So long?

Look at this - ten days since the last information on this page!

Anyone would think there was some kind of a problem!

But there isn't.

I have been rather busy, though.

My dear nice little friends, it is painful to be away from you for so long. I wish I could write every day. When I do, you will know I am quite healthy. Because creative output shows that all is well. We can be even happier when my work-list of compositions needs scientists from NASA to catalogue it. Oh yes, and when I have 11 children (didn't Bach do that too?)

Are you being creative today? It doesn't have to be an oil painting. But you can do something. Create, not destroy - mend or fix something! Give to someone! Give something they really like, would be even better!

More soon - in the blink of an eye. Hopefully the blink won't be too long!

Crayon Carry-ons

Wax crayons are very popular. People like children to use them because they don't have sharp points, so you cannot cause injuries with them. This seems quite a reliable principle to go by. However. There is one documented instance of crayon-induced harm that I know of. As a child, Homer...


...Simpson, fond of putting crayons in his ears and nose,


got one stuck. Not realising this, over time the crayon found its way into his brain. Detected by X-ray photograph,


it was removed surgically. The surgery effected a radical change in Simpson's brain-power.



The new Homer, unhappy with the responsibility of free thought, started to yearn for the old days when all he had to think about was where his next beer was coming from. His daughter Lisa's fears were realised when she noticed her powder blue crayon was missing...So perhaps crayons also bring tragedy, of a kind. But let's hope there is a lesson we can all learn from the story of Homer Simpson.

Remembering at all times to keep crayons clear of the orifices of the head, let us look at the evolution of the wax crayon colour rainbow. In the beginning, there were only eight colours. This was in 1903 when Binney Smith & Co. first started manufacturing the Crayola crayon. The colours were black, blue, brown, green, orange, red, violet and yellow. Quite good choices! No controversy so far.

In 1949 another 40 colours were added. Lemon Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Periwinkle, Thistle - more exciting names. One of them was changed in 1958 - "Prussian Blue" was thought to have no meaning at that date, since it was decided children no longer knew of the deep blue colour of the Prussian army uniform. OK, I understand I suppose. It turned into "Midnight Blue".

Some of the names were a bit too exciting. Oh dear, what's this one - Flesh? Well, it was a pinky colour. Except not all flesh is that colour, is it? So they changed the name to Peach. That was the Peach that we used at my school. It was the one that always ran out the fastest. We were always drawing people, of course, and seemingly the people all had Peach-coloured flesh - yes, flesh was "Flesh" at that time. Not surprisingly, because I never saw any other colour skin for many years. One of the dinner ladies was Italian, and I thought she looked a bit strange! Where did I go to school, you may ask? Nazi Germany? No, it was an ordinary English school. So we thought. Anyway, I have seen lots of different skin types now. And I'm not sure I would use Peach for any of them - though it does come in handy as a base, if blended (I'm really talking about coloured pencils here; I haven't used wax crayons recently).

So goodbye Flesh. 16 further colours were added in 1958, among them Indian Red. The name referred to a famous type of pigment used in paint. But I suppose people were a bit nervous. They thought about the Native American (name for the people who lived in America before the Americans lived there) and remembered they were called "Red Indians". That's what we called them too, once - and yes, I learned all about them at my school. But they weren't Indian, and they weren't Red any more than I am Peach or Marcus Aurelius Garvey was Black.

Nervous people thought Indian Red could be seen as Red Indian, so it became Chestnut in 1999.

The strange thing is that in 1998, when the latest addition to the Crayola rainbow brought the total number of colours to 120, one of them was called Fuzzy-Wuzzy Brown. Hmm. "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" is a racist term for a person of African genetic origin. A Brown person, one might say (or "black", I suppose, though I already exempted M. Garvey from being painted with that exact colour. I would like to say that I don't find anybody to be quite black. Some people come close-ish - a very nice colour of skin I think! Other colours are nice too, of course. Please can't we just say everyone is human-coloured?)

