#big fact of new alto

[mgopinoon]

I was thinking about the Deuxmoi thing, who hasn't posted the pictures and only made a post hinting at the rumor. Finally, even though they are in cahoots with Kaia's team, they made a big noise, people who are not part of the fandom always stick with the first thing they read and the vast majority do not look for a confirmation of the rumor, that is why sometimes when one talks to friends or acquaintances conversations come up like: I read somewhere that x famous person is with this other person, and if one is more up to date on the news, one knows that it was not like that or that it happened a long time ago.

What I mean by this is that people have the rumor in their subconscious that they take it as a fact and then they don't bother to make a second confirmation. It is the first time that I see so many people speculating or saying specifically that Kaia and Austin broke up without being part of the fandom.

Para mí Deuxmoi se puede ir al infierno por no publicar las fotos que hubieran causado más revuelo, pero de igual manera nos dieron una gran ayuda.

I was just reading on reddit and I came across an example of what I said. People just took the news that they got engaged and didn't check the pages again to find out it was all fake.

No soporto eso del "chico alto llamado Elvis" jajajajaja me reí a carcajadas.

[duckapus]

Pokemon/WarioWare crossover because why not throw yet another Anime Rewrite AU that I say I'll write a fic for and fully intend to but never do on the pile? (i have issues...)

Five years before the start of the series Delia and Ash find a girl around Ash's age with red eyes lost in a park who can't remember anything about herself except that her name is Ashley. Fallers are a bit more common in this timeline than others (though still pretty rare and not yet well understood) so when the authorities investigate they realize her situation pretty quickly...particularly how near-impossible it would be to get a 5-year-old who seems to be from a world without Pokemon (Fallers typically remember what Pokemon are and can name ones they're familiar with, so the fact that she only refers to them by general terms like "cat" or "bird" and is confused by a lot of their behavior is very telling). Delia, of course, agrees to take her in permanently after they break the news to her (she'd already been looking after Ashley during the investigation because of course she would).

So now Ash has a not-actually-a-twin sister. She still manages to become a witch-in-training since she's still got her massive potential for magic and witchcraft is canonically a thing in the Pokemon Anime. She even manages to summon Red and make him her familiar at seven. She's a bit more outgoing thanks to being raised in the Ketchum household instead of growing up more-or-less alone in that haunted mansion, but at her core she's still the grumpy little witch girl we know and love.

Anyway, she and Ash both plan on challenging the Indigo League, though they're going to travel together at least for their Kanto Journey (...yeah they're definitely gonna stick together even after that 'cause this is still meant to be a canon rewrite), partly because they know ahead of time about the Starter shortage and they figure that as long as at least one of them gets a Pokemon they can help the other catch something on Route 1 so they don't have to wait a month for a new set to be available (what, you really think Oak would've left them in the lurch for a whole year if the shortage had been real and not a Timeline Preservation Measure? though given how big a head start that would give the other trainers (particularly Gary) it still makes sense why 10-year-old Ash acted like it was the end of the world).

Of course, their alarm clock mysteriously breaks and they oversleep and end up with a Pikachu who hates them and an Eevee with absolutely no thoughts in its fluffy little head.

Anyway, things are mostly normal for a while aside from Ashley and Red being along for the ride, up until Power of One, where they encounter Wario. Apparently he ended up in the Pokemon World because he found some sort of magical artifact during one of his treasure hunts. Notably, he isn't Amnesiac like most Fallers, and he's not from the version of the Mushroom World that Ashley originally came from, as evidenced by him recognizing her on-sight even though she would've disappeared before ever meeting him. Anyway, he helps them beat Laurence III, then decides to claim the Hikokyu as spoils of war and fix it up to use as the local WarioWare HQ. So he's settling down in Shamouti for the time being.

Meanwhile, back in the Mushroom world, the WarioWare crew and the main Mario cast are trying to figure out what happened to Wario. They eventually manage to create a pipe that goes between Diamond City and Shamouti at some point midway through Johto...and find out that he ran off to Johto with Melody to challenge their League because he found out that Pokemon Battling, especially official League matches, gets you prize money, and he needed funds for replacement parts to get the Hikokyu up and running. So Mario, Peach, and about half the crew are off to fetch him. They don't finally catch up with him until the Alto Maire incident. Ashley's part of the search party, so she and the AU's main Ashley (and both Reds of course) end up meeting and it's a bit awkward at first. They end up going by Ashley K (for Ketchum of course) and Ashley M (for Mushroom, since she doesn't have a last name and Ashley W would be too clunky to say, plus she wouldn't be caught dead naming herself after Wario) for the sake of convenience (the Reds follow suit, of course).

I also have the idea of having the Hikokyu set up shop in Orre after it's been made skyworthy again and fully converted into a second game studio, then having the WarioWare crew stumble into and run roughshod over Gale of Darkness's plot with their own brand of glorious mayhem while just trying to introduce their games to the fresh new audience the Pokemon World provides.

[sayitaliano]

Aggettivo qualificativo: where to put it in a sentence?

IMPORTANT: This is an advanced Italian grammar post. If you're a beginner please take your time to get here. Learn about all the parts of the speech and get accostumed to how Italian works (it has loads of rules and exceptions so try to focus on building easy sentences first). For now, simply add the adjective after the noun it refers to: this is generally considered a "neutral" position for adjectives (and you can use them in this position to introduce other complements and make more difficult sentences too -see below).

Italian sentences add infos "to the right": they grow with infos after the main thing is stated. They follow a [subject - verb - object - other complements] pattern. This pattern can change though, cause of stylistic choices or cause the speaker wants or needs to put the stress on specific parts of the speech (eg. "Bello, questo vestito!" instead of "Questo vestito è bello!" => these two sentences both translate as "This dress is nice!" but in the first sentence, we want to stress we find it very nice so we put "bello" first), or give them a slightly different acception.

THE AGGETTIVO QUALIFICATIVO: Generally speaking, the aggettivo qualificativo specifies a characteristic of the noun it refers to. According on the situation, this characteristic can be fundamental (Portami la cartellina blu, per favore = Bring me the blue folder, please -> I want the blue one, not the red or the yellow or any other I have) or just "a plus" (Ho una cartellina blu = I have a blue folder -> Fun fact...?). It's up to the speaker's intention.

SO, WHERE TO PUT THESE ADJECTIVES? The aggettivo qualificativo can move its position according on how objective (more fixed) or subjective (less fixed: as seen, the speaker can move it to stress infos and bring their opinion) the characteristic it expresses is. To make it a little easier though, there are a few rules for you to check:

->AFTER THE NOUN: - if the adjective specifies a particular characteristic of the noun that makes the noun different from others. eg. Ho visto il maglione nuovo di Luigi = I saw the new sweater of Luigi -> I saw the new one, not an old one. eg. Portami la cartellina blu. = Bring me the blue folder -> the blu one, not another color's one.

- if the adjective is altered (check here): eg. una casa piccolina = a small little house

- if the adjective introduces a complement: eg. una casa piena di piante = a house filled with plants

- if the adjective is a present/past participle of a verb: eg. una casa ristrutturata = a restructured house

-if the adjective originates form a noun and has a relation with the noun it comes with: eg. un biglietto aereo = a plane ticket (aereo => aeroplano = airplane)

->BEFORE THE NOUN: - if the adjective is simply describing but not comparing to others or making the noun different from similar ones (as seen for the "after"). eg. Ho visto il nuovo maglione di Luigi. => simply a Luigi's sweater that is new. I'm not considering the old ones here.

