Aesthetics

At last I am moving. Some of my old small group are coming to help me, which is nice of them. I lured them out with pizza. ;) The carpet in the apartment is being replaced tomorrow, which is cutting it pretty close! But I'll be moving in the evening, so it shouldn't be a problem, assuming they actually get it done. The nice thing is that I was supposed to sign the lease tomorrow, but the landlord wasn't going to be around, so we did it today and I got the keys.

It's a studio and quite a bit smaller than the apartment I'm in now, but I'm kind of glad. I'm taking it as a challenge to get rid of all my excess junk, which I've actually been doing all year in anticipation of moving, even though I didn't know my space would be so restricted. I just wanted to have less to move. ;) The smallness of the apartment will give me an objective goal for weeding my possessions. If I can fit things comfortably into that space, then I've done enough for the time being. Since I have the keys, I'm going to go over later tonight and measure everything so I can plan my furniture arrangement better.

Dumbly, I waited till yesterday to get my phone service set up, so I won't have a phone line until next Wednesday (I don't have a cell phone) and Internet access till Thursday. But I don't use the phone much anyway, and I'll be closer to work, so I can easily pop over and use the Internet there or at the library, which will also be closer.

Also dumbly, it turns out that I could have stayed in my present apartment rather than moving, even though the complex had been converted to condominiums and I think it was explicitly stated that we'd have to move if we weren't buying. But now they're even taking new renters. I was able to stay a month past the end of my lease because they allow us to pay month to month, and apparently I could have stayed indefinitely that way. I also got a "renew your lease" notice after giving them my written notice that I was leaving. Somewhere there, communication wasn't happening. Anyway, by then it was too late; I had made up my mind. It's been nice living here the past three years, but I'm moving closer to all the things I do, and I'm looking forward to it.

On another note, I've been watching the original Battlestar Galactica online at Netflix the past couple of days. I remember seeing bits of episodes when I was little, but I never knew the plot until I read the general premise a couple of years ago, and even then it didn't really stick in my mind. Well, I ran out of things to watch yesterday, so I flipped through the Netflix instant watching list, spied it, and figured now was as good a time as any to inform myself. I had thought it was basically an sci fi action show. Boy was I ever wrong! Yes, it has action, but wow—it is weighty and epic. The issues it touches on are large. I felt emotions during the pilot I do not normally experience while watching TV. So I can see why it was so popular, and I'm looking forward to watching the remake. I don't have cable, so it'll all have to be on DVD.

The other sci fi series I remember watching but not understanding was Buck Rogers, which is also available for Netflix online viewing. See what you guys are missing? Join Netflix!

Version 1.1, 5-1-05

"Aesthetics" is a strange title. Why don't I just call it "Entertainment" or "Art"? Well, I would, but "entertainment" is too superficial for what I have in mind, and "art" sounds too highbrow; some of what's here is just entertainment. But I am at heart a philosopher rather than an artist or entertainer or even a consumer, so I've called it something philosophical, "Aesthetics." I do like immersing myself in the experience of fun, beautiful, or profound things, but I am equally (or more) interested in the ideas they represent and in what makes them fun, beautiful, or profound. You'll notice I also have an aesthetics section on the philosophy page. I'll try to put my more theoretical discussions of aesthetics there. I guess you could call the subject of this page "applied aesthetics."

My general aesthetic theory is that people have different emotional or intellectual desires in life, and they use art to help fulfill them. This leads them into different realms of artistic taste. For instance, I like to use music to create an environment for me to live in, so I don't listen to music that takes a lot of concentration to appreciate. I tend to listen to new age or ambient music, sometimes classical. I like art that I can "get" at a glance but which also has deeper layers of structure and meaning that I can uncover over time. Additionally, my favorite genres of just about everything are science fiction and fantasy. This is due to the fact that the real world is boring.

