tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80788890207716215252024-03-07T22:27:20.425-08:00Missives from the edgeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-27662732324651708462018-09-30T13:50:00.000-07:002018-10-02T11:29:57.670-07:005 Seriously Dumb Myths about Copyright John Degen Should Stop Repeating<p>
I had the misfortune of stumbling across an article by John Degen, Executive Director of the Writers Union of Canada, called
<a href="https://medium.com/@jkdegen/5-seriously-dumb-myths-about-copyright-the-media-should-stop-repeating-a92e934f12a4">
<i>5 Seriously Dumb Myths About Copyright the Media Should Stop Repeating.</i>
</a>
(Click the title now and read the article before proceeding!) Arguing that copyright is “complex and, frankly, not all that gripping,” he offers a “short list of seriously dumb copyright myths to help you through the clutter of free culture bunkum.” He then proceeds to engage in a pyrotechnic display of ignorance, shoddy research, misdirection, and omission, supported by arguments that fail the test of logic. His rhetoric resembles the macho, self-righteous posturing of right-wing talk radio.
<p>
Whatever your stance on copyright, Degen’s article is not worthy of even cursory consideration. It encourages you not to think, a disgraceful tone to adopt when weighing in on a nuanced and controversial subject. As the Executive Director of the Writers Union of Canada, a position of some <i>gravitas</i> I would imagine, he should be ashamed of himself.
<p>
Without advocating any particular position on copyright, I intend to demonstrate the worthlessness of Degen's article.
<!--
***MYTH #5***
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<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-top: 1.5em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; left: -.1em">
Myth #5. Artists Feel Restricted by Copyright
</span>
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: .65em">
<span style="font-style: italic">
Right… and cyclists feel restricted by bike paths. Drivers feel restricted by the network of roads and highways. Pilots feel restricted by lift and drag.</span>
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div></div>
<p style="margin-top: 1em">
The point Degen appears to be making is that restictions are something everyone has to live with, so put up and shut up. Let’s examine his argument, noting first that his analogies are out to
lunch:
<ol style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em">
<li>
Cyclists do not feel restricted by bike paths. They love them. They petition City Hall for more, not fewer.
</li>
<li>
Drivers do not feel restricted by roads and highways. Roads enable them. Rare would be the person who preferred to, or even could, drive across Canada without them, let alone to the local mall.
</li>
<li>
Pilots do not feel restricted by lift-and-drag. Degen is mixing terms. Drag is the force that acts opposite to the direction of motion. Except in a vacuum, it hampers the speed of any moving object, flying or not. If pilots feel restricted by drag, it is because they are constrained by the immutable laws of Nature, not the mutable laws of Man.
<p style="margin-top: .5em">
On the other hand, lift, which is created by differences in air pressure, is what makes planes fly. It's hard to imagine pilots chafing at lift. Without it, they'd be out of a job.
</li>
</ol>
<p>
Despite the analogies, Degen’s inference is clear: if we accept <i>some</i> restrictions in <i>some</i> domains, we must accept <i>all</i> restrictions in <i>all</i> domains. If you think his conclusion is valid, I suggest you take a remedial course in logic.
<p>
Degen winds up: “Truth: Professional, working artists who respect heir own work also respect the work of others.” The statement may arguably be true, but it’s unrelated to the subject, which is whether artists feel restricted by copyright. For all its relevance, he might as well have said: “Truth: When it rains, the streets get wet.”
<p>
Here, in a nutshell, is Degen’s take on Myth #5:
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: -.5em">
<i>Because</i><br>
<span style="position: relative; margin-left: 1em">
cyclists feel restricted by bike paths, <i>and</i><br>
</span>
<span style="position: relative; margin-left: 1em">
drivers feel restricted by roads, <i>and</i><br>
</span>
<span style="position: relative; margin-left: 1em">
pilots feel restricted by aerodynamics,<br>
</span>
<i>therefore</i><br>
<span style="position: relative; margin-left: 1em">
professional working artists respect the work of others.
</span>
</div>
<p style="position: relative; margin-top: .25em">
If this makes sense to you, I suggest checking into an asylum.
<p>
I wish I didn’t have to waste further space on Myth #5, but Degen goes on:
<div style="postion: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-style: italic; margin-top: -1.5em; margin-left: .65em; margin-right: .65em">
Anti-copyright crusaders love to shout about remix culture and how copyright aims to stop it. Real artists understand:
<p style="margin-top: .25em">
a) Remix culture was not invented by the Internet. Original works of art have been referencing and remixing other original works of art since the dawn of… well, art.</span>
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div>
<p style="position: relative; margin-top: .25em">
This is deeply confusing. Is Degen saying that artists who re-mixed prior to copyright (i.e. throughout most of human history) ought not to have done so, or that artists who re-mixed prior to copyright were able to do so because there were no copyright restrictions? If the latter, then it’s an argument <i>against</i> strong copyright. If the former, a significant portion of our cultural heritage would not exist. Is Degen saying that would be a <i>good</i> thing?
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-style: italic; margin-top: -1.5em; margin-left: .65em; margin-right: .65em">
<p>
b) There’s a difference between creative remixing and uncreative copying. That’s a line all professional, working artists recognize by instinct, and it’s a line professional artists are happy to have defined by law.</span>
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div>
<p style="position: relative; margin-top: .25em">
Degen is engaging in misdirection. There is indeed a difference between
creative remixing and uncreative copying, though it doesn’t take a “professional, working artist” to acknowledge it. The Canadian Copyright Act does a fine job (section 29.21).
<p>
It is equally true that some—maybe most—artists are happy to have the distinction defined by law, <i>which doesn’t mean they are happy with the current definition.</i> It’s why there is an ongoing debate, and why, Mr. Degen, you have an opinion on the subject.
<!--
***MYTH #4***
-->
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-top: 1.5em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; left: -.1em">
Myth #4. Copyright Harms the Public Domain
</span>
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: .65em">
<span style="font-style: italic">
First of all, there is no “public domain” without copyright. By definition, the cultural public domain consists of those works of art and expression that have for one reason or another fallen
<span style="font-style: normal">out</span> of copyright protection. You can’t really have one without the other.</span>
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div></div>
<p style="margin-top: 1em">
It’s hard to know where to begin with this one. The first sentence is untrue, and the second presents only a partial definition of the Public Domain.
<p>
In jurisprudence, the Public Domain is defined negatively: all works <i>not</i> restricted by copyright, including older works that were never so restricted. Degen's definition excludes these, which paints a false picture of the Public Domain. Works that never had a copyright can hardly “fall out of” protections they never had.
<p>
If the Public domain is <i>all uncopyrighted works</i>, and works pre-dating copyright were <i>ipso facto</i> all uncopyrighted, the real scope of the Public Domain extends back to the first cave paintings.
<p>
Copyright didn’t create the Public Domain; copyright gave it a name. There can be no serious discussion about copyright without acknowledging that the Public Domain, by whatever name one calls it—<i>res communes,</i> the public sphere, the commons of the mind—has
been around since “the dawn of... well, art.”
<div style="postion: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-style: italic; margin-top: -1.5em; margin-left: .65em; margin-right: .65em">
Secondly, can we please stop conflating copyright with a lack of access? Anti-copyright activists are weirdly proud of how they “liberate” books into the public domain when copyright terms end. <span style="font-style: normal">The Little Prince</span> fell out of copyright protection almost everywhere but France at the beginning of 2015. Was it more difficult to find, obtain or read a copy of <span style="font-style: normal">The Little Prince</span> before January 1st, 2015 than it is now?
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span></span>
</div>
<p style="position: relative; margin-top: .5em">
Again, it’s hard to know where to start. Why should we—who is this <i>we?</i>—stop conflating copyright with lack of access when copyright is all about restricing access: materially, by demanding payment for every copy, and intellectually, by granting authors exclusive rights over the use of their work? Rightly or wrongly, in just measure or unjust, copyright and lack of access are inextricably bound, not conflated.
<p>
Ironically, it is Degen who is guilty of conflation: lack of <i>material</i> access with lack of <i>intellectual</i> access. His “weirdly proud, truthy-sounding activists and crusaders” who aren’t “real or professional working artists”—possibly because many of them are lawyers defending artists in copyright cases—aren’t “shouting” about lack of material access. Their concern is about intellectual and creative access, and whether copyright’s scope and term lengths are robbing society of its creative and intellectual vitality.
<!--
***MYTH #3***
-->
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-top:1.5em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; left: -.1em">
Myth #3. Copyright is an Attack on Artistic Freedom
</span>
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: .65em">
<span style="font-style: italic">
<p>
I have been a working, professional writer for close to thirty years. I’ve felt my artistic freedom threatened by a great many things—state censorship, all manner of fundamentalisms, Internet bullying and shaming… to name but a few.
<p>
Copyright law is not on that list, and it will <span style="font-style: normal">NEVER</span> be on that
list. The very foundation of copyright is the insistence that if I create an artistic expression, I own that artistic expression. And if I own something, you best believe I will protect it from those who want to impose their restrictions on it.
<p>
Truth: My right to own and profit from my free expression is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Enough with the Orwellian doublespeak about copyright attacking my rights. Copyright <span style="font-style: normal">IS</span> my right, dammit.
</span>
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div></div>
<p style="margin-top: 1em">
Please, Mr. Degen, stop SHOUTING. You’re starting to come across like a truthy-sounding activist.
<p>
It is spectacularly inaccurate to say that “the very foundation of copyright is the insistence that if I create an artistic expression, I own that artistic expression.” The purpose of copyright—its universally acknowledged foundation—is, in a few words drawn from the United States’ Constitution, “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8). In other words, to stimulate authorship.
<p>
Degen compounds the error by glossing over the issue of ownership, the very thing that makes copyright such a thorny subject: artistic expression, like ideas, cannot be owned.
<p>
In order for a thing to be ownable, it must be <i>rivalrous.</i> In economics, a rival good is one that may only be possessed or consumed by a single entity, whether an individual or a collective. You and I can't both be wearing the same pair of underwear at the same time.
<p>
Ideas (intellectual content) and artistic expression (the means by which ideas are communicated within a specific medium) are not rivalrous. If I read a book, I possess in my head both the ideas contained therein and the means by which they were expressed. If you read it, we both possess the same ideas and expression. A physical copy of the book may be rivalrous, but the ideas and expression in it are not. <i>“There are certain materials—the air we breathe, sunlight, rain, space, life, creations, thoughts, feelings, ideas, words, numbers—not subject to private ownership.”</i> (Patterson, L. Ray and Lindberg, Stanley W. <i>The Nature of Copyright: A Law of Users' Rights.</i> Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.)
<p>
Copyright doesn’t confer ownership of ideas and expression; copyright grants limited rights over their use. “Limited” because Degen’s rights <i>are</i> restricted, particularly in the matter of fair dealing (“fair use” in US law and elsewhere). Does his bellicose assertion “You best believe I will protect it from those who would impose their restrictions on it” mean he rejects even fair dealing?
<p>
Degen rails against restrictions, yet asserts his right to impose as many as he likes. This from a man who has already advanced the argument, albeit poorly, that everyone has to live with
restrictions, so put up and shut up.
<p>
Did someone cut the cheese, or is that the odour of hypocrisy wafting through the room?
<div style="postion: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-style: italic; margin-top: -1.5em; margin-left: .65em; margin-right: .65em">
<p>
Truth: My right to own and profit from my free expression is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Enough with the Orwellian doublespeak about copyright attacking my rights. Copyright IS my right, dammit.
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</span></div>
<p style="position: relative; margin-top: .25em">
Let’s face it: the <i>Universal Declaration of Human Rights</i> (UDHR) is a relatively toothless document. Every signatory state disregards at least a few of its articles with impunity. But it’s a go-to favourite when trying to throw moral dust in your opponents' eyes.
<p>
<b><i>Truth:</i></b> The UDHR makes no mention of ownership of artistic expression whatsovever. Article 27, subsection (2) states: “Everyone has the right to the <i>protection</i> [italics mine] of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”
<p>
<b><i>Truth:</i></b> Degen has cherry-picked only the second subsection of the Article. The first states: “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” Degen conveniently ignores that the two articles, cheek-by-jowl and more than a little conflictual, are there so that signatory states are mandated to achieve a <i>balance</i> between users’ rights and authors' rights.
<p>
<b><i>Truth:</i></b> Degen has not only cherry-picked from the UDHR. By alluding to it alone, he has also cherry-picked his document as well. The UDHR is just one of <i>three</i> documents that, together, form the <i>International Bill of Human Rights.</i> The second document is the <i>International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.</i>
<p>
Article 15 of the <i>Covenant</i> begins by re-stating Article 27 of the UDHR in its entirety and adds three (3!) further sections.
<p>
The first mandates that the steps taken to implement Article 15 of the UHDR must include those necessary for the “conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture.” None of these can be achieved when copyright blocks access to works for
an unreasonable length of time.
<p>
The second mandates that “the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity” be respected. If artists do not have the freedom to build upon or transform works within a reasonable span of time after a work is made public, then copyright is not doing its job.
<p>
The third mandates that “the benefits to be derived from the encouragement and development of international contacts and co-operation in the scientific and cultural fields be recognized.” Co-operation is impossible without the unencumbered exchange—sharing—of ideas.
<p>
In short, all three subsections are incompatible with Degen's “I own it therefore I have the right to restrict it” position with respect to the imagined ownership of his artistic expression he believes copyright confers.
<p>
Degen’s omissions don’t stop with the leaving out the <i>International Covenant.</i> There is a yet a third document that forms part of the <i>International Bill of Human Rights</i> where it touches upon copyright: the <i>United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights General Comment #17.</i>
<p>
<i>General Comment #17</i> explains the intentions of the rights pertaining to Article 27 of the UDHR and Article 15 of the <i>International Covenant.</i> It’s a fourteen page long document addressing no less than fifty-seven separate issues arising from Article 15 of the <i>Covenant.</i>
<p>
The following quotation from <i>General Comment #17</i> demonstrates Degen's ignorance both of the purpose of copyright and of the very document he cites in support his position. Pay particular attention to the second paragraph.
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 1.5em; margin-right: 1.5em; font-style: italic">
<p>
1. ...the scope of protection of the moral and material interests of the author provided for by article 15, paragraph 1 (c) [of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights], <u>does not necessarily coincide with what is referred to as intellectual property rights under national legislation or international agreements.</u>
<p>
2. It is therefore important <u>not to equate intellectual property rights with the human right recognized in article 15, paragraph 1 (c).</u>
</div>
<p>
One final Truth: The term “doublespeak” is not used anywhere in Orwell’s <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four.</i>
<!--
***MYTH #2***
-->
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-top: 1.5em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; left: -.1em">
Myth #2. Copyright Costs Consumers
</span>
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: .65em">
<span style="font-style: italic">
In a recent, weakly researched piece on copyright, Canada’s National Post published without challenge the claim that copyright term extensions for music in Canada will cost “the public billions of dollars in the long term.</span>
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div></div>
<p style="margin-top: 1em">
The <i>National Post’</i>s weak research is matched by Mr. Degen’s. The real myth here is that advocates of copyright reform make such a claim. They don’t. The <i>National Post</i> does, a newspaper founded by a convicted fraudster and generally not acknowledged as a
journalistic heavyweight.
<p>
The truth is that an overview of contemporary literature on copyright reveals a marked lack of concern over public spending.
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-style: italic; margin-top: -1.5em; margin-left: .65em; margin-right: .65em">
<p>
Truth: Paying artists for works we want to consume is how we have a cultural economy. As long as we live in market-based economic systems, the exchange of money for works, goods and services is
going to be an essential mechanism.
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div>
<p style="position: relative; margin-top: .25em">
There is an extraordinary amount of cynicism seeping out of that first sentence. Do we “consume” art? Is it equivalent to a plate of Kraft Dinner, disposable diapers, a roll of toilet paper? The correct verb is appreciate, or value, or enjoy.
<p>
“Cultural economy” is equally base. We have a cultural economy only insofar as we monetize artistic expression. Regardless of one’s position on copyright, it is reasonable to ask if we in fact need to monetize artistic expression, or whether we need to have a cultural
economy at all. How on earth did we get Homer, and Euripedes, and Aristophanes, and Cicero, and Catullus, and Virgil, or, for that matter, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, or the <i>Analects of Confucius</i> without a cultural economy?
<p>
The human race had a vital cultural <i>life</i> long before it had a cultural <i>economy,</i> with qualitatively no difference in the works produced.
<p>
Before advocating for strong copyright, as Mr. Degen does, the question needs to be asked: Is paying artists for works we want to consume the most effective way to promote “Science and the useful Arts” (i.e. the most effective way to stimulate intellectual and creative activity)? Is there an alternative, for example paying artists <i>to work,</i> rather than paying <i>for their works?</i> In an article as strongly worded as Degen’s, it is unthinkably lazy not to have examined this issue and responded to it with reasoned arguments.
<!--
***MYTH #1***
-->
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-top: 1.5em">
<span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-size: 1.25em;">“</span>
<span style="position: relative; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; left: -.1em">
Myth #1. Copyright only helps Corporations
</span>
<div style="position: relative; margin-left: .65em">
<span style="font-style: italic">
This is the whopper of anti-copyright mythology.</span>
<span style="position: relative; left: -.25em; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; line-height: .5em">”</span>
</div></div>
<p style="margin-top: 1em">
One has to wonder what group of “anti-copyright acitivists” Degen consulted when deciding this was the whopper of all copyright myths.
<p>
No one subjecting current copyright law to a thoughtful critique would ever make such a statement since it is well established that the material protections afforded by copyright can be, and are, invoked by individuals.
<p>
That being noted, it must equally be observed that while copyright protection is available to individuals (i.e. does not <i>only</i> help corporations), the majority of copyright cases in Canada and the United States are indeed instituted by corporations, businesses, and agencies, at least as reported in the cases archive of the
<a href="https://fairuse.stanford.edu/case/">
Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use Center
</a>
and the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_case_law#United_States">
Wikipedia List of Copyright Case Law
</a>.
<p>
Furthermore one wonders by what sophistry Degen embraces the <i>United Nations Declaration of Human Rights</i> while categorically rejecting the same organization’s findings, to whit, <i>“Intellectual property regimes <u>primarily protect business and corporate interests and investments.</u>”</i> (The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment #17, Article 2.)
<p>
As noted at the beginning of this article, I have not attempted to respond to Degen’s arguments or to advocate a position on copyright. My intention has been to demonstrate the shoddiness of research, the illogic, the contradiction of facts, the misdirection, and the
general level of ignorance of the subject demonstrated in his article. Copyright is an issue with many sides and cannot be reduced to an ill-informed, ill-framed rant.
<p>
“How is anyone supposed to do the work of truly understanding copyright?” Degen asks presumptively at the start of his article. The answer, Mr. Degen, is by actually reading the literature.
<p>
For an excellent background to copyright, take a look at Lydia Pallas Loren’s clear and digestible article,
<a href="http://open-spaces.com/articles/the-purpose-of-copyright">
<i>The Purpose of Copyright</i>
</a>
or download—for free—a copy of James Boyle’s award-winning
<a href="http://www.thepublicdomain.org/download">
<i>The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind</i>
</a>.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-10372415163636288752016-01-01T20:22:00.000-08:002016-01-01T20:22:45.922-08:002015's Failed PredictionLast year on January 1, I posted an article called <i>2015: The Year Everything Breaks.</i> I prefaced it by saying my intuition has a habit of being wrong but I wanted to be on record anyway.<br />
<br />
Well, I was wrong. Everything didn't break. I'm not really surprised. On reflection, the reason is obvious. Everything was already broken. Intellect was speaking, not intuition.<br />
<br />
Folks, I don't think we're going to recover from the downward spiral we're on. The catastrophe we're hurtling towards is terrifying, but nobody with the power to do so will do anything to stop it. It won't be climate change. It won't be the world economy collapsing. It won't be some ghastly global conflict. It will be all three.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-2839387839283677252015-10-07T17:29:00.000-07:002017-04-04T17:42:16.523-07:00Improving Playback from MuseScore 2 Piano Scores<style>
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This article looks at ways to improve the musical quality of playback from piano scores engraved with
<a href="http://www.musescore.com/">MuseScore 2</a>.
It isn’t a tutorial: it assumes a working knowledge of MuseScore 2, familiarity with the JACK audio connection kit, and the basics of music theory. Completed scores demonstrating the principles discussed can be found on YouTube:
</div>
<ul class="abstract tighter">
<li class="tighter"><a href="https://youtu.be/6voLiwDzsOI">Piano Sonata in B-flat, 1st mov’t.</a></li>
<li class="tighter"><a href="https://youtu.be/7TzeWSOAauQ">Piano Sonata in B-flat, 2nd mov’t.</a></li>
<li class="tighter"><a href="https://youtu.be/0MMXN5VdAnY">Ch’ien</a></li>
<li class="tighter"><a href="https://youtu.be/qEWPldWLbLs">Kun</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<br />
Getting the best playback from MuseScore piano scores is largely a matter of deconstructing the things we do reflexively as pianists and turning them into instructions that can be understood by a musically brain dead performer, namely the computer. We’re scarcely aware when we play a simple tune with chordal accompaniment that we’re playing the right hand louder than the left, and emphasizing individual notes within the chords to make them euphonius. It’s only when we hit the Playback button in MuseScore for the first time that we hear how much performance information <i>isn’t</i> communicated in the score. The literal interpretation of the notes as they appear generally sounds ghastly.
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<br />
The MuseScore development team set out to create a music notation program, not a tool for generating digital/audio performances. Playback therefore lacks the sophistication evident elsewhere in the program. Only the most basic parameters of note control are provided: pitch, duration, and loudness. Attack and release, the defining features of pianistic “touch”, are absent. Pedalling merely extends the length of notes; there is no corresponding change in tone colour. Half- and quarter-pedalling are impossible.
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<br />
Just the same, remarkably good performances can be coaxed from MuseScore, provided you’re willing to invest the time. It’s painstaking work. Every note needs to be individually adjusted and there are no magic bullets.
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<br />
The goal of tweaking a score for playback is not to achieve life-like piano sound, but a life-like <i>interpretation.</i> Limitations in the sampling technology used by MuseScore put truly realistic piano sound out of reach. A satisfactory approximation with no obvious flaws is what you should be aiming for. Once that is achieved, you have an adequate instrument with which to express yourself musically from the score. In much the same way as Bach sounds great on Aunt Sadie’s old upright when it’s played by an expert (assuming she keeps the thing in tune), MuseScore doesn’t need perfect Bösendorfer Imperial to generate sensitive digital performances.
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<br />
<h2>
Soundfonts</h2>
None of the freely available piano soundfonts is perfect. Some are just plain dreadful. Others come fairly close to what you want but exhibit flaws: no brilliance in the lower octaves, or too much of it at the high end, or resonance that sounds decidedly canned, or a few notes here and there that are always too loud or soft.
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Of the free piano soundfonts, the <a href="http://freepats.zenvoid.org/Piano/">Salamander Grand Piano</a> listed in the MuseScore handbook isn’t half bad. There are some fairly decent Steinway soundfonts out there, too—again, not perfect, but usable. It’s a good idea to spend time scouring the Web for piano soundfonts, testing them one by one, and keeping any with promise. Having a library lets you choose which pianos are best suited to particular styles and genres. I have yet to come across a one-size-fits-all.
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<br />
<h2>
Equalization, Compression and Reverb</h2>
Creating a musically-satisfying performance from MuseScore mostly involves adjusting note velocities, i.e. the loudness of each note. In order to do so effectively, equalization and compression need to be applied to your audio output while you’re working on your score, not as an afterthought.
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<br />
MuseScore does not provide equalization and compression. This means setting MuseScore’s I/O to use JACK and connecting MuseScore’s output, via <span class="prog-name">qjackctl(1)</span> or <span class="prog-name">ladish</span>, to external software. I use the JACK mastering software, JAMIN, which provides equalization, compression, and a look-ahead limiter. A really good tutorial on JAMIN, informatively written for the uninitiated, is
<a href="http://www.penguinproducer.com/Blog/2011/09/mastering-with-jamin/">Mastering with Jamin</a>.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Equalization</h3>
Equalization allows you to adjust the overall timbre of your soundfont, making it richer, brighter, sweeter or more mellow according to your needs. How you adjust equalization is a matter of personal taste. Furthermore, each soundfont has differing requirements. Some need only a little help, others require a major facelift.