-if the adjective is intended with a figurative acception (that's why to keep it objectively neutral/literal, you need to put it after the noun). So, in general we have: 1) adjective + noun: figurative meaning of the adjective 2) noun + adjective: literal meaning of the adjective eg. una grande casa = a cool/comfortable house; una casa grande = a big house eg. una vecchia amica = an old times' friend, a friend I know since long time; un'amica vecchia = a friend old in age eg. un buon amico = a friend you can rely on; un amico buono = a good hearted friend eg. un alto magistrato = a very important magistrate/official; un magistrato alto = a magistrate/official that is tall (check here for more; reminder that there are exceptions but the figurative acception is to be considered oftentimes, unless the context tells you differently)

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

Mapping Madrid: Week 8

I KNOW it's been a while and i'm so so sorry. but look. Carabanchel! peace and love on planet earth <3. so... i had to get a book from carabanchel's public library and i was like... hey let's do a mapping madrid while we're at it! coincidentally the roulette has now twice in a row landed on carabanchel so. i had no other option. as you can see, however, the station featured in this post is Carabanchel Alto ('High Carabanchel'), which was the result of me walking around not really knowing where i was going and realising i was 50 mins away from Carabanchel and only 30 from Carabanchel Alto once i wanted to go back home. the bad thing is... Carabanchel is in my beloved line 5, whereas carabanchel alto is in the dreaded line 11. let me talk about line 11 for a minute, cause it made my trip back home twice as long (it almost took me 2 hours lol) and it's now my archnemesis. it is the shortest metro line in the city (with the exception of Ramal i guess. also they're now expanding it i think but still) and it only has one entry point through line 6, so it's basically a bottleneck. i hate it so much. en fin. Carabanchel is one of the 21 districts of Madrid, and it used to be an independent town back in the day before being annexed by Madrid. In fact, it was two towns, Carabanchel and Carabanchel Alto, that's why there's that distinction. It is a very working class area of the city, with lots of immigrants and diversity, and for me Carabanchel is the beating heart of Madrid, as here is where the biggest festivities and traditions take place, and the people here are the proudest and the bestest honestly <3 As I said previously, I mainly wandered around after going to the library (which didn't have the book I wanted rip) listening to a new podcast I just found (I really recommend it, it's called 'No hay negros en el Tíbet') and sitting for a bit to read some Catullus (<3). Most of the time I was in this kinda new-ish area, it reminded me a lot of Loranca, part of Fuenlabrada which is one of the big southern cities (here's a post about Madrid's peripheria I made a few years ago in case you wanna know more about that), where my cousin and uncles live. Only at the end I got to the traditional 'old town', but by then my phone was dying so i didn't take many pictures unfortunately. Also I am pretty sure I passed by possibly the most important place in Carabanchel, the old Carabanchel Prison, which was established during the Francoist era and was the largest and harshest prison in the country, torturing thousands political prisoners (NEVERMIND I JUST READ ON WIKIPEDIA THAT IT WAS DEMOLISHED IN 2008. NO IDEA WHAT I SAW THEN).

[girderednerve]

audiobooks are my friend. not you libby i hate you

i started listening to an audiobook of 'chip war' by chris miller (sorry for reading a book off of the obama list) & it's very interesting, although my understanding is definitely limited by the fact that i was listening to it while driving to work in the snow. anyway there's a lot i didn't know about chips & so on; this book is not going to answer some of my most pressing questions (where do they get those big silicon wafers & do people get silicosis making them) & is generally less interested in labor than in corporate history.

i did not understand how much of the computer industry just came from missile targeting. like, the transistor came out of bell labs & the patent was owned by at&t, i knew that, but every other major improvement was driven by the need to have better-targeted bombs. aerial bombardment, military efficacy, & the idea of precision are always on my mind in general but it's like. i don't know. bizarre & upsetting to realize how structurally significant these preoccupations are. there's a part of me which is like, a key function of the modern space program is to say 'look at all the cool technology we did for space, definitely don't think about anything else one might do with a rocket,' which i realize is nonsense on some level, & yet.

intel's 4004 'computer on a chip' from 1971, designed for a calculator, was not the first programmable chip: that was in the F14! how do we feel about that one because i am feeling, honestly, pretty bad. texas instruments, a company which i primarily associate with my horrendous graphing calculator from high school algebra, actually got by on military contracts & designed the first laser-guided bomb. sweet! i hate it! i know this isn't news but it's news to me; everyone on here just points out that the internet started as a military endeavor, not that the physical objects that make the internet were (& are) too.

the book also leans into that 'the age of industry has passed; now is the age of data' trope which i hate, because it makes no sense to me. how exactly is one meant to have the incredible data machines which are going to run everything & be immeasurably important if one does not have industry? we're talking about incredibly complex, precise manufacturing processes, using highly refined & specific materials, which still must be gotten out of the ground by someone & transported by someone & rely on machines made by yet other someones. there is no realm of ideas separate from the real physical world we live in.

anyway i'm not very far into the book yet but i am documenting the experience. probably i should've just listened to malcolm harris' palo alto instead, that probably would bother me less, but i am very interested in the particulars of supply chains & how they are established, so.

[putschki1969]

Hi Puts, seeing you have been busy with work since your return from the Japan trip. Hope you can take good care of yourself with the busy work schedule.

I saw your lately post about Keiko’s new album hasn’t been your taste of music. So I wonder what kind of song genres do you prefer the girls to sing in their solo. What’s your favourite solo songs of the girls?

For myself, I love ballads so Wakana’s solo music genre has always been my cup of tea. But seeing Keiko doing challenges with her alto tone on some many musical genres makes me wanna cheer for her too. Tbh I don’t really dislike her songs maybe becoz I just simply adore her voice. As for Hikaru, since I’m not a great fan of rock anime genres, so I’m not catching up with her latest music. If you have some recommendations of her songs, I’d love to know that too.

Sorry for such a long message. Hope it wasn’t to hard for you to read. Stay well and keep sharing the Kala-love around^_^

Hello there!

Thank you, I feel like I am slowly getting back into a routine.

I had a huge reply already written for this but then I must have accidentally clicked a stupid shortcut which deleted a huge wall of text from this post T_T Needless to say, I have zero motivation to go through it all again. I apologise in advance if this feels a little rushed, I’ll still try my best.

First of all, no worries, your message is perfectly fine and it's an interesting question. However, I will admit that I always struggle with these types of questions because I lack the necessary expertise to explain my preferences when it comes to certain music genres. I enjoy music solely on an intuitive and emotional level, it either makes me feel something or it doesn't, for the most part I tend to disregard the technical aspects. That’s not to say that I don’t have some basic requirements which determine whether or not I like a piece of music.

Generally speaking, structure is key. Anything that’s too chaotic, directionless or all over the place will make me incredibly antsy. However, music shouldn’t be too monotonous either, I love a good, natural buildup. To really get into the flow of something I need a smooth melody with some motifs thrown into the mix.

I am very attracted to classical and orchestral elements. Symphonic instrumentals, elaborate harmonies, dramatic melodies, operatic vocals, inject it all into my veins. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate other types of music as well. In fact, I have always had a weakness for 80s and 90s pop but that’s neither here nor there.

Vocal-wise, I gravitate most towards warm, mature and emotionally rich singing voices. I typically find high-pitched and youthful/childlike voices quite annoying.

Having said all that, I can’t really tell you my genre preferences when it comes to the girls. I just want their songs to have a good structure with a somewhat sizeable section that’s pleasing to my ears. Ideally, I would have them use a singing style that highlights their talents and doesn’t make their voice sound too grating. Keiko’s 3rd album accomplishes none of those things which is why I have a bit of an aversion to it. In all honesty, it feels like a big chaotic mess o me.

Just like you I have a strong passion for ballads but I don’t really want them to stick to a specific type of song. Especially considering that many of their solo ballads don’t even appeal to me. 

For example, I am absolutely obsessed with Keiko’s “Toori Ame”, “ I quite enjoy “Inochi no Hana” but I couldn’t care less about songs like “Hitori Janai Kara” or “Revolution”. While Wakana’s debut power ballad “Toki wo Koeru Yoru ni” hits me right in the feels and her equally enchanting “breathing” gives me goosebumps, the seemingly epic “magic moment” doesn’t do anything for me. Let’s not even talk about her slower pieces like “Nagareboshi” which I simply find too bland. With Hikaru it’s incredibly hard to pick ballads I like because at some point they have all started to sound the same to me but I definitely love her “Kawaisou da yo” and “midnight”.

