To NaNo or Not to NaNo, That is the Question

I’m still debating whether to take on NaNoWriMo this year.  I want to, but I am still up to my eyeballs with moving and jobbing and everything else I’ve got going.  I wouldn’t even consider it, except that “RSL” is complete and being critiqued. I don’t expect the crits to be done before December, so I have no other writing projects going right now. My fingers itch for the keyboard…

Will this blog be enough?  Oh yeah.  Flamencophile.com languishes for lack of attention, too.  Maybe not.

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Love and Promises

Writing is what’s on my mind today. My post, Nakedness, is listed on the Personal Power Blog Carnival at Pinkblocks.com. Last night I sent out my revised Part One of “Return of the Shadow Lion” to my Dedicated Readers, or DRs as they are known in Critters.org/critique.org lingo. The critiques, or crits, that came back off of last week’s submission of the Prologue and first three chapters of RSL were very helpful and gave me a lot to do and think about during the revision. The “Critters” (another critique.org term) not only made great comments, and asked insightful and pointed questions, they also gave me an unexpected gift.

After I sent out the first section, I sat back and reflected on what I’ve learned so far. That’s when I saw the real theme of the fantasy novel that has consumed so much of my time lately. Love and promises. Oh, I’d known that was in there, but several sub-themes and the necessary obsession with detail that is required for the editing process had distracted me from the primary point.

For all of the ordeals that I put my characters through and how much they suffer for their goals, this one thing became quite clear. Down to the last malakh, good or bad, honorable or scoundrel, the quality of their lives and their legacies is determined by one thing–whether they act out of limited self-interest or for the good of others. Their fates are sealed out of that fundamental choice of whether or not to live out of love. All else, their promises and commitments, and how they choose to fulfill those, flows from the fount of what lies deep within their hearts. And it isn’t always black and white, or obvious, what drives some of them. That’s the suspense and the surprise of it. It’s also a lot of the fun of the writing of it, too.

It is often the ones that suffer the most for their choices, lose their lives for their commitments even, that have the highest quality of life. They are the ones who love well and deeply; they die the same way. Their legacies are all different. They may come to their demise with grace or groveling, end up variously respected, vilified or redeemed, but the one constant is love. Love and promises.

Whatever happens with this book, whether it eventually finds a publisher or languishes on a CD-R in my office closet, matters a lot less to me at the moment than my happiness over having written something with a transcendent message. I do feel some obligation to help it find a larger audience than just me and half dozen critiquers, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the message it contains won’t allow itself be limited by either the vagaries of the publishing industry or the limits of my writing skill. Heck, it isn’t limited to the written page at all. That’s just this one messenger’s particular medium. The message itself flows into, fills, and overflows all of our little boxes, just as it flows into, fills and overflows our lives–if we let it.

Those are my thoughts on this blustery morning in Parks, Arizona. It rained last night and the San Francisco Peaks are sporting a wreath of clouds as I write this. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the first snowfall of the season dusting the higher elevations once the clouds lift. Today, I’ll be immersed in more editing and hammering away at flamencophile.com. I may even get a few boxes packed. Until next time, this Ariel Laurel Strong for the Cloud of Unknowing on WordPress.com. Posted on Sunday, September 23 at 18:59 UTC.

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Vigilante Blog Justice…How to Out a Scraper Bot

It all started out innocently enough. I just got mad about my content being scraped over and over. I’m all for humans using technology to eliminate drudgery and expand opportunity. What I don’t like is humans using technology to use other humans.

After railing about the injustice and applying a few ineffective remedies, I decided to try something else. What follows won’t work against every scraper site, but it does alert users that they are reading stolen content and asserts your claim on your intellectual property. It’s kind of funny, too. Note: This is mainly for a hosted blog. If you have access to the server where your blog resides, there are better remedies.

I used two simple principles to design a “spam sandwich” to bait a scraper’s spider:

1) A human can quickly and easily scan to see if content is relevant and interesting. A human can also skim over the irrelevant parts and extract what was meant for human consumption only.

