Now there's been a long entry to tell anyone interested a little of the events of months that took me away from the Log and still do, I'd like to put in a good word for the musical haven where I spend some of my time. And a few other things.
I really like the East London-based Last.fm, where it seems that I'm among the oldest members. It's not just my age, which saw another year added last week, but my 1 July 2003 registration date. But I was given the latter since that was when I started using what was then a good piece of software to share listening trends online.
Today is Migration Day.
This Log can never again be what it has been at least as long as I keep my paid job, while inside and out of AFP I want to be around primarily for people I know rather than readers I've met only online. Some became friends for sure, so I'm sorry to shut down.
It's just a matter of time.
My life needs rearranging to fit everything in. Sandy and I decided that even the unfinished book we've narrated about her loves and life in music and the "alternative culture" -- her place in the underground -- must go on to the back burner.
"I'm not that remarkable," she claims.
Well, people know I disagree with her there, but will obey orders to ease off. I'm slowed down by medication I shall always need to take and must learn to live with, grateful that the appropriate treatment for a Bipolar II state can still tire me out but no longer clobbers my creative impulse and desire to learn. My old friend BJ is now retired and fully immersed both in making music and a study of it, setting an admirable example. That has merged with much of what kept me and other friends busy during a time social historians are likely to present as a watershed year in French politics too.
I don't like the outcome, having Nicolas Sakozy as president, but way back in April, the woman who ran against him, Ségolène Royal, was late with her own policies and stabbed in the back by her own side, but she did remarkably well because the French woke up and wanted a change.
However, to go into that would be a long digression into why this nation might conceivably have put a woman in charge. I wrote plenty about it elsewhere at the time, but it's quietened me down since to put things together in a way that is part of the background to the book.
Royal isn't among those I've met, but Sandy's one of the candidates for a bigger book, if ever I did make time, about all my "Meetings with Remarkable Women". Unlike Barry, I'm already embarked long before I retire on studies of the musicians among them. What will eventually come of it, beyond my daily dealings with friends and colleagues, is a long way down the line, but how the parcels have begun pouring in to AFP!
"Are you buying up half of Amazon?" our splendid desk chief Tim teased me last week while he distributed the post. No, but it was agreeable sychronicity to have several hefty packages chucked my way on Tuesday, my birthday. I was a little crestfallen to see that a few books will be even harder a slog than anticipated when I compiled reading and listening lists, then pruned them and finally submitted the orders more often to Amazon "marketplace" sellers than to the stores themselves.
Friend and graphic designer Cam has been very helpful in guidance about related work in different domains of art that relate to where I'm headed. I also picked up ideas from Marianne, who took a break from her own studies yesterday to lead me out shopping for her and an Indian lunch she bought me. The young lady thought Dad might like a few CDs instead, but quickly understood when she saw the piles on my table, including a couple for her, that we'd do better to forget more music purchases. Instead, we celebrated both my birthday and her excellent academic results with a good meal before she took me to meet a fellow student she's staying with in Paris. I'm pleased for her about such an ability to share studies and the least I can do is buy her a little music to ease an academic load that will be tough for a long time.
There's no music as such in her courses, but we have a common interest in women's studies. While what I'm into is largely in English and hers mostly in her maternal language, I showed her a part of 'Disruptive Divas' in a section written by Melissa LaFrance that made my head spin! "I know," Marianne said bleakly. Like me, she could wrap her brain round some very interesting points, but LaFrance also found it necessary to throw in a chunk of academic prelude of the kind that gives French philosophy a fearsome and sometimes bad name, it's so obtuse.
I'll skip those bits, unlike the passages that mean I must refresh my own data base of the rudiments and theory of music. It's been much too long since I sat down at a musical keyboard myself, simply to do this.
I'll also skip a tedious list of titles acquired and simply thank Marianne, my mate Freddie and a few people at work who came with excellent ideas of what I'd find worthwhile to fill in my gap years in music itself. I believed I already had while writing 'Voices of Women', but no. With their help, I kept on pruning until I still had several dozen names left as unexplored territory from the early 1980s to the mid-90s.
It will take me years to catch up, mostly for the sheer pleasure, but while I listen and read several other books where music is only a part of a much broader context, I hope to be among those who make short contributions to fill in gaps at Last.fm, where this entry began.
The reason I so much like Last.fm is that the community is run by music lovers of different ages who cater in various ways they perhaps rightly call a "social music revolution" for what is apparently now more than "20 million active users based in more than 232 countries" (Wikipedia). It's also better known than any blah of mine.
It's very user-friendly, comes in several languages, provides an excellent Internet radio station, and allows me to make the final changes to this Log before I set my nose to the grindstone and migrate. I'm glad that a CBS buy-out in May didn't lead to a corporate change of the team that keeps the place going. These people present themselves at About Last.fm, with an invitation to more exploration.
"You have to pay. I'm too mean," said my workmate Simon last week, but he isn't. In any event, it comes for free, unless you want the full benefits I enjoy, particularly custom-made radio stations that do an excellent job in broadening horizons based on your listening habits. It costs only 2.50 euros a month and when I show people like Simon what's on offer for download, their tongue-in-cheek mean streak rapidly vanishes.
I know musicians use MySpace a great deal, but many of them appear to have been drawn to Last.fm too in a generous way. MySpace has plenty of merits, but the tendency many users there have to post huge illustrations of all sorts irritates me. It's mere clutter, a visual equivalent of noise that gets up my nose. But I'm going to post my own picture, thanks to Last.fm before I disappear.
When I'll be back, there's no telling. What I've written today fits into a broader context of family, friendships, work and social issues I'm taking on, maybe at the expense of the Log, but I find that a small price to pay for other features of my study course. I mean the mysterious Underground, stuff I need to know to be able to be of use and help to other people, rather than writing about it in an indiscreet way.
I feel that this place may now have served its purpose in my own life at least, though I never expected to say that, but then nor did I anticipate a 2007 that's been such a year of change. My previous entry, though it may need a bit of a rewrite sometime, said as much about that as I could.
Not now. Toodle-pip and happy listening. Here are a few musicians I've been enjoying:
6:48:27 PM link 
|
|
postbox