As for general favourites, here’s a list of all the solo songs I repeatedly listen to (in order of their release):

Wakana:Toki wo Koeru Yoru ni, Kinmokusei, Yakusoku no Yoake, Ai no Hana, Kioku no Hito, Koi wa Itsumo, breathing, 442, Myself, Happy Hello Day, Toki ni wa Mukashi no Hanashi wo, Inochi no Namae, Get Wild Hikaru: Avaricia, yolcu, Fili, 空-Look Ahead, disclose, midnight, Determination, Kawaisou da you, Kanashii Kedamono, Ambient Border Keiko: Inochi no Hana, Nanairo no Finale, Toori Ame, Nobody Knows You, Lost, Yoru no Uso to

Obviously, I can recommend all of these to you. I like some of their other stuff too but these ones I actively seek out

[pendanticalcats]

Hi!! I love your Flickerswish and I was wondering how you came up with him?? Also any fun little facts about him you wanna share??

OC making is such a vague process for me that discribing it is difficult. I came up with Dillydally's name and design first before I had come up with Flickers as a next gen OC. That got me thinking about what the junkyard looks like in the next gen and who lives there. None of the existing cats fit with his design or vibe so someone new was needed as his parent. I wanted to give Jemima a love intrest and am intrigued with parrallels between Jemima and her parents so Flickers backstory came from that. I then drew his design a year later but hes very inspired by a franken cat cosplay I saw years ago. the hardest part is names which only come to me in dreams and I have to trust myself to remember. Most of my OC creation is finding gaps in canon characters dynamics and then filling them.

Fun Facts:

If Flickerswitch was to live in a house (he doesn't they scare him) any guest would never see him because he would hide inside the couch or armchairs.

He is the smallest cat in the junkyard by a bit. He'd be 5'0 on a good day if human. Even though he is very small he can't regularly sing very high and is an alto/tennor that doesn't stop him from trying. All of his kittens are taller than him he does not like it.

His favorite style of dance is ballet but his favorite style of music is swing jazz. He'd make an amazing flapper.

He is afraid of Etcetera. No reason she's perfictly polite and they have many close mutual friends he just refuses to interact with her.

In the Jellicle Ball a few years after he joins there is the song "The Dancing Cats" (the dancing cats! the dancing cats! the beautiful marvelous dancing cats!) about him and Victoria doing a pantomime and big dancing stunts. It has a circusesque feel.

[new-eyes-extra-colors]

8, 23, 35 for any/all of your choice

[oc asks]

8. do they have a nickname? who gave it to them? if it's not derived from their real name, what's the story behind it?

Nora gets called Nor or doll by Nick only. Piper calls her Blue, Deacon and Mac call her boss, and she gets called ma'am a lot by various parties.

Ace is a nickname, specifically after the ace of hearts card tucked into the brim of their hat. They also go by Aces, Courier Six, or Sixes.

Scout probably gets called "big guy" occasionally. He is in fact a big guy.

May gets called by her last name (Maple) a lot. Brendan calls her Maple Syrup at least once. You know, because she's sweet.

23. how would you describe their voice? can they sing?

Nora's a gravelly alto. She can't sing.

Ace splits the difference between an alto and a tenor, and has a very pleasant singing voice. They like to show off their singing skills, too.

Scout has a syrinx instead of a larynx so his speaking voice sounds like a bird mimicking human speech--kind of throaty. He can whistle and mimic a wide variety of sounds and others' voices very well, so yeah, he can probably sing too.

May's a soprano, high pitched and quiet. She can sing decently well, but is too embarrassed to do it in front of other people.

35. do they ever return home?

Nora may return to Arizona briefly before heading on to New Vegas; I haven't decided yet. I'm still not sure she comes back to Boston from Far Harbor. (Certain people would argue that Acadia is her home.) So, maybe, maybe not.

Ace never recovers their memory and never returns to the life they had before being shot. As far as they're concerned, [NAME REDACTED] died in the Goodsprings cemetery when Benny shot him. Ace started living when they woke up at Doc Mitchell's, so you could argue they don't have a home to return to. The Strip eventually fills that void. So, yes, in a manner of speaking.

Scout never returns to the colony in Chicago he left. He does help forge a new community in the Commonwealth, so he makes his own home in a way. But ultimately, no.

May returns to Littleroot long enough to grab her stuff, but no longer. But she was born in Blackthorn, and has lived in Goldenrod and Olivine, so where home is is debatable. I'd say no, not in any way that matters. That being said there's no place like Hoenn--

[evwritesgames]

Species of Starjourn: Mayentians

Mayene, homeworld of the Mayentians, is a large terrestrial planet dominated by open grasslands on its single continent. The rest of the planet is covered by a murky, viscous ocean that severely limited the potential of naval technology, a factor that may well have kept them from becoming spacefaring on their own.

However, the Mayentians are a “pseudo-uplift” species due to their discover of an advanced probe from an alien civilization. This probe allowed their scientists to reverse-engineer many new technologies that eventually led them to gravitronium and the development of spacefaring technology. Mayene is orbited by three moons, all three of which are rich in gravitronium and there is much speculation about possible links between this and the ancient unknown species that left only a probe behind. The three moons of Mayene are now the base of Mayentian economic and strategic power but they are also popular tourist destinations due to their own desolate beauty and the amazing view of Mayene.

The Mayentians evolved similarly to humans in many ways but there are two very important distinctions. One is that the Mayentians, like the Lecronians or Konogiri, descended from a prey species and are strict herbivores. Their large, conical heads were a specific adaptation to their grassy environment -- literally a way for them to see above the grass while mimicking large mushrooms for camouflage. The second is their development of trinocular vision and other trinary features, stages of their evolution that came after their ancestors began to walk upright and use tools. Mayentian precursor species bear a striking resemblance to the hominids of Earth.

Though considered a gentle and peaceful civilization, the Mayentians are as diverse as humans. Their cultures tend toward cooperation and a certain regard for each other brought on by collective trauma from predation, which in modern times remains as a taboo against harming each other. Though not warlike, their pacifist tendencies are only universally applied to their own species and they are capable of ferocious resistance when attacked. Beyond this, general attitudes about violence and war differ among the Mayentians based on culture, religion, and personal beliefs.

Mayentians are terraforming specialists as they prefer to colonize planets with no large fauna. Mayentians are still prey on their homeworld, though instances of predation are rare. Mayentians developed walled cities and, later, more sophisticated defenses to keep predators away. 

Knowledge that they were not alone in the universe came to Mayentians relatively early in their history. All religious and spiritual traditions among them exist in response to this knowledge. They call the ancient species “The Originators” but opinions about who they were, what they wanted, and where they (or their remnants) might be found differ dramatically. Some Mayentians assign cosmic significance to the Originators and their own species, or one or the other, while others have more secular views.

“Seekers of the Origin” is a generic name for Mayentians who dedicate their lives to studying and “seeking” the Originators. Some are scientists, others are explorers or scholars. Some seek in space, others on Mayene or one of its three moons. Clues and facts about the probe are constantly being readdressed with many popular theories surviving debunking to emerge again, even a generation later. One of the big things humans and Mayentians have in common is a general regard for exploration and curiosity as profound personal and social virtues.

It was a group of Seekers who first encountered ALTO when the organization was still in its infancy. After several confusing and disastrous first contact scenarios with other species, including the Nirojanni, the Mayentians opted to join ALTO and help foster the values and policies, such as peaceful exploration, that the organization is known for today. 

Note: Yeah, they're the Total Recall "three boobs" species but they are also coneheads! And also Opera from Star Ocean 2nd Story. And also the males have three boobs just smaller ones!

