Thursday, April 05, 2012

Waiting For Clouds




It’s a good thing villains are just a device
writers and artists use for comic book fun.






In music a cloud is a sound mass consisting of statistical clouds of microsounds and characterized first by the set of elements used in the texture, secondly density, including rhythmic and pitch density. Clouds may include ambiguity of rhythmic foreground and background or rhythmic hierarchy.






Real-time granular synthesis requires an endless supply of grain generating devices. Several currently available microcomputers are capable of implementing real-time granular synthesis, but the cost of these machines is still quite prohibitive. Therefore, most granular synthesis occurs while the composer waits, sometimes for quite a while.







Waiting for clouds to play music and sing,
a man glances at his digital watch.

A song can be something like a monster
some people see in Loch Ness and some don’t,
but a song that’s a monster would be heard
by everyone—just as noise to some,
but as something that’s somehow more to some.

“What are you waiting for?” a woman asks.
“I notice you keep glancing at your watch.
I do that when I go to a concert
and I’m waiting for the show to begin.
Aren’t the clouds pretty? Are you waiting
for the clouds to play music and sing songs?”

The man looks up. He smiles and he says, “No,
I’m waiting for my date to pick me up.
She should be getting here any second.”

The woman nods, smiles too, and walks past him.

Far in the distance, on the horizon,
a lightening bolt flashes bright orange-white.
For a few seconds silence continues,
and then a low roll of thunder rumbles.

The woman looks back at the man and smiles.

The man smiles too, then laughs. He says, “Really,
I’m just waiting for my date to get here.”

The woman looks away and keeps walking.
She starts whistling, improvising a tune.






. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



Recently I exchanged some very brief e-mails with a reporter
who is covering the strange booms and other phenomena
in Wisconsin and elsewhere. I brought up some information
that, so far as I know, has never appeared in the press or on
the internet. The reporter, in reply, brought up some other
information that, also so far as I know, has never appeared
in the press or on the internet. I’m being obviously vague here
because when speculation is too bizarre even for the internet,
that speculation is by its very nature something close to fiction.
But I love fiction. And if a writer is very careful with fiction,
sometimes fiction can be something like poetry.
And that’s something like a song.





Noises In The Darkness Like A Melody


Song As Eternal Monster Inside Sound



The Endless Death Of Maple White


Hot Red Earth, Cold Blue Jazz



Tanya Tucker’s “Lizzie And The Rainman”


The Thunderous Glamour Of Batteries





















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