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For piano soundfonts, adjusting the equalization curve for frequencies between 130Hz and 880Hz (approximately C3–A5) has the most effect. If the overall tone colour is too bright, emphasizing frequencies in the range of 294Hz–880Hz in a “mountain” curve whose peak is around 500Hz–525Hz will make the sound less brash. Conversely, a “valley” curve will enliven the timbre if it’s dull. A modest moutain curve between 880Hz–1800Hz may add a little sparkle, while a mountain curve between 155Hz and 330Hz can introduce some needed richness. A low-end shelf ending at around 130Hz can be used to add depth or remove boominess. A high-end shelf starting at around 3150Hz allows you to add to or trim the overall brightness of the sound.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Compression</h3>
Compression acts to normalize volumes and prevent clipping (i.e. when the volume exceeds 0dB and introduces distortion). It also affects timbre. Piano sound is rich in overtones, and compression may act on a range of overtones without affecting the volume of the fundamental, thus influencing tone colour. It’s best to use a three-band compessor (JAMIN provides this) with the low/medium crossover set at 116Hz and the medium/high at 1320Hz (approximately B-flat2 and E6, which corresponds to the cross-stringing of many grand pianos). Thresholds should be set between 10dB – -20dB, and makeup gain used to “finish” the sound. Weakness in the lower end can be fixed by raising the low compressor’s makeup gain, while adjustments to the high compressor’s makeup gain increase (or decrease) the prominence of high notes and overtones. Adjustments to the middle compressor’s makeup gain largely affects the “presence” of the sound without significantly altering tone colour.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Reverb</h3>
MuseScore provides a good reverb plugin, <span class="prog-name">zita-rev1(1)</span>, in the “Master Effects” tab of the Sythesizer (<span class="menu-item">View=>Synthesizer</span>). Besides imparting realism to many piano soundfonts, reverb is an important aid in overcoming MuseScore’s simplistic pedalling. Careful adjustments to the zitz-rev1 controls also mitigate the default portato articulation of many soundfonts, resulting in smoother legato, especially in rapid passages. (See the next section for information on fixing excessive portato introduced by MuseScore.)
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<br />
<h4>
• Fixing the gate time</h4>
Gate time refers to when a note starts (ontime) and stops (offtime). MuseScore 2 sets the offtime for the Piano instrument a little short. While this may be useful if you want a very clean, détaché articulation throughout the whole score (think Glenn Gould), it is generally not what you want unless your music is highly contrapuntal.
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<br />
To fix the shortened note length for the entire score, save the score as .mscx rather than .mscz. Open the .mscx file with a text editor and search for <kbd><Articulation></kbd> (i.e. just <kbd><Articulation></kbd>, not <kbd><Articulation name="type"></kbd>). Two lines lower, you’ll see <kbd><gateTime>95</gateTime></kbd>. Change the <kbd>95</kbd> to <kbd>100</kbd>, save, and quit. If you subsequently want to work on an .mscz version of the score, open the .mscx version and save it as .mscz. Alternatively, you can edit the default gateTime in the Piano section of the <kbd>instruments.xml</kbd> file. All subsequent piano scores will use the new default.
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MuseScore v.1 allowed setting ontime and offtime as a function of Note Properties, but this capability is not present in the current release. It is to be hoped this oversight will be corrected. Controlling gate time is essential for natural, non-mechanical-sounding phrasing. At present, the only way to control it is with the Piano Roll Editor, which is implemented poorly and lacks even basic editing functions like group-selecting notes.
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<br />
<h2>
Setting the dynamics</h2>
Before fine-tuning a score, you need to set the overall dynamics. Musescore observes the somewhat arbitrary MIDI standard for dynamic levels, which may or may not be appropriate for your chosen soundfont. Check the volume of all dynamics in your score by right-clicking on the dynamic markings and adjusting the “Velocity” field in the Inspector. Don’t assume the velocity for a given dynamic will be the same throughout the whole score. Dynamics are relative to each other. Texture and tempo furthermore influence how they’re perceived.
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The Inspector allows you to choose whether a dynamic mark or hairpin applies to the grand staff (i.e. both staves, which the Inspector calls “Part”) or an individual staff. When setting overall dynamic levels, pay attention to places where one staff or the other needs to be more prominent. Attach a dynamic marking to each staff and choose “Staff” for both in the Inspector. Make one of them invisible (the keyboard shortcut is “v”), then adjust the velocities of both until the correct balance is achieved.
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<h2>
Pedalling</h2>
Pedalling is often left to the discretion of the performer, but for the purposes of digital playback, the score <i>is</i> the performer. Complete pedalling instructions must therefore be included. Those you do not want appearing in the printable version of the score can be hidden (made invisible).
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Conversely, visible pedal markings may not produce exactly the effect you want during playback. Depressing or releasing the pedal a note earlier or later than marked may achieve a better result. In such cases, use Shift+ArrowLeft/Right to attach the pedal anchors to the notes that work best, then click-drag the ends of the pedal lines to the desired visual position.
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In some instances, you may find that required pedal markings for a real-world interpretation of your score don’t sound right in digital playback. Either they need to be removed entirely for playback, or changes of pedal introduced to prevent muddiness where a real performer wouldn't need them marked in the score. The solution to this situation is to hide the pedal marks needed for digital playback, then to create fake visible pedal lines that have no effect on playback. This is done by attaching a plain line from the <span class="menu-item">Lines Palette</span> to the appropriate notes on the lower staff, right-clicking on the line and editing the <span class="menu-item">Line Properties</span>. Enter <kbd><sym>keyboardPedalPed</sym></kbd> in the text field, check “End=>Hook”, and adjust the vertical placement of the text (Ped.) so it’s flush with the line. The button to the right of the text field in <span class="menu-item">Line Properties</span> calls up the formatting dialogue where vertical adjustment is set.
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<h2>
Adjusting note velocities</h2>
<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Melody</h3>
Dynamics and pedalling having been taken care of, you’re ready to attack your score in earnest. Just as in a live performance, ninety percent of “interpreting” a score with MuseScore involves getting the loudness (velocity) of each note right. For melodies, this means adjusting velocities to reveal phrasing and clarify rhythmic figurations. For harmonies, it means adjusting chord notes to achieve a proper balance in the vertical sonorities.
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<br />
I find it’s best to work phrase-by-phrase. Begin by selecting the melody notes and increasing their velocity by at least 10. Leave the <span class="menu-item">Velocity type</span> at “Offset” (in the Inspector) since this ensures the new value is added to the prevailing dynamic. “10” is somewhat arbitrary. The amount of emphasis needed depends on many factors, including register, prevailing dynamcis, tempo, texture, and “busy-ness” of the accompaniment. Play around with the value until the melody notes stand out clearly.
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Melodies don’t always live in the right hand or the top voice, so be sure to select and increase the velocity all significant melodic fragments and motifs.
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If emphasizing the melody makes a passage or phrase too loud, group select all notes not in the melody and decrease their velocity rather than adjusting the settings for your dynamic markings. Your goal is to balance the planes of sound (i.e. melody and accompaniment) within dynamics you’ve already established. Fine-tuning dynamic settings should be left for a final step.
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At this stage, playback of your score should make more sense musically, but most likely still sounds as if the performer is a hamfisted hack. The reason is that other than the distinction between melody and accompaniment, adjacent notes are being played at a uniform volume. A live pianist <i>never</i> plays adjacent notes identically unless the score demands it.
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“Adjacent” means adjacent both horizontally (melodies and rhythmic figures) and vertically (triads, chords). Getting the relative velocities right for either relies on a few general principles.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Strong and weak beats</h3>
<h4>
• Meter</h4>
Consider the meter of your score. If it’s 2/4, bars are divided into two beats, one strong and one weak. Therefore, a simple melody composed of quarter-notes would need the velocity of every second quarter reduced to produce the characteristic DAH-dah DAH-dah pulse of 2/4. 4/4 is similar in that it has a strong-weak-strong-weak arrangement. The difference is that beat 3 receives slightly less emphasis than beat 1; the two off-beats (2 and 4) generally receive approximately the same weight: DAH-dah-DUH-dah DAH-dah-DUH-dah. 3/4 usually has a strong first beat followed by two noticeably weaker beats: DAH-duh-duh DAH-duh-duh. It is this that produces the characteristic lilt of 3/4 time. 6/8 meter, like 2/4, is divided into two beats (two dotted quarters), strong-weak, but with three subdivisions of the beat that should be treated the same as 3/4, such that a regular progression of eighth-notes in 6/8 produces DAH-duh-duh-DUH-duh-duh.<br />
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<h4>
• Regular subdivisions of the beat</h4>
The principle of strong and weak beats applies to subdivisions of the beat as well. Thus, two eighth-notes side-by-side in 2/4 or 4/4 are strong-weak, assuming the first falls on a beat. Three-note groupings—triplets, or three eighths in 6/8—follow the strong-weak-weak pattern, and four note groupings—four eighths or four sixteenths— should exhibit the strong-weak-medium-weak pattern of 4/4 time.
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The faster the tempo, the less need there is to adjust the individual velocities of 4-note groupings. It is often enough to emphasize only the first note. The remaining notes may be set to a uniform lower velocity and still sound musically satisfactory.
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<h4>
• Dotted rhythms, long-short-short groupings</h4>
At moderate to fast tempi, pianists reflexively play dotted rhythms (e.g. dotted-eighth/sixteenth) strong-weak. What’s surprising about the reflex, when translated to note velocities, is how much softer the short note needs to be. Given that, in melodies, the short note frequently lands between the cracks of the accompanying figuration, it doesn’t take much volume for it to stand out. Furthermore, the short note almost never plays a significant harmonic role. It’s usually a non-chord note: passing tone, échappé, or cambiata. Therefore, don’t be afraid to reduce the velocity by quite a bit. Let your ears be your guide. A proper balance in the loudness between long and short makes dotted rhythms skip. Improper balance makes them limp along like someone with a sprained ankle.
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Reversing the sense of a dotted rhythm (e.g. sixteenth/dotted-eighth) also observes the strong-weak profile, but in many cases, the velocity of the short note needs to be strongly emphasized rather than the velocity of the long note reduced. The reason is that reverse dotted rhythms usually imply an accent on the short note.
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Long-short-short groupings (e.g. eighth-sixteenth-sixteenth) are similar to dotted rhythms in that the final short note usually needs to be quite soft, relatively speaking. Conversely, like reverse dotted rhythms, short-short-long (e.g. sixteenth-sixteenth-eighth) groupings usually benefit from emphasizing the first short note.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Hairpins (crescendi, diminuendi)</h3>
Hairpins are executed by MuseScore 2 during playback. If you put a two-bar crescendo between a note marked <i>piano</i> and a note marked <i>forte</i>, the volume rises steadily from piano to forte. I can’t be certain, but my ears tell me the algorithm for determining the change in volume is <kbd>s=(d2-d1)/n</kbd>, where <kbd>s</kbd> is the velocity step, <kbd>d1</kbd> and <kbd>d2</kbd> are the velocities of the dynamic markings, and <kbd>n</kbd> is the number of notes affected by the hairpin. The result is that the change in velocity is uniform from note to note, which sounds artificial because that is not how hairpins are executed in real life.
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Overcoming the artificiality is a matter of trial and error. Many factors influence the impression of crescendo and diminuendo. There is no algorithm that can be applied to every instance. If the overall effect of the hairpin is less, or more, than expected, click on the hairpin and use the <span class="menu-item">Velocity change</span> field to in/decrease it. "0" in the field means the default behaviour described above. Any other number means that a user-set velocity change is applied progressively to the notes affected by the hairpin. Once the overall effect is to your liking, adjust the velocities of every affected note until your ears tell you the hairpin sounds natural.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Balancing chords</h3>
Adjusting vertical sonorities is even more time-consuming than getting melodic lines right. For any given chord, all of the notes need to be adjusted in relation each other. The texture of the chord, the voicing, the register, the prevailing dynamic, and the voice leading all play a part.
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Start by getting the volume (velocity) of the principle chord note correct in relation to the rest of the musical texture. Principle chord notes are often melody notes, so if you’ve already taken care of emphasizing the melody, you can focus on the supporting harmony.
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Generally, the bottom note of a chord, whether root position or an inversion, needs to have the most weight. Since lower notes on the piano resonate more than upper notes, it’s rare their velocity needs to be increased. If anything, it usually needs to be decreased slightly in order not to be too prominent. A useful trick is to click-select all the chord notes but the lowest and highest, which is probably a melody note, then uncheck <span class="menu-item">Play</span> in the Inspector. This allows you to experiment with the balance between bass and treble.
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Once the bass note is correct, click-select the fifth of the chord and make it audible. Unless a chord is in second inversion, the fifth should be slightly softer than the root. Over-emphasized fifths make chords sound clunky. Experiment with the velocity of the fifth until it achieves its role as a significant supporting tone while still “singing” clearly.
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The thirds of chords determine their mode, major or minor. They are also the most unstable note in a chord and need to be treated with care. Select and make audible the third of the chord and decrease its velocity (sometimes by up to 10 or more steps) until it “locks” in place with the rest of the chord.
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Extensions (sevenths, ninths, etc.) should be dealt with last. If thirds give chords their mode, extensions give them their colour. Since extensions are always dissonant in relation to the base triad, they stand out on their own so, like the third, their velocity should be decreased until they fulfil their colour role without overtaking the whole chord.
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Be careful of doublings. If a chord note is doubled at another octave, you have to determine which octave contributes best to the sonority of the chord. Start by giving both doublings the same volume (not necessarily the same velocity), then play around with the velocities of both until you’re satisfied with the balance. This advice applies primarily to roots and fifths, since thirds and extensions are less likely to be doubled.
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Overall, open voicings are easier to deal with than closed. The reason is that the more jammed together a chord is, the greater the likelihood of conflicting overtones. Even when the tuning of a soundfont is flawless, close-voiced chords can sound out-of-tune, usually a little sharp. This is especially true of chords the lower down the keyboard you go. The guilty party is usually the third. I suspect Beethoven’s fondness for thick, close-voiced chords in the lower register of the piano stems from his not being able to hear the conflicting upper partials owing to his deafness.
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<h2>
Alterations of tempo</h2>
<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Rubato</h3>
Rubato does not always mean the Horowitzian extremes of pushing and pulling the tempo for exaggerated expressivity. Even the simplest piece exhibits minute changes in tempo when executed sensitively, for example the natural tendency toward relaxing the tempo at the ends of phrases, or giving important melody notes agogic accents.
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The tool for introducing rubato into a score is the <span class="menu-item">Time stretch</span> parameter associated with articulations in the Inspector, not actual changes in tempo. Click-select notes whose length you wish to modify, add an articulation from the <span class="menu-item">Palette</span>, and make it invisible. It doesn’t matter which articulation you choose. I use the tenuto mark but it could as easly be a fermata.
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Click-select the articulation and begin adjusting the time stretch. Use very small increments. Depending on the tempo and the duration of the note, even a 0.01 change in the middle of a phrase can be audible. At phrase ends, the natural caesura can be accomplished with a time stretch of as little as 0.1.
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<br />
Rubato is largely a question of taste and judgment, so listen to your scores critically. The best way to determine where rubato is needed is to conduct your score while it’s playing. Doing this, I’m immediately disturbed when phrases barrel toward their ends instead of coming to rest, or when subsequent phrases begin without enough breathing time between, or when an important note doesn’t have time to speak properly. Singing the score helps, too.
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I often find that rhythmic figures comprising two short notes leading to a longer one sound slightly uneven, for example <b>♪ ♬ ♪ ♬ ♪</b> ... The second short note seems to be rushed, despite respecting the beat. Lengthening it by a tiny amount corrects the problem. Whether or not this merely reflects my playing style is impossible to judge, but it is worth considering whenever rhythmic figures of this sort strike you as inexplicably uneven.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Ritardando</h3>
MuseScore does not provide a way to achieve automatic gradual changes of tempo during playback (analogous to hairpins). As with rubato, the trick is to use hidden articulations whose time stretches adjust the length of each note during the speed-up or slow-down. This is much more efficient than making a series of tempo changes, and provides finer-grained control.
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Ritardandi (and accellerandi) are notoriously difficult to get right. The impression of a uniform, gradual change of tempo is partly an illusion when sensitively executed by a live performer. For this reason, simply increasing the time stretch uniformly for each note in a ritardando passage will not work. In live performance, some note groupings are played pretty much at speed. Others, depending on the length of the ritardando, are played for a while at a uniform slower tempo before slowing again. Significant notes may require agogic accents. Dynamics are also a consideration: ritardando combined with diminuendo means that the length of time each note needs to “sing” plays a role in how much time stretch it needs. The most important thing to remember is that ritardando means a slowing of the beat or pulse, not merely the slowing of individual notes.
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<br />
The best way to work on ritardandi is to establish a less-than-ideal regular slowing down first. This is accomplished by click selecting all the affected notes, adding hidden articulations, and adjusting the time stretch of each note arithmetically, for example by steps of .01 (.01, .02, .03...) or .02 (.02, .04, .06...) depending on the amount of slowing down required. That done, play the passage over and over and, using your ears as your guide, tweak each individual time stretch until you’re completely satisfied you <i>hear</i> the ritardando the way you want. Don’t rely on some sort of regular progression of incremental time stretch changes to convince you you've achieved a realistic result.
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<br />
<h2>
Supplementary Hidden Staves</h2>
When setting up a piano score, it’s a good idea to include a supplementary, hidden staff. An extra grand staff isn’t usually necessary, just a single staff that uses the piano soundfont. Staves are hidden by unchecking the “Visible” checkbox in <span class="menu-item">Edit=>Instruments</span>. Note that Musescore 2 has the peculiarity that you have to close and re-open the Instruments dialogue in order to see the “Visible” checkbox the first time time you add an instrument.
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<br />
The reason for a hidden staff is to spell things out literally when MuseScore’s default playback of certain musical gestures, notably ornaments, doesn’t produce the results you want. For example, you may want a mordent snapped out as 64ths rather than 32nds, or to give a pulse to a particularly long trill. In these cases, click-select the visible ornamented note and uncheck “Play” in the Inspector. Then, on the staff that will be hidden, write the ornament out in full the way you want, applying whatever velocity changes and time stretches you need. When you’re done, hide the staff. For layout purposes, MuseScore completely ignores hidden staves, so a trill over a whole note in the visible staff takes up the same space it did before you wrote the trill out in full on the supplementary staff, once the staff hidden. <i>Caveat:</i> Don’t make changes to your score’s layout while the supplementary staff is visible.
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<h3>
<span class="square">■ </span>Broken Chords (arpeggiando)</h3>
A hidden, supplementary staff is essential for broken chords. MuseScore 2’s default playback of an arpeggiando is to start on the beat. Furthermore, the speed of the arpeggiando is determined by the duration of the chord to which it is attached. A broken whole-note chord is arpeggiated very slowly, while a broken eighth-note chord is arpeggiated much more rapidly.
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<br />
To get the right speed, it isn’t necessary to write the arpeggiando out in full on the supplementary staff. Rather, uncheck “Play” for the whole chord in the visible staff, then copy and paste it (along with the arpeggiando marking) to the supplementary staff and make it playable there. Now all you have to do is change the duration of the chord to one that plays the arpeggiando at the speed you want, then tie it so the chord so it lasts as long as the visible score directs.
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<br />
Unfortunately, getting broken chords to start before the beat does require writing the arpeggiando out in full.
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<br />
<h2>
Conclusion</h2>
I cannot overemphasize how much time is required to turn a beautiful MuseScore score—and the scores are indeed very beautiful—into a musically satisfactory digitial audio interpretation. It takes commitment, dedication and patience to tweak every one of the thousands of notes that may make up a score, but it’s time well spent if you share audio versions of your scores publicly.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-15891751285473919632015-06-28T13:13:00.000-07:002015-06-29T10:06:55.944-07:00MuseScore 2.0 - A Great Success<p>
I was excited when MuseScore 2.0 was released a few months ago. I’ve been using the program for a couple of years to engrave scores and generate midi output for rendering into digital performances. Some persistent bugs, left unaddressed too long in the 1.x development cycle, meant waiting for 2.0 for the fixes.
</p>
<p>
In order to see how 2.0 performed, I selected two fearsomely complex piano pieces I wrote a number of years ago. My goal was to see if I could engrave them exactly as notated in the manuscripts, then realize satisfactory audio performances directly from the scores.
</p>
<p>
The two pieces are musical reflections on the first and second hexagrams of the <i>I Ching</i> (<i>The Book of Changes</i>). The scores can be viewed as PDFs at
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.schaffter.ca/pdf/Ch%27ien.pdf">http://www.schaffter.ca/pdf/Ch’ien.pdf</a>
<br />
<a href="http://www.schaffter.ca/pdf/Kun.pdf">http://www.schaffter.ca/pdf/Kun.pdf</a>
<br />
<br />
or on YouTube (along with audio) at
<br />
<br />
<i>Ch’ien:</i>
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMXN5VdAnY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMXN5VdAnY</a>
<br />
<i>Kun:</i>
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEWPldWLbLs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEWPldWLbLs</a>
</p>
<p>
Overall, I have to say I am very pleased with 2.0. An immediately obvious improvement is the implementation of fully-functional constrained mouse moves and a “snap to grid” option. What a timesaver. No more firing up a screen ruler and slip-sliding things around until they line up. But the best thing about 2.0 is the new “Inspector,” a pane showing nearly every configurable value for a selected object. My test scores needed many, many tweaks (which were expected because of the scores’ complexity). The Inspector made it much easier to effect the changes than the former note-by-note, right-click method implemented in 1.x.
</p>
<p>
<i>Ch’ien</i> and <i>Kun</i> posed both notational and playback challenges. Playback being a sensitive point with the developers (the party line, oft-repeated, is “MuseScore is a music <i>notation</i> program”), I’ll write about it in another article.
</p>
<p>
The main notational challenges presented to MuseScore by <i>Ch’ien</i> and <i>Kun</i> were:
<br />
<br />
<b> 1. </b>a piano grand staff comprised of four staves instead of the usual two<br />
<b> 2. </b>the use of transposing clefs (8va and 8va bassa)<br />
<b> 3. </b><i>ottava</i> lines<br />
<b> 4. </b>chords joined by the stem across multiple staves<br />
<b> 5. </b>cross-staff beaming<br />
<b> 6. </b>continuing beams over system breaks<br />
<b> 7. </b>arpeggiandi across staves<br />
<b> 8. </b>open-ended ties across bar lines<br />
<b> 9. </b>long slurs with awkward profiles, sometimes spanning staves<br />
<b>10. </b>additive rhythms, meaning no time signature and bars of significantly differing lengths<br />
<b>11. </b>unusual tuplets, e.g. 5-64ths, with brackets<br />
<b>12. </b>multiple grace notes<br />
<b>13. </b>accidentals that apply only to the notes they precede<br />
<b>14. </b>metronome markings given in 16th notes<br />
<b>15. </b>span lines, e.g. Ritardando.....<br />
<b>16. </b>extensive dynamic markings<br />
<b>17. </b>precise pedaling instructions<br />
<b>18. </b>text instructions requiring more than one line<br />
<br />
MuseScore 2.0 rose to every challenge, as the finished scores show. Both are perfect in that every item appears exactly the way I want, where I want it. The overall spacing, layout and justification are excellent, as is the design of the musical symbols and notes. In terms of the finished score, MuseScore 2.0 is easily the best WYSIWYG music notation software out there. With continued development, it stands a very good chance of becoming a killer app, as the GIMP is to graphics, or VLC is to media players.
</p>
<p>
I generally judge the usefulness of a WYSIWYG program by whether it ever leaves users stuck with something they don’t like. A well-designed and implemented program allows for overriding every default, or, at the very least, for coming up with creative ways to improve the undesirable or achieve the unusual using the program’s native tools.
</p>
<p>
MuseScore is exceptionally well designed in this regard. A good example occurs on pages 11 and 12 of the <i>Ch'ien</i> score, where I needed beams with different values (8th and 16th) in several voices to continue over the system break. MuseScore doesn’t handle this requirement (it’s very rare), and it’s tricky to “fake”, but by hiding various beams/flags and manually drawing lines of the correct thickness and positioning them over the notes, I was able to achieve the effect.
</p>
<p>
I rank MuseScore’s implementation of “hiding” (making graphical elements invisible) amongst its best-implemented features. The developers have observed the principle of orthogonality, such that one can hide, with respect to any note, the accidental, the notehead, the dot, the stem, the flag and the beam separately. Most users will never need such extreme separability, so kudos to the developers for providing it. Best of all, hiding can be toggled with a simple keyboard shortcut, the letter “v”, and toggling the hiding/showing of all invisibles at once can be mapped in Preferences by the user.
</p>
<p>
Now, to the specifics.
</p>
<p>
<b>Items 1-3:</b> I had no problems setting up the four-staff grand staff. Furthermore, on playback, the transposing clefs transposed as expected, as did the <i>ottava</i> lines.