[d0ll-partz]

Final Reflection

I had a really hard time deciding which song I wanted to sing for this assignment, but I ultimately settled on Celebrity Skin by Hole because I think it plays to quite a few of my strengths. It allowed me the freedom to experiment with the performance aspect and add some of my own flair to the track. It also sits in quite a comfortable place in my vocal range, it’s on the lower end with Courtney Love also being an alto. It also has some moments that have a real grit and raspiness to them that I really love. I was responsible for planning the rehearsals and booking the rehearsal spaces, which I think I was pretty successful at as there were only one or two mix-ups with times. I sang the vocals and mixed/edited the studio recording with some guidance from the lovely Stu Brewer in one of the mac suite sessions and from my fellow waterbear student/boyfriend because I really struggled with the production aspect of the project. I also helped out my fellow waterbear student/boyfriend with his project that I sang lead vocals and wrote the lyrics for. We originally wrote it in college a few years ago and haven’t really touched it since. We changed it around a little after having a very productive writing session with Kieron Pepper. He helped me figure out why the existing chorus didn’t sound right in my head and it was due to the phrasing of the lyrics. We also decided to add a new section to act as a chorus as the existing one sounded too much like a pre-chorus.

I think my live performance went really well and I always really enjoy the performance aspect of projects, it's where my passion for music really lies. I think I conveyed the exact amount of instability and anger that I wanted to in my facial expressions and the way I moved my body, as it was written as a very angry song, poking fun at the Hollywood sphere that Courtney Love had been thrust into. Ideally I would’ve had a little more space to move/thrash around but that’s just me being picky. I incorporated some hand movements that I’ve watched Courtney Love do in the live versions of the song that I found, like the way she places her hands under her chin when she sings the line “oh look at my face,” as I thought it was very camp and cute. I didn’t take much else from her aside from fashion/makeup inspiration as her range of movement is limited by her guitar, a problem I do not have, so I mostly just followed my own interpretation of how I think it should be performed. 

One thing I need to improve is my planning throughout. It definitely could’ve been better as my organizational skills are severely lacking and I need to be more consistent with how when I get things done, instead of doing nothing and then lots and lots of work in one big burst, I need to start actually sticking to the times I set aside to get things done, i made a weekly planner but I never ended up following the schedule that I made for myself. I am aware of this fact about myself so I always start out with the best intentions and make a game plan but usually around the second week I start to forget things and fall behind, so I need to start setting actual alarms/reminders for when it’s time to get on with a task and hold myself accountable when I fail to do so. I also think my knowledge about production has come a long way, I now understand how to use corrective EQ, how different microphones can be used for different things, and how to add reverb, but it isn’t even nearly as extensive as what it should be by now because I become increasingly nervous around things that I don’t understand and instead of asking for help I like to make myself suffer in silence! I think this is because of some unresolved stuff left over from going to a grammar school. I genuinely need to sit down over the break and rewatch all the content and write down the parts I didn’t really understand and take it to one of the production tutors to help me fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I also ran out of time to record the bass line so the mix sounds quite empty, Stu helped me and explained how to use a spreader to make the sound wider but the lack of bass really sticks out and annoys me, if I could do it again I’d make sure I had allocated enough time to get Rei or Toby in to record the bass line for me. I showed a few of my peers my final mix and the video of my live performance and they all gave me pretty positive feedback, only one person noticed the lack of bass in the studio recording and I got quite a few compliments on my stylistic choices. Overall I think this project went pretty well, I would definitely improve my organisation in every aspect and spend some more time understanding production but I’m pretty happy with the end results.

[mariacallous]

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Margaret Atwood, Canadian author of generation-defining dystopias “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Testaments,” is used to drawing her inspiration from history.

Born in 1939, she based much of her fiction on true events of World War II and its aftermath.

At 83, Atwood got to witness another cataclysmic event when Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

She had a birdwatching trip to Ukraine scheduled for March but didn’t cancel it until late February, thinking “surely they (Russia) wouldn’t do anything that stupid.” 

When the all-out war began, Atwood used her publicity to voice support for Ukraine’s fight. From joining rallies in Toronto to speaking at the Lviv Book Forum, Atwood encourages support from her audience and relies on historical context to make sense of the war. Sometimes that involves a fair share of doomscrolling. 

The Kyiv Independent spoke with Atwood on Oct. 14 in Palo Alto, California, to find out how she disentangles fact from fiction online, reconciles history with current events and what is her vision of Ukraine’s reconstruction.

The Kyiv Independent: In one of your interviews, you talked about the stories nations tell. More specifically, you were comparing Canada and the U.S. How do you view the stories coming from Russia and Ukraine right now?

Margaret Atwood: The Russian narrative doesn't really stand up very well, the “denazification” type of thing. If you're going to invade every place that has Nazis, you're going to have a long list. You can invade Germany, you can invade the United States, there are Nazis in both of them. You can invade Canada, we’ve got some Nazis too. So good try but not buying it. 

And the other one, Russia protecting itself — from what? Nobody in their right mind would ever invade Russia, it is too big. Everybody, who has ever invaded, has had a horrible experience.

The Kyiv Independent: In your books, “The Handmaid's Tale” and “The Testaments,” the propaganda spread is limited to the Republic of Gilead. Looking at how propaganda is spreading now — it extends far beyond the Russian borders, and it reaches everyone. How did this inform how you view propaganda?

Margaret Atwood:There's a difference between writing a novel and being in real life. So writing a novel, you are focused on what’s in the novel, but propaganda has always been widespread. I would say, since the newspaper, the radio, and the movies —  those were the big propaganda machines in the first part of the 20th century. After that, it became television as well. And now it's the internet, but it's nothing new. Fascism got a big boost from the radio. Then World War II starts and we get newsreels. We look at some of those old newsreels – it's pure propaganda. And the radio was also very big in World War II. That’s how people got their news mostly, plus newspapers but the radio was very immediate. And if you think that wasn't censored, you're wrong. Of course, it was.

The Kyiv Independent: In your books, the focus has been on the experience of women in authoritarian states. As we have witnessed in the war in Ukraine, women have been a great part of the war effort, both going to fight and volunteering. They also suffered from it greatly, as we see cases of sexual violence.

Margaret Atwood: This is not new. That goes back to the Trojan War. It’s an old motif, it's one of the things that always happens in war. But yes, wars are not good for women. They are not good for men either. Wars are bad but sometimes you don't have a choice.

The Kyiv Independent: Has the experience of Ukrainian women that you have been witnessing changed your perspective on what people can do in the moment to help them?

Margaret Atwood: No, it has validated it. Women were quite active in World War II and then their activities got papered over as it often happens. 

The Kyiv Independent: What are some of the things we can do right now to prevent the female experiences from getting papered over?

MA: You write about them. But it’s hard to write about things at the time they are happening. First of all, you don't want to give anybody away. And second, you don't have perspective because you're right in the middle of it and you don't know how it's going to come out. So, you don't know the importance of an action or a moment until afterward. And all wars are like that, old battles are like that. When you're in the middle of it, you don't actually know what's going on. And because it's very granular — these people are doing this, those people are doing that — we are not going to see how that all fits together until afterward.

The Kyiv Independent: During your talk at the Lviv Book Forum, you mentioned a Ukrainian anthology that you have been reading.

Margaret Atwood: Yeah, it's not a recent one. It's a couple of years old but they republished it at this moment. However, I predict that they're going to put together a more recent one. Since this (war) began, people must have been writing about it. So, when people say to me, “Well, what are you going to write about Ukraine?” I say, “It's not me who is going to write it, it's the people there…”

The Kyiv Independent: When did you start learning more about Ukraine?

Margaret Atwood: I have just always seemed to have known about it. You can't read much about World War II without galloping over Ukraine, galloping back over Ukraine. It’s just there. And I knew about the famine (Holodomor), of course. If you're studying anything about Soviet Russia, there it is. You can't avoid it — a very deliberate, wretched, bad. 

The Kyiv Independent: How have you been keeping up with the news?

Margaret Atwood: Doomscrolling a lot. Well, you often see things on social media before you see them in mainstream press. If you see them there, you are not sure they are real. That is the problem. So, I have a couple of keywords that I'm fixated on right now. A few weeks ago it was Lyman, before that it was Izium, right now it’s Svatove and Nova Kakhovka. So, I look them up every day just to see if anything has happened. Sometimes you wake up in the morning — what just happened? They blew up the (Crimean) bridge.

The Kyiv Independent: Before the all-out war began many people didn’t believe Putin would invade further. What do you think made many of us look at all the signaling and remain in disbelief?

