My birthday
Yesterday was my birthday. Steve, Erika and I went out with a group of people, only they didn't know they were celebrating my birthday. They got together on the occasion on someone else's birthday, that of an Austin science fiction fandom figure named Earl. He supposedly turned 50, though my guess was it was by far not his first 50th birthday. :-)) The party was combined with a Saturday Dining Conspiracy outing. (SDC is an informal group of people that meet every Saturday to try out different restaurants, and is headed by Lawrence, another prominent Austin science fiction fandom figure). In addition to that, Steve and I tacked on a third occasion -- my birthday -- to this outing. To put it simply, we have no lives of our own, so we have to surreptitiously sneak my birthday into someone else's celebration. :-)
Anyway, we went to a restaurant called Hoover's Cooking, which serves home-style cooking. It is a kind of place where vegetables are served only as an excuse to eat a lot of butter. But it was tasty and we got to talk with some interesting people in Austin science fiction fandom.
The proverbial one new thing learned that day:
Talking with Lawrence you can always be sure you will learn the proverbial one new thing every day, because he sprinkles various factoids generously into conversation. And this time I learned about the existence of a documentary "Genghis Blues", which describes a journey of a blind American blues musician to Tuva, a country (or rather, territory) near Mongolia, to learn Tuvan throat singing. I've read about throat singing before, and its most peculiar feature is that it lets the singer sing in more than one voice at the same time. According to this Wikipedia article, with this method it is possible to create up to six pitches at once. I find that extremely fascinating. I read an article in Scientific American that provided a technical analysis of throat singing, of how a fine control of mouth and throat organs allows to shape the sound waves so as to create multiple overtones; it had lots of fancy figures showing wave profiles and what-have-you, but it left me with no clearer idea of how they do it.
So now I'm very interested in seeing this movie. What makes the story even more fascinating is that the above-mentioned American blues musician had to learn Tuvan language in order to study throat singing, and there are no English-Tuvan dictionaries. There are only Russian-Tuvan dictionaries. So he had to learn Russian first. And he did it all while being blind. This must really be a story worth seeing.
But for that I need to come out of self-imposed ("there are more interesting things to do", I said to myself many years ago) movie abstinence. The last movie I saw was about 2 years ago. Before my interest wanes, I must find a copy of "Genghis Blues". Steve looked for it in Blockbuster, and was told it would cost $30 to order it. No, thanks. :-) Netflix has it, but it would not be fair to subscribe for a trial period and cancel it. Because we won't be renting more movies, noooo. As soon as I see this documentary, I will re-take my anti-visual-media nun precepts. :-)
Anyway, we went to a restaurant called Hoover's Cooking, which serves home-style cooking. It is a kind of place where vegetables are served only as an excuse to eat a lot of butter. But it was tasty and we got to talk with some interesting people in Austin science fiction fandom.
The proverbial one new thing learned that day:
Talking with Lawrence you can always be sure you will learn the proverbial one new thing every day, because he sprinkles various factoids generously into conversation. And this time I learned about the existence of a documentary "Genghis Blues", which describes a journey of a blind American blues musician to Tuva, a country (or rather, territory) near Mongolia, to learn Tuvan throat singing. I've read about throat singing before, and its most peculiar feature is that it lets the singer sing in more than one voice at the same time. According to this Wikipedia article, with this method it is possible to create up to six pitches at once. I find that extremely fascinating. I read an article in Scientific American that provided a technical analysis of throat singing, of how a fine control of mouth and throat organs allows to shape the sound waves so as to create multiple overtones; it had lots of fancy figures showing wave profiles and what-have-you, but it left me with no clearer idea of how they do it.
So now I'm very interested in seeing this movie. What makes the story even more fascinating is that the above-mentioned American blues musician had to learn Tuvan language in order to study throat singing, and there are no English-Tuvan dictionaries. There are only Russian-Tuvan dictionaries. So he had to learn Russian first. And he did it all while being blind. This must really be a story worth seeing.
But for that I need to come out of self-imposed ("there are more interesting things to do", I said to myself many years ago) movie abstinence. The last movie I saw was about 2 years ago. Before my interest wanes, I must find a copy of "Genghis Blues". Steve looked for it in Blockbuster, and was told it would cost $30 to order it. No, thanks. :-) Netflix has it, but it would not be fair to subscribe for a trial period and cancel it. Because we won't be renting more movies, noooo. As soon as I see this documentary, I will re-take my anti-visual-media nun precepts. :-)