</p>
<p>
<b>Items 4-6:</b> Stretching stems across staves was accomplished easily by hiding note-flags and beams (if any) and extending the stem from one staff to meet the stem on another.
</p>
<p>
Cross-staff beaming was straightforward and reliable. A missing feature was the ability to set the beams horizontally automatically; where slanted beams looked awkward, I had to adjust them manually. This required firing up a screen ruler since the beam handles do not snap to the page grid, which would have significantly eased the operation.
</p>
<p>
The need for extending beams across system breaks is a rarity, and MuseScore doesn’t implement it. I had to get creative to achieve the effect, but MuseScore provided the tools. As mentioned above, pages 10 and 11 of <i>Ch’ien</i> show the results, which are flawless.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 7:</b> Arpeggiando signs can easily be dragged to cross staves, however getting the desired playback is fussy. I’ll address the issue in my article on MuseScore playback.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 8:</b> Open-ended ties aren’t common, so I expected setting them up to be finicky. It was, but not unnecessarily. I made ties to invisible notes or chords at the start of the next bar, then adjusted the starting position and length of the ties so they curved just over the barline. It’s another good example, like extended beaming, of MuseScore meeting my “never leave the user stuck” criterion.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 9:</b> Slurs. They’re amazingly well implemented. Even long slurs spanning multiple staves exhibit elegance and grace. Rare were places I had to make adjustments. The only place where MuseScore fell down was when slurring from a stem-down to stem-up note; by convention, the end of the slur should go clearly <i>into</i> the stem of the stem-up note, not into or close to the top of the stem, which is how they presently appear.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 10:</b> I expected the additive rhythms to give MuseScore the most trouble, but I was wrong. Calling up the Measure Properties dialogue in any bar let me specify the number of beats I needed, even oddities like 27/32. Many music notation programs fall down on this issue, so a big thanks to the MuseScore developers for getting it right.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 11:</b> The creation of tuplets isn’t exactly intuitive, but it’s simple to do once you RTFM. MuseScore lets you specify whether you want the tuplet bracketed, which is nice because I often do, but like cross-staff beams, it isn’t possible to have the brackets horizontal by default, nor to get the handles to snap to the page grid.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 12:</b> Multiple grace notes, no problem.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 13:</b> Having accidentals apply only to the notes they precede made note entry painstaking, tedious, and prone to error. Because I intended to generate playback from the scores, it was necessary to add an accidental from the palette to every note needing to be raised or flattened. Furthermore, accidental-ed notes had to have their accidentals cancelled with hidden natural signs. The hidden natural signs frequently interfered with the correct positioning of visible accidentals, particularly staggered accidentals (which, under more usual circumstances, MuseScore handles intelligently). It is fortunate that MuseScore allows shifting the position of accidentals, since it didn’t leave me “stuck”, but the amount of work required to get them right was staggering. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
</p>
<p>
Given the number of scores written in the past hundred years with the “accidentals apply only to...” requirement, the MuseScore developers need to give the matter some thought. I propose a special note-entry mode where Arrow-Up doesn’t raise a note by a semitone, but rather always adds a sharp, with the same behaviour for Arrow-Down and flats. (This would also help overcome MuseScore’s hate-on for E-sharp/B-sharp and F-flat/C-flat.) All notes without an accidental would, in this mode, be treated as naturals upon playback.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 14:</b> Metronome markings using the 16th note were possible, but the text field is buggy. When adding tempi markings to <i>Kun,</i> the default note value appeared as a dotted-quarter with no stem. Wiping it out from immediately left of the equals sign took three presses of the Backspace key—and still didn’t wipe out the dot! Also, I dislike the default “lowered and smaller” notehead style used for tempo markings, so I had to adjust the size after entering my 16th note. It would be nice if this were a settable default.
</p>
<p>
There was a playback issue, too. Although the Inspector has a “Follow text” option for tempo markings, it doesn’t. The text, “<16th-note> = 114”, unambiguously means the unit for metronome beats is the 16th, and there should be of 114 of them per minute. Playback, however, multiplied the speed by 4, indicating it was using a quarter-note as the beat despite text that said “use a sixteenth”. The solution was to uncheck “Follow text” and enter a BPM one-quarter the desired tempo. Easy enough, but “Follow text” should, to my way of thinking, mean “follow text”. If it means something else, perhaps it should be labelled differently.
</p>
<p>
That said, the idea, if not the implementation, is a great addition to MuseScore.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 15:</b> Span lines were a bit of a nuisance. For example, a simple <i>ritardando</i> over two bars required: a) dragging a solid line from the palette to the note where I wanted it to begin; b) changing the line to a dashed line (in the Inspector); c) right-clicking the line to call up the Line Properties dialogue; d) entering “Rit.” in the text box; e) adjusting the formatting of the type and its placement relative to the line (placement defaults to somewhere in the middle of the text’s x-height); f) dragging the rightmost point of the line to the desired location. Do that often enough, and you start to get irritated.
</p>
<p>
I hope the developers will consider adding a few of the most common span lines to the palette: <i>Rit., Accelerando, Cres., Dim.,</i> and the like. Alternatively, a method for creating one’s own span lines in the Master Palette, similar to the way one can create new time signatures, would be just as welcome.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 16:</b> Adding dynamics to a score (p, mf, fff...) is a no-brainer, however there is a caveat when it comes to moving them around after they’ve been added. If you mouse-drag an already-placed dynamic too far, you risk decoupling it from the note and/or staff to which it was attached and having it attach to another. This has no effect on the printed score other than repositioning the dynamic to the desired visual location, but it does affect playback. The only reliable way to prevent a dynamic from anchoring to a different note while repositioning it is to use the Inspector to set the new horizontal and vertical offset.
</p>
<p>
Hairpins (crescendo, diminuendo) are a pain in the neck if you have need a lot of them. In theory, adding them is easy: click the notes where you want the hairpin to start and end, then hit the “<” or “>” key. Unfortunately, the default starting point aligns with any accidentals that precede the starting note, and the default endpoint is always one note further to the right than the one you selected. The left-hand problem is a bad design choice; the right-hand problem is a bug. Both meant a lot of manual tweaking.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 17:</b> There is no way to add a pedal line between two selected notes (i.e. a range of notes). A pedal line must be dragged from the palette to the desired starting note, whence, by unchangeable default, it runs the remainder of the length of the bar. Pedal changes within the bar require moving the anchor of the “pedal up” mark back to the correct position <i>one note at a time.</i> As scores increase in length and complexity, the amount of time it takes to move backward just one note increases, sometimes by up to one second on my AMD dual-core system. The annoyance of having to move the pedal-up point backward <i>for every single pedal change within a bar,</i> plus the sluggishness of the operation, is enough to make a sane person go ballistic.
</p>
<p>
Though it pains me to say so, MuseScore gets a failing mark when it comes to pedaling, and I seriously hope the developers change their tune on the subject, which presently runs: The need for precise pedaling is rare (since when?), “to the end of the bar” is a sensible default length (it’s not; “to the next major beat” is), and use <i>simile</i> to avoid too many pedal marks, which goes against the advice of most style guides.
</p>
<p>
<b>Item 18:</b> MuseScore doesn’t include linespacing in its text formatting controls, which means that if you need to insert multi-line text instructions, you’re stuck with the linespacing MuseScore gives you, which is often too loose. I hope this oversight, present in 1.x as well, gets corrected.
</p>
<p>
<b>Miscellaneous</b>
</p>
<p>
Randomly and inexplicably, but routinely, the little arrows used to increment or decrement fields in the Inspector (e.g. the horizontal offset) begin to react twice to a single mouse click. Thus, if a click is supposed to increment by .50sp, it increments by 1.00sp instead. Once the behaviour starts, it persists throughout the session.
</p>
<p>
Anchor points for pedaling are based on the staff to which the pedal line is attached rather than to the whole system (grand staff). This means, for example, that if you have a full measure rest in the bass staff, pedal lines have to be attached to the treble staff for their anchors to be positioned correctly. Afterwards, the line has to be dragged to the proper position beneath the bass staff.
</p>
<p>
Scores exported to PDF look ghastly, at least when viewed in Okular, which is one of the most common PDF viewers on Linux systems. I haven’t seen such jaggedness in diagonal lines and curves since the early days of Mario Bros. A workaround is to export the score to PNG, which produces a separate .png file for each page. Convert each of the .png files to .pdf, then concatenate them into a single file.
</p>
<p>
MuseScore’s text-formatting is extremely rudimentary. Typographically satisfactory title pages with items like performance instructions and instrumentation are next to impossible. I typeset mine separately and join them to the PDF version of the score.
</p>
<p>
Around page 20 of the <i>Kun</i> score, I wanted to respell a couple of pitches. I selected the chords in question and hit Respell. From where I was in the score, the result looked like what I wanted so I saved and quit. Imagine my dismay, on re-opening the file, to discover that the entire score had been respelled! I lost a couple of days fixing everything. I’ll know better in the future, but since I’m certain not to be the only person who hasn’t read the manual before using the Respell function (which specifies that Respell acts on the whole score), it would be a good idea for MuseScore to issue a warning before performing the operation.
</p>
<p>
Finally, my <i>Ch’ien</i> score reveals a puzzling bug in MuseScore. Every time I save and re-open the file, it’s corrupted. Specifically, several pages worth of pedal markings are significantly out of place. The problem is not with the score itself, since before saving it, it renders perfectly on the screen. (I know, I re-entered the pedal marks dozens of times.) I’m not sure how MuseScore can render a file perfectly when it’s open (pre-save/close), but mangle it upon re-opening. Potentially a serious bug, even though, at present, no one else seems to have encountered it, and only <i>Ch’ien</i> is affected.
</p>
<p>
<b>Summary</b>
</p>
<p>
While the final version of my two scores shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that MuseScore 2.0 allows one to create beautiful scores to exacting standards, it doesn’t always do so as efficiently as I believe it could. On the basis of my “never stuck” criterion, I give MuseScore 2.0 a solid 10/10, but issues with dynamics, hairpins and pedaling lower the mark to 8. The developers are, however, marvellously responsive to bug reports, suggestions and feature requests, so I expect that MuseScore will soon reach 10/10 in all areas concerning the creation of printable musical scores.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-57594565594305059452015-06-07T16:40:00.001-07:002015-06-25T23:50:34.992-07:002015 Dalton Camp Award submission<p>The following is an essay I submitted to the Friends of the CBC’s 2015 Dalton Camp Award. The contest subject was “The link between the media and democracy in Canada.” With a $10,000CAD prize, anyone in their right mind would have written an essay currying the favour of the Friends and the judges by re-hashing the role of the Fourth Estate and supporting the CBC to the hilt.<br />
</p><p>I am not in my right mind. For decades, the CBC has been out-of-touch with all but middle-class and upper Canadians. Its once-proud tradition of journalism–remember <i>The Fifth Estate</i> breaking Brian Mulroney’s Airbus kickback scandal?– has been drowned out by Pastor Mansbridge of <i>The National</i> nightly intoning the government-in-power’s party line. Intellectually, it has been so dumbed down that when I review, say, documentaries by Glenn Gould on YouTube, documentaries made in the ’60s and ’70s, I am dismayed to realize that in 2015, a man such as Gould would never be given free rein to occupy the airwaves with programs as profound as <i>The Idea of the North</i> or as erudite as <i>An Art of the Fugue</i>.<br />
</p><p>The notion that the CBC is still what it was in its glory days persists among liberal, educated Canadians. Many assert with pride (and a certain distasteful elistism) that they <i>only</i> listen to CBC–particularly the news– believing it to be the voice of all Canadians, linking rich and poor, urban and rural, educated and unschooled. One can reasonably assume that the Friends, and the Dalton Camp Award judges, are of this opinion. If my goal had been to make a stab at the $10,000, dispelling this persistent myth about present-day CBC and implicating it in the demise of democracy in Canada would clearly not have been the way to go about it.<br />
</p><p>Yet that is precisely what I did. Don’t get me wrong: I loved CBC radio when I was growing up. I would not be who I am today–intellectually, culturally, or politically–were it not for <i>Gilmour’s Albums, Off the Record, Eclectic Circus, The World at Six, Morningside, Ideas, The Royal Canadian Air Farce</i> (radio version) or Glenn Gould’s breathtakingly articulate documentaries. Through the medium of the CBC, I came to understand what Trudeau meant by a “just society”, and shared the quiet, assured pride Canadians felt about being part in it.<br />
</p><p>I submitted my essay as a sort of test to see whether those who believe the CBC is still what it was were open-minded, capable of accepting reasoned criticism, and unafraid to acknowledge that Canada, no longer a functioning democracy, became that way in part through a failure of the Fourth Estate. I suspected not, which doesn’t mean I didn’t hope to be proven wrong by winning.<br />
</p><p>Not having won proves nothing, of course, though I can’t help noticing that the winning essay stays well within the lines and steers clear of the fact that the link between the media and democracy in Canada is meaningful only if we have a democracy, which, as of September 12 2014, we unequivocally do not. The winning essay is well written and researched, though, and deserves a read (<a href="http://www.friends.ca/DCA/2015/SpencerKeys.">The Freedom to Jest: Protecting Our Democratic Right to Parody and Satire</a>).<br />
</p><p>The text of my essay as presented here is stripped of footnotes to aid readability. If you’d like to read the text intact, as submitted, a typeset copy in PDF format is available on my website <a href="http://www.schaffter.ca/pdf/Error-404.pdf">here</a>.<br />
</p><br />
<h2>Democracy: Error 404</h2><h3>Essay submitted to the 2015 Dalton Camp Award competition</h3><br />
<p>It’s Hallowe’en night, and Jack-o-lanterns are flickering on the street outside my window in Vanier, Ontario. The usual hookers have been chased from the sidewalk by trick-or-treaters dressed in Dollar Store costumes.<br />
</p><p>Never heard of Vanier? It’s the poor part of Ottawa, the one you don’t see on <i>The National.</i> A large portion of its residents are on social assistance. Alcoholism is rampant, as is crack use, and prostitution. Most of the housing is rental, with absentee landlords who collect tax credits for three years then flip the properties.<br />
</p><p>Vanier is just a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill, but politics is rarely a topic of conversation here. Residents of Vanier know it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always wins. Increasingly, better-off Canadians are feeling the same way. I recently saw a bumper sticker on an SUV loaded with kids and hockey gear: <i>If voting could change anything, it wouldn’t be legal.</i><br />
</p><p>Democracy exists to safeguard against tyranny, a situation that exists when too few hands hold too much power. Put another way, democracy is founded on the principle that all who are drawn to power will abuse it.<br />
</p><p>The distinguishing feature of democracy is that sovereign power rests in the hands of the governed. The people, in other words. Sovereignty, as defined by the 1648 treaties of Osnabrück and Münster–collectively, “The Peace of Westphalia”–entails self-governance, the acknowledged right of a country to enact legislation free of supranational interference.<br />
</p><p>Yet on September 12, 2014, the Canadian government, headed by a duly-elected Prime Minister, ratified a trade agreement with China that gives state-backed Chinese corporations the right to sue Canada when legislation passed at any level of government interferes with their profits.<br />
</p><p>This is not the first such agreement, called a FIPA (Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement), that Canada has signed. At last count, there are twenty-eight. Any one of them, arguably, erodes the sovereignty of Canadian democracy. What is different about the one with China is that when China isn’t happy with our legislation, they can sue us in camera. That means in secret, behind closed doors. More frightening, we, the the citizens of Canada, won’t even know when China institutes proceedings against us. Depending on how heavily China invests in Canada, resource management, healthcare, education, banking, and environmental and human rights legislation are no longer under our control.<br />
</p><p>It’s time to face an unpalatable truth: we no longer have a democracy in Canada, not by any definition of the word. Sovereign power does not rest uniquely with her peoples. The China-Canada FIPA forfeited that right.<br />
</p><p>How did we come to this? How did a once admired and respected nation allow itself to become the servant of a master other than its citizens? A master, moreover, with an atrocious record of human rights violations and environmental spoilage? More important, how is it most Canadians were blindsided by our loss of sovereignty?<br />
</p><p>The link between the media and democracy is supposed to be that democracy requires informed citizens, and the media informs them. Where, then, was the media in the period between the signing of FIPA and its ratification two years later? How is it so few Canadians even knew of its existence?<br />
</p><p>It is easy to point a finger at government. From the 2012 signing in Vladivostock to the press-release announcement of its ratification in 2014, the government did its best to stifle debate and keep FIPA out of the public eye. Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s blistering sixty-second briefing to the Speaker of the House on October 24 2012 was a lone cry in the wind.<br />
</p><p>But FIPA was a matter of public record after it was tabled in Parliament. Since it posed a serious threat to Canadian sovereignty, the national media should have been on it like white on rice. Yet despite mounting grassroots opposition, critiques by acknowledged experts, and petitions signed by tens of thousands of Canadians, the media remained virtually silent. The day of ratification, it ranked lower on The National than the shenanigans of Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, as the following Twitter posts remind us:<br />
<blockquote>L. Lea @YukonGale:<br />
<i>“The National is half over and FIPA hasn’t yet been mentioned.”</i><br />
<br />
The National @CBCTheNational:<br />
<i>“Thanks for your tweet. Mentioned at the 20 minute mark in the program.”</i><br />
<br />
L. Lea @YukonGale:<br />
<i>“Sorry, I must have blinked. You don’t think that was more pertinent to the country than the Ford story?”</i><br />
</blockquote></p><p>One could be forgiven for suspecting the CBC, a Crown corporation supposedly at arm’s length from the government, was in this case anything but. However, the failure of mainstream media to serve its role in Canadian democracy runs deeper than the seemingly complicit silence over FIPA.<br />
</p><p>The link between democracy and the media depends upon a necessary fiction, that of journalistic impartiality. We expect significant news items to be reported accurately and in an unbiased manner. The media, however, cannot do this. The very manner in which it reports the news shapes public opinion. Which stories are considered newsworthy, how many seconds or column inches they receive, and how stories are prioritized are powerful tools for manipulating public perception.<br />
</p><p>Add to this the problem of ownership concentration in Canadian media, and the untenability of the fiction becomes obvious. One wonders how anyone was ever gulled by it. Whoever holds the purse strings to the media controls the flow of information to the public. This is as true of the CBC–say it isn’t so!–as it is of CTV (a subsidiary of BCE, the parent company of Bell Canada), Sun Media (a subsidiary of Québécor) or Postmedia (owner of all the former Canwest/Global publishing properties). Ownership concentration has been business as usual in the Canadian media for over a hundred years. In his heyday, convicted fraudster Conrad Black owned 59 Canadian dailies (55% of the market), most of which were acquired from Southam Inc., a newspaper empire founded in 1904.<br />
</p><p>The most troubling weakness in the link between the media and democracy in Canada is manifested at election time. The fault is not entirely the media’s. Blame lies in a flaw that’s woven into in our electoral system: the Prime Minister is chosen by default. The leader of the party with the greatest number of seats in Parliament becomes, de facto, the head of government, putting Canadians in the position of casting a one-size-fits-all ballot for their local MP, the party they would like to hold majority in Parliament, and the leader of the nation.<br />
</p><p>Our system of representational democracy is supposed to reflect a combined, upward expression of the will of Canadians. Ideally, we vote for the candidate whom we believe will best represent our riding’s interests in Parliament. Typically, this candidate is aligned with a political party that embraces a particular ideology, such that the sum total of party representation in Parliament represents the national political zeitgeist. The leader of the party with the majority of seats becomes Prime Minister, not because s/he was elected to the position, but because s/he was chosen by party members as the embodiment of the virtues and aspirations for Canada the party espouses.<br />
</p><p>During elections, the media, both regional and national, unfailingly focus on partisan politics. Intentionally or not, they paint a simplistic, top-down view of the electoral process, one that trivializes voting for best representation, encouraging, instead, placing bets on a winner. Election coverage resembles Queen’s Plate day at Woodbine. The field is reduced to two front runners and a long shot, usually the NDP. The breeding, background, and win rate of party leaders are trotted out like racing forms. Weaknesses are attacked with the zeal of piranhas flaying a hapless cow. Party standings in the polls–the odds–are reported daily.<br />
</p><p>This last is particularly destructive because it fosters strategic voting. A strategic vote–a vote against something–is no vote at all. It is a response to feeling backed into a corner, compelled to use one’s ballot to prevent an outcome rather than pro-actively support one. This kind of binary choice–back the winner or skew the race–isn’t democracy, it’s playing the odds, and calls into doubt the authenticity of election results. Combined with gerrymandering and a lack of transparent mechanisms for investigating electoral irregularities, it is theoretically possible for Canadians to elect a Prime Minister known to be disdainful of democracy and seem to grant him a majority in Parliament despite his party having less than forty percent of the popular vote.<br />
</p><p>Well, perhaps not so theoretically.<br />
</p><p>The media’s role in democracy does not end with elections, though all too often it does. Press releases and wire-service stories stand in for real journalism. Facts are reported without taking into account that reporting is not just about facts, but the dynamic interplay between them. Informed analysis is required to make news stories meaningful and set them in context. Such analysis is generally missing from the daily news reports Canadians rely on. Even when it is not, the analysis is often perfunctory, and significant stories are allowed to die afterwards. CBC radio, for example, broadcast a discussion between treaty expert Gus Van Harten and David Fung of the Canada-China Business Council shortly after the signing of FIPA in 2012. It raised alarms about the constitutionality of FIPA and its damaging impact on Canadian sovereignty, but there the story stopped. Despite demands for Parliamentary debate, despite tens of thousands of petition signatures, despite Trade Minister Ed Fast’s assertion in May 2014 that only “technicalities” stood in the way of final ratification, scarcely a peep was heard about FIPA on the CBC, other than a blip or two occasioned by the Hupacasath judicial challenge–Ed Fast’s technicalities.<br />
</p><p>“Much has been written over the past two years about the impact the Canada-China FIPA,” says The Council of Canadians blog of September 12, 2014, but if it has, it certainly hasn’t been in the mainstream media. A Google search for news items about FIPA between January 2013, four months after the original signing, and September 2014, the date of ratification, turns up practically nothing originating from Canadian news sources. My downstairs neighbour, a school teacher who regularly turns to the CBC for news, was completely unaware of FIPA’s damaging provisions, let alone that only the Green Party had denounced it in Parliament, called the government to task, demanded debate, and stood up for the sovereignty of Canada.<br />
</p><p>“Media” in the 21st century entails more than the traditional, gated outlets of print and broadcast. Social media and the Internet provide a free alternative for disseminating information and fostering debate. Valiant efforts were made by bloggers, the Green Party of Canada, Leadnow.ca, The Council of Canadians and other advocacy groups to keep FIPA foremost in the minds of Canadians, but to what effect? The deal was ratified. One of two conclusions that may be drawn from this. Either social media and the Internet are not yet the effective tools for democracy they promised to be two decades ago, or the government is contemptuous of democracy and unconcerned with the will of the Canadian people. The latter seems more likely. An Ipsos Reid survey conducted for The Vancouver Sun in December, 2012, revealed that 59% of Canadians opposed a free-trade deal with China, 68% wanted the Conservative government to block the sale of Canadian firms to foreign investors, and 74% felt the governing Tories should stop acquisitions made by foreign, state-owned enterprises.<br />
</p><p>Even with the traditional media reporting these findings, even with the free and open Internet striving to keep Canadians informed, even with Elizabeth May’s clarion calls in Parliament a matter of public record on YouTube, the present Conservative government, led by Stephen Harper, signed away the sovereignty of the Canadian people.<br />
</p><p>The link between democracy and the media in Canada, however imperfect, is now irrelevant. For there to be a link, there must be a democracy. But like a browser URL you click on that results in “Error 404: Page not found”, when I click “Canada” this Hallowe’en night in Vanier, up pops “Error 404: Democracy not found”.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-56567736032586153402015-01-01T20:45:00.000-08:002015-01-16T12:40:24.799-08:002015: The Year Everything Breaks<p>Very probably I shouldn’t write this post. I’m not a psychic. I rarely make predictions about anything. Experience has taught me just how bad I am at it. But I have a feeling 2015 will be the year everything breaks, and I want to make sure the feeling is on record. I hope I’m wrong. Then again, perhaps not. The way the world is going, change will only follow on collapse. My intuition may just be that everything is going to change.<br />