Before I get started on the subsections, a note on my links: I link to websites I like, but I don't necessarily approve of everything on those sites. This is true whenever anybody links to anything on the web, but I just want to say to my more conservative readers that while I try to associate myself with wholesome things, sometimes the things I like about a work are accompanied by other things I could do without (usually it's language and violence). I try to overlook those and just enjoy the parts I do like. I hope my aesthetic and other values will become evident to you as you read through my site.

Music

I've been a musician since I was three. I took violin lessons from three till first grade, piano first through twelfth, French horn in band sixth grade through high school, and church choir the whole time. By the end of high school, my musical activities had proliferated so much that I was tired of music altogether. Except for band. Band, I can honestly say, was the best thing I did in school, and I loved it the whole way through. I still kind of miss the French horn. I'll probably pick it up again someday. When I went to college, I dropped music entirely for a couple of years, after which I helped out with the music at church until our little church closed.

Performing is fun (when I'm not doing too much of it), but what I really want to do is compose. This is what I unconsciously wished I was doing whenever I'd sit down at the piano to practice. And I did compose some, though it wasn't much and not that good. But what I really wanted my teachers couldn't give me, which was formal training in composition. I did take a music theory class in high school, but that was about it. Wheaton offers a major in composition, but I had other priorities. You can't major in everything. So now I plan to teach myself. I want to start with tonal harmony and counterpoint and then get into digital music.

And of course, I listen to music, too. I don't connect with most styles of popular music. As I mentioned earlier, mostly I listen to new age, ambient, and other electronic music, some classical, and a few movie and game soundtracks. I used to listen to a lot of Christian music, but these days I don't connect well with Contemporary Christian Music. I do like hymns. But in general I'm an instrumental person. Vocal music just doesn't do much for me, with a few exceptions.

This section is called "Music," but other auditory things will likely appear here as well, like sound effects and instrument samples.

Writing

Writing. Yes, I read as well as write. But "literature," again, sounds too highbrow. I occasionally read high art literature but not that much. I would use "narrative," but I'm interested in other kinds of writing as well. So I'll just call the whole thing writing because really, when I'm analyzing other people's writing, my goal is to know how to write better myself.

I read almost no fiction while I was a teenager, except for the stuff we were forced to read in school. I read a lot of fiction when I was younger, but once I hit my teenage years my analytical mind took over, and I read mainly apologetics. What brought me back was a video game. I never played them growing up, but my senior year of college I was introduced to Chrono Trigger, and I was hooked. Chrono Trigger was an RPG for the Super Nintendo that came out in 1995. I played it for hours at a time, and instead of feeling brain-dead like I did after playing other video games, I always came out of it feeling exhilarated. As I looked for other games like it, I realized that what I liked most about it was the plot, and of course, I could get that from literature. So I broke my narrative fast and picked up The Hobbit, a book I had tried to read twice before and had dropped in the middle of Mirkwood each time. This time I finished it and moved on to The Lord of the Rings. And my fiction consumption has just snowballed from there. Usually I read science fiction and fantasy. And I mostly listen to audiobooks because it lets me do other things at the same time.

Despite all this fiction I'm reading, I haven't been writing any stories like I did when I was little. I have these huge mental blocks that keep me from getting very far with ... well, anything, but especially creative writing. My writing is all of a more expositional nature. This is something I hope to overcome. Narrative really fascinates me, and I have this impulse to create that so rarely gets channeled into anything productive.

Poetry rarely does anything for me, usually because I find it hard to understand, but I strongly prefer metrical, rhyming poetry over freeverse. I especially appreciate meter-and-rhyme when it occurs in music, though I am also impressed when someone can set prose to a melody and not sound like they're rambling musically.

Art

I'm including in this category anything visual, such as architecture. I know even less about visual art than the other areas of aesthetics, and my tastes here are even more limited. I'm pretty much at the level of pop culture. Art museums bore me about as much as the average person. I don't typically care about any art produced before the twentieth century, and the avant garde types of modern art are nonsensical to me or at least uninteresting. My favorite kinds of art are nature photography, fantasy art, and surrealism. Then I have other miscellaneous visual interests, mostly having to do with computers and publishing, like fonts and tiling images. Sometime I want to explore the ins and outs of computer graphics.

