The Path of the Bookseller

The music that blasts from the children’s shop next door to and below ours often gets stuck in my head, bursting back into my consciousness when least welcome. Today, it was playing the original “Someday My Prince Will Come,” Adriana Caselotti’s implausible vibrato slicing through the grinding groan of frustrated traffic and the half-conversations of crowded, isolated people, only some of whom had telephones. On Saturday, it was the impossibly cheerful music of an imagined old world, a sort of Chipmunk Klezmer of the Damned.
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As usual, work on creative stuff has gotten stuck in a sargasso of technical crud, but I’ve dug my way out, and the accelerated composing of “Moses” continues.

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I’ve been asked to compose a piece for narrator and string orchestra related to Passover, for a performance in New Jersey just before the holiday. The music is still coming together, but here’s the text as it now stands:

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On Wednesday, 24 January 2007, The “Wednesdays at Grace” performance series presents:

D’MAMAH (דממה)

(Hebrew for “Still,” as in “a still, small voice”)

• Nancy Beckman: shakuhachi, voice
• Thomas Bickley: recorder, electronics, voice
• Joseph Zitt: voice

Performing “Badbury Rings,” “Banquet of Heaven,”
“Te lucis ante terminum,” and other works and improvisations

7 pm

Grace North Church

2138 Cedar Street

Berkeley, CA 94709

Open to the public without charge
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Christmas is over. And, as predictably as the taking down of Christmas lights and the half-off sales on the foot-tall black, gold, and fuchsia plastic trees, it’s time for the retail workers to get sick. I’m no exception.
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After many months of working afternoon and evening shifts, heading outside to go to work in the morning can be quite disorienting. All the shadows are on the wrong sides of things.

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She walks, a straight line moving in silence through a room crowded with noise. Even as she frowns, she smiles, full lips set in a stasis of beauty that drifts, undisturbed, above the sound.
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As closing time approached, I went around the music floor to make sure all of the customers had left. One that I had seen earlier didn’t seem to be around, though I hadn’t seen him leave. “Is Tracksuit Man still here?” I asked another worker.

A voice came from the far side of a bookshelf. “Yes, I am.”

Oops.
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Thanks to all who responded about my Bluetooth problem and keypad confusion. John’s comment, erudite as always, explained the odd history of keypads in a way that made sense of things (though my hands will remain confused until my brain convinces them of how things are).

Ron’s comment explained what I needed to do to get things working.

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Here I am again, trying not to go to bed angry after having spent several hours battling to get my technology to do something that should be dead-simple.

I just got a Bluetooth USB dongle for my laptop, so I can send photos to it from my phone more easily. Setting up Bluetooth on both the phone and the laptop seem quite easy–until I get to the point where each is asking for some sort of passcode.

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