In Rainbows

I don’t think I’ve ever done the amateur music critic thing on this blog before, but it’s been forever since I posted, and I was writing up my thoughts anyway. Thus, I present my stream-of-consciousness review Radiohead’s newest, In Rainbows.

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"15 Steps": Oh cool, this is in 5. Or maybe 15. Mm, tasty rhythm. Actually, one of the things that I noted the first time through was how tight the rhythms are on the whole album. Well done, technically.

"Bodysnatchers": The riff that opens this one up is most excellent. Some of the synth stuff in the middle sounds like background that was used in "The National Anthem." This is possible, right? Radiohead have been known to reuse bits from previous works, right?

This is all significantly better on headphones than on my cheapo spekers. Man, I need a real stereo. ::attempts to Glean::

"Nude": Every layer that comes in on this just makes me smile. Mellow bass. Thom Yorke feather-voice. Easy chill guitar line. Orchestral mountains in the distance.
The music plus the title makes me think of bed-ins for peace.

"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi": Sounds oceanic and benthic in the same way that "Subterranean Homesick Alien" sounded cavernous and chthonic. Good evocative sound painting without being overly literal. The exact opposite of this would be if Radiohead had for some bizarre reason decided to include bubble sounds effects on this song.

"All I Need": Some eerie dissonance between the lyrics and the music here. Just listening to the words, you get the sense of a song of devotion, albeit a devotion bordering on co-dependent and pitiful. But the music contains shadows of menace that change the whole package. I appreciate musical irony.

"Faust Arp": When Thom counts this one off, I immediately think of "Little Yellow Spider" by Devendra Banhart. Of course, Radiohead doing a song like that would be about the most humorous and improbable thing to hit music in recent memory. As it is, I award points to the acoustic guitar work, the string section, and the driving syncopation under the more lyrically dense parts. If anything, this song is too short for me; I want to hear it develop further.

"Reckoner": Here I had to look up the lyrics. I am not sure what they mean. This song makes me think of the Grim Reaper, not as an image of terror, but as a kind old man with a gentle smile coming to bring peace to a tired soul.

“House of Cards”: A curious juxtaposition of mellow, relaxing, spacious chords and words about “denial” and “infrastructure will collapse.” Musical irony similar to “All I Need.”

“Jigsaw Falling into Place”: Another example of captivating, well-crafted rhythms, right from the first second. And more acoustic guitar. Is it just me, or does this album have way more acoustic guitar than anything since The Bends?

At about three minutes in, I start thinking of this song as some alternate universe version of “Hotel California.” Man, my brain is weird.

“Videotape”: This one actually grabbed me the most from my first listen. I suspect it is the lonesome piano combined with Thom Yorke singing about personal salvation. It’s a strangely comforting song, despite not being overtly optimistic. Another instance of that peaceful, resolved feeling.
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A number of people have noted that the MP3 download album did not come with art. Someone made their own.

Flashback

In honor of the upcoming third anniversary of my visit to Iceland (or maybe just because I keep talking with people about this trip), I have uploaded most of my photos from that trip to Facebook for public viewing. If you're on Facebook, go visit my page. If you're not, use this link.

Loopy Experimental Poetry

In a mystic loop,
This haiku contains itself--
And the universe.

Not Related to Thanksgiving

Every morning, usually around seven or eight A. M., this man runs by my apartment. He always wears the same thing: gray sweatshirt with hood pulled up tight over his head, old sweatpants, dark gloves curled into tight fists. Generally he’ll make two circumnavigations of the block on his route. I’ve never gotten a good look at him, but I’d say he’s about 48 to 52 years old.

Now, you might be wondering how I can confirm that this man runs by every day; I mean, isn’t it a little improbable that I would be looking out the window every time he passes by? It’s not like I spend hours staring outside. Nor would I say that my schedule is so routine that I am, say, always sitting and eating breakfast at the same time every morning.