2) An automated scraper bot cannot. Do use care, however, in designing your “fly in the ointment.” Legitimate search engines can flag “over-optimized” content which is designed to alter search engine ranking, and could confuse your “spam sandwich” as an attempt to crank up your ratings, but with a little writing skill you can avoid getting penalized by Yahoo! or Google and still target your intended quarry – the dreaded Spiderbotus scraperus stinkerii.

Here’s the bot bait I designed using the above two principles: Three Great Ways to Increase Your Site Traffic

Here’s the result of the experiment: Open Season on Scraper Bots

There are lots of ways these ideas could be improved and refined. I’d like to hear the results of any similar experiment you conduct. The possibilities are endless. And of course, if you choose to indulge in this sort of behavior remember these words of wisdom by John Steinbeck:

“It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.”

In the meantime, if you like the idea, by all means use it. Just give me a link back, okay? (https://dangerousangel.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/vigilante-blog-justicehow-to-out-a-scraper-bot/)

Happy hunting. :-)
Ariel Laurel Strong on dangerousangel.wordpress.com

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Three Great Ways to Increase Your Site Traffic

Now that I’ve gone to putting at least one link back to this site somewhere in every post, I’m finding lots of my original content scattered around cyberspace. I’m not getting trackbacks, either; I’m finding the posts off of referrers coming into this site and to Flamencophile.com. They don’t even have the decency to give me a byline. Oh. Silly me. Such web denizens are not generally known for their well developed Internet manners.

The funny thing in all of this? My most recent blog posts with “web design,” “internet,” and “web development” tags are the ones that are getting hits the hardest (that was deliberate – read on, high volume readership – ha!) and it’s already sending lots of traffic to Flamencophile, which isn’t even out of development yet. (When a website isn’t even live yet, “increase in site traffic” is a relative term.)

Wonder if that title optimization will grab a few more of them. I hope so. And, I hope they use unmoderated bot-powered posts, too. That way, any human that happens to read this without an author’s attribution, or elsewhere than The Cloud of Unknowing on WordPress.com, will know that the blog or website they are on is posting content without the permission of the creator and in violation of intellectual property rights.

Itsy bitsy spiders crawling the web trying to find search engine optimized blog posts…but they do have certain built-in limitations. A computer program simply cannot do what a human can in filtering the written word for meaning and relevance. If you read this only slightly tongue-in-cheek article carefully, you can get an education in SEO. It could even be title d how to make money writing a thousand dollar blog post with web designs on how to get the highest traffic possible for search engine robot bait.

I learned many years ago in studying martial arts that an aggressive or offensive posture can often get you hurt easier than a neutral, or even a defensive, one. Save your energy for the big battles and use the attacker’s own momentum and energy against him… There’s more than one way to captcha the little web crawlers for one’s own nefarious purposes.

See, I didn’t wish a virus on those maddog scr*p#rs and sp^m$rs trying to make thousands of dollars, double their traffic, and earn high AdSense revenue off the work of honest bloggers like Ariel Laurel Strong. :-)

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Quotes on Writing by John Steinbeck

The Prologue and first three chapters of my novel are out to the critique group, and the first two sections sit idle, pending the results of my request for dedicated readers. Now I wait. Wonder. Deal with my doubts. It’s rather funny, really. For all my talk about not worrying about what others think, I found myself getting uptight about this one.

The judgement of others on one’s creative progeny carries the potential for enlightenment and for intimidation. I’m sure to get valuable feedback; I will undoubtedly have to deal with at least some emotional reactivity, no matter what is said. Praise or criticism can be equal diversions from true creativity.

