...being the observations and navigational extracts
from the ongoing expeditions of San Francisco Piano Pop trio
True Margrit

Monday, April 09, 2007

Case in Point

So, I wrote the previous blog about coincidence/ synchronicity and then the next day Olivia Newton John randomly kept coming up in all these diverse conversations. Evidently the love or distaste for ONJ is a specialized and little known litmus test--if you like her you are on acid, if you don't you are an alkaline battery. I have hated her music many long years-- I am sorry, but she is way too irretrievably flaccid for me! Amanda hates her too. But Sarah, Teresa, and Jodi love her.

The question is, can 40 million Frenchwomen be wrong?

Anyhoo...

Speaking (as I did in the previous blog) of GRIDDLE, we are playing with them at theUptown Nightclub on Thursday.
Also on the bill are :
Headshear and Blue Mire.


Last Friday's gig at El RIo was a splendid night of rock. Thanks to all who participated. You know who you are.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Coincidence...Or?

My dear readers, y'know how you'll turn on the TV and (just for example) the one episode you've ever seen of the Beverly Hillbillies is playing (the same one where Ellie May is getting courted & sparked by some wildly inappropriate suitor & she's pretending to be ten years younger, since 26 is over the hill in the Clampett world view). Or it could be the same Sex in the City, or Simpsons, or South Park, or Petticoat Junction--the point is you never see any other episode--just that one. Yours. (Robert Geller--a fab songwriter-- has a great tune about this phenomenon, it's called "Episode").

There are other common types o' coincidences... you'll read a book about, say, Henry VIII and then suddenly there are 3 miniseries about him and/ or other Tudors popping up like so many Elizabethan pastries rising in the oven. And before you can say "Renn Faire", everyone is writing or reading a book about Anne Boleyn. Is it a zeitgeist thing? Or what?

It happens in your very own brain and circumstances...is it significant? Or not?

I was talking with Chris McGrew from GRIDDLE yesterday about modal harmony, which made me think of my one term of jazz piano with Jerry Coker back at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The very next day, my mom told me how her piano student is starting jazz piano instruction with Jerry Coker... whoa...is there a pattern to all this, a future in the tea leaves, a face in the clouds, a glowing causeway of destiny that leads to... well, other cities of sychronicities? Should we be more Elizabethan and take astrology REALLY seriously? Should we utilize the ancients' modes of divination for our post modern purposes--we could sacrifice livestock for stock tips. Is there a message in the bones in my plate after I gnaw my chicken wing? & Why have I dated so many Geminis? There are seven letters in both my names which adds up to 14 proving that I better not eat turnips on Sundays.

Not to make light of numerology, of course. Some of my best friends are numerically sensitive. I am more alphabetical myself.

But the point is, we look for patterns and then see them everywhere--which tells us more about the human brain that's doing the looking than anything we are actually looking at. Perhaps a fundamental need to create a form, a rhythm, a shape is being expressed. Tolkien called humans 'sub creators". Indeed. Go unto your fields and sow, take up a brush & paint a landscape, score a film, write ye some doggerel.

If that's not sufficient, get thee to a taqueria. You're probably peckish.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Happy Passover...

...where applicable: