I thought it wouldn't have the nerve to happen here, but instead of cotton fluff, real snow is predicted for later this week. You know those smarmy commercials you see with people happily shopping while snowflakes drift down prettily? If that ever really happens, what you see are soaked people protecting their purchases from water while sloshing through puddles of slush to get to their cars which are already covered with half-frozen icy rain. And then those happy American consumers get on the road and skid about on the ice film while going too fast in heavy traffic. Nothing makes a joyous Christmas season brighter and better than a 200-car pileup in thick fog on I-95!

I already consumed, mostly online. The rest of my gifts will come from (where else) Trader Joe's. Everyone I know has too much STUFF. The only acceptable present that won't add to the clutter is something you can eat or drink. I have been heroically resisting the chocolate truffles offered to me at work. The blustery winds have blown the colorful leaves off the trees and it is freezing out, so winter is really here. Time to hibernate, not work. But we are not natural creatures, so that isn't possible. More coffee, then, as those ominous white particles descend from the grey sky.

I have been learning "GarageBand," which is the simple music synthesizer program which came with my Macintosh. I can make plenty of noises on it, including electronic beeps, bloinks, and drones. I am not much interested in the pop music sounds which it is pre-programmed to make. But there's an option where you can "take apart" the sounds and re-make them to your noisy satisfaction. Once I build up a library of these, I can put them together and make some continuity. My friends in my online electronic music "community" are urging me to get moving and make some new compositions. They claim that ambient has "no rules," but of course that isn't true, because there is no creative field, no matter how avant-garde or experimental, which does not have a set of rules to obey. They just may be less obvious than the rules one learns in academic art and music classes.

Posted at 3:05 am | link