Comics

Comics, along with video games, were one of those things I wished I could get into when I was young but didn't because they cost too much. I did grow up on comic-related TV shows and movies, however. I watched Superfriends, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Batman. Superman and Wonder Woman were at the top of my list of superheros, though they've now been supplanted by Spider-Man. There's something about comics that's just cool (not a word I use often, but here it fits). To some degree it depends on the comic, but partly it's the medium itself that intrigues me. The first comic book I actually read was volume one of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Kind of a dark one to start out on, but that's what I picked up. Anyway, that launched me into comic books. But one comic medium I had already discovered was webcomics! What a great way to pass the time. I occasionally have the urge to try drawing my own, but who knows if that will happen. I can't do everything. I have to keep reminding myself of that (if you don't know what I mean, take a look around this site!). I also dabble in anime and manga, which I like because they are weird and because they are character-driven. And for the record, Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic strip in the universe. The best webcomic in the universe is General Protection Fault.

Games

In a sense, games are the centerpiece of my aesthetic interests, specifically what I call "narrative games." These are any games that revolve around stories. My primary focus is on computer games, like text adventures and computer RPGs. Narrative games bring together two topics that are deeply fascinating to me: narrative and interaction. Why they are so intriguing to me is a mystery I haven't yet explored. Of course, most people wouldn't explore it at all. Those people are normal.

As I mentioned in the writing section, the game that got me started was Chrono Trigger, which I played about six years after it came out. I love that game. To a certain degree it has become the model by which I evaluate many of the other games I play, at least the RPGs. Since then I've been playing a fairly steady stream of RPGs and adventure games, both commercial and freeware.

One of my goals in life is to write at least one or two of these games. I want to write at least one text adventure and one graphical adventure. There are other kinds of games I want to create, too--games that are mindless but rewarding. I mean, really. I play games to relax, not to challenge myself. Most games take too much thought or skill.

Mass media

I don't watch much TV or many movies, but I listen to the radio a lot. I used to alternate between talk and music in phases, but now my musical tastes have drifted away from the kinds of things that get played on the radio, so I listen to talk radio almost exclusively.

And even though I pay very little attention to mass culture, in this category goes one of the few things I can genuinely say I'm a fan of, and that's Star Trek. The X-Files comes in second. Star Wars is growing on me, along with one or two others.

Humor

Humor is necessary for my survival. I am addicted to it. And to go along with my philosopher tendencies, I also analyze it. Everything else in this section will be a surprise.

Aesthetics Introduction

Aesthetics links

Music

Writing

Art

Comics

Games

Mass media

Humor

I was just looking at the Netflix new releases, and they have all these videos of music concerts, both popular and classical. I thought those would probably be boring. And I realized, what the world needs is music videos of classical music!! :D That would be so interesting. Something like Fantasia but live action, like normal music videos. Many of those would of course be a lot longer than the average and kind of expensive to produce, but it might get people into the genre. :) The world of classical music is suffering financially right now, I hear. Nobody listens to it anymore.

This music mystery comes from the distant past of my childhood, when I had a set of superhero story books and tapes produced by DC Comics and Fisher Price. I loved those things. I listened to them all the time. And of course, my mom got rid of them at some point (she was only doing her duty). So I'm collecting them again. I just bought my first one a couple of weeks ago on eBay—Superman: From Krypton to Metropolis. Tonight I listened to it and practiced my archiving skills by recording it onto my computer and burning it onto a CD. Since it was over 20 years old, I half expected the tape to already be worn out and warbly, but it was in admirable condition.

The stories in this series were read dramatically (in both senses) by a cast and accompanied by sound effects and music. They were done so well, and I listened to them so often, that they have defined how I think of superhero comics, at least from the DC universe. They captured the noble, larger-than-life spirit of the stories.

