20 May 26
On New Music
Microtonality is having a moment. I am late to this trend, but two days ago I discovered the Québécois rock band duo Angine de Poitrine who is now all over the internet. Back in February, the Seattle radio station KEXP posted a YouTube video of a set the band did at a music festival in Rennes, France in December. This video rapidly went viral, and as of this writing has 14.8 million views on YouTube. Clearly the band has tapped into something in the public’s consciousness, but what?
The first thing one notices on the video are the Dadaesque costumes — masked figures in black and white polkadots with especially long noses. The conceit is that they are alien timetravellers, brothers named Khn and Klek de Poitrine. Klek is the drummer, and Khn plays a double-necked combination bass and guitar. Look closely at the bass-guitar combo and one will notice rather a lot of frets on the two necks.
The costumes may be what draw people to look at the band, but the music is what is compelling and new. The reason for the large number of frets is that it is a microtonal instrument, and the frets are spaced in quarter tones. The band plays microtonal math rock, the latter meaning there are a lot of complex time signatures and polyrhythms. And the two musicians are really good: they have been playing together since they were teenagers. Khn uses a live looper to layer different bass and guitar lines together in sequence, which seems like quite a feat of hand-foot-toe coordination. Despite the complexity of the music, it remains accessible with a strong groove.
Commentary on the band is its own subgenre on YouTube. Some of this commentary goes into music theory: there are videos looking at the microtonality, and other videos analyzing the polyrhythms. There is other discussion about why this band has gone viral. One thread that comes up a lot is that the band has put things together in a way that could not have been done by AI. Despite being alien timetravelers, what they have done is a profound act of human creativity.
19 May 26
Overnight Visitor(s)
When I went outside this morning, I saw that this table, which was clear last night, was now covered in large bird droppings.
I didn’t sleep well (back spasm) and I got up well before dawn. I heard a great-horned owl calling outside. (This isn’t unusual; we have barn and great-horned owls nesting in the neighborhood.) But this is a lot of droppings for one owl in one night. My guess is that there were young owls sitting in the persimmon tree, getting fed by an adult. The fact that there was no evidence of food indicates that it was probably regurgitated for the young.
I’m glad there are enough mature trees where we live to host these species along with nesting Swainson’s hawks.
18 May 26
Redemption In A Walnut Orchard
Last weekend I watched the Errol Morris documentary from 2003 on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War. I followed this up with listening to a podcast interview from 2022 with his son Craig McNamara, which was produced not too long after Craig’s memoir of his difficult relationship with his father came out, entitled Because Our Fathers Lied after a line in a poem by Kipling.
Craig’s journey landed him not very far from here. In fact his interviewer, Michael Dimock, is somebody I have worked with: Michael is a regenerative food system activist who leads a group called Roots of Change. Craig became an organic farmer who has a walnut orchard near Winters, about 25 km west of Davis. Craig’s response to the Vietnam War as a young adult was in 1969 to wander south: he spent several years traveling through Latin America, working on subsistence farms, eventually ending up staying for a while on Easter Island. Agriculture got into his bones, and he returned to California and enrolled in UC Davis to get formal training in the agricultural sciences. He later bought the land and orchard near Winters with his father coming in as a financial partner.
This is one of these stories whose arc is multigenerational. After Robert left (or was fired from) his position as US Secretary of Defense he becomes president of the World Bank for 13 years, and meets with many heads of state all over the globe. Such travel does not make for a grounded life, but his son discovered such grounding on a bit of land near Putah Creek. The generations continue on there: Craig’s children Emily and Sean are both partners in the organic farm.
17 May 26
A Hot Wind
During our sketchcrawl yesterday it was very windy; today it was worse, so much so that it knocked out power in downtown Davis for six hours. Unlike where we used to live, this is not a big deal, because at least we still have water when the power goes out. We settled into reading and knitting, there being plenty of light available. I finished Christian Cooper’s memoir, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World. If you recall, Cooper was the man who was faced with weaponized racism while birding in Central Park on Memorial Day in 2020, just for asking a woman to leash her dog per the rules. (This turned out to be the same day that George Floyd was brutally killed by police officer Derek Chauvins in Minneapolis while his fellow officers looked on.) It’s a great book whose intersectionality unexpectedly includes birders. I recommend it.
The power outage meant, however, that the German class I’d booked for 5 pm, which relies on good wifi, got missed. The topic was “Eine Grafik genauer beschreiben” — since this topic interests me I’ll have to figure out a way to re-book it.
16 May 26
Sketchcrawl With Waffles
As Pica related previously today we had a sketchcrawl meeting at 3rd and A Street in Davis. Pete Scully who organized the sketchcrawl said he likes sketching along A Street since it marks the border between campus and there is a lot of interesting activity at this boundary. He also remarked upon the arrival of the Little Gem Belgian Waffles shop; he quite liked the one in Berkeley but hadn’t eaten in this one yet.
I sketched the restaurant from the other side of 3rd Street and then crossed over A Street into campus to sketch the Social Sciences and Humanities Building aka The Death Star. Pica meanwhile tried one of the waffles and found it yummy.
15 May 26
Sketchcrawl Tomorrow
The Let’s Draw Davis urban sketchers has been for over 20 years (not sure exactly, but we participated in the very first one along with one other person, Pete Scully, who is now a personage on the worldwide urban sketchers scene).
I always mean to draw things other than people during these sketchcrawls, but it’s the one time when you can draw your fellow sketchers without getting weird looks (the couple in my drawing figured out I was drawing them and I think it made them uncomfortable, which is sad).
I’m going to take the minimal kit I took with me to Germany: fountain pen and tiny watercolor palette from Art Toolkit.
14 May 26
Hollyhocks
Hollyhocks are in bloom throughout our neighborhood now, including some straggly plants in our backyard. This is a sketch of some hollyhocks growing in a little public garden across the street from our house. This is my second field sketch using my new Folio Palette kit. It’s nice to have lots of colors to choose from between the 26 colors in the filled pans and my expanded colorful set of Derwent drawing pencils.
13 May 26
Stamp Designing: Behind the Scenes
Following on the heels of the exciting announcement of the new Postcrossing stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service (I should be receiving my pre-order this Friday; see my previous entry on this topic), the folks at Postcrossing interviewed Antonio Alcalá, an art director at the USPS. It’s a wonderful interview and very heartening to know that he really understands the postcrossing project and even participated in it before time constraints drew him away.
Designing something as tiny as a postage stamp is one of the most difficult challenges I can imagine, and it’s no wonder that each set of stamps takes about three years from concept to counter. As Alcalá says, a stamp is part of a country’s brand. How many stamps do you issue in a series? (the more, the greater the cost and also time commitment.)
The USPS has been going through the wars in the past few years but it remains an excellent service. I am happy to add to its coffers in my own tiny way by my postcard habit. Below is the card I received yesterday from Ukraine; the sender not only wrote a lovely message (and selected birds for me, which a surprising number of people manage to do), but also responded to my acknowledgment in which I sent sympathy for what her poor country’s been going through. It is an awesome way to connect with people all over the world, a light touch in a heavy time.
12 May 26
Folio Palette Is Filled
The paints I ordered for my Art Toolkit Folio Palette arrived yesterday and I have filled the palette with the 26 colors I selected. I painted a swatch chart which is to the left of the palette in the photo. I am going to mount the swatch chart on cardstock and carry it around in my art supply pouch with this palette.
The other component to expanding my field kit is adding additional pencils that are in the new Derwent drawing pencil set to make up a field set of pencils. This is a project for tomorrow or the next day.