</p><p>The world is already broken, of course. It’s hardly news. Capitalism is imploding. Whole countries teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. The sleeping giant, Russia, is stirring again. China has abandoned its Middle Kingdom insularity and seeks to dominate the world economic stage. Much of Africa is now a post-colonial cesspool, ravaged by AIDS, Ebola, and genocide. The populations of Central and South America live in fear of kidnapping, torture, and murder. The citizens of Britain can’t walk to the corner store without being tracked by CCTV cameras. Totalitarian governments in Southeast Asia are courted for child labour. America is ruled by a handful of elites who together hold more wealth than 99% of the rest of its population. The Middle-East is a killing field for warring fundamentalists and oil-dependent foreign interests. Sovereignty is dead in many countries, with legislative power handed over to trans-global corporations or the World Bank. Everywhere, the very rich are getting very richer while the very poor sink deeper into hunger, thirst, disease, and desperation.<br />
</p><p>Our functional vocabularies have shrunk to Newspeak size. Memory Holes are growing, and Big Lies pass for journalism. Liberal education, once a virtue, is dismissed, while greed, a vice, is fervently promoted. Debate on almost anything is now impossible. Illiterate opinions pass for arguments, and futile online rants replace the rhetoric of discourse.<br />
</p><p>Advertising has become the propaganda tool for a new corporate order. Citizens already crushed by debt are pressured into purchasing on credit just to bolster “The Economy,” a tool for prosperity that’s turned into an overseer’s whip.<br />
</p><p>Sexual liberation, so desperately needed to cast off the yoke of Victorian morality, has devolved into obligatory hedonism. Feminism has been cynically corrupted by the entertainment media. The liberated woman now is <i>All About That Bass</i>, with “...that boom boom that all the boys chase” and “All the right junk in all the right places.” Racism and homophobia are as rampant as they ever were.<br />
</p><p>Anomie and disempowerment afflict the globe. The Internet, which in its infancy we thought would usher in a golden age, is cancerous with narcissistic social media. Smart phones fool people into thinking they’re connected with the world, while addiction to the tiny digital displays cuts off the opportunity for real interaction. They and their bigger brothers, tablets, are like crack, a drug whose high, apparently, consists of simply craving more.<br />
</p><p>Non-medicinal use of psychotropic drugs is pandemic. Krokodil, a brew of match-tips, gasoline, and codeine that devours the body from inside, has left its native Russia and is popping up in North America and Western Europe. Alcohol continues to enjoy most-favoured status despite millenia of family breakdown, ruined lives, and violence, while marijuana, peaceable and medically useful, still earns its sellers and consumers prison terms.<br />
</p><p>The world is undergoing climate change, but rather than preparing for it, right-wing PR think-tanks and environmentalists shout insults at each other, neither group acknowledging that whether God or Man’s to blame, the process has begun and needs a global strategy to deal with the consequences.<br />
</p><p>Video games and CGI have saturated an entire generation with hyper-real images of brutality unknown as entertainment since Caligula and Commodus. In real life, students slaughter classmates, fathers massacre their wives and children, young men with an axe to grind spray theatres and restaurants and shopping malls with automatic weapons.<br />
</p><p>The Earth is being raped for resources a fool can see won’t last. Ecosystems vital to the planet’s health are being destroyed for short-term profit. Monsanto manufactures costly seed whose fruit is barren so that farmers can’t replant and have to buy new seed each year. Biotech unleashes GMOs into the wild with no regard for consequences. Fresh water, once abundant and the property of all, is dwindling; profiteers are scrambling to make it a commodity, like gold.<br />
</p><p>If you’ve read this far, you might be wondering what’s left to break if 2015 is the year everything breaks. I suspect what my intuition is telling me is that the cracks in the facade are widening, the lies are getting more transparent, the fictions that allow us to ignore the truth are stretched to snapping.<br />
</p><p>The source of nearly all our present woes is greed, and the wealthy’s mania for power. Global revolution, impossible before the Internet, may be the only way to stop them. I’m no fan of revolutions. They’re bloody, innocents die, and the inevitable counter-revolutions often leave things in a worse state than before. Alternatively—and this is what I believe—the whole stochastic house of cards we call the global economy is about to tumble down, with cataclysmic impact on all but a very few, self-sufficient nations. The mighty American Empire will likely be the hardest hit, given the obscene disparity between the numbers of its rich and poor.<br />
</p><p>Let’s hope my intuition is as bad as usual.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-70281335835554287332013-09-16T22:40:00.000-07:002013-09-18T23:00:01.657-07:00And He Built a Crooked House...<p>The mall experience is something I avoid whenever possible. Rare’s the time I find what I’m looking for. But last Saturday, I donned my biking gloves and knapsack and headed over to the St-Laurent Shopping Centre.<br />
</p><p>I had three items on my list: ink for my printer, new jeans, and a new pair of sneakers.<br />
</p><p>St-Laurent is as horrible as any other mall. It’s an expressionist nightmare where no corridor proceeds in parallel with any other. Entrances and exits, or the escalators up and down, seem to recede as you approach them. The only thing that’s missing for a truly <i>Kaligari</i>-esque experience are looming shadows on the walls, and that’s only because the weirdly artificial light casts no shadows at all.<br />
</p><p>It’s a house of mirrors, too. Halls that led you to the shoe store yesterday today deposit you outside the food court—Heinlein’s <i>And He Built a Crooked House</i> made manifest.<br />
</p><p>The Printwell service counter is conveniently located just inside a southern entrance. I approve of Printwell. They exist to screw the system, filling up your printer cartridge for a fraction of the cost of a replacement. My old bird’s been going for a couple of years now thanks to them.<br />
</p><p>I dropped my cartridge off, and was told it would be ready in about a half an hour, time to pick up jeans and sneakers. I know my jean size (30-34) and my shoe size (12), so it seemed a simple matter of finding what I needed on the shelves.<br />
</p><p>I started with the sneakers. All my life, I’ve favoured canvas running shoes. They’re comfortable, cheap, and practical. I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy, so they don’t look out of place. And they’ve been around forever. Bradbury’s <i>Dandelion Wine</i> devotes a whole chapter to them. Besides, fashionable footwear angers me. I want function over branding. I’m not vain enough to think a logo magically transforms me into something that I’m not.<br />
</p><p>St-Laurent has seven shoe stores, four sporting goods stores, and two department stores—more than enough to find a pair of size twelve canvas runners. I like high-tops, but I’m not that fussy; ordinary low cuts are fine.<br />
</p><p>Could I find what I was looking for? Not a chance. I added a mile or so of wear to my already worn-out sneakers traipsing through the mall, checking every one of those thirteen stores. Only three had canvas sneakers. The offerings at Payless Shoes had quilted padding and cost 3x what I paid the last time for unquilted ones. Footlocker had Converse, but the sales person shook his head when I enquired about size twelve.<br />
</p><p>I felt a glimmer of hope at SportCheck, where they had both Converse and size twelves. The glimmer faded when I asked price: sixty-five dollars. “You’re paying for the name,” the clerk said sympathetically when I pointed out the shoes were made of canvas, rubber, and a little bit of foam.<br />
</p><p>If I’m paying for a name, that name had better be along the lines of Stradivarius or Fabergé, not something as supremely inconsequential as eight letters in a circle on the ankles of my running shoes!<br />
</p><p>Sneakers off the list, I attacked the jeans. Besides the two department stores, St-Laurent boasts eighteen clothing retailers, including two that specialize in jeans. The plethora of choices offered was staggering: boot cut, straight cut, classic cut, slim fit, comfortable fit, high waist, low-riders, button fly, zipper... Some were even ordinary denim blue. But the only choice that mattered—30-34—was nowhere to be found. Not in one of twenty stores.<br />
</p><p>I couldn’t believe it. There I was, in a temple to commerce, in a day and age where economic pundits and other lackeys of the über-rich prattle on about competition and consumer choice, and not one single competitive price or useful choice was to be found.<br />
</p><p>Angered at this sham of “giving consumers what they want”, and disgusted by the propaganda that supports it, I went back to Printwell, paid a reasonable price for my unbranded black ink, and left.<br />
</p><p>Outside, the sun cast comfortingly real shadows on the ground.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-35402735743967487542013-08-19T11:49:00.000-07:002013-08-20T13:12:54.537-07:00Cooking Poor:Making yoghurt at home<p>If your reaction to the subject of this article is <i>Ew, I don’t like yoghurt,</i> then go away. I’ll be preaching to the choir.<br />
</p><p>Yoghurt is miracle. Milk plus some bacteria equals one of the oldest treats known to mankind. While I’m sure it’s terribly good for you, as so many claim, what matters most is that it’s delicious and keeps for weeks. I may use coffee to kickstart my brain, but it’s that morning bowl of yoghurt that makes my days worth facing.<br />
</p><p>If you embrace the principles of “living poor,” making yoghurt at home fits right in.<br />
</p><p>First off, you’re manufacturing something yourself rather than paying someone to do it for you—in this case, the dairy industry. The people who profit when you buy processed milk products at the supermarket aren’t dairy farmers, but stockholders invested in supermarket chains and the food conglomerates supplying them. While we can’t avoid the dairy industry when it comes to basics like milk, butter, and cheese, we can give it the finger by making yoghurt at home.<br />
</p><p>Secondly, the environmental damage caused by unnecessary processing of foods is reduced every time you make a product marketers would have you thinking it’s easier, or better, or faster, or simpler to buy—yoghurt, especially flavoured yoghurts, being a classic example.<br />
</p><p>Making yoghurt is no trouble at all, and litre for litre costs the same as milk. Where I live, a container of supermarket yoghurt comparable in flavour to what I make at home costs four times what I pay for the equivalent amount of milk.<br />
</p><p>Yoghurt enthusiasts on the Web have their hearts in the right place, but may be doing a disservice because of their excessive emphasis on getting temperatures perfect. There are thousands of articles out there telling you to heat the milk to such-and-such a precise temperature, then let it cool to such-and-such another precise temperature, then let it incubate at yet another precise temperature.<br />
</p><p><i>Bollocks!</i> In thirty years of making yoghurt, I have never touched a thermometer. Here’s the skinny on how to make real, no-fuss, no-worry yoghurt.<br />
</p><p>Pour any quanitity of milk you like into a thick-bottomed pot. Heat, stirring contantly, until it begins to foam. Reduce the heat and simmer for two minutes, still stirring constantly. Milk has an awful tendency to boil over.<br />
</p><p>Remove the pot from the element and let the milk cool until it passes the baby-bottle wrist test, typically half an hour.<br />
</p><p>Pour the milk into a clean bowl and stir in a tablespoon or so of your last batch of yoghurt. If you’re making yoghurt for the very first time, buy a small container of good, unflavoured commercial yoghurt and use a tablespoon of that instead.<br />
</p><p>Cover the bowl with a lid or plate, and set it in the oven with the oven light turned on. Leave for 12 hours.<br />
</p><p><i>Voilà!</i> A bowl of yoghurt, ready to be cooled. I usually pass a whisk through it a couple of times to incorporate any whey (the clear liquid that rises to the top) before transfering it to a smaller pot for storage in the fridge.<br />
</p><p>The consistency of homemade yoghurt is a little runnier than commercial offerings, which often use lecithin, egg-white powder, and other thickeners. Why, I do not know. Extending the product, maybe, so manufacturers can squeeze another dollar out of a litre of milk? At any rate, the 2-minute simmering evaporates excess water from the milk and ensures a thick, unctuous, honest yoghurt.<br />
</p><p>The flavour is generally better than bought yoghurt, and you can increase the tanginess by letting the yoghurt incubate longer. I like a good, “bright” yoghurt, and have found 12 hours to be just about right.<br />
</p><p>The essence of living poor, cooking poor, is summed up by making yoghurt at home. It costs less than buying, it robs food conglomerates of inauthentically-generated profit, it contributes to the well-being of the Earth by reducing wasteful and destructive over-processing, it diminishes the carbon footprint of shipping, and it tastes fantastic. How perfect is that?<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-27548594904148005112013-08-09T10:17:00.001-07:002013-08-09T10:18:07.917-07:00Cooking Poor:Whole wheat quick breads<p>Bread. I adore the stuff no matter what form it comes in. I’ve often said a bread and water diet would present no hardship for me, provided the bread were good.<br />
</p><p>When you’re living poor, bread really is the staff of life, a superb source of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, complex carbohydrates and dietary fibre. All of which is secondary to the fact that bread is filling, something that’s important when you’re trying to spend the least amount of money possible on food.<br />
</p><p>In the broadest terms, bread is nothing more than flour or meal mixed with liquid to make a dough, then heated. Every culture in the world makes bread in some form or another, whether it’s French <i>baguettes</i>, Jewish <i>challah</i>, Mexican tortillas, Lebanese pita, or Indian nan.<br />
</p><p>For most North Americans, bread means a yeast-risen loaf—basically, the stuff you buy in plastic bags at the supermarket. The problem there, of course, is that you’re paying an industry to make something that you could be making yourself, and the cheap offerings, like Wonderbread, simply don't deliver the flavour and nutrition of an honest loaf.<br />
</p><p>Baking beautiful, whole wheat loaves is an activity I do regularly, but I won’t lie: It’s a lengthy process that ties you to the kitchen for a couple of hours, and it’s a skill that takes practice. Well worth it, but even we dedicated bakers need alternatives to yeast-risen breads for those times when we want a simple, no-fuss loaf.<br />
</p><p>So-called “quick breads” are breads leavened with baking soda or baking powder instead of yeast. Other than <a href="http://missives-from-the-edge.blogspot.ca/2010/10/simple-joys-of-irish-soda-bread.html">Irish soda bread</a>, which is <i>sui generis</i>, they require sugar in some form or another in order to produce a good texture, or “crumb”, as bakers call it. Consequently, most quick bread recipes you come across are quite sweet and fall into the dessert category, like zucchini bread or date-and-nut loaf. While delicious, they’re not as useful dietarily as regular yeast breads. For example, you wouldn’t want to make a tuna sandwich on banana bread.<br />
</p><p>I made it a project of mine some years ago to come up with a quick loaf that could stand in for yeast bread and be as suitable dripping with marmalade as bracketing a tomato sandwich. The following two recipes are the fruits of my labours. Despite their seeming similarity, each produces a distinctly different loaf. The one with corn syrup has the sturdier crumb of the two and a faint sweetness that brings out the flavour of the whole wheat. The molasses loaf has a slightly denser crumb with a paradoxically more delicate texture. The molasses does not predominate, but adds complexity and richness. Both toast beautifully—an essential quality in any useful bread—and both make great sandwiches.<br />
<p>A couple of baking tips:<br />
<i>Always sift your dry ingredients,</i> no matter that many cookbooks swear it isn’t necessary. Aside from ensuring even distribution of the flour and leavening agent, sifting loosens and aerates the flour, which benefits every kind of baking.<br />
<i>When a recipe calls for buttermilk,</i> which is expensive, put a tablespoon or so of vinegar in the measuring cup, then fill it to the desired measure with milk. Let sit for five minutes to sour.<br />
<i>When a recipe calls a sticky liquid,</i> such as molasses, along with oil, use the same measuring cup for both, and measure the oil first. Afterwards, the sticky stuff will pour out cleanly, leaving only a small drop at the lip.<br />
<i>Do not overbake.</i> Ever. Dry baked goods are nearly always the result of overbaking, not an inferior recipe.<br />
</p><p><h2 style="text-align: center; font-family: sans; font-size: 110%">Whole Wheat Quick Bread #1</h2></p><p>1-1/2 cups whole-wheat flour<br />
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour<br />
2 teaspoons baking powder<br />
1 teaspoon baking soda<br />
1 teaspoon salt<br />
1-1/2 cups buttermilk<br />
1/4 cup corn syrup<br />
1/4 cup vegetable oil<br />
</p><p>Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9-1/2 x 5 inch loaf pan or equivalent.<br />
</p><p>Sift together the flours, baking soda, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Make a well in the middle.<br />
</p><p>In another bowl, mix together the buttermilk, oil, and corn syrup. Pour into the well. Stir just enough to combine. Transfer the batter to the loaf pan.<br />
</p><p>Bake 45-50 minutes. Turn the loaf out onto a wire rack and cover with a damp cloth while it cools.<br />
</p><p><h2 style="text-align: center; font-family: sans; font-size: 110%">Whole Wheat Quick Bread #2</h2></p><p>2 cups whole-wheat flour<br />
1 cup all-purpose flour<br />
2 tsp baking powder<br />
1 tsp baking soda<br />
1 tsp salt<br />
1-1/2 cups buttermilk<br />
1/4 cup molasses<br />
1/4 cup vegetable oil<br />
</p><p>Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9-1/2 x 5 inch loaf pan or equivalent.<br />
</p><p>Sift together the flours, baking soda, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Make a well in the middle.<br />
</p><p>In another bowl, mix together the buttermilk, oil, and molasses. Pour into the well. Stir just enough to combine. Transfer the batter to the loaf pan.<br />
</p><p>Bake 40-50 minutes. Turn the loaf out onto a wire rack and cover with a damp cloth while it cools.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-3368202103254414152013-07-25T10:04:00.001-07:002013-07-28T23:10:38.496-07:00My excellent neighbours—an object lesson<p>I want to hold myself up as an object of ridicule and humiliation. I would also like to hold myself up as an object lesson.<br />
<p>We were having a heat-wave the summer John and James and I moved into our apartment. The next-door neighbours had—have—a swimming pool. I didn’t know them; I could only see them over the fence, splashing about in their oasis of turquoise bliss.<br />
</p><p>I’m big on sharing and hard on hoarding, and it seemed unconscionable to me, during one of Ottawa’s filthy heat waves, not to offer us escape from the swelter and humidity. I judged them harshly, those people I didn’t know, and wrote an article, <a href="http://missives-from-the-edge.blogspot.ca/2010/07/swimming-pool-communist.html">Swimming pool communist</a>, in which I painted them in shades contemptuous and damning. I accused them of being bourgeois, hermetic, smug, and insensitive to the reality of Vanier, which is mostly Franco slum.<br />
</p><p>Three years have passed, and for three years, that momentary eruption of heat-induced name-calling has been sticking in my craw. <i>Communist</i> is an article I should never have written, at least not with our neighbours as the springboard. I was so very wrong to judge them.<br />
</p><p>Their names are Carole (accent on the last syllable) and René. They’ve lived in the same lovingly-maintained house for thirty-five years with never a thought of flipping it for profit. They’ve weathered the changes inflicted on Vanier by the city of Ottawa, from working-class quarter to crackwhore ridden slum. Not just weathered, but adapted to with humour, grace, and understanding. René’s been in roofing and construction since forever. Carole embodies everything the archetypal version of a mother, now a grandmother, should be. Their marriage had some rocky patches, but they persevered, as couples used to do, and now they complete each other in a partnership to warm the heart.<br />
</p><p>I properly met Carole the first time at a yard sale. I’d been looking for a sink strainer, one of those slotted plastic inserts you tuck in a corner of the sink to collect vegetable peelings and whatnot, that have inexplicably vanished from the store shelves. Lo and behold, there on a table on their lawn was the very thing for which I'd been hunting. Carole and I exchanged a few words in French and English, which is pretty much the norm in linguistically schizophrenic Vanier, where anglophones are anglophone but francophones are fluently bilingual. The nature of the object I was buying prompted kitchen talk, whence Carole and I discovered a shared love of baking.<br />
</p><p>I don't recall who took that first plate of cookies or slice of pie next door, but soon enough, sharing and comparing what we whipped up in the oven turned us into real neighbours. Carole invited me to help make doughnuts for some little-league hockey blow-out; I showed her the secrets of perfect pie pastry. One thing led to another, and soon enough, Carole, René, and I were friends.<br />
</p><p>They are a couple who exemplify decency, generosity, and open-heartedness. They are as comfortable asking for neighbourly help—say, cat-sitting—as they are offering it: the propane barbeque I so love in the summer was a gift, someone's rusting piece of junk restored to working order by René. They fix, recycle, and re-use everything. What they no longer have use for, they offer first to neighbours before donating to the Sally Ann. Not for them the <i>Brave New World</i> mantra of consumerism, “Ending is better than mending.”<br />
</p><p>(You haven't read <i>BNW</i>? Go back to school! Oh, right. . . they don’t teach it in school anymore. How convenient for our corporate masters.)<br />
</p><p>There’s something wonderfully, almost magically, anachronistic about Carole and René. René goes bowling twice a week. Carole still hangs her laundry on the line, winter and summer. She kvetches about being a widow during hockey season. He rolls his eyes when she makes him come with her to Fabricville. He recycles old metal. She makes quilts—<i>gorgeous</i> quilts—for newborns at the Children’s Hospital and army veterans. They enrol their grandkids in soapbox derbies. Soapbox derbies! Who even knows what those are anymore? And they do everything together. Carole’s as handy with tools as René is with the washing.<br />
</p><p>Two years ago, René built a covered porch for Carole, a place for her to sip her tea, quilt, and watch the world go by. I’m often invited to sit with her. We’ve got a system going that beats telephones and texting. When she wants me to come over, she stands at her back door and rings a little crystal bell she picked up god-knows-where. The tinkling’s my signal that it’s time for tea and chatting. René, leery of the eccentricity at first, himself now rings from time to time—always way too long—and grins from ear to ear when, summoned, I appear.<br />
</p><p>So go on, laugh at me. Call me names. Accuse me of hypocrisy. I deserve it. I’m always holding forth about not judging people till you know them, yet three years ago I looked across a fence at people I had yet to meet and damned them publicly, or as publicly as blogs that no one reads allow. I could not have been more wrong, either in the making or the substance of my judgment.<br />
</p><p>When you look across a fence, be it real or virtual—a border or a shallow strip of muddy water or an economic difference—don’t judge the people on the other side until you get to know them.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-65969526923853544292013-07-20T12:20:00.000-07:002013-07-21T22:38:46.942-07:00Cooking Poor:White sauce variations<p>In my last post, I discussed <a href="http://http://missives-from-the-edge.blogspot.ca/2013/07/cooking-poor-white-sauce-creamed.html">creamed vegetables</a>, which are a delicious way to make your vegetables go further. Flavour is everything when you’re living poor because ill-prepared or tasteless food has a dampening effect on one’s spirits. The difference between living poor and living in poverty is that the former emphasizes living, while the latter emphasizes deprivation. Attitude is everything. Whether you’re poor by choice or circumstance, extracting the best from everything you buy brings satisfaction, pride, and even joy.<br />
</p><p>Once you’ve mastered <a href="http://missives-from-the-edge.blogspot.ca/2013/07/cooking-poorbasic-white-sauce.html">white sauce</a>—and mastered is really too strong a verb for something so easy—you have at your disposal a foundation for endless variations to accompany meat, poultry, and fish. Overall, when living poor, flesh is a terrible economy and should be avoided. However, when you do come across specials in the supermarket freezer, it makes a wonderful treat, even if the quality is usually not Grade A. That’s where the art of saucing comes in.<br />
</p><p>You’re really only limited by your imagination when it comes turning white sauce into a delicious partner for other foods. The French have all sorts of fancy names for the variations: <i>Mornay</i> for cheese sauce, <i>Forestière</i> for mushroom sauce, etc. I prefer the common, descriptive English names, which make the sauces sound more down-to-earth and accessible to home cooks. There’s probably a bit of reverse snobbery involved, too.<br />
</p><p>Here are four suggestions for things you can do with white sauce to get you started.<br />
</p><p><b><i>Cheese Sauce:</i></b> Add 3/4 - 1 cup of full-flavoured, grated cheese(s) to 1 cup of white sauce. Season with a pinch each of cayenne pepper and dry mustard. White sauce brings out the flavour of cheese and lets you get the most out of those plastic-wrapped rectangles sold in supermarkets.<br />
</p><p>Aside from being a classic accompaniment to cauliflower, which is inexpensive and can be grown locally throughout most of North America—two qualities always to watch for in your food—cheese sauce is fabulous over meat loaf.<br />
<p><b><i>Mushroom Sauce:</i></b> Also called mushroom gravy. Add 3/4 cup of chopped <i>raw</i> mushrooms to 1 cup of white sauce and heat gently over low heat for 10 minutes. Season with generous gratings of nutmeg; mushrooms love nutmeg.<br />
</p><p>Mushrooms have practically no nutritional value, so they’re best kept off the menu when you’re living poor. However, the deliciousness of mushroom sauce justifies their occasional purchase, especially since the quantity is small. Also, I'm not sure why raw mushrooms produce a better flavour than cooked—it seems to break culinary common sense—but they do.<br />
</p><p>Mushroom gravy is the perfect sauce to serve with oven-broiled chicken (recipe below).<br />
</p><p><b><i>Egg Sauce:</i></b> Increase the quantity of milk in the basic white sauce recipe by 1/3 cup. Add two chopped, hardboiled eggs and season with a splash of Tobasco. The Tobasco adds no heat, and its flavour is essential to the sauce.<br />
</p><p>Egg sauce is one of the great comfort foods, and is the sauce of choice to go over salmon loaf (recipe below), an oft-overlooked traditional poor-man’s food.<br />
</p><p><b><i>Parsley Sauce:</i></b> Add 1/3 -1/2 cup chopped curly parsley to the white sauce and let it warm for a few minutes. Aside from being excellent with fish, parsley sauce over plain, boiled potatoes is a real treat.<br />
</p><p>Curly parsley should be part of every economical kitchen. It’s inexpensive to buy, and can even be grown in a pot indoors. It keeps for ages in the refrigerator, and is a great herb for rounding out the flavour of dishes that “seem to be missing something”. Plus it’s loaded with iron.<br />
</p><p>Don’t make the foodie mistake of thinking Italian flat-leaf parsley is superior to curly parsley. Italian parsley has a pepperiness that’s works with some dishes, but is entirely inappropriate for others. Both are delicious, but real cooks, as opposed to Food Network junkies, know when to use which.<br />
</p><p><h2 style="text-align: center; font-family: sans; font-size: 110%">Oven-broiled Chicken</h2></p><p>3 - 4 lb chicken<br />
3 tbsp oil<br />
freshly cracked pepper<br />
salt<br />
<p>Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
</p><p>Cut the chicken into parts. Lightly oil a shallow baking dish; glass is best, I find. Rub the chicken pieces with the remaining oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place the chicken skin side up in the oiled dish and bake until just done, approximately 30 - 45 minutes. Do not under any circumstance overcook.<br />
<p>For whatever reason, this simple way of doing chicken is the best. I find it preferable to roasting a whole chicken. The skin is crispy, the flavour rich and honest, and the flesh nice and moist.<br />
</p><p><h2 style="text-align: center; font-family: sans; font-size: 110%">Salmon Loaf</h2></p><p>3 tins salmon, drained<br />
1/2 cup breadcrumbs<br />
4 tbsp soft butter<br />
1 tbsp chopped curly parsley<br />