No, I know this man runs by every morning because I hear him. I swear I am not making this up: the man barks as he runs. Sort of odd little panting yelps, not particularly loud, but perfectly audible in the early, low traffic quiet of the day. At first I thought he was running with a very rhythmic and vocal dog. Then I watched more carefully the next time and noticed that the man was completely alone. Just him, running and barking in time to his breathing and his footfalls.

I can not get my mind around this singularly strange character. I have hypothesized at length about the reasons why one might bark while running. Perhaps the man has some sort of respiratory condition that makes his breathing noisier than most. Still, I would think that such a condition would force him to run more slowly than the pace I observe. Perhaps this man seeks to channel the spirit of the wolf in order to maintain his stamina while running. (That reminds me of someone I knew in college who consistently wore a wolf tail everywhere. Quite normal when you talked to him and really and all around nice guy, but he always wore a wolf tail. And more often than not, a T-shirt with a print of a wolf on it. And sometimes, wolf ears. But he was clean-shaven, so I guess the wolf fetish did not extend to facial hair. I never really felt comfortable asking him about it.) Perhaps it is a psychological, rather than physical, condition that causes the barking.

Whatever. I’ll let you ponder the nature of this unusual, and quite unnerving aspect of my neighborhood.

Authentic Excerpt #1

“Years ago, biologist Bill McLarney was inventing some advanced aquaculture at the New Alchemy Institute in Costa Rica. He was stirring a tank of algae one day when a brassy lady from North America strode in and demanded, ‘Why are you standing there stirring that green goop, when what really matters in the world is love?’

Bill thought for a minute and replied, ‘Well, there’s theoretical love; and then there’s applied love’-- and kept on stirring.”
--Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins; Natural Capitalism

This may actually sum up why I’m in engineering.

Carbon Neutral

Once again, I apologize. It’s been too long. Nevertheless, I would ask you to remember this: even if I have months-long gaps in my posting, this blog is still here. I haven’t given up on it yet. Nor do I plan to.

It’s just one thing after another these days. Ever since I moved here back in August, I haven’t been overtaxed, but just busy enough too limit blogging. Moving in requires buying many new things, like furniture, which requires time-intensive shopping. And I have been socializing quite a bit, getting to know my fellow comrade grad students, playing occasional jams with Kevin & Co. over at St. Andrew’s (to play his compositions for services). I’ve made a lot of new friends, and I have kept up with some of you old ones out there with personal emails. That’s better than mass mailings or indiscriminate blog posts, right? I guess I still have to apologize for those who were left out of the loop.

And once something moves out of the front of your mind, it’s difficult for it to work its way back in. For example, I still haven’t followed through on my promise to tell everyone where my new album(s) are available for download. Yeah, plural--we’ll get to that in a moment. Many of you I told in person; many were informed through Facebook. My dad even posted the JoelTed link in the comments to one post. Still, for the record:
JoelTed-- download.com/joelabrahamson
JTAKRA--wu.elixant.com/jtakra

OK, so what is JTAKRA? Well, that’s the OTHER album I did this summer. When I came home to North Dakota, my sister was waiting for me with a bunch of cello and piano duet music. I hadn’t played piano seriously for a while, so I gladly agreed to play with her. A good, fun way to keep the skills up. Then, since she joined my record label, I thought it might be a good goal to record an album in July before we left for backpacking on Isle Royale (another story! agh! I was behind before…). We settled on two pieces, Elgar’s Cello Concerto (piano plays the orchestra reduction) and the Beethoven Sonata for Cello and Piano, Opus 102, No. 1. I’m quite pleased with the results of only about six weeks of work. So go check that one out too. There are liner notes there as well. Hosting is graciously provided by our friend Lushen Wu.

I also promised many people that I would post pictures of my new apartment when I got it together. Well, it’s together… but I haven’t taken the pictures yet. You’ll have to wait on that one.

