Journal 2020-09-27

My IOS Apple health app is showing it has stored 238.66 terabytes of my data! Wow, didn’t know I did that many steps.

Journal 2020-09-18

Watching performers, I appreciate quality but I don’t get particularly excited by even exquisite technical excellence. Looks attract, certainly, but interest is quickly lost if there is nothing real going on beyond the performance. I detach emotionally when there is anything conceited or contrived. What holds me is real lived human experience, with all its perfect imperfections; something genuine that has emerged in the moment and surprised even the performer.

Journal 2020-09-10

I really don’t like listening to or watching any recent performance of mine, even if I am generally pleased with how it turned out. This is weird because I don’t mind after a while, when there is some distance of time and I have forgotten about the process involved. I suppose the time delay helps me enjoy it as an audience member, rather than identifying so firmly as the performer.

Podcast #4

"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes"

- Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare

A Little Bit of Drama

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Shakespeare the Songwriter

I listened on YouTube to various attempts at turning Shakespeare’s sonnets into songs, but I don’t think these straight translations work very well. However Shakespeare is so clever that if you read the lines of his sonnets out of sequence as rhyming couplets - e.g. line 1 then 3 then 2 then 4 etc. - the sonnets usually still work well, without losing the meaning. So I picked up a guitar, strummed some rhythms and improvised some vocal melodies to the rejigged lines, and it all works great!

A key for translating Shakespeare’s sonnets into a standard song format:

VERSE 1:

Line 1

Line 3

Line 2

Line 4

CHORUS:

Line 13

Line 14

VERSE 2:

Line 5

Line 7

Line 6

Line 8

CHORUS:

Line 13

Line 14

BRIDGE:

Line 9

Line 11

Line 10

Line 12

CHORUS:

Line 13

Line 14

Line 13

Line 14