The tapes also contained some musical mysteries. When I was young I thought the music had been written specifically for them, but I was surprised to hear the Batman music while watching the original Fantasia. It was Night on Bald Mountain. They had used classical music. So I've always wondered what they had chosen for the rest. I'm not well versed in classical music, or most any music, in fact.

I was especially curious about the Superman tape. I associate two themes with Superman, the John Williams music from the movies and the music from that tape. Fortunately, the credits in the back of the book gave me some clues. For "Contributing Composers" they listed Richard Wagner and Anton Dvorak. So I made a trip to the Classical Archives. I looked at Dvorak first because I figured he had written less music. I decided they had probably used something famous, so I listened to his 9th Symphony, "From the New World." And I found that I liked it. I'm used to being bored by classical music. Anyway, I did recognize the beginning of the fourth movement from one part of the tape, but that wasn't the main theme I was looking for. But it was a lucky guess nonetheless!

I decided to give Wagner a try. I thought it was probably buried in the middle of Die Walkurie (some other time), but I found something famous and short to start off with, Overture to the Flying Dutchman. And I didn't go any further, because that was it.

Hurray! I'm getting pretty good at this. ;) And now I can listen to Wagner while reading the Superman comic archives. :)

I was shocked to get a lead on one of my mystery songs tonight while listening to an independent artists site. I first heard this song on the Muzak website, and it was some jazzy, ambient sounding thing with some guitar, bass, and a nice piano melody. The piano was what caught my attention. I was sure I had heard it before, but I had no idea where. I had little hope of finding out what it was in the near future because the people I know don't listen to that kind of music. I certainly didn't expect to come across any clues while avoiding the major music labels!

The clue came from a pianist named Michael Dulin on download.com. When I first heard him I was really impressed. I usually don't like piano music, but this guy is great. He had a piece called "Simply Satie," and to my astonishment, I recognized the melody and accompaniment from my mystery song. But in this case it was only a piano piece. Since electronic artists are always remixing other songs, I figured that's what had happened here, so I began an investigation.

According to an Amazon review, "Simply Satie" by Michael Bulin is based on "Gymnopedie #1" by Erik Satie, so I looked up that and found out that Erik Satie was a classical composer, of all things. Unfortunately, it turns out that that piece is very popular and exists in numerous arrangements (which might explain why it sounded familiar when I first heard it), so just looking up "gymnopedie #1" and satie in Google didn't get me very far.

After a few false starts, I came up with a winning search: 'gymnopedie satie (ambient or electronic or jazz or "new age") -tabs' in my trusty metasearch program, Telescope. And I found it. It's "Falling" by Chris Coco, on his album Next Wave, which I have now ordered. Yaaay! That was one I really wanted to solve. I was also curious about the genre it belonged to, which turned out to be chillout. Another genre to explore.

Okay, not really. But copyright laws really irritate me sometimes. In fact, intellectual property is one of the few topics that I can get carried away reading about. Hours slip away while I hop from link to link, looking for relief from my frustration, some glimmer of hope that the world of digital content might get saner in the near future. It's been a futile search so far.

My latest excursion into IP issues began when I thought maybe I would try some of those online music stores. I was looking for ones that didn't require a subscription. There's so little music out there I like well enough to buy that I figured I would only use the store occasionally. The main stores that fit the bill were Sony Connect, iTunes, and Musicmatch. My intent was to download the music and transfer it to my Sony minidisc player. So before plunging in I decided I would download one song and see what I could do with it. First I went to Sony's store and bought "Wuthering Heights" from Cinemage by Ryuichi Sakamoto. But I knew I'd be able to put that on my MD player, so after experiencing the thrill of downloading a single track and leaving the rest of the album untouched, I moved on.

Next I tried downloading from iTunes, and that's where my high began to falter. I bought "The Dark Night of the Soul" from The Mask and Mirror by Loreena McKennitt, which is not available from Sony Connect. I figured I could locate the downloaded file on my computer and use Sony's SonicStage software to transfer it to my MD player. Nope. The file was in some Apple-specific format that not even Windows Media Player would recognize. It had the extension m4p.