Margaret Atwood: It's hope, and it's also rationality. They think “this would be so stupid, surely nobody would do it.” And they do it… So I explain to people that wars happen for two reasons. Somebody wants somebody else's stuff. And they think they can win. Sometimes thinking they can win is justified and sometimes it is not justified. But if there's no stuff that they want, they don't bother. Ukraine has a lot of natural resources, access to the Black Sea, and control of that area…There's a lot of reasons for wanting it, but none of them are the reasons that they are admitting. They're going with “the soul of whatnot” and the “essentialist whatnot” and “the novel whatnot.” But it really is the stuff. It's the loot.

Nobody starts a war if they think they can't win. They get into defensive wars for that reason. But they don't initiate wars unless they think they can win. That was a miscalculation, wasn’t it? 

If (President Volodymyr) Zelensky had left, it would have been game over. And you can't make it up: It's a guy who had a role playing the president of Ukraine, then becomes the president of Ukraine and becomes this heroic figure having started as a comedian. You just really can't invent it.

The Kyiv Independent: Were you following the 2019 presidential election closely? What did you make of it as it was happening?

Margaret Atwood: I was following it very closely. He is a script writer…I think people get more inspiration from movies than we give them credit for. A lot of politics is acting as you have probably figured out. Zelensky had a better act.

I don’t think he was prepared for it (the war). I think his military was prepared and he couldn't have done this without the backing of the military, obviously. 

The Kyiv Independent: In addition to non-fiction, it is valuable for people to read fiction to make sense of the things that are happening. Do you have any book recommendations, any dystopias?

Margaret Atwood: They are gloomy. So let us not speak of them right now. Let us instead speak of the project I'm doing called Practical Utopias. It has assembled 200 people from about 138 countries… We're giving them Lego blocks of new materials, new processes with the goal to make practical better possibilities. 

I'm gonna say something really quite annoying. These places that have been so destroyed, when they rebuild them — this is a kind of perfect place to put better into practice. And I'm guessing that a lot of people will be offering their inventions and services, their new stuff to make better from the ground up…So that is a positive way of looking at it. It's not what you would wish, you would not. You wouldn’t wish for this opportunity to have appeared but it could be an opportunity. It could be the template for the future — that’s my utopian vision.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

TWO KINDS OF N THINGS THAT DON'T SCALE

One of the startups we've funded. And yet as it gets cheaper to start startups, this sparsely occupied territory is becoming more and more valuable. This has a nice sound to it, but not so much that it paralyzes you. Thermals happen, yes, but no one can predict them—not even the founders, and there are companies that will give $2 million to a startup that seems very promising but still had some things to figure out. You grow big by being nice, but you can stay big by being mean. But I didn't use the term slippery slope by accident; customers' insatiable demand for custom work will always be pushing you toward the bottom. How much does an angel invest? They can work wherever they want. They can work wherever they want. You can't have ulterior motives when you have to remember that it's an admirable thing to write great programs, even when this work doesn't translate easily into the conventional intellectual currency of research papers.1 If you looked in the head of a 1950s auto executive, the attitude must have been: sure, give 'em whatever they ask for, so long as you're telling the truth. The unusual thing about Lisp—in fact, to anyone who wants to understand the essence of Lisp—is that it can be written in itself.

On closer acquaintance they turn out to be flaky, high-maintenance investors. It definitely has a flavor of its own though. One interesting consequence of this fact is that there are more bad programmers than good programmers. If you do that in a language with prefix syntax, any function you define is effectively an operator. The Octoparts are the nicest guys in the world. If your current trajectory won't quite get you to profitability but you can stay big by being nice, but you have to pick some group of users. Experienced founders treat it as a company.

Maybe an organization that helped lift its weight off a country could benefit from the giant sums they're compelled to invest. What makes Google so valuable is that their users have money. Plus a company that has raised money is literally more valuable. If it takes longer to find the library function that will do what you want in a startup. But Palo Alto is getting expensive. And the startups where they have to ask for more because they know VCs aren't interested in such small deals. And this tradition had so long to develop that nontechnical people like managers and venture capitalists also learned it. It's like telling the truth. When I was a kid I was firmly in the camp of bad. And I don't have time to work, they say. Lisp model. That's the sense in which the best work is done by the people who work there want to stay there, instead of fleeing as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to come up with as a technologist in residence at a new venture capital fund.

VC funding because it could legitimately absorb large amounts of money; you just have to fill it. Notice the pattern here? With server-based software you can use any language you want. Not explicitly, of course. Editors must know they attract readers. Recently it was starting to seem that computers were finally fast enough. What seems like work to you? So unless their founders could pull off an IPO which would be difficult with Yahoo as a competitor, they had no choice but to ride the thing down. A lot of VCs still act as if founders retaining board control after a series A, that will actually benefit from the resulting growth.

I'd guess they were dead by 2005. If you're designing a tool, for example. A round. How do you find them? People who worry about the increasing gap between rich and poor generally look back on the default explanation of people living in fallen civilizations. There's a hack for being decisive when you're inexperienced: ratchet down the size of your investment till it's an amount you wouldn't care too much about the business model, at least at first. Palo Alto was not originally a suburb. If you can recognize good startup founders by empathizing with them—if you both resonate at the same frequency—then you may already be a better startup picker than the median professional VC. I'm going to try to make money differently is to sell different things, and now we're talking about people. A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and one independent. It's not a charity, but they run it like one.

Notes

I'm going to call the Metaphysics came after meta after the egalitarian pressures of World War II had disappeared in a time machine. He devoted much of the crown, and one different qualities that help in deciding what to outsource and what not to. Delicious/popular is driven mostly by hackers. In a startup you can fix by writing an interpreter for the same gestures but without using them to.

[suggahsweet]

A little bit in love with Glee!

and just life in general right now, honestly, but specifically Glee. I write this as a reminder for my future self who will probably make the same mistakes again and forget to be grounded, and forget that change is good and transitions take time but eventually you're going to find the sunshine of it all, because the first night of this season of Glee I was like, oh nooo. B wasn't able to come and there were SO many new faces and SO few of the OG members and we were in a new practising space that takes me a good 40 minutes to get to, and everyone's personality seemed SO big and I was worried that signing up this year was a big ole mistake. Specifically I had a conversation with Niall (whom I knew from the season where I was pregnant, what a trip that was bahaha) and Chandler, where Chandler immediately cussed me out and told me he hated me. And I knew it was a joke! I did! But the people pleaser in me was like no, please, you're supposed to love me and I will not rest until you do! Hahaha. And B said, don't worry, everyone was nervous, and everyone will settle down, and things won't feel so aggressive, and of course, she was completely, 100% right. A few weeks ago I really felt like we hit the part of the season where we all started gelling as a team, and everyone knows each other's personalities better, and everyone (I hope) feels accepted just as they are, plus I've always preferred learning the choreo and dances to the singing anyway, and when it all starts to come together that's the very best part. I come home every Thursday completely wired. And there are little things I love about everyone, like:

Alana's sense of humour. She is constantly cracking me up just by being her, and I was hit by a sense of extreme nostalgia this week realizing that we've been performing together now for over eight years. Amazing! She was talking about Glee Season 10 and I was like excellent, so this isn't going to end anytime soon, God willing!

Louis's smile and kindness

how some people open their mouth and their voices just come out, effortlessly. Looking at you, Vee!

how quick Chandler's brain works. I truly can't keep up with him when we talk...and he's no longer telling me he hates me so that's great 😂

Faith's unwavering commitment to perfect choreography and harmony memorization. I panic texted her the other day and she was immediately at the ready to be like calm down this is how we're supposed to sing it.

Mara has the absolute chillest vibes and I am here for it. Literally the first day of Glee she was like I don't even know whether I'm a soprano or alto, and yet I never hear her singing off-key or messing us up. We love to see it! (And hear it.)

Maurice. He's so sweet and brought a hat just for EJ. So thoughtful!

