http://www.radicaldruid.com/ words and music by john l. en Copyright 2009 Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:20:53 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss LunaNina.com | Unconscious Mutterings: Unwanted :: attention You'd better :: you bet Woman :: smarter Weighed :: and found wanting Upright :: citizen I feel :: good Ill :: will It's like :: this ya'll Poor man :: burden Great :: googly moogly]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/muttering_313.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/muttering_313.html Words Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:20:53 -0600 Gitanjali (with an introduction by W.B. Yeats). It includes the following disclaimer on the title page: "This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work." Wow. Quite a caveat for the reader or monitor for the reader. Just a couple of things: First, at no place in this printing does it identify WHEN this book was written, except by coincidence in the Yeats' introduction, which is dated "September 1912". The publishing date says (c) 2008 Wilder Publications, and also reads "First Edition". Really! A 2008 first edition is a product of THIS time. But I know that not to be the case, so what "time" is this book really the product of? And come to think of it, have the views promulgated in this writing REALLY changed all that much, for the majority of people? Probably not. Second, who is this warning for? What uninformed soul is likely to read this prose poem unawares? Finally, and perhaps most puzzling, why isn't this disclaimer printed in LARGE, BOLD LETTERS on the title page of the BIBLE? It seems a far more appropriate warning there, doesn't it?]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/using_disclaimers_where_they_r.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/using_disclaimers_where_they_r.html Conversation Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:00:52 -0600 13 JAN 2009]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/the_wrong_side.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/the_wrong_side.html Poetry Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:45:45 -0600 LunaNina.com | Unconscious Mutterings: Confirmation :: Ornithology Verse :: and Chapter Authorize :: Allow Blog :: Party Thirty :: and a Hippie Heir :: Apparent What are you doing? :: Dave? Complaint :: Grievance Leave :: French Tune :: a Fish]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/unconcious_mutterings_no_310.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/unconcious_mutterings_no_310.html Words Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:25:17 -0600 horizontally so it can perform an upstroke for additional speed and effect. When he combines this with left guitarist technique for hammer-ons and pull-offs, the end result is dazzling speed. The second was Jaco Pastorius' use of chording and false harmonics. When exploring different chord shapes and voices around the neck, I sounded the chords out using arpeggios played with my thumb, index, middle (and sometimes ring) fingers - not an unusual approach when one is playing acoustic fingerstyle guitar - or banjo. Particularly claw hammer style banjo. The innovation is the claw hammer approach. I admit I was troubled with the "double-thumb" technique of Victor's. Why not just use a thumb-pick, as you would on a banjo, instead of resting (and in a sense, limiting the range of motion of) your thumb. I've always avoided techniques that involved resting the hand in anyway on the strings or nearby props (like the old Precision thumb rests). And my thumb slap technique was deeply rooted in the vertical style. But to use the thumb and first fingers in combination, and move the thumb for a second combination stroke with subsequent index and ring finger "plucks"? Keeping an underlying rhythm going consisting of sounded notes and/or muted string unsounded notes while the hand floats above the strings (and along the neck)? That, my friends, is "claw hammer funk" bass. I'm still working out the details and some of the mechanics. But the end result should be (provided that you have sufficient hand strength) a bass style that provides both thumb and finger pop and slap, with a fluidity and dexterity akin to Earl Scruggs banjo technique. And there you have it.]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/a_new_technique_for_slap_and_f.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/a_new_technique_for_slap_and_f.html Influences bass technique clawhammer clawhammer bass electric bass funk Jaco Pastorius slap bass Victor Wooten Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:05:59 -0600 02 JAN 2009]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/space_between_breath.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2009/01/space_between_breath.html Poetry Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:10:11 -0600 16 DEC 2008]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/12/what_soundtrack.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/12/what_soundtrack.html Poetry Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:25:48 -0600 12 DEC 2008]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/12/arise_new_day.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/12/arise_new_day.html Poetry Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:01:30 -0600 Cheap hotel, out on the turnpike between come and gone; far too late for sleeping, far too early to be getting on. Who can tell? Sometimes the line between what's right and wrong fades into nothing like an old fashioned country song. You and me? It's hard to figure out the bottom line; too much time together, not enough of it was very fine. Some say love heals every wound, and some say love is blind; When it's gone, it doesn't leave too much behind. What we had is over, and it really doesn't matter whose to blame. Really makes no difference, win or lose, you end with nothing just the same. Cheap hotel, out on the turnpike just a mile or so; far enough to say I'm leaving, close enough to nowhere else to go. http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/12/super_8.