Author: Aeonn

I’ve been listening to quite a bit of jazz lately. More specifically, I’ve been listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I had no idea that John Coltrane was part of the sextet that recorded Miles Davis’s career masterpiece Kind of Blue, which is lauded as the greatest jazz album of all time. After listening to it, I have found that many artists have sampled its recording and some describe it as a Bible, in that you should always have a copy in your house.

Coltrane would move on, create his own quartet, and eventually record the monumental A Love Supreme. It was recorded over two days, the bulk recorded on day one, and adjustments made on day two. I can’t stop listening to it. I ordered A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album from Amazon and it should be here tomorrow. The recording process is detailed, as well as reception, reviews, and its impact on jazz. I am partial to Coltrane and have listened to a lot of his recordings. There’s a podcast on iTunes called The Traneumentary, which has an accompanying website. In it well-known artists and jazz historians break down some great tracks of Coltrane’s, and all of A Love Supreme.

From Pandora:

Composed of four parts, each has a thematic progression leading to an understanding of spirituality through meditation. From the beginning, “Acknowledgement” is the awakening of sorts that trails off to the famous chanting of the theme at the end, which yields to the second act, “Resolution,” an amazingly beautiful piece about the fury of dedication to a new path of understanding. “Persuance” is a search for that understanding, and “Psalm” is the enlightenment.

A satirical article regarding the dangers of Patsy Cline’s music.

I’m finally hooking up my old Sega Genesis tonight and playing Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, complete with his music as the soundtrack. Who’s BAD!?

I enjoyed meeting your dog.
And your friends.
I enjoyed the dinner you made.
I enjoyed my nervousness.
You’re wrong about me.

Wonderwall.

I was visiting my Aunt this evening and she told me that she and my mother talked about me all day as they were hanging out. My mom was calling me the ring-leader of everything bad that took place in her four children’s lives. “But,” my Aunt said, “she said you were more known for escaping, or wandering off, and usually dragging others into it.” She proceeds to tell me two stories that I have heard hundreds of times in my life. I was too little to remember said events, but they go like this…

Incident One
Date: Early to mid 1981
Location: A shopping mall in Orlando, FL
Adults involved: My parents

Little Aeonn is in a stroller and is only about a 1 1/2 years old. We are in a store inside a shopping mall. (This is where the story changes between the adults involved. My mom says we were in a bookstore. My dad specifically remembers being in a Spencer’s gift store… which is kind of gross). My parents are pushing the stroller through the store, pausing to look at items, still strolling, still pausing, and then my dad realizes that I am no longer in the stroller. Or in the store. He has no idea how long I have been gone or where I have gone to. They exit the store and head to the center of the mall. They frantically look for me. They call security. They call the local police. They make an announcement in the mall. My mom swears I have been kidnapped, knows she can’t pay the ransom, and is planning my funeral in the mall. 15 minutes later, an older couple is walking from the other end of the mall holding my hand. I had exited the stroller, exited the store, and walked to the other end of the mall and into Sears at 18 months old. Escape 1.

Incident Two
Date: Early to mid 1984
Location: Zares in Pensacola, FL
Adults involved: My mother and Aunt Katie

Incident two finds us in a Zares which is sort of like a Target or Venture. It sold household items, clothing, etc. Little Aeonn is 4 and her Aunt Katie is visiting Florida from New Orleans, LA where she attended college. They are out looking for a spool of a certain color thread. While the adults are in the aisle discussing said spool, Little Aeonn grabs 3-year-old sister Nancy’s hand and decides that they have better things to do. The adults are still discussing thread color, which is apparently enthralling, riveting even, when they realize that the cotton-top kids are missing. They begin to look for them. Ultimately, they go to the front of the store and request that the store doors be locked and that everyone should stop what they are doing and find these children. The store makes an announcement over the intercom, “Little Aeonn and Little Nancy… your mother is looking for you.” They are darting up and down aisles, calling the local news, requesting the Navy get involved, and eventually find us where one would expect to find two small children in a department store, bouncing a ball in the toy section. Escape 2.