So I did some searching and discovered some nasty bits of information. Music downloaded from the iTunes store is in a protected file format. Fortunately, using the iTunes software, the files can be burned onto a CD that you can play on a CD player. The obvious solution would be to then transfer the files from the CD to the MD player using SonicStage. But although this is technically possible, fairly easy, and uses only the normal functions of commercial software from major companies, it is possibly also illegal, due to an irksome piece of legislation called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA outlaws the circumventing of copyright protection measures, which is what that procedure would do. I investigated Musicmatch to see what I could do with its music. Same situation, but with DRMed Windows Media files rather than Apple's format. I still wouldn't be able to move them to my MD player. I gave up and uninstalled both programs. I can't work with people who won't cooperate with me. This article pretty much expresses my opinion on the subject.

I also found out more about the lawsuit against Sony last year. Some of their copy-protected CDs included software used to play the CD, and the software installed a rootkit on the user's computer, which could be used by malicious programs to gain control of the computer. And not only was the rootkit hidden, but when some of the victims tried to remove it, it damaged their computers in various ways, such as by disabling their CD-ROM drives. This is totally unacceptable, so Sony isn't on my good list right now either.

My default reaction to these kinds of copyright annoyances is to imagine a standoff between the consumers and the copyright holders. If they won't give us what we want (free music, interoperable file formats, whatever), we won't give them what they want (our business). We'll take our toys and go play somewhere else. Partly this means redoubling my efforts to find music by independent artists. But to me, when it comes right down to it, it means writing my own music.

As I said, I have a hard time finding music I really like. I guess I'm just strange. But I like writing music, even though I hardly ever do it. So I figure that's the most reliable way to "find" music that I'll like and that won't come with inconvenient copy-protection features. Trying to work with DRM as a consumer is like being in debt—you have the nagging sense that you're not in control. In times like that, I understand the reassurance that truly owning something can provide, even something as abstract as intellectual property. You're free to do with that property whatever you like, within reason. You can even give it away.

So I'm looking at music theory again to see what I can learn. We'll see if I stick with it long enough to write anything.

I grew up on superheroes, mainly the ones from the DC universe. I watched the Super Friends, the Superman movies, Wonder Woman, Batman. I had the action figures, storytapes, coloring books, and we have pictures of me in a Superman Halloween costume. Superman was my favorite. Well, I'm in nostalgia mode these days, and I'm always in research mode, so when the first Spider-Man movie came out, I wondered how easy it would be to track down the first Spider-Man comics to find out how the character got his start. It's the kind of thing I'm always looking for, the real story, the genuine article, roots and origins. What was Spider-Man like when Stan Lee first conceived of him, and what was his story? And while I was at it, why not Superman? It turned out to be easier than I expected. Marvel and DC are both publishing collections of just this sort of thing, bound reprints of their early comics, and for many of their characters.

I remember my childhood only vaguely. And I was even more oblivious while watching the Super Friends than watching Deep Space Nine when I was older, so I have only the most nebulous idea of what the show was about, and the plots escape me entirely. I only know that I loved it. Other than the pure, "Ah, those were the days" feeling, in this nostalgia-seeking phase I'm in I want to try to remember exactly what it was I loved about these things. Maybe I can recapture some of the imagination I had back then. But I also want to find out what was there beyond what my little mind could pick up. What did Superman stand for as a cultural icon? How did he get that way? What is it about people that would motivate them to create such characters? Why was I so captivated by them?

And so, several weeks ago, I began. I tracked down the first Superman comic ever, in the form of the Superman Action Comics Archives: Volume 1. I am now on volume 2. I'm taking notes along the way, which I'll probably share with you at some point. It made me happy to realize that now I'm reading real comics. Not the sophisticated, Frank Miller stuff. Superman, as he was when he was creating the comic book industry (or so I'm told). I never read them growing up. Comic books are an expensive hobby.

