Heroes and leftover pancakes take 2, with a side of circles.
Heroes sometimes begat new heroes, and in the process remind you why you chose them. Musical influences are recursion at its best.
I went to see "The Invisible Lighthouse" last week, a self-produced/self-directed film by Thomas Dolby, with live musical and narrative accompaniment. I expected to see a short film, with an interesting question and answer session afterwards.
I should have known better. I pick my heroes well, and TMDR has never appeared to have been a person that rests on his laurels. The music after the film and Q&A session consisted of Blake Leyh on guitar, Don Was on bass, Zoe Keating on cello, Dan Hicks on guitar and vocals, Narada Michael Walden on drums, Thomas Dolby on piano and vocals, performing "I Scare Myself", a tune written by Dan Hicks and covered on TMDR's 1984 album "The Flat Earth". It turns out that Dan Hicks is one of Thomas' heroes, and this was the first chance Thomas had had to perform with him. Magic, I still have not processed all I heard in that moment. Dan Hicks' vocal control, hearing for the first time the guitar work that drives the haunting piano in TMDR's version. I learned a bit about music and language watching them play, and I learned a lot more about what I owe my heroes. Even famous, accomplished people take direction without question when the situation calls for it, and this is the secret sauce to what we call "more than the sum of the parts." They performed a second Dan Hicks tune, one that terrifies me, but more about that later. Dan Hicks walked them through it, unrehearsed, by talking the musicians through their parts. This was the analog equivalent of watching TMDR sequence a song live back in 2007, and was just as amazing. I had not heard of Narada Michael Walden before, but I now need to study his creations. When they performed "Blinded by Science", he nailed the opening beats as if he was attached to a midi cable. Watching musicians perform that are that in tune to each other gives me chills.
The film is part autobiography, part statement, and part exploration of memory. Thomas narrates most of it live, and accompanied that night by Blake Leyh on sounds, it was a trip to where Thomas grew up, and where he lives now. During one section where he describes an event from his childhood, he delves into the malleability of our memories, describing his own experience with a self-implanted memory, one that he acknowledges as clearly impossible for him to have formed at the event he remembers, as he was miles away. Moving on from there, he discusses a 1980 UFO sighting near the area, and the determined memories of the servicemen who reported it in the absence of all evidence of the event. Another scene, shot from high, shows what looks like someone had painted a giant white 'X', as you would see in the countryside for aerial surveys. Or perhaps it was for targeting, as the island was also a MOD bombing range, if I read the signs correctly. Only as the camera descends do you see that the white 'X' is resolving to be just him, lying down in his coat.
This sequence about memory pulled me in, as I had recently been reminded of my own long-ago thoughts on the difference between human intelligence and any possibly implementation of intelligence in machines. I am jealous of what machines will be capable of, as they can save and examine their state, in ways humans cannot. We cannot remember an event, without activating the emotions we felt at that time. We cannot divorce ourselves from our feelings, short of some horrible pathological condition, which I would argue renders the person as different than "human".
Will the malleability of memory come to my rescue, bringing me back to a spot where I can be king again? Even a day of that would be nice.
or, more likely, is it going to terrify me, ala Michael Kixby, as presaged by the tune they played?
Because my life does consist of circles that always come to a close.
I went to see "The Invisible Lighthouse" last week, a self-produced/self-directed film by Thomas Dolby, with live musical and narrative accompaniment. I expected to see a short film, with an interesting question and answer session afterwards.
I should have known better. I pick my heroes well, and TMDR has never appeared to have been a person that rests on his laurels. The music after the film and Q&A session consisted of Blake Leyh on guitar, Don Was on bass, Zoe Keating on cello, Dan Hicks on guitar and vocals, Narada Michael Walden on drums, Thomas Dolby on piano and vocals, performing "I Scare Myself", a tune written by Dan Hicks and covered on TMDR's 1984 album "The Flat Earth". It turns out that Dan Hicks is one of Thomas' heroes, and this was the first chance Thomas had had to perform with him. Magic, I still have not processed all I heard in that moment. Dan Hicks' vocal control, hearing for the first time the guitar work that drives the haunting piano in TMDR's version. I learned a bit about music and language watching them play, and I learned a lot more about what I owe my heroes. Even famous, accomplished people take direction without question when the situation calls for it, and this is the secret sauce to what we call "more than the sum of the parts." They performed a second Dan Hicks tune, one that terrifies me, but more about that later. Dan Hicks walked them through it, unrehearsed, by talking the musicians through their parts. This was the analog equivalent of watching TMDR sequence a song live back in 2007, and was just as amazing. I had not heard of Narada Michael Walden before, but I now need to study his creations. When they performed "Blinded by Science", he nailed the opening beats as if he was attached to a midi cable. Watching musicians perform that are that in tune to each other gives me chills.
The film is part autobiography, part statement, and part exploration of memory. Thomas narrates most of it live, and accompanied that night by Blake Leyh on sounds, it was a trip to where Thomas grew up, and where he lives now. During one section where he describes an event from his childhood, he delves into the malleability of our memories, describing his own experience with a self-implanted memory, one that he acknowledges as clearly impossible for him to have formed at the event he remembers, as he was miles away. Moving on from there, he discusses a 1980 UFO sighting near the area, and the determined memories of the servicemen who reported it in the absence of all evidence of the event. Another scene, shot from high, shows what looks like someone had painted a giant white 'X', as you would see in the countryside for aerial surveys. Or perhaps it was for targeting, as the island was also a MOD bombing range, if I read the signs correctly. Only as the camera descends do you see that the white 'X' is resolving to be just him, lying down in his coat.
This sequence about memory pulled me in, as I had recently been reminded of my own long-ago thoughts on the difference between human intelligence and any possibly implementation of intelligence in machines. I am jealous of what machines will be capable of, as they can save and examine their state, in ways humans cannot. We cannot remember an event, without activating the emotions we felt at that time. We cannot divorce ourselves from our feelings, short of some horrible pathological condition, which I would argue renders the person as different than "human".
Will the malleability of memory come to my rescue, bringing me back to a spot where I can be king again? Even a day of that would be nice.
or, more likely, is it going to terrify me, ala Michael Kixby, as presaged by the tune they played?
Because my life does consist of circles that always come to a close.