on the FilkArchive is OK and so is keeping a download page on my own site, but those are limited by being MP3-only ... also, album format has a special attraction of being a complete creation. I'm currently wondering whether an offer of, "send a blank CD with S.A.S.E. and get music in return" would have any appeal to people or has downloading made that a too old-fashioned concept? Any other distribution methods I should consider?

While working in the garden this morning (like you couldn't have predicted that) I heard the sounds of a kids party from a street away. I assume it was professionally run because of loudspeaker announcements, organized events, and canned music.

At one point I heard them say that a cakewalk was about to start. I remember those from school fairs; there's a path of numbered squares and, while music plays, everyone walks from square to square. When the music stops, a number is drawn and whoever is standing there wins. Prizes were -- wait for it -- cakes!

So they start the cakewalk today and the music they use is Heart's "Crazy On You". Now, I like Heart very much, and that song near the top of the list, but I wonder about the choice....

"With bombs and the devil, and the kids keep comin'
 No way to breathe easy, no time to be young"

But you can have cake!

In spite of the weekend of digging, weeding, and the cutting of overhanging branches, I feel mostly OK. My right arm is the dissenting voice in that judgment. (Why my arm has a voice will not be covered in this lesson.) Elbow: sore, forearm: aching, fingers: stiff and tingling ... but it's better than it was yesterday by a long shot! (At one point I picked up an apple and couldn't apply enough finger pressure to hold it if I turned my palm down.)

Perhaps needless to say, this meant I didn't touch a guitar all weekend. Last night I had a dream that someone asked me to play a song I knew, but I couldn't do it: couldn't read the chord symbols or the music, couldn't remember the rhythm or even whether I used a pick on it. Dear subconscious, your lack of imagination is distressing.

Sometimes when I'm digging rows for vegetables and thinking about whatever comes to me, I imagine myself as one of the peasants from The Holy Grail. The concepts and the actions are in dramatic contrast.

( How to keep your infinite number of monkeys busy forever )

This is the second weekend in a row that I'm living in half-days. The pattern is to get up in the morning, grab a shovel, work in the garden for three hours or so, get cleaned up ... and then, mid-afternoon, start it all again. (Often there is a cat nap in the middle, featuring real cats.) The bright light in the process is that there's less area left to dig tomorrow than the amount I did today.

So far I'm not seeing any of the truly bad indicators that we had last year. I've pulled up about 50 weeds in total of a type called wild garlic, where last year there were about 50 per square foot in a bed along one fence. I've seen two caterpillars that look suspiciously like last year's tent caterpillars, but maybe they're not because the tent variety are more likely to come in quantities of two thousand than just two.

The raspberry bushes look healthy so it can't be all bad.

More digging, more weeding (, more ibuprofen, more coffee).... It now looks as if half the garden is usable; more after I've recovered a bit.

While working, I decided that a tiny green citrus fruit with a superb taste would be called a 'Sublime' and that a Scottish pouch for holding an injured parrot must be a "Polysporin".

More later.

I'm fascinated by the idea that we see things thousands of times as part of our life's "furniture" and then suddenly, with no obvious external difference, it takes on new meaning. Sometimes it happens with important things and sometimes with utter trivia.

I have my email program set so that it doesn't display graphics in messages unless I explicitly tell it to do so. Instead, it presents a banner saying, "This message contains unloaded images." I assume I don't have to finish this; everyone sees where it's going, right? Preventable accident, screaming headlines, disbelieving neighbors....

This is a good day so far ... even though I've been awake since three minutes after "stop yowling, kitty". (My clock has weird markings.)

It's sunny, somewhat cool, and breezy. That combines to dry up a lot of yesterday's surface moisture and make gardening comfortable. I've done a couple of hours of weed-pulling and digging already and hope to get out for more after lunch. Between now and lunch, I'm recovering. I can feel the effects in my back and legs of a winter of music.

Or maybe I'm getting older. As usual, when I'm working with my hands, it's an opportunity for my mind to follow its own path. I found myself humming a andpuff song, except my lyrics were coming out, "These stupid weeds get tougher every year." Well, the exact word may not have been 'stupid'.

I discovered a new commandment today: Thou shalt not laugh when your spouse buys a GPS and then can't find it.

And you really shouldn't say, "I hear they're selling a device that helps with that." There's a fine line between ironic and suicidal, but I need better eyeglasses. :-)

Queen St. West is a fun place to go walking at lunch. It contains about 60% of Toronto's supply of raw weird. Today I noticed that the new Ali Baba restaurant has the same "opening soon" sign that it has been displaying for weeks. Waiting for your delivery of sesame oil?

In other news, spam keeps getting stupider. A couple of subject lines from today are off beyond weird.

Women always peck on rich-looking men
She won't be able to take the eyes off the watch

Or maybe it's poetry.