I hated that Nick left halfway through the season BUT Seb is one of my favourite singers and we go way back so the fact that he just showed up out of nowhere to razzle dazzle us is just the best

getting to know Billy who straight up feels like he could be part of my high school gang. He comes off as the self-deprecating funny guy so it's been a fun surprise to find out that, much like the character he plays in Freak Flag, he is indeed an onion. :)

and of course, carpooling with B, while probably not good for my overall bedtime on Thursday nights due to the fact that I am still high on social interaction until almost 11pm rather than coming down during my drive, gives me LIFE. We love a debrief, and debrief we do!

I can't believe the show is in two weeks. Already praying for a babysitter and some sort of setup to work next year so I can come back!

[jcmarchi]

Jupiter-sized Planet Has Big Secret: 350,000-mile-long Tail - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/jupiter-sized-planet-has-big-secret-350000-mile-long-tail-technology-org/

Jupiter-sized Planet Has Big Secret: 350,000-mile-long Tail - Technology Org

Scientists say the discovery presents a rare opportunity to study the physics that shape thousands of other planets.

WASP-69b is having a hot girl summer that never ends. The huge gaseous exoplanet, roughly the size of Jupiter and approximately 160 light years from Earth, orbits its searing host star so closely that its atmosphere is boiling away at a rate of 200,000 tons per second.

Exoplanet – illustrative photo. Image credit: Pixabay (Free Pixabay license)

In new research published today in the Astrophysical Journal, a team led by UCLA astrophysicists discovered that as the planet’s atmosphere escapes into space, its host star’s stellar winds sculpt it into a comet-like tail that trails the planet for at least 350,000 miles — far longer than observed before.

“Work by previous groups showed that this planet was losing some of its atmosphere and suggested a subtle tail or perhaps none at all,” said Dakotah Tyler, a UCLA doctoral student and first author of the research. “However, we have now definitively detected this tail and shown it to be at least seven times longer than the planet itself.”

Discovered a decade ago, WASP-69b is known as a “hot Jupiter” — a gas giant planet that orbits precariously close to its star. In fact, the exoplanet is so close that it completes a full orbit in less than four Earth days; by comparison, Mercury, the closest planet to our sun, has an 88-day orbit.

Illustration of planet with tail orbiting a star. Image credit: Adam Makarenko/W. M. Keck Observatory

The discovery that WASP-69b’s star is not only stripping away the planet’s atmosphere with high-energy radiation but also physically shepherding that escaped gas into a long, thin tail helps to reveal how stellar winds affect planets that orbit their stars so closely. Studying this type of atmospheric mass-loss directly is pivotal for understanding exactly how planets across the galaxy evolve over time with their stars, the researchers said.

“Over the last decade, we have learned that the majority of stars host a planet that orbits them closer than Mercury orbits our sun and that the erosion of their atmospheres plays a key role in explaining the types of planets we see today,” said co-author and UCLA professor of physics and astronomy Erik Petigura. “However, for most known exoplanets, we suspect that the period of atmospheric loss concluded long ago. The WASP-69b system is a gem because we have a rare opportunity to study atmospheric mass-loss in real time and understand the critical physics that shape thousands of other planets.”

Earlier observations of WASP-69b, conducted with a 3.5-meter telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain and a 5-meter telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, showed only a hint of a tail or no tail. For the current study, the researchers used a larger, 10-meter telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, along with its high-resolution spectrograph instrument, called NIRSPEC, to make observations that were more sensitive to the detailed structure of WASP-69b’s escaping atmosphere.

The observations revealed that WASP-69b’s escaping gas, primarily hydrogen and helium, is shaped and pushed in the direction of Earth by radiation and an outflow of gas from its host star known as a stellar wind for hundreds of thousands of miles. The researchers were then able to calculate the amount of mass the planet was losing.

“These comet-like tails are really valuable because they form when the escaping atmosphere of the planet rams into the stellar wind, which causes the gas to be swept back,” Petigura said. “Observing such an extended tail allows us to study these interactions in great detail.”

Even though the hot Jupiter is dancing a dangerous tango with its star, Tyler said its atmosphere won’t completely evaporate.

“At around 90 times the mass of Earth, WASP-69b has such a large reservoir of material that even losing this enormous amount of mass won’t affect it much over the course of its life. It’s in no danger of losing its entire atmosphere within the star’s lifetime,” Tyler said.

“The resilience of this planet in such an extreme and hostile environment serves as a powerful reminder to us all,” he added. “Despite the multitude of challenges we may face, our capacity to withstand and overcome is often far greater than we realize. Our problems may seem daunting, but like WASP-69b, we have what it takes to continue on.”

Other authors of the paper include Antonija Oklopcic from the University of Amsterdam and Trevor David from the Flatiron Institute.

Source: UCLA

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[jpbjazz]

LÉGENDES DU JAZZ

ERIC DOLPHY, LE PRODIGE ÉTOUFFÉ DANS SON BERCEAU

‘’Eric Dolphy was  a complete musician. He could fit anywhere. He was a fine lead alto in a big band. He could make it in a classical group. He was entirely his own man when he soloed. He had mastered jazz. And he had mastered all the instruments he played. In fact, he knew more than what’s supposed to be possible to do on them.’’

- Charles Mingus

Né à Los Angeles le 20 juin 1928, Eric Dolphy était le fils unique d’Eric et Sadie Dolphy, des immigrants originaires de Panama. Après avoir brièvement joué de l’harmonica, Dolphy avait commencé à suivre des cours de clarinette et des saxophone dès l’âge de six ans. Il avait ensuite étudié le hautbois dans l’espoir de se lancer dans une carrière de musicien classique. Il avait même obtenu une bourse pour étudier à l’Université Southern California durant deux ans.

Après avoir remporté un prix de  clarinette à l’âge de treize ans, Dolphy avait fréquenté le Dorsey High School, où il avait poursuivi ses études musicales et avait appris à jouer d’autres instruments. En 1946, Dolphy avait été nommé co-directeur de la chorale de jeunes de la Westminster Presbyterian Church dirigée par le Révérend Hampton B. Hawes, qui était le père du pianiste de jazz du même nom. Après avoir obtenu son diplôme en 1947, Dolphy était entré au Los Angeles City College, où il avait interprété des œuvres de musique classique contemporaine comme L’Histoire du Soldat d’Igor  Stravinsky avec les futures légendes du jazz Jimmy Knepper et Art Farmer. Dolphy avait aussi partie des 17 Beboppers de Roy Porter. Dolphy avait d’ailleurs fait huit enregistrements avec Porter en 1949, ses premiers en carrière. Lors de ses sessions, Dolphy avait joué du saxophone baryton, du saxophone alto, de la flûte et de la clarinette soprano.

DÉBUTS DE CARRIÈRE

Entré dans l’armée en 1950 pour faire son service militaire, Dolphy avait été stationné à Fort Lewis, dans l’État de Washington. À partir de 1952, Dolphy avait fréquenté la Navy School of Music. À sa libération en 1953, Dolphy était retourné à Los Angeles où il avait collaboré avec plusieurs musiciens, dont Buddy Collette, Eddie Beal et Gerald Wilson. C’est en l’honneur de ce dernier que Dolphy avait composé sa pièce intitulée ‘’G.W.’’ Dolphy invitait souvent des amis à venir improviser avec lui. Des enregistrements réalisés en 1954 avec le trompettiste Clifford Brown documentent cette période de la vie de Dolphy.

Eric Dolphy a obtenu sa première chance comme musicien professionnel lorsqu’il avait été invité à se joindre au quintet de Chico Hamilton en 1958. Dolphy était parti en tournée avec le groupe, ce qui lui avait permis de se faire connaître d’un plus large public. On voit d’ailleurs Dolphy jouer de la flûte avec le groupe d’Hamilton dans le documentaire ‘’Jazz on a Summer’s Day’’, enregistré au festival de jazz de Newport en 1958.

Après avoir quitté le groupe d’Hamilton en 1959, Dolphy avait décidé de s’installer à New York.

