Strange Pulse

Daniel and I saw Alison Krauss & Union Station at the Greek Theater last night. We were so blown away. How can she sound BETTER live? How can she sing so perfectly and make it seem so effortless? How can they all?

There was no opening band. They played for what I thought was three hours, but when I looked at my voice recorder when it was over, it’d only been recording for two. (I recorded the show, but my recorder is very low quality.) The played a billion songs!

They played a lot of the ones I wanted to hear—”Restless,” “The Lucky One,” “Goodbye is All We Have.” But they didn’t do “New Favorite” or “We Hide and Seek.” I told Daniel it’s insane that they could play so many songs and still there were songs left out that I wanted to hear.

They did a song I’ve never heard before, a really dramatic tale about two boys lost on a mountain called “Jacob’s Dream.” The entire crowd was dead silent, just utterly enthralled. I was on the edge of my seat, waiting to see if the boys would be find dead or alive. It was definitely a highlight of the show. I mentioned it to Daniel after and he said it’s so amazing that they can perform a song and you can follow every word and take it all in when you’ve never heard a word of it before.

I always knew that Alison is really sweet. But I had no idea she was so funny. She talked a lot in between songs. She introduced each band member throughout the show. She talked about a couple of the songwriters they record songs by.The woman who wrote “Goodbye is All We Have” wrote it when she was 18—Sarah Siskin. I need to look into her, she has an album.

And apparently, the guy who wrote “Restless,” “The Lucky One,” and a bunch other of their songs, is a former truck driver who likes to put his false teeth in his pocket.

It was really incredible. Well worth the money. I kind of wish it had cost even more. They deserve it.

I’ll post a recording of “Jacob’s Dream” from my little voice recorder to the radio.blog.

This is an old pioneer farmhouse we used to rent in Sequim, WA. Of the places we’ve lived, this was my favorite.

It’s situated in the middle of huge fields, probably 60 acres or so on both sides. It’s surrounded by mountains along the south, and just north of it was the Straight of Juan de Fuca.

This poor bush in the back was pretty much decimated by the kids, they’d pull the cat tail branches off and run around with them.

There was a room in the back porch where the kids would play. Sort of. Mostly it got piled high with junk.

It had a stone chimney made from rocks taken from the Dungeness river. Inside the fireplace was made from the same stones. The focal point of the living room was the big fireplace.

The bay window on the east side of the house was in the dining room. I used to get up early before the kids and sit on the floor in front of it with the sun streaming in. I like to think I was enjoying the sunrise but really I was just warming myself on the heating vent.

This is the interior of that room:

You can see the heating vent on the floor beneath the window.

All wood panelling. I loved that house.

It’s not gray anymore. It was sold and someone repainted it an awful yellow-green color. I loved the grey and white.

When my parents heard I was getting back into film photography they said they’d keep an eye out for old antique cameras for me. They do this for my brother a lot. He uses a lot of antique and toy cameras and gets some really interesting stuff out of them, and now I want to try it too! My parents just sent me some old box cameras that I can’t wait to try out. Of course the reason they’re so cheap and can be picked up everywhere is that no one makes film for them anymore. You have to buy other film and have it respooled onto a spool that will fit inside the camera, or buy the respooled film from speciality websites. So I’ve ordered some film and I hope it arrives before I leave for Tucson this weekend. I really want to try them all out in Arizona!

I’ve also been going to the swap meet down the street every so often and searching for old, interesting cameras. So far I haven’t found much, and what I have found has been way overpriced. But my parents got me some pinhole cameras for my birthday which I’ve been trying out pretty unsuccessfully for the last few weeks. And I keep spending so much money on getting film developed, I figured I should just try to develop it myself at home. I have a scanner that can scan the negatives.

So I looked on eBay for some cheap equipment to develop film. And I found it. And I won it. It’s coming in the mail soon.

The only problem is, I started looking at old cameras for sale on the site. And I’ve gotten a little bit carried away. It’s too easy to get sucked into bidding on stuff. So far I’ve gotten two cameras which I later figured out you can’t get film for anymore. If I’m really ambitious I can try to modify some film and get it to work somehow…but I doubt it will.

I’ve also gotten a Holga, which should be fun. And some old 35mm cameras that are rangefinders. I’m excited! In fact, one camera had no bids on it until I bid about 2 hours before the end of the auction. Then someone else started bidding. I totally got into a bidding war with this person literally minutes before the auction ended. And I won. I ended up paying about $16 for the camera. But with shipping it’s $25.

And now it needs to STOP.

I’ll post pictures of all the cameras I’ve managed to accumulate once they all arrive.

Earlier this week Daniel and I made some sandwiches and took them to the beach. It was my first time riding on the motorcycle since he got it. It reminded me of when we were first married and lived in Hawaii. We had the same sort of motorcycle and for awhile it was our only transportation.

Of course I’m older now and much more aware of everything that could go wrong while riding on a motorcycle! Made me nervous but Daniel’s a really good rider. It was fun.