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/12/super_8.html Lyrics Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:30:58 -0600 I don't know if ya'll have seen this, but it disturbs me a little (and so I feel it essential sharing ... LOL). There's a web-based ad (I saw it on MySpace --- I know, I know for shame, for shame) for some kind of online/continuing education that begins with the question "Are you interested in a career in..." and then shows the same fresh scrubbed blonde who has obviously been paid (because she is smiling) to be photo-shopped into various "uniforms" ... Criminal Justice -- she looks a bit like Heather Locklear from TJ Hooker here Education -- she looks prim and proper, and is holding an apple Business - she's wearing a nice blue suit Health Care - dressed in scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck Something Else - just an outline of this poor girl, with no specific picture, and Liberal Arts - she's smiling and holding a MICROPHONE Sadly, and maybe it's because she's a young, beautiful blonde, there's no options for Science (or maybe nobody looks good with a pocket protector, microscope or calculator). But that's not my biggest beef. As you may have guessed, my main problem is with the Liberal Arts choice. Since WHEN did Liberal Arts mean Entertainment? Like American Idol? Or do they mean, in a twisted sort of Amerikka way that Liberal somehow implies fluff, without substance, just some kind of anti-technology, anti-intellectual, anti-real work sort of existence? Last time I looked, Liberal Arts included History, Archaeology, Language, Art, Music and a myriad of so-called "soft sciences" like Psychology, Anthropology, Philosophy? Isn't everything that isn't Biology, Chemistry or Physics derivative, or somehow lumped under the business of Business a Liberal Art? Isn't liberal arts really about THINKING in coordination with some kind of doing, and not about bandying about with a microphone and TALKING (or singing)? If you judge it based on these kinds of advertisements, apparently not. What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong with people? What is wrong with education? http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/interpretative_liberal_arts.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/interpretative_liberal_arts.html Conversation Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:40:06 -0600 03 NOV 2008]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/blue_monday.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/blue_monday.html Politics Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:12:26 -0600 LunaNina.com | Unconscious Mutterings: In love ::with Be my guest ::at your service Number one ::fan Swallowed whole ::bolted 50 percent ::solution Made in ::some other place Supplement ::add-on Right for ::now Endless ::wire Ceramic ::tile]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/muttering_no_301.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/muttering_no_301.html Words Sun, 02 Nov 2008 04:17:58 -0600 01 NOV 2008 ]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/in_that_brief_instant.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/11/in_that_brief_instant.html Poetry Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:52:09 -0600 NarcissusWorks: The Ghost Anthology: No, it's not a real poetry collection. No, I didn't write the one line poem attributed to me. No, I didn't give my permission for, or seek, inclusion in this farcical volume. But think about it. If you ARE a living poet and you WERE somehow included, it's probably one of the few, if not the ONLY time in your life that you will be included as a "poet" along with the likes of Rainier Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman, Jack Keroauc or even Ron Silliman. This freak act of iambic penterrorism, or whatever you want to call it, has by the simple fact of random collection given you, me and everyone else on its table of contents a kind of legitimacy -- the same kind of legitimacy that we now share with 98% of historical figures, that we are referenced in print by yet another source. In this world of screen names, false accounts, spoofed IP addresses, and other ridiculously easy ways to remain anonymous while spouting damn near anything from a virtual soapbox, maybe that's as "REAL" as it's ever going to get. And as a parting thought ... think of the MILLIONS of folks who post what they call poetry on their websites, on poetry bulletin boards, anywhere they can get access, that their friends and readership laud with attaboys, right ons and "oh how deeps" ... folks who remind of watching American Idol audition outtakes (if they were for poets, instead) who WEREN'T included on this voluminous list. Why us, instead of them? Perhaps because some of us in this anthology actually ARE poets.]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/10/like_miles_says_so_what.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/10/like_miles_says_so_what.html Poetry Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:42:01 -0600 LunaNina.com | Unconscious Mutterings brings you my take on: Heist ::Lift Hack ::Break Dane ::Great Stings ::Smacks Monkey ::Man Junkie ::Strung Out Pumped ::Up Brass ::Monkey Fight! ::the Power Vouch ::Safe]]> http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/09/unconscious_mutterings_no_295.html http://www.radicaldruid.com/2008/09/unconscious_mutterings_no_295.html Words Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:03:14 -0600