So, I did what I often do when I need a little boost – turned to the thoughts and reflections of someone who succeeded where I hope to tread. As usual, John Steinbeck spoke to my dilemma. Mo ghile mear. Some of my great hero’s thoughts on writing:

The basic rule given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there were no rules.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—”Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

~ John Steinbeck, 1902-1968
American Novelist and Writer, Nobel Prize for Literature for 1962

For more on John Steinbeck, see the Steinbeck Center website, or visit Critical Thinkers : : Steinbeck Resources for a wealth of great links.

At the moment, I am particularly taken by that last quote. I need to keep the perspective that no matter what anyone else may think of the product, the process of writing is a big part of my path. In that respect, it is absolutely essential to me, though no one else may ever, or needs to, give a hoot.

It appears that I must also write that lullaby I am to sing, as referenced in the “My Mission in Life” post. And I’m willing to bet it’s a story song about angels and dragons and other fanciful creatures…and probably to the rhythm of a nana or a bambera.

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Bruce Lee, Guitar Instructor

“If you follow the classical pattern, you’re understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow – you are not understanding yourself.” ~ Bruce Lee

I am stripping away everything I thought I knew about playing guitar, using everything I know from every other thing I’ve done in my life, in an effort to pare down to just the essentials. Basics. Fundamentals. The three R’s – Relax, Release, Repeat.

In the midst of this process, I ran across the following quote by Bruce Lee, the famous martial artist.  Lee, in his own way stripped down everything he knew from his years of training in the classic Chinese martial art of Wing Chun, by listening to his own inner knowing and through tireless experiment.

I wish neither to possess nor to be possessed.
I no longer covet paradise.
More important, I no longer fear hell…
The medicine for my suffering
I had within me from the very beginning,
But I did not take it.
My ailment came from within myself,
But I did not observe it.
Until this moment.
Now I see that I will never find the light
Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel,
Consuming myself.

~ Bruce Lee

For years, I tried to possess the secret of fine playing, pursuing some idea that the answer was outside myself, in teachers, exercises, practice, performance. For many years more, I gave up the pursuit.  When I returned to playing seriously, I started to repeat the same old errors.

In the last few days, I have been discovering something wonderful. I haven’t been doing anything on my lesson materials, none of the pieces, or even working on compás. But in my staying away from the specifics, and dwelling on the fundamentals, I’ve finally understood the spirit of the last few lessons.

“Duende,” “aire,” the soul, the angel of the music – those things cannot be grasped. They arise like a phoenix out of the ashes, as one consumes one’s own preconceived notions, burns away the fears, the worries, and the doubts, and ignites the inner passion that lies at the heart of creativity.

Like so much else on this blog over the past nine months, one thing turns around and mirrors and symbolizes another. My old post on “It’s Not the Flames That Kill You” takes on new meaning.  One more pass through the fire…

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Too, Too Much Fun

Too, too much fun! All of this focus on compás and rhythm improvement has had an unexpected payoff. I was practicing along on one of the pop tunes for my gig at the Campus Coffee Bean and a flamenco strum slipped in there. It was totally unconscious, and it worked. Cool!

A little while later, I was working some chords up the guitar neck on another tune and, just wondering what it would sound like, I substituted a discordant B chord that is common in flamenco, but rather unusual in a old folk-rock sort of piece. (Bar a B chord at the seventh fret, lift the bar, just placing the first finger on the sixth string, and leave the first two strings open.) That worked, too. Hey, this is fun.

Stuff is clicking in unexpected ways and I’m unconsciously developing a unique sound to my playing. That’s something rather new for a classical guitarist who always tried to play it the “right” way and rarely took any chances with her music.

It does make me wonder where all this is headed, though. How did that uptight, sweet, little paper-trained musician ever find the chutzpah to become a firefighter/EMT/skydiver/river rat, etc.? And now that the harum scarum risktaker has settled down (a bit), will her music get edgier? Seems to be going that direction, anyway.

Well, I’m off to finish loading up for the Campus Coffee Bean gig tonight…

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Business Cards, v. 2.0

Everything seems to be entering the “version 2.0” stage lately. Even though I fully intended to finish up the “Artist Bio” on the Music By Ariel blog, I spent a lot of time reworking my music business cards instead. I’m debating whether to use the dangerous angel website for music or add another domain; the DA website has more to do with my fantasy fiction writing. Decisions, decisions.