From an excellent piece on Time regarding the life/death of Michael Jackson:

But as the first grieving fades, and all those people Jackson’s lawyers paid to keep quiet get other people to pay for their stories, the tabloid tattling will return. The noise should be as instructive as it is ugly. It will force Michael Jackson’s fans and foes to ask: Why must our stars fall so spectacularly and fail us so egregiously? Perhaps it’s because we want them to. Indeed, it may be the primary function of celebrities like Jackson to show us, in their early radiance, what we could dream of being — and in the murk of their decline, what we fear we could become.

I am having the hardest time saying, “Michael Jackson WAS awesome.” Aaaahhhh…

Canadian songstress Kay Pettigrew covering the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It’s fresh for sure.

via

On iReport, cronked posts a perfect video montage.

South Waterfront neighborhood, Portland, Oregon. Looking from our condo we can see cars attempting, and most failing, to climb up a hill to get out of the neighborhood.

I experience déjà vu every once in a while. While there has been ‘scientific research’ done and it’s been theorized as an anomaly of memory, I love the feeling that I know what’s going down as it’s going down. I experience physical, auditorial, and visual déjà vu. The below ‘scientific explanation is fascinating as it states déjà vu is caused by the brain storing content into memory before the conscious portion processes it. So, déjà vu, based on the below ‘scientific theory,’ is not a precognition, but a defect in the brain.

Déjà vu has been subjected to serious psychological and neurophysiological research. Scientifically speaking, the most likely explanation of déjà vu is not that it is an act of “precognition” or “prophecy”, but rather that it is an anomaly of memory; it is the impression that an experience is “being recalled”.

This explanation is substantiated by the fact that the sense of “recollection” at the time is strong in most cases, but that the circumstances of the “previous” experience (when, where and how the earlier experience occurred) are quite uncertain. Likewise, as time passes, subjects can exhibit a strong recollection of having the “unsettling” experience of déjà vu itself, but little or no recollection of the specifics of the event(s) or circumstance(s) they were “remembering” when they had the déjà vu experience.

In particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the present) and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the past). In other words, the events would be stored into memory before the conscious part of the brain even receives the information and processes it. The delay is only of a few milliseconds, and besides, already happened at the time the consciousness of the individual is experiencing it.

Also, in neural studies, more fascinating stuff:

In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, it was widely believed that déjà vu could be caused by the mis-timing of neuronal firing. This timing error was thought to lead the brain to believe that it was encountering a stimulus for the second time, when in fact, it was simply re-experiencing the same event from a slightly delayed source. A number of variations of these theories exist, with miscommunication of the two cerebral hemispheres and abnormally fast neuronal firing also given as explanations for the sensation.

Usually when I talk about déjà vu it happens shortly after. My neurons should mis-timely fire in the next week, I deduce.

I’ve found one reason to go to New Mexico, the Loretto Chapel Staircase.

The architect of the Chapel, Antoine Mouly, died suddenly and it was only after much of the chapel was constructed that the builders realized it was lacking any type of stairway to the choir loft.

Needing a way to get up to the choir loft the nuns prayed for St. Joseph’s intercession for nine straight days. On the day after their novena ended a shabby looking stranger appeared at their door. He told the nuns he would build them a staircase but that he needed total privacy and locked himself in the chapel for three months.

The resulting staircase is an impressive work of carpentry. It ascends twenty feet, making two complete revolutions up to the choir loft without the use of nails or apparent center support. However, the central spiral of the staircase is narrow enough to serve as a central beam. Nonetheless there was no attachment unto any wall or pole in the original stairway; it was only later, when a railing was added, that the outer spiral got fastened to an adjacent pillar.

A local historian published evidence to suggest the craftsman was the French-born Francois-Jean Rochas, who came to the United States as a member of a celibate order of artisans and settled in New Mexico. The findings suggest the staircase was built in France and fitted by Rochas. That would explain why it appeared so suddenly, and why it might have given rise to the legend of the miraculous saint.

Picture of the staircase before the railing was added. Fascinating!

And… THAT happened.

“Folks, right now… we uh.. may need emergency surgery.. in the studio.”

Society In Decline Project: Intrastate Commerce

Old commerical signs, mostly neon. Very cool.

I’m partial to the Bell Bouy Crabs Sign.