SA COLLABORATION AVEC MINGUS

En 1960, Dolphy s’était joint au Jazz Workshop de Charles Mingus. Dolphy connaissait Mingus depuis plusieurs années, puisqu’il avait grandi avec lui à Los Angeles. Dans le cadre de l’album de Mingus intitulé ‘’Pre-Bird’’, Dolphy avait particulièrement été mis en évidence dans la pièce ‘’Bemoanable Lady’’. La même année, Dolphy s’était produit en concert au Showplace avec Mingus et Ted Curson. Sa performance avait été immortalisée dans le poème ‘’Mingus at the Showplace’’ de William Matthews. Dolphy avait également participé aux albums ‘’Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus’’ et ‘’Mingus at Antibes’’, une prestation en concert mettant aussi en vedette Booker Ervin et Bud Powell. Mingus ne tarissait pas d’éloges au sujets des talents de multi-instrumentiste de Dolphy qu’il considérait comme un des musiciens les plus complets qu’il n’ait jamais rencontrés. Mingus affirmait : ‘’He could fit anywhere. He was a fine lead alto in a big band. He could make it in a classical group. And, of course, he was entirely his own man when he soloed.... He had mastered jazz. And he had mastered all the instruments he played. In fact, he knew more than was supposed to be possible to do on them."[

À cette époque, Dolphy avait également participé à d’autres sessions d’enregistrements de Mingus avec la firme Candice. Il avait aussi partie de la session des Newport Rebels. En 1961, Dolphy avait quitté le groupe de Mingus et avait séjourné en Europe durant quelques mois, enregistrant notamment en Scandinavie et à Berlin. Dolphy avait de nouveau rejoint le groupe de Mingus en 1963, pour participer à l’enregistrement de ‘’Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus’’, dont la pièce ‘’Hora Decubitus’’ le mettait particulièrement en vedette.

Au début de 1964, Dolphy avait de nouveau collaboré avec le Jazz Workshop, en compagnie du pianiste Jaki Byard, du trompettiste Johnny Coles et du saxophoniste Clifford Jordan. Après avoir joué au Five Spot de New York, le groupe s’était produit à l’Université Cornell et à Town Hall avant de partir en tournée en Europe. Charles Mingus a composé au moins deux pièces en l’honneur de Dolphy: ‘’One for Eric’’ et ‘’So Long Eric.’’

LA PÉRIODE JOHN COLTRANE

Dolphy avait rencontré John Coltrane pour la première fois lorsqu’il travaillait avec le saxophoniste alto Johnny Hodges à Los Angeles en 1954. Les deux hommes avaient eu une collaboration particulièrement féconde: ils échangeaient souvent des idées et apprenaient l’un de l’autre. Après avoir assisté à plusieurs performances du groupe, Dolphy avait été formellement invité à se joindre au groupe de Coltrane au début de l’année 1961.

Si la collaboration de Coltrane avec Miles Davis avait accru sa popularité auprès du grand public, il s’était aliéné certains critiques de jazz lorsqu’il avait commencé à s’éloigner du hard bop. Même si la collaboration de Coltrane avec Eric Dolphy est aujourd’hui saluée par la majorité des spécialistes du jazz, cela n’avait pas toujours été le cas. À l’origine, les critiques du magazine DownBeat avaient même qualifié la musique de Coltrane et de Dolphy d’’’anti-jazz.’’ Ces critiques avaient blessé Coltrane, qui avait déclaré: "They made it appear that we didn't even know the first thing about music {...} it hurt me to see [Dolphy] get hurt in this thing."

À l’origine, seulement trois pièces de la période de résidence de Coltrane au Village Vanguard avaient été publiées, dont une seule mettant en vedette Eric Dolphy. En 1997, les Disques Impulse ont publié l’intégrale des concerts du Village Vanguard sous le titre de ‘’The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings.’’ On peut y entendre de longues performances de Dolphy tant au saxophone alto qu’à la clarinette basse. Dolphy exécute également un solo sur le classique de Coltrane, ‘’Naima.’’ En 2001, les disques Pablo ont également publié un coffret des performances de Coltrane en Europe sur lequel on peut entendre des pièces qui ne faisaient pas partie du matériel du Village Vanguard, dont ‘’My Favorite Things’’, sur laquelle Dolphy effectue une prestation à la flûte.

AUTRES COLLABORATIONS

Dolphy a également brièvement collaboré avec trompettiste Booker Little. Sur l’album ‘’Out Front’’, son premier enregistrement pour Candid, on peut entendre Dolphy principalement au saxophone alto, même s’il s’est également exécuté à la clarinette basse et à la flûte dans certains passages collectifs. L’album de Dolphy ‘’Far Cry’’, enregistré pour la firme Prestige, comprend également des collaborations  de Little sur cinq pièces.

Dolphy et Little ont aussi co-dirigé un quintet au Five Spot en 1961. La section rythmique de la formation était composée du contrebassiste Richard Davis, du pianiste Mal Waldron et du batteur Ed Blackwell. Un des concerts du groupe a été enregistré. On retrouve également Dolphy et Little sur la compilation intitulée ‘’Here and There.’’ Les deux hommes accompagnent aussi la chanteuse Abbey Lincoln sur l’album ‘’Straight Ahead’’ et sur l’album du batteur Max Roach intitulé ‘’Bitter Sweet.’’ Little est mort en octobre 1961 d’une maladie des reins à l’âge de seulement vingt-trois ans.  

Au cours de cette période, Dolphya également fait des apparitions sur des albums de George Russell, Oliver Nelson et Ornette Coleman. Il a aussi travaillé et enregistré avec le compositeur et chef d’orchestre Gunther Schuller, le multi-instrumentiste Ken McIntyre et le contrebassiste Ron Carter.

SES ENREGISTREMENTS COMME LEADER

Les premiers enregistrements de Dolphy en tant que leader ont été produits par les Disques Prestige. Très prolifique, Dolphy a enregistré treize albums pour la firme d’avril 1960 à septembre 1961, même s’il n’avait pas agi comme leader sur toutes les sessions. En 1995, les Disques Fantasy ont publié un coffret de neuf CD comprenant tous les enregistrements de Dolphy pour Prestige.

Les deux premiers albums de Dolphy comme leader étaient intitulés ‘’Outward Bound’’ et ‘’Out There.’’ Les pochettes des deux albums ont été illustrées par l’artiste Richard ‘’Prophet’’ Jennings. Le premier disque, qui se rapprochait davantage du hard bop que des albums subséquents de Dolphy, avait été enregistré au studio de Rudy Van Gelder au New Jersey. Participait à l’enregistrement le trompettiste Freddie Hubbard, qui connaissait bien Dolphy pour avoir été son compagnon de chambre lorsque les deux hommes étaient arrivés à New York. L’album ‘’Outward Bound’’ contient trois compositions de Dolphy: ‘’G.W.’’, ‘’Les’’ et ‘’245.’’ Quant à l’album ‘’Out There’’, il était définitivement plus près de la troisième vague que du hard bop, et mettait en vedette Ron Carter au violoncelle. L’album comprend également une composition de Charles Mingus, intitulée ‘’Eclipse’’, qui a permis à Dolphy d’exécuter un de ses rares solos à la clarinette soprano. Dolphy a aussi enregistré à l’occasion des solos de saxophone sans accompagnement, à l’image d’un Coleman Hawkins ou d’un Sonny Rollins par exemple, mais c’était la première fois qu’un musicien de jazz réalisait cette prouesse à l’alto. Dolphy avai d’ailleurs eu l’occasion de renouveler l’expérience sur l’album ‘’Far Cry’’ et lors d’une tournée en Europe subséquente. Grand innovateur, Dolphy avait été un des premiers musiciens de jazz à établir la crédibilité de la clarinette basse comme instrument de jazz à part entière.

Dolphy avait aussi fait une incursion dans la musique classique. Familier avec la musique de compositeurs tels Anton Webern et Alan Berg, Dolphy possédait une vaste collection de disques classiques. En plus des oeuvres de Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky et Bartok, Dolphy possédait des enregistrements des compositeurs Milton Babbitt, Donald Erb, Charles Ives et Olivier Messiaen. Après avoir rendu visite à Edgar Varèse à sa résidence, Dolphy avait exécuté sa pièce ‘’Density’’ pour flûte au Ojai Music Festival en 1962. Dolphy abait également collaboré à l’album de Gunther Schuller et de John Lewis intitulé ‘’Jazz Abstractions.’’ Dolphy admirait aussi le travail du flûtiste italien Severino Gazzelloni. Dolphy a d’ailleurs écrit la composition ‘’Gazzelloni’’ en son honneur.