Finally, we come to the real reason for the post. I am very happy and proud to announce today that I am “carbon neutral,” having purchased “offsets” for the greenhouse gas emissions from my apartment, car travel, and plane travel. What this means is that I have invested a certain sum of money in projects that will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by an equivalent amount those for which I am responsible. This is a similar system to the one in Europe (and the one about to be set up in California), where companies have carbon allowances every year and are allowed to trade them on a market. This way, if somebody goes over, they can pay extra to have someone else who is doing better than expected to make up for their extra emissions. Thus, good ol’ capitalism is put to work, giving business financial incentives to reduce their emissions. The carbon-trading system grew out of the Kyoto Protocol, which most developed nations have ratified, but of course, not the US. (Also, not Australia. Not sure why that is.) I will take this opportunity to remind you that President Bush did promise on the campaign trail in 2000 to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and has since completely reneged on that promise.

Basically, I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth today, and although I had been planning this move for some time, the movie reminded me of the urgency of the issue. We are already seeing effects of global climate change, and although we will not be able to stave off all the negative effects still to come, everything we do today makes the problem that much less severe. Plus, sustained action and change in policy and energy infrastructure must begin NOW to give us the best chance of stopping the worst of global warming.

I cruised over to the website associated with the film, calculated my annual carbon dioxide emissions, and followed a link to a partner site, NativeEnergy to purchase my offsets. It was very quick, and less expensive then I expected. By my estimates of driving, flying, and utility bills, I am responsible for 4.15 tons of carbon dioxide emissions this year. That sounds like a lot to me, but it’s actually quite a bit less than the 7.5 tons per year of the average American. To put it in other terms, that’s 22.7 pounds of CO2 per day, which is still almost double the average human’s emissions, and more than four times the amount the Earth can actually sustain (according to this rather informative Sierra Club article). But by buying credits in new wind power projects with NativeEnergy, I could compensate for those emissions for just $48. At this price, there really should be more people going carbon neutral.

Now, there is some debate in the carbon credit trading community about how to calculate one’s individual responsibility for emissions, so I will admit that it is possible that I have underestimated my own personal contributions to global warming. For example, another carbon offset site, The CarbonNeutral Company, says that, as an American, I am responsible for a whopping 19.9 metric tonnes (21.9 US tons) of CO2 per year. Of course, I didn’t plug any numbers into this site, so they are just assuming that I consume as much as a regular American, neglecting all my biking, bus travel, thermostat lowering (I still haven’t turned on the heat in my apartment, and it’s fine, thank you), etc. That still doesn’t explain the discrepancy between 21.9 tons and the ClimateCrisis value of 7.5 tons for the average American. Purchasing offsets for 21.9 tons costs much more (try ~$300). I think CarbonNeutral’s higher value takes into account the emissions from “infrastructure,” emissions from the university buildings I walk around in all day, from the crews that made the roads that my buses drive on. But I think I am justified in using the lower estimate, since I have made changes in my lifestyle to reduce my emissions, so therefore I should reap the benefits. Plus, calculating my share of responsibility for these “infrastructure” emissions is rather complicated, so I would rather that the individual organizations more directly responsible for these emissions deal with their own CO2. In any case, I am proud to say that now I have at least done SOMETHING. Please join me in the fight to preserve our world.

Causes

I found something to jolt me out of my summer blogging doldrums. It is urgent, interesting, important, and blogs just happen to be an excellent platform from which to promote it. It is Amnesty International’s Irrepressible.info campaign.

If you look at my sidebar, you will notice that two new little boxes have appeared there. Down at the bottom of the “Links” section, there’s the ONE campaign, which has the worthy goal of fighting global poverty and AIDS. Not only that, but it has enough resources and supporters (yes, more than just Brad Pitt and Bono) that I would say I have seen ONE make real progress on awareness of these issues in the last few years since its creation.

Then, closer to the top, there’s the box from Amnesty. It is a little piece of HTML that displays a fragment of text that someone is trying censor (in the native language). It brings up a new fragment every time you reload the page. The more people add this code to their site, the harder it will be for governments to block their citizens from reading politically undesirable content. I think Neal Stephenson would proud. And possibly also the Founders. So join me, friends, and defend Internet freedom.

(If you don’t have a platform where you can add this code, you can also visit Irrepressible.info and sign their pledge for Internet freedom anyway.)