1 onion, diced fine<br />
salt and pepper<br />
Worcestershire sauce<br />
2 eggs, slightly beaten<br />
</p><p>Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
</p><p>Mix all the ingredients in a bowl with your hands. Pat into a buttered loaf pan (again, I find glass is best). Set the loaf pan in 1 inch of hot water in larger pan and bake 30 - 35 minutes. Let the loaf rest a few minutes before slicing.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-46244092641523124692013-07-16T09:29:00.000-07:002013-07-16T21:17:54.288-07:00Cooking Poor:White sauce, creamed vegetables<p>The French refer to White Sauce, which I wrote about <a href="http://missives-from-the-edge.blogspot.ca/2013/07/cooking-poorbasic-white-sauce.html">here</a>, as a “mother sauce” because it provides the foundation for a host of variations. If you’re living poor, it’s a miracle for stretching food that costs only pennies. Your grandmother knew it. If you’re lucky, your mom knew it, too.<br />
</p><p>These days, white sauce isn’t something home cooks whip up regularly for weekday meals. More’s the pity. So-called creamed dishes—meats, leftovers, and particularly vegetables added to a basic white sauce—make great comfort food. They can be served as a side, or as a main dish spooned over rice or slices of toast. Excellent “living poor” food that makes your leftovers and vegetables go twice as far.<br />
</p><p>Unadulterated white sauce has a particular affinity for cooked vegetables, which reveal unexpected flavours when the two come together. Root vegetables like carrots or turnips become less aggressive and develop a pleasant sweetness. Scalloped potatoes (sliced potatoes and onions baked in white sauce) are their own brand of delicious. Equally good, if less fancy, are cubed, cooked potatoes added directly to the sauce—useful to know when you’re down to just a few shrivelling spuds. Green and yellow vegetables like peas, beans, celery, corn, and squashes undergo subtle transformations that reveal new sides to their character. Spinach and chard loose any residual bitterness and turn comfortingly rich. Anything in the cabbage family can be creamed, including broccoli, as can boiled white or yellow onions.<br />
</p><p>All that’s required for creamed vegetables is a quantity of white sauce and a quantity of cooked vegetables. The basic recipe for white sauce gives one cup, but it can be doubled endlessly. The vegetables should be cubed or sliced, not too thinly, and cooked simply by steaming or boiling. Combine the two in the pot you use to make the sauce and keep warm over low heat so the mixture doesn’t boil.<br />
</p><p>It often happens that when you add the vegetables, the sauce becomes a little too thick. Thin it with small amounts of milk, which can be cold, to bring it to the desired consistency.<br />
</p><p>A favourite creamed dish of mine is cabbage. Cabbages are a vegetable of choice when you’re living poor, at least here in Canada, because they’re inexpensive, filling, and nutritious. What’s more, they grow everywhere, ship easily, require minimal refrigeration, and keep for ages—qualities we should look for in our supermarket produce in order to slow the destruction of planet Earth. Reducing the harm done when money exchanges hands is one of the guiding principles of living poor.<br />
</p><p>Here’s my gussied-up version of creamed cabbage, the one I use when serving guests.<br />
</p><p><h2 style="text-align: center; font-family: sans; font-size: 110%">Creamed Cabbage</h2></p><p>4 tbsp butter<br />
4 tbsp flour<br />
1-3/4 cups hot milk<br />
1/2 tsp salt<br />
freshly cracked pepper<br />
nutmeg<br />
1 small or 1/2 large head cabbage<br />
buttered breadcrumbs<br />
</p><p>Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
</p><p>Shred cabbage, place in a large, heavy-bottomed pot, add a little water, and steam, covered, for 20 minutes. Drain and transfer to a casserole.<br />
</p><p>Make a <a href="http://missives-from-the-edge.blogspot.ca/2013/07/cooking-poorbasic-white-sauce.html">white sauce</a> of the butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper. Season well with freshly grated nutmeg. Pour over the cabbage, cover with buttered breadcrumbs, and bake until bubbly and golden brown.<br />
</p><p><i>Next: White Sauce variations</i><br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-61973702719832744002013-07-09T09:52:00.000-07:002013-07-13T21:11:45.379-07:00Cooking Poor:Basic White Sauce<p>It has been said that one of the most subversive things you can do these days is grow your own food. Supermarket chains, and the food processing and shipping conglomerates that support them, don’t want you raising your own crops. They can’t make money from it. Heaven forfend consumers should also be <i>producers</i>. With a small plot of land—say, the size of a suburban backyard—your beets, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, beans, squashes, and herbs cost virtually nothing but the time devoted to their cultivation. A kitchen garden deprives global food corporations of the only crop they harvest: money.<br />
</p><p>Living poor, especially in the city, you probably don’t own a patch of arable land despite being a person far more likely to cultivate it than the urban landowners who do. The kitchen garden “movement” is a great conscience-easer for the middle-class and wealthier, but is meaningless and insulting to the poor.<br />
</p><p>A more attainable way to give the finger to greed is to learn to cook your own food from scratch. Not the “seared Kobe beef with pancetta lardons and tarragon-balsamic vinegar reduction” cooking worshipped by pretentious urban foodies, but real home cooking, whose foundation is economy.<br />
</p><p>As with most of what used to be called the domestic arts, basic cooking skills are viewed as optional by many foodie dabblers. They either mistake expensive ingredients and exotic products for solid technique, or protest that learning somehow interferes with creativity, or are simply undisciplined frauds wearing the borrowed colours of a professional chef.<br />
</p><p>I’m alarmed at times by the number of people I know who don’t know how to mash potatoes, cook rice, steam vegetables, roast fowl, make stock, and a host of other fundamental kitchen skills. Without those skills, you wind up paying to have someone else prepare your food, either by purchasing processed approximations of the real thing or by supporting the hugely wasteful restaurant industry.<br />
</p><p>I’ve been preparing my own food and feeding households on a limited budget for years. I’ve already written a few food-themed articles in this blog, and am now beginning to realize I should incorporate more. Living poor and eating well is something I’ve spend decades practising. The time has come to share the fruits of my experience.<br />
</p><p>Good, practical cooking is largely a question of creating variety out of a small number of staples combined with fresh, unprocessed ingredients. One of the essentials to achieving this is knowing how to make White Sauce. </p><p>Foodies balk whenever I say White Sauce, preferring the la-dee-dah term, <i>béchamel,</i> unless, of course, they’re so far misguided by snobbery that their noses crinkle at the very thought of pre-<i>nouvelle cuisine.</i> They’re wrong in any case. Béchamel is a white sauce variation, not the thing itself.<br />
</p><p>White Sauce is a combination of milk, butter, and flour that produces a medium-thick, pleasantly mild sauce that serves as a sort of culinary blank slate for all sorts of foods and flavours. For budget-limited cooks, it is the “extender” <i>par excellence,</i> and for that reason alone deserves its place as one of the foundations of home cooking.<br />
</p><h2 align=center>White Sauce Recipe<br />
</h2><p>1 cup of milk<br />
2 tablespoons unsalted butter<br />
2 tablespoons flour<br />
1/4 teaspoon salt*<br />
pepper<br />
(nutmeg)<br />
<i>*If your butter is salted, reduce this quantity by half</i><br />
<p>Begin by heating the milk, either in a double-boiler until steam starts to rise off the surface, or for 1 minute in the microwave.<br />
</p><p>While the milk is heating, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Do not let the butter brown.<br />
</p><p>When the butter’s melted, reduce the heat to low and stir in the flour and salt. Let the roux, as the flour and butter mixture is called, cook for 1 minute, then remove it from the heat until the milk is ready. Do not let the roux brown.<br />
</p><p>Return the heat to medium and set the saucepan back on the burner. Using a whisk, incorporate the hot milk into the roux a little at a time, whisking constantly so the two blend together smoothly.<br />
</p><p>Continue cooking and stirring until the sauce achieves a medium-thick consistency. Do not let it boil, as this imparts an unwanted sweetness. I use a wooden spoon for the last bit of stirring because it’s easier to keep the sauce from sticking to the bottom and sides of the pan.<br />
</p><p>Season with a few twists from the peppermill and, for a wonderfully pleasant flavour that marries beautifully with all sorts of foods, a small grating of nutmeg.<br />
</p><p>That’s it. Perfect white sauce, ready for whatever use you can think of.<br />
</p><p>In my next food-related article, I’ll discuss some of the things you can do with our marvellous culinary blank slate.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-48211118854719300482013-07-02T16:14:00.000-07:002013-07-04T00:22:15.456-07:00Living poor, Part II:Spend less, do less harm<p>I wrote in my blog post <a href=”http://missives-from-the-edge.blogspot.ca/2013/06/living-poor.html”>June 24</a> that money is the lifebood of civilization. We cannot function without it.<br />
</p><p>In any large-scale social grouping, two attributes, paradoxically opposed, are needed for survival: self-sufficiency and cooperation. We have to be able to accomplish some tasks on our own, and to work together to accomplish others. Money provides a framework for achieving both. Self-sufficiency comes from financial independence—the ability to buy what one needs—and cooperation in the form of income-earning work. It’s all conceptual, of course, illusory. Real self-sufficiency is making everything you need yourself and raising your own food, while true cooperation happens for no other reason than there’s need. Without money, few of us are truly self-sufficient, and without a steady paycheck, few of us prepared to work in needful joint endeavours.<br />
</p><p>This is not to cast aspersions, but rather to underline why money is essential. The notion of “value”, transferable between goods, services, and labour through the use of symbolic tokens, eases the burden of self-sufficiency and provides an incentive for cooperation.<br />
</p><p>No, we cannot do without money. And yet...<br />
<br />
– the produce you buy at the supermarket is shipped from half a world away, creating a huge carbon footprint; most of it is grown as destructive monoculture crops; chemical pesticides, fertilizers and significant water diversion were likely involved; underpaid and unprotected migrant workers or impoverished native populations were used to harvest it<br />
<br />
– the clothing you purchase was almost certainly made in a sweatshop<br />
<br />
– the gasoline you fill your tank with on the way to work pollutes the atmosphere; wars are fought to keep the oil it comes from flowing<br />
<br />
– money from the pills you buy enriches companies who manufacture deadly chemicals that enter the biosphere; the same companies then turn around and sell you drugs to treat the diseases they have caused<br />
<br />
– the house you’re paying too much for—or selling for too much—inflates the cost of real estate, impoverishing millions and dooming many to homelessness<br />
<br />
– the electricity you burn through comes from dirty, coal-fired generators, unsafe nuclear plants, and land-destroying damns<br />
<br />
– the insurance premiums you pay on your hourse, your car, your belongings are invested in corporations that operate without regard to human rights, safety, or dignity; the environment is treated with the same contempt<br />
<br />
– the treat you give yourself for being a wage-slave—a resort holiday on some impoverished island—adds to global warming when you fly there and come back, and furthers the social inequity endemic to poor nations<br />
</p><p>And that’s just what happens when you <i>spend</i> money. For many, <i>earning</i> it has consequences equally as dire. Flipping burgers at a fast-food joint contributes to the epidemic of obesity afflicting North America and encourages destructive land-use policies. Working for a financial institution means you’re helping those without a conscience play with capital—buying, selling, investing—wrecking lives and the environment without a second thought. Your factory job depends on manufactured obsolescence. Your farming job requires you to plant and harvest crops that have been modified so that the seed can’t be collected and you have to pay each year for something nature gives for free. Your teaching job demands that you train worker drones to feed the maw of finance rather than instructing students to become mature and thinking members of society.<br />
</p><p>If money is the lifeblood of civilization, then we must conclude that, at present, the blood is poisoned. Virtually every time we spend it, we are doing harm somewhere, and the hours we put in earning it are scarcely less damaging. There is no escaping; we must earn and spend in order to survive, yet doing so incurs a host of evils which, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy the Earth.<br />
</p><p>“Living poor”, as I have come to call my way of life, is not intended as a solution. It is not a cure. It is a response, an individual commitment not to worsen things, to minimize the damage done by money. It is a decision to devote oneself to real productivity and fruitful pursuits. It begins by valuing one’s social, creative, intellectual, and spiritual aptitudes higher than a paycheque, thereby enabling a life of conscience, not expedience. The choice is hard since it means limiting expenditures, forgoing convenience, overcoming laziness, and acquiring skills the poor the world over practise to survive.<br />
</p><p>Living poor need not be all-or-nothing; taken to extremes it risks fanaticism. Rather, it’s a guiding ethos, best described by questions: Am I learning to survive with less and still feel full? Am I maximizing the utility of everything I buy? Am I sharing what I can, even it it means I have to tighten up my belt? Am I seeking entertainment in the company of others, not expensive toys? Can I ask for help in need, knowing that I give it freely?<br />
</p><p>Living poor, as I see it, is taking on the role of conscientious objector in a war that’s being waged against the Earth and all humanity. The poor are not responsible for plundering the globe and spreading misery to every hemisphere. The poor don’t waste. The poor don’t wage imperial wars. The poor don’t despoil the environment. Furthermore, the poor know how to share. The poor know how to sacrifice. The poor know how to work together. Joining them by learning to get by with next to nothing will not stop the war, but it minimizes harm and announces that you won’t partake in something that runs contrary to conscience.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-15582218772614019082013-06-24T17:00:00.001-07:002013-07-02T16:17:26.379-07:00Living poor<p>I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this life-project I call “living poor”. It started years ago, when I dwelt in Québec. I’d come to realize that no matter how hard I worked, no matter what the pay, I would always be struggling for money. Furthermore, I would always feel beaten down by the knowledge that I was being personally and creatively unproductive during the hours I worked.<br />
</p><p>For as long as I can remember, I have felt the overwhelming pull to practise what I’m called to do: be of service to others, and to contribute to the world from my creative and intellectual abilities. I do not fancy myself a superior talent worthy of fame or fortune, but I’m a competent and thorough craftsman in a number of areas. There is need for what I do, though it rarely pays, and I will not rob the world of skills I possess by devoting myself to the singular pursuit of an income. Time to write, to compose, to programme, to shop/cook/clean for friends who cannot, to teach and tutor, to be there for people in crisis—this is more valuable than any paycheque.<br />
</p><p>The pursuit of money dirties everything it touches. There’s a reason why the expression is “filthy lucre”, not “lily-white lucre”, and why money is “laundered”. I’m deeply uncomfortable receiving money for services from people who have no money to spare, especially when those services cost me nothing. I would rather the gratitude and trust of the out-of-work friend whose résumé I prepare than the cold insult of cash.<br />
</p><p>Lest I be thought naive, it is the <i>pursuit</i> of money that troubles me, not the thing itself. The symbolic exchange of value for value—my bushel of turnips for three copper coins; three copper coins to pay the blacksmith for a hoe—is a necessary convenience. There is much good that cannot be accomplished without it, at least not in societies whose members do not function well cooperatively, such as ours.<br />
</p><p>An oft-repeated caution is that money is the root of all evil, but the original formulation, in Latin, speaks the truth more clearly: <i>Radix malorum est cupiditas</i>—<i>love</i> of money is the root of all evil.<br />
</p><p>Our society worships money, and what greater love is there than worship? Practically from birth we we are taught to revere money. Those born into it learn it confers prestige, privilege, and ease. It sets them apart from ordinary mortals. Those less fortunate grow up yearning to acquire it. It has, since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant enshrinement of capitalism and the growth of the middle class, become our Holy of Holies. Not to base one’s life upon its acquisition and expenditure is to reject dogma and commit heresy.<br />
</p><p>The problem with worshipping anything is that the love is not reciprocal. The object of worship, or what it represents, doesn’t love back, except that we imagine it. An acquaintance of mine, a wealthy one, once opined, “You have to love money if you want money to love you.” A clever quip, one designed to make most people nod in rueful agreement, but untrue. The ardent pursuit of money, whether much (say, by gambling on the stock market) or “enough” (eg by earning a steady income), whether attended by success or failure, has wasted far more lives than it has enriched.<br />
</p><p>None of this is new. It is self-evident, if one takes but a moment to think about it. Or perhaps not so self-evident. Throughout history, prophets and teachers have had to repeat the message. The Buddha. Jesus. Mohamed. Francis of Assisi.<br />
</p><p>Thoreau, in the first chapter of <i>Walden</i>, “Economy”, famously summed up the personal consequences of devoting one’s life to the pursuit of money: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called <i>resignation</i> is confirmed <i>desperation</i>.” [The italics are mine.]<br />
</p><p>Anyone who bucks the trend of “job at any cost” is marginalized in our society. The decision to embrace living poor is labelled laziness, advantage taking, illness. Irony of ironies. The middle class and wealthier drive everywhere instead of walking, buy pre-prepared and processed foods they could have made themselves, have machines to do their dishes and their laundry and their yard work, throw things out instead of fixing them, buy new socks instead of darning them. <i>That</i> is laziness. The same class fuels the trend to “more for less”, a hallmark of consumerism that enslaves the poor—half a world away so as not to trouble conscience. And are not militant rejection of reality, delusion, and refusal to acknowledge undisputed facts all indicators of a mental illness?<br />
</p><p>Alanis Obomsawin, an Abenaki from the Odanak reserve, said in 1972: “Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”<br />
</p><p>Again, not new. Again, self-evident. Yet we act as if it isn’t. We elevate the pursuit of money as a means unto itself, deny that our thinking is circular, and stick our fingers in our ears and shout la-la-la whenever someone points to facts like “wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”<br />
</p><p>Money is the life-blood of our society, every monetary exchange a beat of its unfeeling heart, which creates a perpetual psychic noise, like real blood rushing through our ears. For the poor, it is a loud, distressing buzz. For the middle-class, a hum, persistent but low-level. The rich, of course, build soundproof mansions.<br />
</p><p>We can’t escape it. The money-meter never stops. Every second of every day, we’re forced to spend. Rent, electricity, gas, phone, TV, Internet...these suck up money like a vacuum cleaner even while we sleep.<br />
</p><p>I was talking about this with my roommate, John, the other night. Like me, he’s one of those who’s chosen “living poor”. Both of us have observed something few remark upon: if you live in the city, every time you leave your home you wind up spending money. There’s almost no way to avoid it unless all you fancy is a stroll around the block to take in the sickening air. In fact, most urbanites only ever leave their homes for money, either making it—and getting to work alone can cost thousands per year—or spending it.<br />
</p><p>In short, our lives are circumscribed by money. It makes vassals of us all. Being a vassal isn’t necessarily a bad thing, provided one’s ruler is benign. Money is anything but. Truly, <i>cupiditas</i>, the love of money, is the root of evil, if evil be the misery inflicted on the people of Nigeria, the human rights atrocities of China, the rioting in bankrupt countries such as Greece and Spain, the sweatshops found in Free Trade zones, the death of workers crushed or burned in unsafe factories, the despoliation of the Earth, and the destruction of the biosphere.<br />
</p><p>But the most pernicious evil of all is the waste of human potential. When people’s value to society is measured solely by their income, it is tantamount to saying they are worthless otherwise—patently untrue, but so pervasive it is rarely questioned. If you don’t or cannot “monetize” your skills (a sickening neologism), they have no value. <i>You</i> have no value.<br />
</p><p>Value to what? Why “the economy”, of course, a tool we have elevated to the status of a <i>raison d’être</i>. Activities of real value—to your neighbours, your community, your culture, the globe—are actively discouraged by the credo “if it isn’t earning money then it hasn’t any worth”. Those with skills that fall outside the purview of “employment” lose the opportunity to practise them when “real jobs” become the only thing that counts. Society is poorer for it, but somehow that’s okay because it fuels the economy.<br />
</p><p>I’m not “against” money. I’m not against commerce. Civilizations need the trust implied by exchanging tokens of value, whether paper or gold or numbers on a screen. I’m not a communist, though I confess to being a committed social democrat. I’m not even against capitalism, when practised with restraint and oversight.<br />
</p><p>What I am against is wasting time in meaningless employment, which more times than not contributes to the ecological and human ills that threaten to destroy us. I, and others like me, are compelled to use our skills <i>to be of use</i>, not to make a buck. In other times, we might have gravitated to the holy life, as priests or monks, or nuns. Vows of poverty were once respected. In today’s society, we must, instead, commit ourselves to living poor, by which I do not mean “in poverty”, but rather valuing oneself, one’s skills, one’s contributions to the world, as more important than a steady income.<br />
</p><p>It is not an easy choice. For some of us, it’s not a choice at all, but rather a vocation—which, from it’s Latin root, denotes a calling, a summons to be useful.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-54418502992693784522013-06-17T20:57:00.000-07:002015-06-28T23:15:29.669-07:00Orchestrating with Musescore v1.3 and LinuxSampler<p>For the past few months, I’ve been exploring Musescore as an all-in-one solution to composing, orchestrating, and engraving original compositions. I’ve already written a tutorial at Musescore on extending Musescore (v1.3) with LinuxSampler, but I’d like to share my thoughts on the more musical side of things, specifically achieving a satisfactory Musescore-generated performance of music written for full orchestra.<br />
</p><p>If you’re a Musescore user, and interested in this article, have a look at the LinuxSampler tutorial located <a href="http://musescore.org/en/node/21159">here</a>. My commentary is based on the setup described.<br />
</p><p>I started using Musescore simply to engrave pencilled manuscripts that were in danger of fading. The more I worked with it, the more I became intrigued with the idea of using it for prototyping audio versions of my work. Starting off small, just songs scored for a solo instrument with piano accompaniment, I progressed to adding strings, and finally worked up to a small orchestra.<br />
</p><p>I wanted to go bigger, trying my hand at a full orchestra, but was finding some limitations in Musescore’s reliance on GM soundbanks. No soundbank I could find was perfect. If the strings were good, the oboe would be awful. Or the oboe would be great and the French horns terrible. Since Musescore is JACK smart, I wondered if connecting Musescore’s midi output to a sampler would solve my problem. It did. Using LinuxSampler, I could load any soundfont I wanted and have it correspond to the appropriate Musescore staff.<br />
</p><p>There’s no dearth of free soundfonts out there, most in .sf2 format, some in .sfz and .gig, all three of which can be loaded into LinuxSampler. The problem is that where quantity reigns, quality does not. Part of that is personal preference, but generally, quality soundfonts that work well as part of an orchestra are hard to find. For anyone interested in midi orchestration, I suggest downloading as many soundfonts as you can find for any particular instrument, then auditioning them, just as you’d do with real players. LinuxSampler has a handy virtual keyboard that makes trying out individual soundfonts easy.<br />
</p><p>No soundfont is perfect, top to bottom, so what you’re looking for is as close to a “typical” sound in the low, medium, and high registers as possible. A flute that’s acceptable above C5 but sounds oddly metallic between C4 and C5 is no good, whereas one that sounds realistic up to C6 but then gets shrill may, in fact, be usable, since the flute is naturally a little shrill up there.<br />
</p><p>It’s a good idea to have several soundfonts available for each instrument. Depending on the overall orchestration, you may find that that trumpet that sounded dreadful with one combination of instruments works perfectly with another. You will also want a choice between “solo” instrument samples and samples that fit well into an orchestral fabric.<br />
</p><p>In the woodwinds, stay away from samples with overly noticeable vibrato. A little vibrato can offset the fact that you aren’t working with instrument sections—essentially, you’re scoring one instrument per part—but too much stands out and usually sounds cheap. The only exception to the rule is the oboe, which in midi scoring seems to blend more naturally when there’s a distinctive vibrato. This is true not only of, say, oboe+flute in octaves, but also when the oboe is reinforcing a section of strings.<br />
</p><p>Usable brass is hard to find, particularly the all-important French horns. The problem is that most of the soundfonts I came across have far too much character, suitable for solos but too distinctive for orchestral work. Nearly all of them have too much bite, so I’d advise looking for soundfonts that minimize it; otherwise, balance with other instruments becomes next to impossible.<br />
</p><p>The string section presents the hardest challenge. Plenty of soundfonts exist, but none can hope to be completely satisfactory. Such is the nature of strings, where expressivity in both timbre and articulation are all important. I learned a few tricks in Musescore that help with the problem, which I’ll get to further on. While you’re auditioning soundfonts, you should be listening for string sections that display a good medium legato (not too slow on the attack) as well as timbrally similar sections of strings <i>détaché</i>. Marcato, too, depending on your needs.<br />
</p><p>Pay particular attention to the timbre of the soundfonts in all the registers from contrabass to stratosphere. There are a number out there specifically for violin, viola, cello, and bass sections, but I didn’t find them as useful as the more generalized “strings” soundfonts. A few make excellent first and second violins; others make great cellos. Miraculously, some even sound like violas.<br />
</p><p>For pizzicato, a general “pizz. strings” soundfont is usually sufficient for all sections of strings. An “acoustic bass” soundfont, ie a single plucked contrabass, makes a helpful stand-in for pizzicato basses when the scoring is light.<br />
</p><p>Harp, percussion, and piano are usually intended to stand out from the surrounding orchestration, so the choice of soundfonts is very much a question of personal preference.<br />
</p><p>Don’t overlook the large GM banks (like FluidGM or Merlin) when hunting around for samples. You can load individual instruments from them in LinuxSampler, and there are a few gems.<br />
</p><p>Once you’ve got a library of soundfonts, you can start setting up “orchestras” in LinuxSampler that correspond to your scoring needs.<br />