I also signed up for three more nights playing at the Campus Coffee Bean in Flagstaff, June 11, 18, and 25, from 7-9 p.m. I’ll be posting more on these on the MBA blog once I have the “Appearances” page done. Eventually, I’ll keep all of that basic music info over there, and won’t repeat information so much. But, for now, I’m still sorting it all out.

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Drawn Portrait vs. Photo?

I’m still undecided on this one. I’ve been working on this drawing to use on the “Music by Ariel” blog. It’s got potential, but I’ve still got a ways to go. I’m posting it just because days ago I said I’d be putting something up and this is my way of proving to myself that I am making at least some progress…

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Analog vs. Digital, Continued

Just for fun, here are a few of my old nature illustrations from back in the mid-eighties:

What a long, strange trip it’s been. I went from being an intern in the Exhibits department at the Museum of Arizona in Flagstaff, where I illustrated a show on cacti (where the Prickly Pear pen and ink drawing with watercolor washes originated), to doing jeep tours and working for a company in Phoenix that produced one-of-a-kind, hand-painted clothing. From there, it was back to the high country, where I got hired by a tiny startup producing interactive visitor information kiosks. They needed someone with artistic skills, but hadn’t had very good luck training geeks to be artists. They decided to find an artist and train her to be a geek.

It worked. I learned to design and program multimedia projects on Commodore Amigas, illustrating visitor guides using a palette of eight colors, four of which were reserved for the background, text and buttons. Everything was done with the most rudimentary of paint programs, using a mouse. The whole thing ended up in a free-standing kiosk with its own Amiga inside, operated by a visitor using a touchscreen.

The maximum screen resolution was 640 x 480 pixels. I look back at these, with no anti-aliasing, no PhotoShop text manipulation, nothing at all like what today’s beginner computer artist has at the flick of a stylus on a tablet, and realize they don’t look like much. For the early 1990’s, though, they were pretty cool.

Pieces from my ancient art portfolio, done for a now-defunct multimedia company…

It was a GREAT BIG DEAL when we went to a palette of 16 colors. I was ecstatic!

From there, it was on to Northern Arizona University, to work as a multimedia developer on educational software projects ranging from foreign language CD-ROMs for elementary school children (in HyperCard!) to very early web-based educational projects (mid-1990’s), like a Grand Canyon geology program for undergrads which utilized a website, companion CD-ROM, plus print materials. Does anyone still remember “Mosaic?” We were so excited when that came out.

Educational multimedia was great work, if you could stand the university bureaucracy. I couldn’t; I burned out. So what did I do? Started playing music again (the duo with the now ex-husband), then firefighting and EMTing, which is about as analog as you can get, and finally ended up back at a keyboard designing websites.

So here I am, with a checkered, and mostly out-of-date, résumé, unable to do the kind of hard, physical work I used to do, and back in love with music. I’ve got the old art tackle box out on my dining room table and artwork propped all over my living room. And, I’ve got a map, of sorts. It’s not quite as direct as dispatch saying, “Township 16N, Range 11E, Section 5, Northwest corner of the Southwest quadrant” and following the smoke, but I have this funny feeling it will eventually get me where I want to go.

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Analog vs. Digital: A Renaissance Woman in a Post-Modern World

The other night, M gave me an assignment. A simple one, really, but I had no idea what a shift would come out of it. I was getting very frustrated with my job hunt and my promotional activities and was back feeling like I was spinning my wheels. I couldn’t focus; I had lost all sense of perspective and priorities. Railing about being a Renaissance woman in a post-modern world was certainly getting me nowhere…

M: “You’re trying to do this with logic and words, which is not how your mind works best. Why don’t you “map” it, see it on the web?”

Duh. Why does he always make such perfect sense, and why do I continually miss the obvious?