So there was a crayon called Fuzzy-Wuzzy Brown. There still is, as far as I know. It didn't get changed. But Indian Red did. How odd, to me. To you?

Please note that I have refrained from giving examples of possible other upsetting names that crayon companies may wish to mysteriously overlook. There is no "good taste" control on my humour when I'm being harsh, and I'm not trying to offend people today. Please imagine your own. In fact, don't imagine them. You don't need any practise thinking like that. We've had enough racism now. We've all seen enough of it. Come on, think of some nice names instead. And if there is a skin colour you don't like, think harder. Give it the most beautiful name you can, please.

Thank you.

Orange

Just now there was a man outside the window. He was very weathered-looking. I don't know if he had somewhere to live or what - probably he does and I have offended him now. I just saw him for ten seconds. He had an orange in his hand. As he slowly walked past, he was looking at the orange and turning it around, throwing it in the air a few centimetres. He seemed to be enjoying his orange!

We don't know where the orange came from , or where the man came from. Probably for a few seconds he didn't know either. He was just enjoying his orange. Not the best thing of his life, maybe, but good for now.

I hope you enjoy your now, too. Whatever colour it is!

Bonito

There is no such thing as Bonito. If you read a cookery book that says it is an ingredient in Japanese food, it is wrong. Bonito is the word for fish from the tuna family (Mr. and Mrs. Tuna, and all the little tunas...just joking). But the Japanese food product made from dried fish of this type (e.g. skipjack tuna) is actually called katsuo.

I think this is right. Honto desu ka?

Rostrum Camera: Ken Morse

A rostrum camera is a special camera used in television and film to animate a still picture or object. The most famous rostrum camera operator, also the most credited film cameraman in history, is Ken Morse. Here is his picture (since you never normally get to see him from the other side of a camera):




So now you know who it is.

Rostrum Camera: Ken Morse.

Roger North

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) wrote an opera called The Fairy-Queen. The music was lost at some point and not found until many years later. The score can now be found at the Royal Academy of Music. I know, I listened to a recording of part of it and followed the music in Purcell's handwriting!

Roger North (1653-1734) said:

There was so much of admirable musick in that opera, that it's no wonder it's lost; for the English have no care of what's good, and therefore deserve it not.

Cannon

I heard Maxim Vengerov today playing Paganini's violin, the Cannon ("Il Cannone"). Exciting! Paganini's violin!

The music was not very typical of what one might maybe associate with Paganini - a Mozart Adagio, a Beethoven sonata, and a Paganini piece, but a slow one with no pyrotechnics. For an encore he played the last movement of Paganini's B minor concerto - that's the La Campanella movement, with the little bell in it (triangle in the orchestral version). There was a special moment in this piece. Let me tell you about it.

In violin-playing, "left-hand pizzicato" means the hand that holds down the notes actually plucks the string on its own. You hold down a note and the next finger up can pluck the string so we hear the note - good for pretending you are two violinists at the same time, because you can carry on playing in the normal way with the bow on another string!

An effective technique is to do a little run of these in rapid succession: left hand holds down fingers 4321 on the fingerboard, then quickly takes them off with the plucking action. Give the first note a start with the bow (we hear the note held down by the fourth finger), 4th finger plucks the note held by 3rd finger, 3rd finger plucks the note held by second finger, second finger plucks note held by first finger, first finger plucks the open string. This happens FAST, in a downward scale, yakatakaTA! TakatakaPA! BRRRRRRump!

There was one of those in the La Campanella performance - just one. It was so loud. The sound jumped into the hall, quite different from the sounds of the rest of the concert. Then I had a glimpse of what Paganini might have sounded like. So many of his sounds must have been like that - supernaturally strange and unlike a violin.

So there was just one moment like this. But five notes, on Paganini's violin, can be a lot. And that's probably the closest I'll get to hearing him live.

Now I have a sound to think of - and there are a lot of Liszt piano pieces inspired by Paganini that need us to know about extraordinary sounds like that. So, good!