We love living somewhere that we can just quickly make some sandwiches and go eat on the beach. It’s never very crowded—we go to a more local spot, not the touristy, high-flying beach.

There was a windsurfer. Good day for windsurfing—the wind was warm, waves were too sucky for normal surfing.

There was a guy doing yoga. That’s the life!

Daniel went down to see how warm the water was.

BTW, if my brothers are reading this—this is the beach you guys are renting a house on for Christmas.

And little.

Some old negatives I found and scanned…some of these I never printed so they’re new to me.

Note she’s standing in a puddle.

Still standing in the puddle.

Bros!

A couple from before Elijah was born:

I’ve blogged before about how Nathaniel and Catherine were delayed in speech and used sign language instead. Here he is signing “All gone.”

Here she is signing the same thing.

I love it when songs have cascading notes and rhythms in them. I was thinking about three songs in particular that use cascading notes and realized they do it at or near the end of the song. I think it really heightens the tension.

First example is Tori Amos’ “Precious Things”. The cascading part creates a really great tension towards the latter part of the song.

Favorite lines:

“He said you’re really an ugly girl
But I like the way you play
And I died
But I thanked him
Can you believe that”

Here’s a clip of the cascading part:

Precious Things

Second example: Opeth’s “Closure.” The entire song is a masterpiece. But the last half, when the whole thing changes, that’s what I live for. The whole thing builds up to my favorite line, then it changes entirely.

Favorite line: “In the rays of the sun I am longing for the darkness”

Here’s a clip of the cascading part—the entire last half of the song does this:

Closure

Third example: A song from Iron and Wine’s new album, which isn’t out yet, called “Innocent Bones.” (But it’s leaked and the album is excellent.) The specific notes I’m thinking of in this song are very subtle but effective. It’s near the end of the song.

Favorite line: “Every saint has a chair to borrow and a church to sell”

Here’s a clip of the cascading part:

Innocent Bones Clip

All three songs are posted to the radio.blog.

Since I have this scanner that can scan film now I’m gonna dig through my old negatives. Here’s a few I’ve managed to scan so far.

I’ve already posted about some of these pictures before, but the versions I’ve posted were scans of pictures I printed in a make-shift darkroom in my parents’ cellar. (I refuse to call that thing a basement.) These are scans of the negatives, without any croppng.

Here’s the picture I took of Bono when I met him with my penpal Laura (right) and her friend Sherry (left):

Here’s the story behind it.

Here’s a picture of me and Laura (I’m on the right with the big hair). I think we were waiting outside a club we’d heard U2 was going to be at. Camper Van Beethoven were playing.

I met Joan Baez earlier that day. She called me “the burning bush.”

I recently told Daniel that. He said something like, “I love that we’ve been married for years and years and you’ll just say stuff like that.” I said, “Like what?” He said, “I met Joan Baez, she called me the burning bush!” I guess he’d never heard that story before.

This is Daniel on our first date:

You can read about it here.

This is me outside the house I lived in as a teenager. An old farmhouse on 2 acres.

My friend Julius had cut my hair. This was prior to the picture above with Laura, by then it had grown out and gotten all Robert Smith-y.

Love the armchair on the front porch.

Now you know why I love that line from a Ben Folds song that says:

Well this should cheer you up for sure.
See, I found your old ID, and you’re all dressed up like the Cure.

My parents got me a couple of pinhole blender cameras for my birthday. One lets you do three exposures that sort of overlap, and the film is curved, so everything gets distorted—pretty cool. Actually the other camera does the same thing but it only has one pinhole. The bigger camera has three you can expose all at once. See cameras here and here.

So I went to a park down the road and took a roll of film with the bigger camera. It sort of came out. My local film lab can’t print or scan the negatives because the images are so wide, so I just had them develop the film and I’m scanning the negatives myself. I can’t quite figure out how to get them to scan right. Color negatives are tricky. I think I’ve got the color settings figured out though.

I think this is probably the best image:

Here’s a few more:

Click the images for bigger versions. (Except the third one, I forgot to save out a big version of it.)

Seeing a couple dance to one of her songs on So You Think You Can Dance last week reminded me. Did you know she’s the daughter of Ravi Shankar?

Such great mellow music. I’ll post a couple songs to the radio.blog.

But since someone gave it to him, I’m ok with it.

Daniel got to work on Monday and his boss was late coming in. He hates it when his boss is late. Sets a bad example, etc. So when his boss finally got there, Daniel started nagging him about being late. Knowing Daniel, “nagging” was probably more along the lines of yelling. His boss said, “Come outside, got something to show ya.”

His boss had a friend getting rid of an old Honda 450 for cheap, so he bought it. For Daniel. Which is why he was late to work.

Daniel’s been riding his bicycle to work for months now. We only have one (working) car. Now he can ride a motorbike instead.

I might enroll in motorcycle driving school, myself. That is, if I’m not too short for the bike. Haven’t tried to sit on it yet.