</p><p>Balance is everything, and one thing that’s certain is that your soundfonts won’t all be of equal volume. My way of dealing with the problem is to create a test score in Musescore composed of long whole notes, one per instrument in succession in their middle range: the flute plays a whole note A5, then the oboe an A4, then the clarinet an A4, etc. By default, Musescore sets note velocity to 80, which I use as a mezzo-forte benchmark. I adjust the levels with Musescore’s mixer until all the instruments are producing a satisfactory mezzo-forte at a velocity of 80. (An alternative is to leave Musescore’s levels alone, and adjust them in LinuxSampler. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.)<br />
</p><p>Using 80 as the note velocity for mezzo-forte lets you to divide dynamics into useful increments of 20: 20=pp; 40=p; 60=mp; 80=mf; 100=f; 120=ff. The 20 provides room for expressive phrasing within a particular dynamic, and to compensate for the dynamic differences between high and low registers. Allocating dynamic levels this way gives a fairly reliable approximation of the balance of instrumental forces you would hear from a live orchestra—essential when prototyping a score. It also allows you to improve the sonority when parts are doubled—say, two trombones playing unison. If you increase the velocity by 10, the sonority increases while staying within the same dynamic range.<br />
</p><p>Be careful of horns, though. You may want to decrease their levels in the Musescore mixer, since horns do not have the same carrying power as other instruments and often have to be marked one level louder in the score than the prevailing dynamic. If the trumpets and trombones are playing mezzo-forte, it’s certain the horns will have to be marked forte if you’re after an even balance. However, if the horns’ mezzo-forte velocity is identical to all the other instruments, marking them forte and setting their velocity to 100 results in horns that are too loud.<br />
</p><p>Achieving a reasonably close correspondence between the dynamic markings in the score and the assigned note velocities is essential. If a bassoon phrase is marked piano, you don’t want to have to tinker around with note velocities (in the Note properties dialogue) until it “sounds right”. It’s much easier to mark the passage piano and set all the notes to a velocity of 40, assured that the bassoon is then playing a good, uniform piano.<br />
</p><p>There’s still an awful lot of tweaking to be done, but for a “first pass” at your score, achieving a good, overall balance of dynamics between parts makes fine-tuning much easier.<br />
</p><p>Strings, as I’ve mentioned, present particular challenges. There are some very expensive commercial VSTs out there that offer good strings with a wide choice of articulations and dynamics, but when scoring with Musescore, your options are limited.<br />
</p><p>The problem with string soundfonts is articulation. Legato, or “slow”, strings have a very gentle, long attack and are unsuitable for even medium-fast passages. Conversely, most “marcato strings” (usually <i>détaché</i>, not marcato) have an aggressive attack, almost like a series of downbows, making them unsuitable for legato phrasing.<br />
</p><p>I deal with the problem by assigning a legato-strings soundfont to the Musescore’s “normal” string channel, and a marcato-strings soundfont to the “tremolo” channel. (Real tremolos I write out in full and make invisible, generally on Voice 4 of the staff.) To switch between articulations, I create staff text saying which I want, then go into the “Staff text properties” dialogue and select the appropriate channel. Afterwards, I set the text invisible.<br />
</p><p>It isn’t possible to get marcato strings to approach legato, but there is some leeway going the other direction. This is fortunate because repeated notes in a legato strings soundfont tend to blur together owing to the very slow attack and decay. The problem is fixable in the Note Properties dialogue, where it’s possible to change the “offtime” of a note to a negative value, effectively shortening its sounded length without altering its written length. Depending on the tempo and note-length, I find setting the offtime between -5% and -10% is usually enough to make repeated notes heard as such.<br />
</p><p>Upbeats, especially short ones, can be a real headache with legato strings unless some other instrument is sharing the upbeat and can mask the slow attack. The solution to this problem is to set the <i>ontime</i> to a negative value, which starts the note a little sooner than normal. Adjusted carefully, you can get the sustain phase of the note’s envelope to fall directly on the upbeat; the early attack is scarcely audible. Another solution I sometimes use is to increase the velocity of the upbeat drastically. If the upbeat’s short enough, the note never gets a chance to reach peak velocity and may sound weak simply because it’s too soft.<br />
</p><p>Unfortunately, there is no quick or easy solution to crescendi and diminuendi, which must be worked out “by hand”, making progressive adjustments to the velocity of every note in all parts of the passage. The “mf=80” system I use does help a bit, in that I can reliably in/decrease the velocities in all the affected parts by the same amount, say by 3, then 5, then 7, and so on. However, it’s worth noting that crescendi and diminuendi, like rit., rall., and other rubato, are rarely executed according to mathematical principles and sensitive ears are required to make them properly musical.<br />
</p><p>The one place where all bets are off is orchestral tutti. Balancing tutti passages requires knowing the art of orchestration well, scoring accordingly, then simply using your ears to get the synthetic output to sound like what you know the real deal sounds like. Owing to acoustic oddities that pile up the more sampled instruments you have playing together, you may have to in/decrease note velocities radically in certain parts, in despite of orchestral common sense. My song, <i>North</i>, (on YouTube <a href="http://youtu.be/tR9wVrFlYbE">here</a>) has a two-bar tutti that took a day or more to get right.<br />
</p><p>Reverb is an essential part of orchestration, so I always attach my sampler, the software that’s actually “playing” the music from Musescore, to a reverb app. All things being equal, and my soundfonts having been carefully selected, this provides enough timbral and dynamic realism to let me tinker with the orchestration while I’m composing.<br />
</p><p>The final step in preparing synthesized audio prototypes of orchestral scores is to apply equalization and compression. This is where deficiencies and eccentricities inherent in the soundfonts can be erased, balance further adjusted, character imparted to various instruments and sections, and the semblance of life infused into what is, after all, canned music.<br />
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-45742941781552195322013-06-09T15:19:00.000-07:002013-06-10T07:16:03.263-07:00Speaking out against Ontario Works<p>My curriculum vitae, which I’ve written as a narrative rather than a list of dates and jobs, ends with the words: “I believe people are more important than institutions.” Not a sentence to warm the hearts of employers, but one that is true and belongs in my CV. Anyone wishing to employ my services should know what they’re getting: I don’t take kindly to institutional bullying. I have, or had, a history of standing up for fellow workers. The talented magazine artist named Linda, browbeaten into timid mediocrity; the single mother with a son named Carl required to work long nights and weekends. That sort of thing.<br />
</p><p>I’ve even compared salaries, especially with female co-workers. I realize that’s cause for being fired, even though freedom of expression is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I don’t like lies, and I don’t like expedient silence. It goes against my nature. It goes against my conscience.<br />
</p><p>Did you know freedom of <i>conscience</i> is also protected under the Canadian Charter? Probably not. Most Canadians, like most Americans with their Constitution, have no idea what’s really in the Charter. Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien wanted to have the article removed. So, no doubt, would have Mike Harris, former premier of Ontario and instigator of Ontario Works.<br />
</p><p>My recent yelling match with Claudette Gamache, the OW worker responsible for my file, has left me in a state of fear for the past few days. Anxiety has dogged my every waking hour. I’m uneasy all the time, unable to concentrate on the simplest of tasks. I’ve started doubting myself, even in areas where I know myself to be competent. I dread the ringing of the phone, the arrival of the mailman. I feel threatened, watched, under suspicion. I find myself defending myself to myself in order to shore up a demoralized sense of self-confidence. I feel attacked. I feel powerless.<br />
</p><p>All this because I dared be honest. Ms. Gamache chose to make my continued eligibility for OW benefits contingent on attending two interviews in widely-spaced locations, one of which meetings was clearly superfluous. So blatant was the duplication that I assumed an error and took steps to correct it. When it turned out to be deliberate, I smelled “jumping through hoops” and said so, adding that I would, of course, attend the interview on the other side of the city if that was what was required.<br />
</p><p>It wasn’t the right thing to say. I know. Neither is finishing my CV with a perfectly honest statement that, in a better world, would be self-evident.<br />
</p><p>I cannot help but notice that in this post and in my last, I’ve quite unconsciously repeated the phrase, “It wasn’t the right thing to say.” What would have been the right thing to say? Why, nothing, of course, just submissive, compliant silence. To speak up, to speak out—to speak at all—is to invite reprisals, and everyone receiving OW benefits knows it.<br />
</p><p>We all live under the fear that at any moment, we'll be called upon to justify our lives, our actions. A caseworker happens upon your file after a period of "inactivity" and calls you in. Sometimes the periods are a few months. Sometimes, they're a few years. The point is, you never know, but when the call comes, you know you're in for a rough ride. You will be interrogated, castigated, made to feel guilty, humiliated, and trivialized. You will know that the only way to ensure the arrival of your next cheque is to bow, scrape, kow-tow, agree to everything, and lie. Yes, lie. No one can live on the $7,000 a year provided by OW. The caseworkers know this, which makes the lying even worse because you're being made to do it as an exercise in power. It is nothing more than sanctioned, institutionalized oppression of a disadvantaged group. <br />
</p><p>It’s funny how long one can go feeling something without recognizing it for what it is. Depression, for example. Many people suffering depression know they’re feeling helpless, know that joy has vanished from their lives, know they’re not attending to the simplest life-affirming tasks, but never connect the dots. It’s the same thing with <i>op</i>-pression. You can go a very long time knuckling under to it without realizing it’s the reason why you’re fearful all the time, the reason you feel guilty when you've done nothing wrong, the reason you're defensive about things that need no defending. You’re scared because it feels as if at any moment someone’s going to pounce. You’re the Jew in Nazi Germany waiting for the knock on the door, the Alabama sharecropper fearing the arrival of the Night Riders.<br />
</p><p>For the record, and because I’ve spoken of honesty and conscience, I am not looking for “...whatever work I can find” (Ms. Gamache, verbatim). It is a lie I’ve been coerced to tell. The truth, which I’m afraid to speak lest I be punished, is this:<br />
</p><p>I have chosen to be on OW (“Welfare”) in order to be of service to others and to contribute, to the world, from my unusual combination of skills. It is an unconventional sacrifice, but not one made out of narcissism or mental illness. Conscience demands it.<br />
</p><p>I cook and clean and shop for a household of three. I spend long hours nearly every day teaching one of my roommmates to sing (if you read my blog, you know I have a degree in music), affording him an opportunity denied by his Children’s Aid Society group-home upbringing. He doesn’t know his father. His mother drank herself to sleep with a lit cigarette and burned to death. He suffers from ADHD. He was spat out by an insensitive, underfunded public education system. Music is healing him, in a very real way, but teaching the unteachable (no education, ADHD) requires an enormous investment of time. I make it willingly, without thought of remuneration, because I see his self-confidence growing, his anger softening, his ability to trust improving daily. And his voice developing in a “oh my god we've hit a motherlode” kind of way.<br />
</p><p>Cooking, cleaning, shopping, teaching... These aren’t the activities of a lazy man, which is how OW, in the guise of Ms. Gamache, characterizes me. But let’s add to the list of activities. I’m a writer, and not just of novels. I help friends without jobs, or a penny to spare, prepare their resumes. I write extensively-researched and well-respected tutorials for open-source software, most recently for a music-engraving program called MuseScore. (Open-source software is free, written by volunteer developers. Approximately 2/3 of Internet servers run on open-source software. Android, which powers smart phones and iPads, is also open-source.)<br />
</p><p>In 2002, I released my own software to the world, a text-processing tool that runs on another piece of open-source software derived from the Unix operating system (you know, the one used at universities and research facilities). It’s over 18,000 lines of commented code with well over a megabyte of documentation and took several years to write. Since then, I have been responsible for maintaining the program, providing support to users from all over the world, dealing with bug reports, and updating my work to reflect current technologies. Last summer alone, I spent over three months reworking the program into what is now one of the best PDF authoring tools available.<br />
</p><p>Lest you imagine writing open-source software is fun, or merely for the hobbyist, know that it frequently involves 18-hour days, and that non-availability to users is not an option. It is not paid, but it is necessary, demanding work in our networked age. I have the skills to do it, within my specialized field of expertise (typesetting and typography; I am neither a hacker nor a trained programmer), and conscience—a moral life— demands of me that I do it.<br />
</p><p>I’m also a musician, primarily a composer. With extensive training in classical music, the music I write will never be commercially viable, even when it approaches the popular song form. There are a number of examples of my work on YouTube, fully-realized symphonic scores and arrangements that took months to prepare, from composing the music to professionally engraving the scores to note-by-note rendering of the scores into computer-generated performances. I go to the trouble, again at a huge cost in time, not in the expectation of making money, not to trot out my creative efforts for the vanity of recognition, but because of my need to contribute to the unbroken tradition of classical music. It is one of mankind’s most magnificent accomplishments, but one which is seriously at risk of vanishing in the face of overwhelming commercial and corporate interests. My scores are online so that others can study and learn from them, as well, one hopes, to be moved by them.<br />
</p><p>So no, I am not “...out there, all day, every day, looking for whatever work I can find.” I’m at home, working hard at what I’m good at. Of course I’d like to get paid. But in the trade-off between giving to the world of one’s talents versus wasting one’s life in meaningless labour, I chose the former. That’s meant a life of poverty, but I’ve embraced it because I’m driven to be productive. I cannot otherwise hold my head up high.<br />
</p><p>Welfare exists to assist those who, for whatever reason, are in financial need. It is not OW’s place to judge. It is not OW’s place to frighten me into unsuitable labour. It is not their place to sit me down with a “specialist” who has no resources whatsoever to help me find work appropriate to my skills, but rather to acknowledge that paid work in my fields is exceptionally difficult to come by, especially now that I am fifty-six years old. It is not their place to demand an accounting of my “job search”, but rather to trust that, like any normal human being, I'll jump at any suitable opportunity that presents itself.<br />
</p><p>In terms of the social contract which used to be Canada’s pride, Ontario Works is a thuggish perversion that oppresses and demeans its clients, coercing them into a failing job market by means of threats and intimidation. Those responsible for setting it up and those responsible for its continuance have corrupted the war on poverty into a war on the poor. My case is unusual, I acknowledge, as are my life choices, but my treatment at the hands of OW is not. I am far from unique. As a province, Ontario to be ashamed of itself.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-47328587465547975062013-06-04T08:50:00.000-07:002013-06-10T07:15:43.170-07:00Speech after long silence - Ontario Works, again<p>Forgive the quote from Yeats in the title. I couldn't think of a better way to say I'm back from a long hiatus. I ceased blogging two years ago when I realized that almost no one was reading my posts. It seemed pointless to continue without an audience. I was also experiencing the chill of knowing that if I wrote the truth about living poor in Ontario, I was likely to be cut off Welfare. “Ontario Works”, as it is called, a double irony lost on no one.<br />
</p><p><i>Suspicion and Surveillance</i>, a report from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work, spells out what OW is really all about.<br />
</p><p><blockquote style="font-size: 90%;">“Rather than being guided by the principles of universality, needs-based eligibility, and rights and entitlements, the emphasis now is on compulsion, sanctions and obligations...the real intent is to deny access to social assistance and to remove those who are on as quickly as possible.”</blockquote></p><p>Living on OW, whose monthly cheques add up to just a little over $7,000 a year, means living with the daily anxiety of being watched and judged. One is required not only to justify every penny in one's bank account, not only to disclose intimate details of one’s personal and social life, not only to participate in futile and irrelevant job seminars, one is also expected to be, in the words of my worker, to whom I just spoke, “...out there, every day, all day, looking for whatever work you can find.”<br />
</p><p>The chief means by which OW enforces its agenda is “non-compliance”. In order to receive even so much as a penny, one has to sign an agreement stating that one will, quite simply, do everything OW demands. Non-compliance with any directive from one’s case worker means no cheque. (It is difficult to know which allusion in “non-compliance” is more ominous: the echoes of Nazi Germany and <i>1984</i>, or the pitiless totalinarianism of the Borg—<i>“You will comply!”</i>) Forced signing of an agreement is tantamount to a contract entered into under duress—void under the law, but when you’re handing welfare cheques to bums, who cares about the law?<br />
</p><p>I’ve just spoken with my worker, a woman named Claudette Gamache, and been threatened with non-compliance. Again. Roused from sleep when she called—the upstairs neighbours have been keeping me up late for months— I was unable to muster my usual composure and got angry with her. Here's the story.<br />
</p><p>Last February, after months and months of not hearing from her, Ms. Gamache called me in for an update of my file. Right off the bat, she made the delay into my fault. Why was I to blame? I asked her. I’d made no changes in my financial or living arrangements, and was keeping my eyes open for possible employment. She tippy-tapped at her computer, shook her head, and began muttering about “seeing no movement on this file.” More pecking at the computer, and she accused me of not complying with an order to see an employment specialist—2-1/2 years prior! I had, in fact, seen the said specialist and attended the prescribed seminar on online employment.<br />
</p><p>As we continued, further inconsistencies came to light, all pertaining to missing information I had in fact supplied. Throughout the interview, I was treated with suspicion and frequently chastised, the theme always the same: non-compliance and my “attitude”, which Ms. Gamache characterized as, “...if you’re like this in a job interview, it's no wonder you can’t get a job.” I responded that this was not a job interview, and that in a job interview, I would not be being reprimanded for the oversights of others.<br />
</p><p>Ms. Gamache then said she was going to set me up with an employment specialist and handed me some forms to sign, renewing my so-called agreement with OW.<br />
</p><p>A week or two later, I received notification in the mail that I had an interview with an employement specialist on Mar. 15, 2013. A day later, I received a second notification that I had a second interview with another employment specialist. The second interview was for Mar. 18—by coincidence, my birthday— at the office of another OW district entirely. At the same time, my mom, who’s 89, was experiencing unusual confusion and memory loss, necessistating an immediate trip to Elora, hundreds of kilometers away, to assess the situation. (She’s fine now.)<br />
</p><p>I called both employment specialists to advise them I’d have to cancel. As per OW norm, both were out of the office. I left clear and detailed messages, saying I’d call to reschedule as soon as I got back to Ottawa, and asking that the two specialists clear up between them which one I should see. I also left a message with Ms. Gamache (“out of the office for the next three days”) enquiring about the redundant interviews.<br />
</p><p>It turned out that the forms I signed included an agreement to meet with both an “employment specialist” and an “Ontario employment specialist”, a distinction that still escapes me. Since it was an absurd duplication to see both, I called the second, the one not in my district, and re-explained the situation. She agreed it was peculiar and said that, since I wasn’t even in her district, I just had to go see the one who was.<br />
</p><p>Upon my return to Ottawa, I rescheduled with employment specialist #1. Shortly thereafter, I received mail notification that I had failed to show up for the original appointment and was about to be held in non-compliance. I called Ms. Gamache and clarified that I had given proper notification of the cancellation and had re-booked.<br />
</p><p>A few days later, I received a second mail notification, this time from the offices of specialist #2, again threatening me with non-compliance for having not shown up at an interview.<br />
</p><p>Second letter in hand, I went to my interview with specialist #1. Let's call her Janine. Unlike Ms. Gamache, she deserves privacy in this matter. What transpired was both shocking and surreal.<br />
</p><p>When I showed up at the OW offices, Janine was in tears. A close relative had died, and OW was refusing to give her the day off. I offered what solace I could during the next hour while Janine soldiered on, so distressed she couldn’t even remember her computer password. I offered to write a letter to the editor about OW’s stunning lack of compassion, but she recoiled, fearful it would cost her job.<br />
</p><p>During that interview, Janine said that the whole OW system is broken. The case workers are unhappy, the clients needs aren’t being met, and the whole non-compliance thing is nothing more than bullying. Her job is mostly futile, since real employment is scarce in the present economy, and whatever assistance she could be offering job-seekers has been hacked off at the knees by cuts to employment programs. Not that the programs were all that effective, she went on, since they were largely for people with little education or for whom English is still very much a second language. Worse, the system requires everyone to lie: the clients, who cannot possibly live $7,000 a year alone, and the workers who have to pretend they don’t know. She said, and I quote: “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and wish for the End of Days.”<br />
</p><p>She was an intelligent and compassionate woman, and deserved honesty in return. I confided to her that my circumstances were unusual. I’m a classically-trained composer, a published novelist, a former typesetter, and a respected open-source programmer . In order to remain productive in these areas, and to pursue what my friend, Tom, calls a Christ vocation (devoting myself to the service of those in need, both in my community and in my immediate circle), I chose, many years ago, to live a life of poverty. “Living poor,” I call it. I have an overwhelming compulsion to be useful, and to give freely to the world what the world so freely gave to me: intelligence, education, talent, encouragement, and practical support. That none of my areas of training and expertise generate much income does not remove my spiritual obligation to continue practising them. Welfare is a choice for me, not to avoid work, but in order to work meaningfully at all. Of course I’d like to have reasonably-paid employment in one of my fields, but they’ rarified and Fate, more than anything else, decides whether I get wind of anything. In short, I’m a hard worker who relies on welfare because the work I do, while highly appreciated by those who benefit, is rarely paid commensurately with the labour involved.<br />
</p><p>Janine actually congratulated me on my difficult and unusual choices, and wished aloud that more of the people she sees sitting across her desk were like me. I don’t say that vainly, only with gratitude. We spent the remainder of our hour going through the online postings at several job-banks, the same ones I check at home.<br />
</p><p>To return to our actual story, at the end of our hour, I showed Janine the non-compliance letter from specialist #2. She agreed it would be absurd for me to repeat everything we’d just done. I asked if she could take care of the matter. She said she would, by speaking to Ms. Gamache and contacting specialist #2. To be on the safe side, I called Ms. Gamache (“This is Claudette Gamache, I'm out of the office...”) and left a message bringing her up to date on my interview with Janine, including what she’d said about the second non-compliance letter.<br />
</p><p>That, I thought, was the end of it. And for two months, so it seemed. Then, this morning, a call from Ms. Gamache claiming I’d refused to see specialist #2. Refused, as if I hadn’t called, hadn’t left messages, hadn’t kept her posted during the whole silly business. More significantly, I had “refused“ nothing, merely cleared up what seemed like a bureaucratic mix-up. I said as much.<br />
</p><p>The big stick came out quickly. "I don’t think you realize how serious this is. You’re in non-compliance.” Taken aback, I replied that, to the best of my knowledge, the matter of the superfluous interview had been cleared up months ago. Why was she was she calling now? Her response was to repeat: "You’re in non-compliance. You refused to attend an interview. I’m sending you a letter today.”<br />
</p><p>Over her continued insistence I was in non-compliance, I endeavoured to remind her of the steps I’d taken to deal with the matter, including my communications with specialist #2, my meeting with Janine, and the phone calls to Ms. Gamache herself. I got cross. Who doesn’t when people won’t acknowledge facts? As once before, she criticized my attitude, something which personally she may have had the right to do, but not when she was speaking for the Ontario Works system. Compliant I may have to be, but nowhere in my agreement is it written that I have to act submissively and keep my voice down, too.<br />
</p><p>I repeated that the duplicate interview had been taken care of months ago, and that it was a dead issue as far as I was concerned because I hadn’t heard about it since. Why was she raising it now? “There's been no movement on your file,” she replied, non-sequitur. “Look,” I said, “if this is a question of jumping through hoops, by all means, set up another interview. I'll be there. But don't threaten me with non-compliance, and stop using that phrase. It sounds like something out of freaking Orwell.”<br />
</p><p>Of course it wasn’t the right thing to say, but here’s the interesting fact: what I said was true. OW may coerce people into signing an agreement (they also coerce people into volunteering, in direct contradiction to the meaning of both words), but when they deny the right to speak honestly without fear of reprisal, then it’s clear that a darker agenda is at work than providing income assistance and employment counselling.<br />
</p><p>It goes without saying that Ms. Gamache’s parting shot, having not once acknowledged anything I’d said, was, “You’re in non-compliance. I'm preparing a letter today.”<br />
</p><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-53051622808708223932011-02-21T11:50:00.000-08:002011-02-21T11:50:03.294-08:00Seville Orange Marmalade<p>
February. Groundhog Day. Valentine’s Day. John says it’s the longest month of the year. Maybe that’s because the two days it’s known for don’t have holidays attached. If Easter isn’t early, you’re looking at the whole of March before the next real vacation. Plus it’s dead of winter. Months of it behind you, months of it ahead. It’s enough to make the shortest days drag on and on.