En 1962-63, Dolphy avait également collaboré avec le pianiste Herbie Hancock. On peut entendre les résultats de cette collaboration sur l’album ‘’The Illinois Concert’’.

En juillet 1963, le producteur Alan Douglas avait organisé des sessions d’enregistrements mettant en vedette les accompagnateurs de Dolphy. Cet exercice avait donné lieu à la publication des albums ‘’Iron Man’’ et ‘’Conversations’’. C’est lors de ces enregistrements que Dolphy s’était produit pour la première fois avec le vibraphoniste Bobby Hutcherson. Dolphy avait connu Hutcherson à Los Angeles lorsqu’il avait brièvement fréquenté sa soeur. Ces sessions d’enregistrement sont particulièrement connues pour les trois duos mettant en vedette Dolphy et le bassiste Richard Davis (sur les pièces ‘’Alone Together’’, ‘’Ode to Charlie Parker’’ et ‘’Come Sunday’’).

Après avoir signé en 1964 un contrat avec les disques Blue Note, Dolphy avait enregistré son album ‘’Out to Lunch’’ avec un quintet formé de Freddie Hubbard à la trompette, de Bobby Hutcherson au vibraphone, de Richard Davis à la contrebasse et de Tony Williams à la batterie. Plus grand succès commercial et artistique de la carrière de Dolphy, l’album constituait une des plus fécondes contributions du multi-instrumentiste au jazz d’avant-garde, tout en conservant ses liens avec la tradition.

DÉCES ET POSTÉRITÉ

Au début de l’année 1964, après la publication d’’’Out to Lunch’’ et avoir collaboré à l’album ‘’Point of Departure’’ du pianiste Andrew Hill sur Blue Note, Dolphy était parti en tournée avec le sextet de Charles Mingus. Peu avant un concert à Oslo en Norvège, Dolphy avait informé Mingus qu’il avait l’intention de demeurer en Europe après la tournée, en partie parce qu’il était déçu de l’attitude du public américain face aux musiciens d’avant-garde, et aussi parce qu’il désirait passer du temps avec sa fiancée Joyce Mordecai qui était danseuse de ballet à Paris. À l’époque, le groupe de Mingus interprétait un long blues qui n’avait pas encore de titre et qu’il avait finalement intitulé ‘’So Long Eric’’ en hommage à Dolphy.

Après avoir quittté le groupe de Mingus, Dolphy avait joué et enregistré avec différents groupes européens ainsi qu’avec des musiciens américains vivant à Paris comme le trompettiste Donald Byrd et le saxophoniste Nathan Davis. Dolphy, qui avait plusieurs projets, avait aussi l’intention de se joindre au groupe du saxophoniste Albert Ayler et de collaborer avec le pianiste Cecil Taylor. Il projetait aussi de former un groupe avec le trompettiste Woody Shaw, le bassiste Richard Davis et le batteur Billy Higgins. À l’époque, Dolphy travaillait également sur un quartet pour cordes intitulé ‘’Love Suite.’’

Le 27 juin 1964, Dolphy s’était rendu à Berlin pour jouer avec un trio dirigé par Karl Berger qui devait se produire à l’ouverture d’un club surnommé The Tangent.  Tombé gravement malade à son arrivée, Dolphy s’était même révélé pratiquement incapable de se produire sur scène. Hospitalisé durant la nuit, l’état de santé de Dolphy s’était encore aggravé. Il est mort le 19 juin, après avoir sombré dans un coma à la suite d’une crise diabète. Il était âgé de seulement treize-six ans. On peut lire sur la pochette des oeuvres complètes de Dolphy publiées par les Disques Prestige que le saxophoniste "collapsed in his hotel room in Berlin and when brought to the hospital he was diagnosed as being in a diabetic coma. After being administered a shot of insulin he lapsed into insulin shock and died". Les médecins de l’hôpital ignoraient que Dolphy était diabétique et avaient conclu qu’il avait été victime d’une consommation excessive de drogues. Or, Dolphy ne fumait pas et ne consommait aucune drogue. Ses médecins avaient été simplement influencés par le préjugé populaire selon lequel les musiciens de jazz étaient des adeptes des narcotiques.

Le trompettiste Ted Curson avait été complètement ébahi par la mort de Dolphy. Il avait déclaré:

"That really broke me up. When Eric got sick on that date [in Berlin], and him being black and a jazz musician, they thought he was a junkie. Eric didn't use any drugs. He was a diabetic—all they had to do was take a blood test and they would have found that out. So he died for nothing. They gave him some detox stuff and he died, and nobody ever went into that club in Berlin again. That was the end of that club".

Peu après la mort de son ami, Curson lui avait rendu hommage dans une élégie intitulée ‘’Tears for Dolphy.’’

Un autre collaborateur de longue date de Dolphy, le compositeur Charles Mingus, avait commenté: "Usually, when a man dies, you remember—or you say you remember—only the good things about him. With Eric, that's all you could remember. I don't remember any drags he did to anybody. The man was absolutely without a need to hurt."

Eric Dolphy a été inhumé au Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery de Los Angeles. On peut lire sur sa pierre tombale l’expression "He Lives In His Music." Peut-être Dolphy pressentait-il sa mort prochaine, car à la veille de son départ pour l’Europe, Dolphy avait laissé une boîte contenant des documents et des effets personnels à ses amis Hale et Juanita Smith. D’abord tombés entre les mains du musicien James Newton, les documens avaient été légués à la Bibliothèque nationale du Congrès en mai 2014.

En dépit de leur collaboration relativement brève, Eric Dolphy avait exercé une influence considérable sur John Coltrane. Dans une entrevue accordée en 1962 au magazine DownBeat, Coltrane avait déclaré: ‘’After he sat in... We began to play some of the things we had only talked about before. Since he's been in the band, he's had a broadening effect on us. There are a lot of things we try now that we never tried before. This helped me... We're playing things that are freer than before." Le biographe de Coltrane, Eric Nisenson, avait confirmé: "Dolphy's effect on Coltrane ran deep. Coltrane's solos became far more adventurous, using musical concepts that without the chemistry of Dolphy's advanced style he might have kept away from the ears of his public."  De tous les hommages qu’on ait jamais rendus à Dolphy, le plus sincère était sorti de la bouche de Charles Mingus. Ce dernier avait déclaré :

‘’Eric Dolphy was  a complete musician. He could fit anywhere. He was a fine lead alto in a big band. He could make it in a classical group. He was entirely his own man when he soloed. He had mastered jazz. And he had mastered all the instruments he played. In fact, he knew more than what’s supposed to be possible to do on them.’’

Dolphy a influencé de nombreux musiciens au cours de sa carrière, dont Ron Carter, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson, Woody Shaw, Tony Williams, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Arthur Blythe, Don Byron, Evan Parker ainsi que les membres de l’Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Intronisé au sein du temple de la renommée du magazine DownBeat en 1964, Dolphy était non seulement un multi-instrumentaliste virtuose, mais aussi un grand être humain. Comme l’avait reconnu Coltrane : "Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician." Après la mort de son fils, la mère de Dolphy avait d’ailleurs légué à Coltrane sa flûte et sa clarinette basse. Coltrane, qui traînait toujours sur lui une photographie de Dolphy, a d’ailleurs utilisé les instruments de Dolphy sur certains de ses enregistrements subséquents.

En 1991, Eric Dolphy a  fait l’objet d’un documentaire intitulé ‘’Last Date’’, produit par le réalisateur Hans Hylkema.

c- 2022-2024, tous droits RÉSERVÉS, LES PROCUCTIONS DE L’IMAGINAIRE HISTORIQUE

SOURCES :

‘’Eric Dolphy.’’ Wikipedia, 2022.

WALTON, Peter. ‘’Eric Dolphy (1928-1964).’’ BlackPast.org., 9 décembre 2007.

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