So I did as he suggested. I closed my eyes and let the images form. Within a few minutes I had my map and I knew where all the things I do fit into that picture. Not that I can articulate it to someone else yet, but I knew. That’s enough for now.

That night, I went to sleep calm and relaxed. The next morning I got up and knew exactly what I needed to finish up my business cards, and within about an hour they were done. Things just “fell into place” all day long. Yesterday, I went into my office/writing room/art studio and pulled out my old art portfolio. This was a purposeful action, though not terribly conscious. Blind intuition. I really didn’t know what I was looking for or about to do, but I knew that it was a direct result of my web-map.

It had been ages since I even had looked through any of that old art work. I went through the portfolio and pulled out whatever struck my fancy and then arrayed the pieces around my living room. And I saw…

I saw the dates of the work. I saw the progression from analog to digital, from nature illustration to fibers to computer art. I saw how I had sold or given away almost all of the early hand-drawn and hand-painted work. I felt how much I missed the feel and sound of pen on paper, the smell of my Prismacolor (TM) pencils. Bet you didn’t know that they have a very distinctive smell…I nearly cried when I pulled out my old tackle box of supplies and opened the lid to the smell of wood and graphite and long ago.

Most of the afternoon was spent shooting photos, and then sorting out and selecting the best ones for my promo materials. Most of the evening, and well into the wee hours of the morning, I did pencil sketches and studies from the pictures in preparation for the self-portrait that I hope will be good enough to use in place of a photograph. I’m rusty, but you know what? It’s one more step towards integrating my art, music, and writing, and all from a simple little exercise in using my mind in its most natural way. I’m still way behind on my practicing, and I’m still a long ways from having my demos where I want them, but I’m on my way. Progress. That’s my motto right now. Just keep moving forward a little each day.

Guess I’m really just an analog girl, who knows and respects the power of the digital age in which we live. And while I am adept in the digital realm, I don’t want to lose the directness, the purity, and the sensual qualities that only come from a pencil in my hand or strings beneath my fingers. As I write this, I lift my fingers from the keyboard and look at my hands, really look. Digits, digital. [Grin.] A Renaissance woman in the post-modern world…indeed.

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Message From My Younger Self

During breakfast this morning, some fragments of lyrics I wrote 25 years ago popped into my head. The words were from one of my brother’s favorites, yet I haven’t played that song in at least two decades. I can’t even remember all the words anymore. So, I expect I will be out in the shed in the near future digging into some of those boxes from long ago. This one isn’t going to let go anytime soon, that’s for sure.

In the bleak hours before the dawn,
With the words that burn and ache within your soul…
{I don’t remember the next two lines of the verse}

Chorus:
Sing the song that only you can sing,
Sing it out loud and strong,
The words that you were born to,
With the voice that has been silent for too long.

Ironically, I wrote those words for a friend who was struggling not to give up on his music and wondering if he still had any songs left inside. But, I might as well have been speaking to myself from 25 years ago. I got to wondering what else my younger self would have to say to me, and what today’s me would say to that twenty-three year old…

She’d probably walk through the door and once she got over the shock of seeing what time has done to her figure and her face, she’d look at me sitting at my table having leftover pizza for breakfast (Hey, it’s brunch. I got up late. Musician’s hours.) and say something like…

Younger Self: “Uh. Shouldn’t you be eating bran flakes or something healthy?”
Older Self: [Folding hands and smiling benignly] “You have not yet studied the venerable art of Tong Long Chu Gar, Grasshopper. Hush your mouth.”

A stand-off, but I know how easily she can be distracted. The library and the instruments will be too much for her. My thousand square feet of mobile home is a true embarrassment of riches to a struggling musician, the sum total of whose possessions are a lime-green 1966 Dodge Dart (a true tank of a car), a guitar, her clothes, her grandmother’s antique bottle collection, a single bookcase full of books, and a tackle box of art supplies, and who draws and paints at a borrowed drafting table.