Anyway, my plan is to read all the Superman comics that have been published in book form. I'm also hoping to start on other superheros before long. There's Batman and Wonder Woman and the Flash and the Green Lantern and Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk and a bunch that I never got into when I was young.

And so you have my (clumsily-written) introduction to my great Superman adventure. Hmm, I started reading a Superman story last night and didn't get to finish. I think I'll read the rest of it right now.

Okay, back to Farscape. I had seen it mentioned in TV Guide and on forums, but I had no idea what it was about other than aliens. I thought maybe it was similar to Babylon 5. I didn't know what Firefly was about either. It turned out that the two shows have a lot in common, although they have very different feels. They both take place on ships, of course, with crews that are outlaws. Both ships have picked up random passengers who have been forced to integrate with the crew. Both crews are trying to avoid the big bad authorities--the Peacekeepers in Farscape's case and the Alliance in Firefly's. The shows are similar enough that I've been getting them confused. It took me a minute to remember that, yes, Firefly was the one with reavers. And during one episode of Farscape I thought, you know, they should be more careful when they're visiting these planets. Who knows who could see them and contact the authorities? They should probably stick to the outer planets. And then I realized that they only talk about the outer planets on Firefly!

But the shows are really very different. Farscape is quirky (it's a Jim Henson production!), but it has a fairly conventional sci fi feel and a lot of the usual sci fi elements. Firefly is basically a Western in space. The sci fi elements are kept to a minimum. In fact, at this point I don't even know how they manage interstellar travel. Both shows balance humor and serious issue exploration, but Firefly does a better job of it. It's more nuanced and more natural. Its characters are drastically different from each other, but they are ordinary people, not the somewhat stylized aliens of Farscape. Still, Farscape does a good enough job in my opinion. Overall, I'd say I like them both in different ways.

But the fact that I was expecting Babylon 5 when I started on Farscape makes me want to watch Babylon 5. :) Maybe I'll try watching that together with the new Battlestar Galactica and see what happens. Those seem different enough to keep straight. Or the old Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers. I get those completely confused, mostly because I can barely remember them.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you what I've been reading.

Hello. It's time I blogged again. I really wish I did more of it, and perhaps I will. I am again trying to get control of my daily routine. Time. My nemesis. Anyway, in the 30 minutes I have left till I am supposed to go to bed, I will tell you what I've been up to.

Mostly I've been watching DVDs of TV shows. Before it was only TNG (Star Trek: The Next Generation), which I've been working through for the past year or so. The next Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine, began in season 6 of TNG, so I started the DS9 DVDs when I got to that point. I was looking forward to it because although I had found the show boring when it first aired, the people at TrekBBS spoke highly of it, as if it were really the most sophisticated Star Trek series. And you know what? They were right. I was pretty dense when it came to following plots and character development back in the old days, and I didn't care about the things the show was about, like society and politics, but now that I'm a little more aware and open to new things, I was hooked right off the bat. I posted this on TrekBBS, and they welcomed me to the club. :) They also told me it gets better (I was almost at the end of season 3), which I pretty much already knew. I started season 4 tonight, and all I'll say is that those writers sure weren't afraid to shake things up! Well, wouldn't want the galaxy to stagnate I guess.

Those DVDs were from the public library. Then I discovered Netflix. Of course, I had heard of it before. I just didn't think I'd ever watch enough movies to justify a monthly fee. But as time went on and my list of obscure things to watch grew, particularly TV series on DVD, the siren call of Netflix grew too tempting, and about a week ago I signed up. The first series I've been renting is Firefly, which I've been watching with my brother. We're becoming instant fans so we can watch the movie in the right frame of mine. And it hasn't been hard. That was a good show! It sticks in the mind. I hope Joss Whedon can start it up again after the movie. He's said he's willing.

While waiting for Firefly DVDs, we've been watching another series (from the library), Farscape. But I will have to continue this tomorrow. Good night!