</p>
<p>
The one thing that redeems this godforsaken month is the arrival of the Seville oranges, which, as marmalade aficionados the world over know, are the <i>only</i> oranges to use in marmalade.
</p>
<p>
Sevilles don’t look like much. They’re generally small, with a thick skin, little pulp, and tons of seeds. But like crabapples, which reveal their magic only when you make them into jelly, Seville oranges are loaded with pectin and packed with flavour. So much so that a scant six oranges is enough to make a dozen jars of marmalade. Six oranges, plus six pounds of sugar and three quarts of water. Now <i>that’s</i> concentrated flavour.
</p>
<p>
My grandmother used to make marmalade (and the booziest Christmas cake in the world). My favourite Aunt made marmalade (and Damson plum jam, which my uncle, Alex, always called “some damn plum jam”). Until a few years ago, my mom made marmalade. These days, it’s me who keeps the fires of tradition stoked.
</p>
<p>
Marmalade’s a lot of work, but then, most jams and jellies are. There’s removing the pulp and extracting the juice, chopping the rind into slivers and soaking it, simmering everything until it jells, preparing jars and lids, packing the marmalade, and cleaning up afterwards. It’s more than worth it, though, not just for the resulting ambrosia, but for the savings. Living poor, as we do in our household, one gets into the habit of spending time and energy instead of cash. I could, if I had bucks to burn, go out and buy a single pot of Dundee marmalade. But for the same amount of money, I can purchase oranges and sugar for twelve jars. Which, unlike the single pot of Dundee, I can share—another habit living poor instills.
</p>
<p>
I suspect, though, that the real reason I get excited about the arrival of the Seville oranges is just that: their arrival. Ever since agribusiness started its headlong rush toward globalization and the perpetual availability of so-called fresh produce, the notion of eagerly anticipating the seasonal arrival of fruits and vegetables has largely vanished from the North American urban consciousness. Mourning the loss may strike some as incipient old-fartishness. It’s not. It’s about remembering and valuing a timeless concept: delight.
</p>
<p>
Delight is not to be found in things that are easily and constantly available. Neither is it to be found in a surfeit of the second rate. Delight in fresh foods, for me at any rate, goes hand in hand with waiting for them, savouring them while they’re in season, and remembering them once they’re gone.
</p>
<p>
Proust said: “Anticipation is the surest form of pleasure. Who wants to burst into fulfilment’s desolate attic?” While biting into that first ripe strawberry of the year hardly counts as a desolate attic, it is true that half the pleasure is in the wait.
</p>
<p>
My mom loves to cook, and I was lucky enough to grow up in southwestern Ontario, which is rich in agricultural land. The yearly rotation of seasons when I was young centred more on what fruits and vegetables were available than on the temperature. Even winter had its imported contribution to make: not just the Seville oranges, but the luscious Fuerte avocados as well, which make the year-round Hass variety look like overgrown warts.
</p>
<p>
It all started near the end of April, when the race began to see which would show up first: the fiddleheads or the asparagus. Even in stores, fiddleheads remain a seasonal item, and asparagus used to be the same. You waited for it impatiently as winter drew to a close, then pigged out while it lasted. Afterwards, no more tender, tasty spears until next spring. And as for fiddleheads, well, no one in their right mind bought them. They were “wild” food. Gathering the furled fern fronds was, for many people, a family tradition, like Christmas or Thanksgiving. The shortness of the season (fiddleheads can vanish almost overnight) made the celebration of them that much more delirious.
</p>
<p>
After the asparagus and fiddleheads, the next anticipated delight was strawberries. Strawberries don’t <i>ever</i> ripen off the vine, which means the ones available year round in stores are unripe, sour frauds. I can’t imagine why anyone would eat them. Neither can I imagine not gorging on the real thing during their naturally, if regrettably, short season.
</p>
<p>
In Ontario, strawberries last from the middle of June till the beginning of July, when the raspberries start. To my childhood self, summer gained momentum with the raspberries. Every week thereafter heralded the arrival of treats untasted since last year. The first unfrozen green peas, still in their pods and in need of shelling. The first wax beans. The first Bing cherries. The first blue plums. The first fat cantaloupes and watermelons.
</p>
<p>
August brought about anticipation of the first corn of the season, along with huge, misshapen Beefsteak tomatoes and Freestone peaches. Other fruits proliferated on the dessert table: Bartlett pears, apricots, nectarines, black grapes. And, of course, the jewel in the crown of August, the blueberries. Only wild blueberries taste like blueberries. The year-long wait preceding their arrival was foreplay to the orgy of gluttony that ensued.
</p>
<p>
With autumn came the first new apples, the first new “keepers” (beets, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas), the explosion of squashes in dozens of shapes, sizes, and colours. The year was winding down, but far from over. Brussels sprouts and hardy cabbages sometimes lasted even past December’s early snow.
</p>
<p>
And once winter had settled in, there were always the Seville oranges to look forward to—admittedly not native, but a reminder, just the same, of the delights of seasonal produce, and cause for the hope of spring.
</p>
<p>
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
</p>
<p>
It would be unfair of me to have mentioned marmalade without giving my mom’s recipe, so here it is. It comes from a cookbook put together by the Women’s Auxiliary of The Church of the Good Shepherd (Anglican) in San José, Costa Rica, which was my father’s parish back in the 1950s.
</p>
<h2 style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Seville Orange Marmalade</h2>
<p style="margin-top: -.5em; text-align: center;">
6-8 Seville oranges<br/>
6 lbs. sugar (approx. 14 cups)<br/>
12 cups water<br/>
</p>
<p>
Cut the oranges into quarters. Take out the pulp, with the seeds, and place in a bowl. Cover with 3 cups of the water.
</p>
<p>
Cut the quarter skins into halves lengthwise, then cut the skins into very thin strips the other direction. Cover with 6 cups of the water. Let stand overnight.
</p>
<p>
Next morning, boil the pulp and water gently for 10 minutes. Line a colander with cheesecloth, dump in the pulp, squeeze out all the juice, and set aside.
</p>
<p>
Again cover the pulp with 3 cups of water. Boil again, gently, for 10 minutes. Squeeze out juice as before.
</p>
<p>
Add the two lots of juice to the skins (and the water they’re in). Boil gently for one hour.
</p>
<p>
Lastly, add the sugar—gradually, a cup at a time, or the marmalade will be cloudy. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the temperature reaches 8 degrees Fahrenheit above boiling point (220 degrees Fahrenheit at or near sea level), or when the juice falls from a spoon in clear sheets.
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-39488969493166800212011-01-26T17:20:00.000-08:002017-10-18T10:27:12.120-07:00Glenn Gould and the Voice of GodThe flu hit our household hard just after the holiday season. All three of us—James, John, and I—were laid low for a couple of weeks. We’re only just now returning to full health.
<br />
The chief feature of the bug, other than fever and severe respiratory congestion, was the fatigue it inspired. For a while, we were sleeping up to eighteen hours a day.
<br />
I normally spend a lot of time at the computer, but with all the Zs I was catching, there wasn’t much I could do, so I set it to download, via BitTorrent, a number of recordings by Glenn Gould I've been wanting for a while. I knew they’d take a couple of days, since classical music tends to have fewer torrent seeders than Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga.
<br />
Mostly, I was interested in what I call Gould’s orphan recordings: performances that Gould pundits generally overlook, or would prefer didn't exist.
<br />
Gould has long occupied a hallowed place in my creative and intellectual life. As a young pianist, I was drawn to the dashing, Romantic figure crouched over the keyboard, coaxing such daringly unconventional, utterly right-sounding music from the strings. Whenever the CBC aired a Gould documentary or special, it was always an occasion for excitement. I'd sit glued to the TV or radio, captivated not only by the music, but by his unapologetically “for those in the know” discussions of it.
<br />
Gould, I have always felt, was first and foremost a great teacher, one who used the piano as a medium for communicating his ideas. His performances were often less interpretations than analyses, exquisitely presented theses that helped me grasp the genius of Bach, or Beethoven, or Berg. No other pianist I can think of, except perhaps Schnabel, has ever brought so much intelligence to bear on performances that are as satisfying to the mind as they are to the ears and heart.
<br />
I was fortunate while at university to study musical aesthetics with Geoffrey Payzant, author of the first in-depth study ever of Gould’s oeuvre. The book was in pre-publication at the time, and Professor Payzant used photocopies of the galley proofs as the textbook for his course’s second semester.
<br />
Significantly, the book was entitled <i>Glenn Gould: Music and Mind.</i> Written by a philosopher from the same university as Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan (the University of Toronto), it was determinedly <i>not</i> a biography; rather, an exploration of Gould’s aesthetics and his theories of media, communication and technology.
<br />
Gould was an intensely private man with a paradoxically intense need to communicate. He resolved the conflict by creating a media version of himself—performer, writer, lecturer, documentarian, occasional comedian. The man himself was almost never seen in public, nor did he need to be. The media creation wasn’t a facade. It was designed to shift the emphasis from “man” to “mind”, to force his audience to focus on what really mattered: his musical ideas as communicated through the medium of the piano.
<br />
In his lifetime, Gould succeeded in this strategy. However, in the decades following his death, there was a trend to poke around his dirty linen, so to speak. Not satisfied with genius, writers and filmmakers felt it incumbent upon themselves to delve into his personal life, thereby trivializing what he'd striven to accomplish.
<br />
Early evidence that Gould would be disrespected in death came in the form of the Toronto International Bach Competition held “in honour of his memory” in ’85, three years after his fatal stroke. Gould despised music competitions. Some of his most scathing and provocative comments are on that very subject. Yet there was Nicholas Goldschmidt, a friend of Gould’s no less, putting together precisely the kind of circus Gould detested. The only saving grace of that slap in the face was that it launched the career of Angela Hewitt.
<br />
No amount of biographical data will ever illuminate Gould’s genius better than the man himself, and attempts to understand him by pawing through his private life are nothing more than prurience.
<br />
Furthermore, Gould’s erstwhile biographers often end up looking like fools. I recall a CBC <i>Life and Times</i> biography in which a woman psychologist held forth on Gould’s mannerisms at the piano: his hunched posture, his hand gestures, his tendency to croon along with the music. According to her, they were symptomatic of some sort of psychopathology. Clearly, she wasn’t a pianist. Gould’s unusual posture was integral to his fleet, nearly superhuman technique. His hand gestures were those of someone conducting himself at the keyboard. And the crooning, along with the conducting, was Gould's response to a frustration known to every classically-trained pianist, namely that the piano is at heart a percussion instrument and cannot “sing”, for example, the way a violin does. We’re all taught to hum along while we practise. Gould’s doing so, even on recordings, was evidence of unselfconscious passion, not neurosis.
<br />
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
<br />
If Gould’s particular genius lay in the ability to enrich his interpretive art with a running analysis of the music he was playing, it was his extraordinary technique that gave the genius voice. Listening to Gould, one can’t help but form the impression that each of his fingers possessed a separate brain. Even in the five-voice C-sharp minor Fugue from Book I of <i>The Well-Tempered Clavier</i> (four is the usual upper limit for voices in a fugue), which has not one, but two, countersubjects (melodic fragments that, whenever the principle subject appears, are always heard along with it), every one of the five parts seems to proceed independently, each with its own articulations and expressive contours. The effect is rather like five people playing the fugue instead of one, each responsible for a separate voice.
<br />
This phenomenal ability meant that Gould could lavish attention on every note he played, precisely shaping the beginning, middle, and end, with the result that, listening to Gould, one can almost hear a composer’s thoughts between the writing of one note and the next.
<br />
For Gould, there were (or should be) no superfluous notes—none that merely coloured, or padded, or served a purely transitional function. Furthermore, the suppleness of his technique afforded him an almost unholy ability to spit out trills with devilish speed and utter precision, which in turn allowed him to use ornamentation as a structural, rather than decorative, element. Amongst the albums I downloaded during my bout with the flu was Gould’s recording of music for the virginal by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons. His performances are incandescent. Glittering, myriad trills anchor the fine melodic threads like jewelled pins in a gossamer tapestry.
<br />
Given his unprecedented musical and intellectual gifts, it’s no surprise that when Gould turned his attention to a particular composer, the composer didn’t always fare well. It’s been said that his genius wasn’t suited to every composer. Frankly, I think it’s the other way around: not every composer was up to the level of Gould’s genius.
<br />
Nowhere is this more evident than in his recordings of Mozart’s piano sonatas. Gould had little use for Mozart, lip-service protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, and he seems to have used the recordings as an opportunity to reveal the paucity of musical substance beneath the grace and charm. He tears the music to shreds, exposing clichés, uncovering (and sometimes fixing) shoddy voice-leading, and hammering home the absence of harmonic inventiveness.
<br />
In an era where culturally pretentious urbanites (read “yuppies”) have elevated Mozart to godhood, Gould’s didactic analysis of the Viennese prodigy’s weaknesses comes as a bracing and welcome tonic.
<br />
Overall, Gould steered clear of nineteenth-century piano literature, in part because he was deeply uncomfortable using the legato pedal, but mostly because he found it musically unsatisfactory. I know, from my own experience, that learning the Romantic virtuoso repertoire is largely an exercise in mastering too many notes sketched over too little musical material.
<br />
Gould’s aversion to the likes of Chopin and Liszt led to a widely-held belief that he simply couldn’t play the Romantics convincingly, that his approach to music was too intellectual. Nothing could be further from the truth. His recording of Brahms' Intermezzi from various opuses is breathtaking in its emotional scope, from the bittersweet nostalgia of the B-flat minor (Op. 117, No. 2), to the otherworldly heroics of the E-flat minor (Op. 118, No. 6), to the achingly tender E-flat major (Op. 117, No. 1). The latter is one of those performances that truly deserves the adjective, transcendent.
<br />
Of the albums I downloaded, by far the most surprising was Gould’s <i>Kunst der Fuge</i> (The Art of the Fugue, by J.S. Bach). Unfinished at the time of Bach’s death, <i>Kunst</i> represents the culmination of the composer’s sublime mastery of counterpoint. As such, it is a work of suprahuman genius.
<br />
Gould’s recording was unique in his canon in that he forsook his beloved Steinway CD318 for the organ. Furthermore, it is unusual in that he insisted the microphones be placed close to the pipes (”close miking”), whereas it is a near-universal convention of organ recordings to place the mikes well out into the hall in order to capture the reverb that is so much a part of the organ’s magnificent sonority.
<br />
Gould’s <i>Kunst</i> also holds the honour of being his most universally reviled recording (with the exception, perhaps, of his legendarily perverse rendering of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major KV331, the one with the famous Rondo Alla Turca at the end). Even his most ardent fans were left scratching their heads.
<br />
Though I knew it by reputation, I was unfamiliar with Gould’s <i>Kunst</i> until I downloaded it. I remember seeing the black-and-white cover in the old A&A Records on Bloor Street in Toronto where I spent a goodly amount of my student allowance, but for some reason, I always flipped past it.
<br />
Scarcely had the twelve-note subject out of which Bach spins his eternal golden braid begun when I understood why even Gould fans viewed the recording with embarrassment. While well-schooled in organ technique, Gould had chosen to transpose his détaché piano style holus-bolus to an instrument that virtually demands a legato touch. His playing on the album could charitably be called un-idiomatic; more forthrightly, just plain ghastly.
<br />
But Gould never did anything without a reason. Not infrequently, what at first sounds like interpretive whimsy—a peculiar tempo, say, or a seemingly arbitrary articulation—proves to be a device for revealing hitherto inaudible or unsuspected connections in the musical fabric.
<br />
Taking it on faith Gould knew what he was doing, I kept listening to the strange, choppy, decidedly un-organ-like music. Listening <i>intently.</i> So intently that somewhere around Contrapunctus IV, I got hypnotized. As the work continued to unfold, I began to feel I was listening not to music, but a dialogue. And not the normal sort of dialogue associated with the subject-answer of voices in a fugue; rather, a colloquy between two masters, a conversation between Bach and Gould. At times, Gould would seem to hold forth: “Awesome, Herr Bach! I know you wouldn’t play it this way yourself, but if I articulate this entry thus, and phrase the corresponding countersubject like this, you can actually hear how the puzzle pieces fit together.” And Bach would reply: “Wow! I never even thought of it. But if you wouldn’t mind sliding over on the bench, let me have a go at the manuals for a while. I want you to check out this next bit. It’s totally cool.”
<br />
And so on, back and forth, two counterpoint geeks in private, passionate discussion about their favourite subject, revelling in their respective interpretive and compositional prowess.
<br />
Surely, I found myself thinking, the voice of God must sound something like this.