YS: “Cool. Look at all the books…Oh wow, a harp! And a cut-away, acoustic-electric guitar!”
OS: “Look in the cases along the wall…”
YS: “You play all these?”
OS: “Not very well. Only the harp and the guitar are worth listening to. My fiddling is atrocious.”

She’s practically squealing in delight at the contents of the cases – a purple, five-string electric violin; a concertina; a mandolin; bagpipes; and best of all, a flamenco guitar. Uh oh, she’s pulled out the flamenco guitar. She can play rings around me, but she doesn’t know that yet. She’s a damned good classical player, but she has no idea how her music will slip away for years and I’m not about to tell her. At this stage of her life, she needs all the hope she can get. I play my trump card.

OS: “Here, let me show you something. I’ve been taking flamenco guitar lessons and I’ll teach you a really great rasgueado.”
YS: “C won’t show me any.”
OS: “I know. You may find this hard to believe, but C is not the only guitar teacher in the world. Just remember, someday you learn to play flamenco, and from a teacher who laughs when he plays.”

Instant attention and absolute focus. We pass the guitar back and forth…

OS: “This is ‘tapao.’ Damp the strings with your left hand and do rhythmic strumming…like this. That’s it. Good! Very good. Now, here’s the rasgueo: Thumb up, m and a fingers down, thumb stroke down. Emphasize the thumb up-stroke, that’s the accent. It’s a triplet, but when you get it up to speed it will be a continuous roll.”

She’s scary with how fast she picks up the strum. She keeps at it while I wonder what else to say to her. She’s right in the middle of the worst of it all. The rough times still ahead, she’ll find out about those soon enough. There isn’t anything I can say that will change that, and in looking back, every mistake she makes is an honest one, an honorable and heart-felt one. No regrets there. I don’t even have any warnings or cautions for her. The stubborness, the smart-ass humor, the impertinent questions, those help her survive and keep her spirit alive.

I have to make her take a break from the guitar. She adores Elmo and thinks I live in the coolest place on Earth. She is especially happy when she finds out that Mom and Dad live just down the road. She thinks our brother is crazy to live in Pennsylvania, but then he always did have to do things his own way. (She ought to know.)

She asks a lot of questions on our walk over to the lake. Things like, “Don’t you have any kids?” and “How come you’re single, don’t you at least have a boyfriend?” No, and no, not at the moment anyway. More for her to find out about as she goes along. Instead, I tell her tales of close calls, river trips and skydiving, fires fought and ambulance runs out on the res. She thinks that’s cool and is looking forward to it. I don’t tell her that learning how to manage those adrenaline surges was a big part of curing the post-traumatic stress disorder she doesn’t even know she has. I can truthfully tell her that, yes, I still played music even when I was an EMT. I almost always had a guitar back at quarters and would often practice between calls.

I had some normal nervousness performing last night; she gets stage-fright to the point of being violently sick. She performs anyway. I remember and have worked through what happened one fateful night long ago; she still has amnesia from it and can’t drive down that road without ending up at an intersection miles away, wondering how she got there. She knows there’s a couple hours of her life missing and it scares her, yet she persists in trying to remember. She will, and she’ll end up stronger for it. She’s smart, she’s resilient, and she won’t let anyone or anything keep her down for long.

We stand on the rocks along the shoreline and I point across the water to where the bald eagles nest and where I’ve seen wild turkeys, where the bear den is, and where the elk cows and calves like to bed down on summer mornings.

YS: “Grandma would have liked this, huh?”
OS: “She sure would have.”

I see her enthusiasm, optimism, and hope, her unbounded curiosity, and realize how they pull her through so much. Even her idealism lives on, tempered somewhat, but I haven’t really changed all that much. I put an arm around her shoulders. I tell her about my writing, and that a song she wrote means an awful lot to me.

OS: “You hang in there, kid. It all works out. And you sure made my day.”

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The Gig and the Maggid

M: How’d the gig go? (As if he didn’t know.)
A: Pretty well.
M: What could have made it better?

I launched into my analysis as per the last post and got the skeptical look, the raised eyebrow. (That ‘s the non-verbal cue to cut the crap and get to the heart of the matter. Do they teach them that in maggid school?)

A: Well…It would have been a lot more fun to have been playing with someone. Someone I really enjoyed spending time with…

(That is an important qualifier based on experience. I’ve done gigs where there were fractured, or fracturing, relationships in the mix, or just not much mutuality. Those aren’t very enjoyable. It’s a real blast to play music with people you like, however.)

That got a nod and a grin…and we had a good laugh over my business cards. He liked my solution to not having any wing or rose art ready in time:

And while I’m uploading photos…Here’s what Elmo thinks of it all.

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Promotional Ponderings

This promo/branding/self-definition stuff is difficult. I’m still trying to finish up my business cards before tonight’s gig and I keep going round and round, wavering between two very different ideas of my music, with correspondingly different color schemes, themes and images. I have narrowed it down somewhat, though. I laughed when I put the “Lover’s Heart” lyrics in the “Stunned” post. Not just “music is my trade,” but “sweet music is my trade.” I can’t seem to escape the “Sweet” thing, no matter how hard I try. Even so, that still leaves a heck of a lot of territory to explore. (Uh oh, I feel another surveying metaphor coming on.)

Guitar vs. harp; red and black vs. blue and white; roses, wings…exploit the angel/name thing. Oy. I came up dry on clip art roses, guitars, wings; my laptop is too low on memory to run Painter efficiently and I don’t have time to draw my own graphics right now…Argh. Just like I overreached on my musical program and have had to modify my expectations, I’m having to do the same with my promo materials. I know. I know. I get impatient and I think I can do more than I can. I’m still learning that lesson. I may forever be learning that lesson, the way I’m going.

I do like the “wings” thing, though. It fits where I’m at right now, that feeling of taking off, ready to fly, but I don’t know that it is a good image for the long term. I’m a little leery of getting too locked into that, or being too corny. I got pretty tired of the “angelic” thing with the old “Bright Angel Music” biz, and that was named after the trail in the Grand Canyon. Of course, because I play harp, people immediately jump to other associations.

So what do I do? Go name myself “Ariel,” on some Kabbalistic notion that only .000009% of the world’s population would even understand. (And that’s probably being overly optimistic.) Some might assume it was for Shakespeare’s airy sprite, but think pop culture, dear readers. Heavens forbid, have I forever associated myself with Disney’s Little Mermaid? Probably. I’ve got no one to blame but myself.

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Have Harp, Will Travel

My latest musical endeavor has nothing to do with playing an instrument, but with transporting the bulky, hard-to-handle pedal harp. I’ve found a new way of putting it into the PT Cruiser. I’d gotten the harp in there before (laid out flat) but then had no room left over for sound equipment. I woke up the other morning with a complete picture in my mind of how to fit it, a guitar or two, the sound system, plus all the necessary gear for several days of gigging away from home, into the back of the PT.

The solution necessitates some creative strapping and padding to hold the harp safely vertical as it rests on its post, and it would be much easier to handle with two people, but I did a solo test load and it worked fine! (The harp is a three-quarter size pedal harp, that weighs approximately 55 pounds and stands about 5’4″ tall. I don’t think my solution would work for a full-size harp, but if any harpists want to know what I came up with, you can email me from the dangerousangel.com website and I’ll reply with the details.)

At 13 mpg and 120,000 miles on the odometer, running the old van to Phoenix and back (300 mile round-trip) was not a good idea, but I’d been holding onto it for lack of a better option. This new development opens up gigging in the Valley with both instruments and sound equipment in a reliable vehicle that gets more than double the miles per gallon. And, I can retire the gig van, which will generate some cash and get the poor, ugly, old beast out of my driveway. Onward! Now, I’ve got to do something about a music website…

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