<br />
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
<br />
The recordings I've referred to in this article are all available for peer-to-peer downloading via BitTorrent. Assuming you have a BitTorrent client on your system (Deluge and Ktorrent are good choices for Linux; for Windows, I don’t know since I don’t do windows—Vuze, maybe?), go to a site like kickasstorrents.com, type “Gould” in the search bar, and choose the ones you want from the results. Be aware, though, that some are in .ogg and .flac format. Make sure your media player can handle them.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-2960361371553293862010-12-19T10:50:00.000-08:002013-07-16T21:30:58.340-07:00Deathnote: Where manga meets Chris Hedges<p>It wasn't my intention to use this blog for discussing books, but things have settled down for now—at least until the next indignity of living in a credit-driven, corporatist state is visited upon yours truly. I have a home, a room to call my own, and stimulating roommates. Winter's coming on, and with it the urge to curl and up read until the greening of the buds next spring. </p><span class="stars">* * *</span> <p>I recently found myself reading two books concurrently—re-reading, actually—and, as occasionally happens when I have more than one book on the go, I discovered unexpected parallels. </p><p>On the surface of it, the books couldn’t be more dissimilar. One was Chris Hedges’ <i>I Don’t Believe in Atheists</i> (Free Press, New York, 2008). The other was Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s manga series, <i>Deathnote</i> (English <i>tankōbon,</i> 12 vols., VIZ Media, San Francisco, 2007). <i>Atheists</i> dissects the secular fundamentalism typified by militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. <i>Deathnote</i> is a story about a high school student who stumbles on a supernatural notebook that grants him the ability to kill simply by writing a person’s name. <i>Atheists</i> is aimed at an educated, adult audience. <i>Deathnote</i> is primarily directed toward teenagers. And while Hedges is a best-selling author, it’s doubtful whether sales of all his books combined approaches even a fraction of the more than twenty-six million copies of <i>Deathnote</i> sold in Japan alone. </p><p>Near the end of <i>Atheists,</i> Hedges makes the following statement: </p><blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 130%;">“Our return to an image-based culture means the destruction of the abstract thought made possible by a literate, print-based society. Image-based societies do not grasp or cope with ambiguity, nuance, doubt and the many layers of irrational motives and urges, some of them frightening, that make human actions complex and finally unfathomable.” </blockquote><p>While I’m predisposed to agree with Hedges on every point he makes against Dawkins and his ilk (including their staggering theological illiteracy and spurious application of Darwinian biology to culture), I respectfully disagree with his assertion that image-based culture cannot cope with ambiguity and nuance. As a novelist in the traditional mode, I’m well aware that we’re moving into a post-literary age. However, I do not hold his alarmist view. My position is cautiously optimistic. I believe what we are witnessing is analogous to the shift from an oral tradition to a written one. Much was lost by that shift, but much was gained. </p><p>I may be stretching a point, since manga is not purely images (it’s basically a Japanese comic), but what astounds me about the form is precisely its potential to convey ambiguity and complex human motivations. Not all manga realizes the potential; in fact, very little does. But when it is realized, the results are stupendous. </p><p><i>Deathnote</i> is manga at its finest, and makes a particularly pertinent counter to Hedges’ doom-and-gloom view of image-based culture since it deals with exactly the same themes as <i>Atheists,</i> and does so in a manner that, contrary to his assertion, is complex, layered and nuanced. </p><p>Hedges’ main thesis is that the fundamentalist mindset, shared by religious types and science-worshipping secularists alike, always entails a Utopian future based on two related but demonstrably flawed assumptions: the possibility of collective salvation, ie. the idea that societies <i>in their entirety</i> can be improved (redeemed); and the myth of moral progress. Hedges rightly argues that as long as human beings are free-thinking organisms, any attempt at collective salvation necessarily devolves into totalitarianism and criminality. Furthermore, neither Religion, nor Reason, nor Science has ever occasioned any moral advancement in our race because, according to Hedges, </p><blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 130%;">“Human evil is not a problem. It is a mystery. It cannot be solved...The forces of darkness are our own forces. If we fail to name or acknowledge these forces, they will destroy us. Acknowledgment means accepting that our encounter with evil is permanent and perpetual...The belief that we can achieve human perfection, that we can advance morally, is itself an evil.” </blockquote><p>Light Yagami, the protagonist of <i>Deathnote,</i> is the embodiment of fundamentalist thinking. An A student of high moral principles, he is disgusted with the state of the world, which he characterizes as “a rotten mess.” When Fate hands him the means to kill at will in the form of a Shinigami’s notebook (Shinigami translates roughly as Death God), he mounts a campaign to purge the world of criminals and make it a place “...inhabited only by people I decide are good.” </p><p>The deathnote is “dropped” into the human world as a lark by Ryuk, a Shinigami seeking relief from the overwhelming boredom of his existence in the Shinigami realm—a sterile landscape inhabited by listless gods who no longer recall their purpose in Creation. The Beckett-like aridity of the Shinigami realm parallels the impoverished role of spirituality in contemporary Western culture, and it’s no surprise that it provides the seeds for Light’s Manichean Utopianism. </p><p>Light himself is an extraordinarily complex character. To start with, he’s impossible not to like. A model teenager, he’s charming, polite, well-spoken. His relationship with his parents is loving and respectful. He shows consideration toward his younger sister, even helping her with homework without griping. Girls find him hot, and guys think he’s cool. It’s as if the creators of <i>Deathnote</i> studied the Patricia Highsmith manual on how to get readers to side with psychopaths and monsters. </p><p>Because monster he is. Along side the very qualities that make him so likable is a monomaniacal appetite for power. Light will stop at nothing to become “...the god of a new world.” I say along side, not underneath, because his dark side and his light side, so to speak, coexist. One does not mask or eclipse the other. The synthesis of the two creates a character who’s at once both appealing and utterly blind to his own evil. </p><p>He’s also disarmingly frank. Ryuk, the Shinigami, is largely ignorant of human behaviour, a device that allows Light to explain how people think. It’s nearly impossible not to nod in agreement when Light elucidates the reason behind an explosion of Internet sites supporting his purge: </p><blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 130%;"><b>Light:</b> <i>“This is what human beings are like, Ryuk. Say in school, we have a discussion in class...there’s no way the subject would be, ‘Is it all right to kill someone evil?’ but let’s say that <i>was</i> the subject. Everyone would act all virtuous and say, ‘No, it’s wrong to kill anybody.’ And of course, that would be the proper response. People need to maintain that kind of facade in public. But this [Light points to his monitor] is what people really think. Cowards. Nobody will acknowledge my existence openly, but out on the anonymous Internet, ‘Kira’ rules.”</i> </blockquote><p><i>Kira,</i> derived from the Japanese mispronunciation of “killer,” is the name by which Light’s criminal-killing spree is known. It’s not an alter ego; Light is not “sometimes-Light” and “sometimes-Kira.” It’s the label for a phenomenon that appeals to people’s desire for simple solutions to complex problems: </p><blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 130%;"><b> Light:</b> <i>“Media reports still refer only to ‘the series of mysterious deaths among violent criminals,’ but people all over the world already feel it—that someone is passing righteous judgment on them [criminals].”</i> </blockquote><p>Light dislikes the term, but intuitively grasps that ‘Kira’ encompasses more than just himself. It’s a doctrine, one that promises its followers paradise on Earth. In manga, as in real life, paradisaical futures, religion-based or secular, demand belief in dogma. </p><p>Light is gifted with a high IQ, and, in truth, much of the entertainment value of <i>Deathnote</i> comes from the battle of wits between him and his equally gifted nemesis, the enigmatic L. Reading the series is a bit like watching two grand masters trying to outwit each other in a marathon game of chess. But Light’s intelligence is paired with a grotesquely childish concept of justice. His plan to make the world a better place by killing criminals is utterly jejune. Like any radical Utopian scheme, it reduces evil to a single target and proposes that removal of the target will lead to an era of prosperity and harmony. His plan is as doomed to fail as gassing Jews or bombing Muslims. Or, as secular fundamentalists propound, excising spirituality from human experience. </p><p>Not surprisingly, Light’s target list expands when he encounters opposition. At one point, L accuses Kira of being evil, and Light, speaking to Ryuk, has this to say: </p><blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 130%;"><b> Light:</b> <i>“Me...evil...? I’m the hero who’s liberating people from fear. I’m the saviour who’s going to be like the god of this perfect new world! Those who try to fight me...<i>they’re</i> the evil ones!!”</i> </blockquote><p>In order to advance his Utopian scheme, he must now purge anyone who opposes Kira or seeks to unmask him. It’s an infantile reaction, one that leads irrevocably to the fanaticism that George Santayana so astutely defined as “redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.” </p><p>Light’s opponents are, in many ways, as childish and fanatical as Light himself. Their protestations that Kira is nothing more than a murderer come across as rote expressions of schoolbook morality. Like Light, they’re blind to their own evil. Abduction, torture and forcible confinement are part and parcel of the battle to bring Light/Kira down. L and his successor, Near, are perfectly content to stand by while lives are sacrificed. Their fanaticism overwhelms any initial sense of justice. In the end, all that matters is winning. <p>In <i>Atheists,</i> Hedges maintains that failure to acknowledge the innate flaws in human kind, that denying the full, irrational complexity of human beings, and that imagining evil is “out there” invite the catastrophic violence of fundamentalism. </p><blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 130%;">“...once evil is seen as being only external, once some human beings are proclaimed more moral than others, repression and murder becomes a regrettable necessity to improve the world.” </blockquote><p>Only one character in <i>Deathnote</i> is natively responsive to the emotional complexity and warring moral impulses that make him human, a police detective named Matsuda. Significantly, he’s the buffoon of the series. While the supposed good guys are reviling Kira for his wickedness, it falls to luckless Matsuda to point out that Kira’s killing of known criminals has indeed resulted in a significant drop in crime. He offers the observation tentatively, in the spirit of wondering, and for his courage in saying what no one else will receives embarrassed, foot-in-the-mouth silence from his fellow police officers. While everyone else is being deadly earnest, only he is capable of spontaneity. He laughs at what is funny, is moved by what is touching, gets excited when there’s cause for optimism. For this he’s treated like a fool. He sincerely wants to bring an end to Kira—for him, “killing anybody is wrong” is not a public facade—and constantly asks: “What can I do to help?” In one telling panel, L brushes him off with: “Well...you could make me a cup of coffee.” </p><p>Matsuda’s just not smart enough, not grimly righteous enough, to play with the big boys. He’s marginalized, much as in the real world those who place humanity above big schemes and sweeping reforms are trivialized and dismissed. </p><p>However Matsuda, in his role as fool, makes everyone else look bad. From the start, L suspects that Light is Kira. Proving that he is forms the heart of <i>Deathnote</i>’s plot. But Matsuda likes and respects Light, and rejects L’s notion that Light is guilty until proven innocent. He defends Light at every opportunity, rejoicing whenever the evidence overwhelmingly supports his innocence, which frequently, and quite reasonably, it does—if you subtract the supernatural element of the story. That Matsuda’s wrong is not an indication of intellectual deficiency; it’s evidence of loyalty, decency, and humanity. </p><p>It’s no accident on the part of the creators of <i>Deathnote</i> that when Light is finally unmasked, in a stunning progression of images that incorporates one of the most expressive panels in the entire series—Light naked and howling like a beast—it’s Matsuda, the avatar of Everyman betrayed, who fires the shot that brings him down. </p><p>I’ve only touched on some of the ways Hedges’ arguments in <i>I Don’t Believe in Atheists</i> are vividly depicted in the pages of <i>Deathnote.</i> Light and L’s relationship alone deserves a book, so finely layered and mytho-psychologically nuanced is the friendship/enmity. Hedges is correct in his blistering criticism of the Utopian ideals that fuel both religious and secular fundamentalism, however he is wrong to imagine that image-based culture—here exemplified by manga—is <i>a priori</i> incapable of coping with the layers of ambiguity, nuance, and doubt that ultimately define who we are as a race. </p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-49336640387620933752010-11-27T06:31:00.000-08:002010-12-19T11:53:28.887-08:00The Worst of All Possible Worlds<p>
I recall the moment I first realized the future we’d been warned about was here. “Free long distance,” said the ad in reassuring, fashionably thin sans-serif type, “just $19.95/mo.”
</p>
<p>
Now, I'll admit I'm not the world’s most plugged-in person. Words change meaning sometimes, and I fail to notice, as the mongers of consumerism and our government distort them in an effort to direct how people think. But as far as I'm aware, free, in both its senses—<i>liberty</i> and <i>gratis</i>—still means what it always has. Free long distance for a price? That’s like saying, “Free beer Wednesday nights for $7.95 a pitcher.” Free means free, pay means pay. One excludes the other. Both cannot be true.
</p>
<p>
Not, that is, outside of doublethink.
</p>
<p>
Doublethink, in Orwell’s <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four,</i> is defined as: “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them...” In the novel, doublethink is propagated through the use of Newspeak, a castrated form of English utterly devoid of nuance, like the soundbites heard on CNN. Its function is control, and its architects the Party. Quite unlike Zen koans (“the sound of one hand clapping”) and the gentle paradoxes of Lao Tzu (“the greatest fullness seems empty”), doublethink is not a tool for apprehending the eternal “real” beyond a scrim of words. Its goal is to induce an unmoored, schizophrenic state wherein reality becomes whatever those in power say it is.
</p>
<p>
In Western culture, doublethink is part and parcel of contemporary life. And it’s bad. Very, very bad. As bad as Orwell warned us it would be. When <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> came out in '49, doublethink was in its infancy, a child of Stalin’s Soviet regime and Josef Goebbels' mastery of propaganda. It was just a trend, but Orwell spotted it, got scared, and used his powers as a novelist to show us what would happen if it carried on unchallenged.
</p>
<p>
Yet here we are, despite his warning, drenched in doublethink:
</p>
<ul style="list-style-type: disc;">
<li>the former President of a country that styles itself the shining
beacon of democracy rigging the elections—twice
<li>perfect, <i>controlled</i> demolitions being set off by jet planes
crashing into the World Trade Center</li>
<li>“greed” being equated with “good”</li>
<li>democracy being imposed by force</li>
<li>freedom being abrogated in the name of liberty</li>
</ul>
<p>
But it’s not these textbook proofs that 1984 is here and now that frighten me the most. Their blatancy, like all Big Lies, ensures that dissidents and other saintly malcontents will tend the fires of truth. No, what terrifies me is a slogan no one took exception to: “Free long distance, $19.95/mo.”
</p>
<p>
Doublethink is so pervasive we’ve grown used to it, so much so that, plastered on a billboard, there for everyone to deconstruct, no one even noticed.
</p>
<p>
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
</p>
<p>
<i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> is, of course, best known for the catch phrase: Big Brother is watching you. Perpetual surveillance is but one prong of the strategy employed by Orwell’s Party to control the “proles,” but it’s the bit that stuck, the theme that everybody knows. And, you’d think, would live in terror of.
</p>
<p>
Yet here we are, the most surveilled society in all of human history.
</p>
<p>
The twentieth century was a hotbed of cautionary tales, from the post-apocalyptic visions of Walter Miller (<i>A Canticle for Leibowitz</i>) and Neville Shute (<i>On the Beach</i>), to Suzette Haden Elgin’s feminist-themed <i>Native Tongue</i> (from which Margaret Atwood appears to have, shall we say, <i>borrowed</i> a few ideas for the <i>Handmaid’s Tale</i>) to Frank Herbert’s tinkering-with-biology-themed <i>The White Plague</i> (which—shall we be charitable again?—prefigured Atwood’s <i>Oryx and Crake</i>), to William Gibson’s dark, corporatist futures—to name a few.
</p>
<p>
Three, however, stand above the rest and have emerged as classics: George Orwell’s <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four,</i> Aldous Huxley’s <i>Brave New World</i> (1932), and Ray Bradbury’s <i>Fahrenheit 451</i> (1953).
</p>
<p>
Each has entered popular imagination via Cole’s Notes-like synposes: <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> is “about” Big Brother; <i>Brave New World</i> is “about” test-tube babies; <i>Fahrenheit 451</i> is “about” burning books.
</p>
<p>
More accurate descriptions would run thus: Orwell’s novel is about a state that limits people freedoms by depriving them of discourse; Huxley’s is about control through drugs, consumerism and state-sanctioned hedonism; Bradbury’s most famous novel (other, I suppose, than <i>Dandelion Wine</i>) concerns itself with the anaesthetizing influence of entertainment media.
</p>
<p>
However, what disturbs me more than seeing complex novels shrivelled into two-word husks is how specifics of the novels' three dystopias have been embraced instead of shunned.
</p>
<p>
Take, for example, Huxley’s “scent organ,” a concert instrument that, instead of playing sound, wafts odours through the audience. Huxley meant the instrument to represent the lengths to which a society benumbed by drugs and sated by consumerism would go in search of novel stimulation. Imagine my frisson of horror when, a few years back, Glade (or was it AirWick?) marketed a plug-in that, according to the ads, would play a symphony of scents to freshen up your living room.
</p>
<p>
My first thought was: Is this some sort of sick, postmodern joke? My second was: <i>Brave New World</i>—it’s here. I don’t know why I was surprised. Test-tube babies were already nothing new; consumerism had become the sole means millions had to validate their lives; Valium and Prozac were, for all intents and purposes, Huxley’s state-provided <i>soma.</i>
</p>
<p>
But just like “free you have to pay for,” one small ad—banal, unnoticed—clued me in: we’re living in not one but <i>two</i> of the dark futures we had more than ample warning to avoid. Bad enough we let the powers that be surveil us with cameras and track our every movement on the Internet, bad enough our language is approaching Newspeak and our thoughts are paralysed by doublethink, bad enough we serve the Party (these days known as “the Economy”), we’ve gone and grafted Huxley onto Orwell’s airless hell.
</p>
<p>
Andrew, my first lover (mentioned elsewhere in this blog) liked to say that science fiction authors should be shot. His admittedly light-hearted thesis was that cautionary tales bring about the futures they decry; some bozo somewhere always thinks, “What a great idea,” and the warnings get converted into blueprints.
</p>
<p>
Nowhere is this easier to see than in <i>Fahrenheit 451.</i> Bradbury’s great fear was not the censoring of books, but rather television’s impact on the act of reading, which, for him, symbolizes thinking and imagination. When his book came out in '53, commercial network programming was scarcely five years old, yet Bradbury’s astounding genius extrapolated wall-sized flat-screens, multi-headed displays, rooms devoted to home theatre systems, reality TV and interactive broadcasts. In itself, pretty cool stuff. But Bradbury could also see how television’s vivid, forged realities might lead to losing our imaginative faculties, and posited a world so media-benumbed its citizens had lost the power to think—a vacuum easily exploited by its government.
</p>
<p>
Sound familiar? Kinda makes you wonder: <i>did</i> someone, reading <i>Fahrenheit 451,</i> say, “Cool! Let’s make the future look like that?”
</p>
<p>
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
Our headlong rush toward the very futures we were warned about is hardly news. Writers with more skill than me have written on it better. These are the meanderings of somebody who doesn’t understand how we, as individuals, are capable of so much good, while as a race we’re so impossibly retarded.
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-21746538240730006972010-10-22T14:37:00.000-07:002010-10-22T22:04:28.351-07:00A Closet Vegetarian<p>
I love to cook, and in my kitchen (when I have one), I observe three rules:
<br/>
<span style="display: block; margin-top: .5em; margin-left: 1em; font-style: italic;">
1. Food should be cooked with butter and love (an old Dutch saying).<br/>
2. Fat equals flavour.<br/>
3. If it tastes good, it’s probably good for you.<br/>
</span>
</p>
<p>
Heresy, no doubt, yet here I am, at 53, never having suffered any major illnesses and weighing what I did when I was fourteen years of age. (In case you’re interested, a slender sixty-eight—kilograms, that is; in pounds, about one-fifty).
</p>
<p>
What’s my secret?
</p>
<p>
Well, the time has come to publicly announce it: I'm a closet vegetarian. Not vegan—that’s too pious for my tastes—just somebody who hankers after legumes, grains and vegetables. Rule #2 should clue you in I'm not averse to flesh. My recipe for <i>tourtière</i> (meat pies made at Christmas in Québec) clearly states: <i>For maximum flavour, do not drain the browned veal, pork, and beef...</i> And, truth is, when cooking for a carnivore, I like the meat. Of course I do. Who doesn’t?
</p>
<p>
But on my own, with no one else’s palate to consider, weeks and sometimes months go by without my purchasing so much as ground pork or a minute steak. It’s more than just my preference. Products from the meat aisle are a terrible economy.
</p>
<p>
Consider this. Yesterday, I made a batch of chili beans and rice, with cornbread on the side. It’s a little hard to judge, but I'd guess the meal’s total cost was somewhere in the neighbourhood of five to seven dollars. It wasn’t just for me; James, his girlfriend, John and I all ate. I had seconds, and there’s still some in the fridge. I'll be eating it tonight.
</p>
<p>
All that food for five to seven dollars—impossible with meat. But as I discovered long ago, living poor and eating well need not be incompatible. All you have to do is be a closet vegetarian.
</p>
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
<p>
The ongoing emphasis on supposed health concerns in the meat vs meatless debate seems, at times, designed to distract from a single, unassailable fact: planet Earth cannot sustain our present rate of meat consumption.
</p>
<p>
Frances Moore Lappé brought the problem to the world’s attention forty years ago in the now-classic <i>Diet for a Small Planet.</i> Her argument—more a statement of the obvious than thesis—was that raising meat’s an unsustainable misuse of global agricultural resources. If the total land required for a single steer is five to six acres, how many more people could be fed if real crops were grown on that same land? The answer is, a shitload (even if that’s not her word). As a protein factory, a cow’s about as fuel efficient as an SUV. More importantly, according to Lappé (and science backs her up), protein from a cow, or pig, or sheep, or chicken isn’t any “better”, isn’t more “required”, than protein from a lentil stew.
</p>
<p>
Thus Lappé proposed a simple, implementable solution to the problem of a growing population and shrinking agricultural resources: eat plants, not animals.
</p>
<p>
Unfortunately, Lappé was a sociologist, not a physiologist or doctor, and her book got bogged down in discussions of what she called complementary proteins. Basically, according to Lappé, the “complete” protein found in animal flesh isn’t present in any single plant-source food. However, combining certain plant-source foods (legumes, grains and nuts, primarily), creates a mix-’n-match of partial proteins that, together, are complete.
</p>
<p>
Lappé was wrong about the proteins—in a good way—and declared it publicly. In the 1981 edition of <i>Diet,</i> she states unequivocally: <blockquote style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">
“In 1971...I gave the impression that in order to get enough protein without meat, considerable care was needed in choosing foods. Actually, it is much easier than I thought.
<br/>
<span style="display: block; margin-top: .5em;">
With three important exceptions, there is little danger of protein deficiency in a plant food diet. The exceptions are diets very heavily dependent on [1] fruit or on [2] some tubers, such as sweet potatoes or cassava, or on [3] junk food (refined flours, sugars, and fat)...In all other diets, if people are getting enough calories, they are virtually certain of getting enough protein.”
</span>
</blockquote>
</p>
<p>
In short, any reasonably balanced diet, including one consisting exclusively of plant foods, is perfectly capable of sustaining the human organism. Thus there is no need for meat. Desire, yes—a juicy steak’s a treat, no doubt about it. And we need our treats, our little luxuries: man does not live by bread alone. But to mistake a luxury for need is an addiction, and addictions have a habit of consuming the addicted.
</p>
<p>
In my case, breaking the addiction—which, admittedly, was never very strong—happened of necessity because I'm living poor.
Increasingly, I understand why nowhere is it written: Blessed are the rich. The poor aren’t eating planet Earth to death.
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-57408052728993716092010-10-13T11:44:00.000-07:002010-10-13T11:44:10.108-07:00The simple joys of Irish soda bread<p>
My first lover, Andrew, liked to say that poverty’s a state of mind. We were young then, with a lot of growing up to do. His arrogance was unintentional. It should not detract from what he meant, that getting by with very little doesn’t have to mean you’re poor. Once the basics have been covered—food, shelter, clothing, company—failure of imagination is a poverty far worse than lack of funds.
</p>
<p>
Living poor imposes disciplines: budgeting your every penny, legwork in the search for bargains, making things the lazy buy, learning how to get the most from everything. (Just like hip-hop fashion, the eco-mantra of the monied urbanite, <i>Reduce, Re-use, Recycle,</i> was ransacked from the poor.) But the discipline that matters most is learning to extract the maximum of pleasure from the simplest of things.
</p>
<p>
Take bread. Not for nothing is it called the staff of life. It fills the belly amply and is packed with nutrients, assuming that we’re talking about real bread, not Wonderbread, of which a friend of mine is fond of saying that the wonder is they call it bread.
</p>
<p>
The problem is, with good bread, that it’s costly. If you have the money for it, sure, there’s bound to be a baker somewhere in your neighbourhood who’ll charge you seven dollars for a multi-grain delight. He might even have a sign outside his shop that says Artisanal, implying that his wares are lovingly handcrafted in the good old peasant manner. Funny how, as our society grows fat, the artefacts of peasantry cost more and more.
</p>
<p>
But if you haven’t got the money, what are you to do? Stealing’s out—not everyone is suited for the life of Jean Valjean—so the answer is: you make it.
</p>
<p>
Many people are intimidated by the thought of making bread. And, without a doubt, yeast breads are a challenge. But why think only yeast? The Irish in the 19th century came up with something simpler that’s a joy to bake and awesome in its humble purity: Irish soda bread.
</p>
<p>
There are recipes out there that call themselves authentic but require things like butter, sugar, currants, citrus peel and spices. Don’t be fooled. Irish soda bread has only four ingredients: flour, soda, salt and soured milk. Through some miracle or magic they produce a loaf that’s ready for the cover of <i>Bon Appetit,</i> smells wheat-y and delicious, has a moist and chewy crumb, and makes fantastic toast. Every time I bake it I'm astounded. The pleasure never dies. My taste buds don’t get jaded and my nose is always eager for communion with the smell of wheat, a hallmark of good soda bread.
</p>
<p>
The discipline of living poor. Learning how to take delight in what you have, in what you make, in what you can afford. Get that right, and every day, if only for a moment, you are richer than Bill Gates.
</p>
<p>
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
</p>
<p>
The canonical recipe for Irish soda bread is four cups of soft, white flour, one teaspoon of baking soda, one teaspoon of salt, and fourteen fluid ounces of soured milk (originally buttermilk, but like so many staples, buttermilk’s now priced as if it’s Devon Cream). I like whole wheat breads, so the recipe below has some adjustments.
</p>
<h2 style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 110%; text-align: center;">Whole Wheat Soda Bread</h2>
2 cups all-purpose flour<br/>
1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour<br/>
1-3/4 cups milk, soured with 1-2 tbsp vinegar<br/>
1 tsp salt<br/>
1-1/2 tsp baking soda<br/>
<br/>
<p>
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter and flour the bottom of a round 8- or 9-inch cake pan. Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl and make a well in the middle. Add the soured milk and mix.
</p>
<p>
Turn the sticky dough onto a floured surface and knead gently for a minute or so. Form into a ball, smooth, and cut a deep cross into the top.
</p>
<p>
Place the bread-to-be in the prepared cake pan, invert another pan of the same size overtop, and bake for forty minutes. Remove from pan and cover with a damp cloth while it cools.
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078889020771621525.post-90807297481585936202010-10-07T11:52:00.000-07:002010-10-07T11:52:15.949-07:00Programming or crack cocaine?<p>
I've been silent for a while, but not inactive. Programming—again. Several years ago, I wrote
a macroset for groff, and periodically, I have the urge to make it better.
</p>
<p>
Groff (”gee-roff”) is a typesetting and document formatting system used primarily in Unix-type environments such as GNU/Linux. It’s wildly powerful in a primitive sort of way, and comes with its own programming language. The language allows you to create deceptively simple commands that perform extraordinarily complex and precise typesetting operations. The commands are called macros, and any reasonably complete set of them is like a programme unto itself.
</p>
<p>
Groff is also free, open-source software. That means you never have to pay for it, the source code is always available, and you’re free to copy, modify and re-distribute it to your heart’s content. Free, open-source software is written and maintained by volunteers, or, more commonly, communities of volunteers.
</p>
<p>
There aren’t a lot of groff experts out there, just a handful scattered round the globe. We use a mailing list to stay in touch. The members on the list are amongst the most intelligent, thoughtful, helpful, diplomatic and ego-free people I have ever had the pleasure of not meeting face-to-face.
</p>
<p>
(It’s really quite remarkable, our little list, a paradigm for everything that’s good about the Internet, or was, until the Web got bogged down with the drivel known as social networking.)
</p><p>
The thing about open-source programming is that it’s work—hard work—and carries with it a degree of responsibility far in excess of what a pay cheque can instill. You write a programme, put it out there, people start to use it, and suddenly, it’s no longer optional whether—or when—you work on it. People are relying on you. You can’t have somebody report a bug and leave them stranded. You you have deal with it right away.
</p>
<p>
The same holds true of features. If all that’s standing in the way of someone finishing their thesis and submitting it in timely fashion is a feature missing from your programme, as was recently the case with “mom”, my macroset, you can’t just say: “I'll implement it later.” Tough or not, you add it right away. That’s the contract that exists between developers of open-source and users, and why open-source beats closed-source (think Windows) hands down every time.
</p>
<p>
<span class="stars">* * *</span>
</p>
<p>
I cannot really call myself a programmer, even though I like to programme. I'm an amateur without the slightest bit of formal training. But the challenge of it calls to me. Programmes are like free-form model airplane kits. You’re handed all the pieces with a tube of if-else-then-and-while glue; from there, it’s up to you to figure out the plane you want and how to make it fly.
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The process uses both sides of the brain, and, for that reason, is addictive. Days and sometimes weeks go by while everything recedes into the distance. Your world is circumscribed by clicking keys and pale glow from a monitor. You go to sleep distressed by some intractability, and wake up with <i>Eurekas!</i> You know only two emotions: satisfaction and despair. Even when you should get up and stretch your legs or spend some time with friends, you carry on, obsessed with nagging details, obsessed with getting done.
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In the end, of course, you finish. Stamina has long ago replaced the high you started with, but still there’s strength to pump the air and utter a soft <i>Ye-ess</i> of quiet pride.
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<span class="stars">* * *</span>
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That’s where I have been the past few weeks. It’s over now. Slowly I'm returning to reality. Once again the blog-voice will be speaking.
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09363667830606117556noreply@blogger.com0