Still have to add type here for an event I created this for, but I am really liking the depth of this piece the more I look at it. I feel this is a bit Escher (tho not as orderly) and a bit influenced by Saul Bass and I again experimented with blending modes and textures to give the piece some tactile qualities.
This has been a very creative week and I like the way it feels. Sadly it’s 3am and my body does NOT like the way that feels. Night!
As I write this blog entry from my brand new iPhone 3G using the just released WordPress app (available in the iTunes App Store), I can’t help but wonder if this will result in me blogging more often or even sharing pictures of events that are happening as I am writing with greater frequency.
Truly amazing folks. More to come! Time to track my route on google maps with GPS. (Sooooo nerdy.)
I spent a good hour today sitting down with my new nylon string mini-guitar to learn an old classic restyled by (who else) Andrew Bird. The song is entitled “How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm” and was originally written by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis with music by Walter Donaldson in the year 1918 in the WWI era. The song, in my own interpretation and no one elses, chronicles the rise of modern cities as they came to odds with country/agricultural life or the traditional family unit and deals with a family whose sons had left to learn about early adulthood in the big cities of Europe and the world. As the mother hopes and beckons in a call/response dialogue with the patriarch of the family the reasons why her sons shall return home to help keep the farm going, the father sullenly realizes his own retirement is in jeopardy. Interestingly at the same the time, the listener hears a sunken disappointment in the subtext of the father’s woes; that perhaps the father wanted more from his own wild 20-something years, something that a more conservative society did not offer when he was still growing up. It’s clear the way in which his dismisses his wife’s hopes that he believes society will get the best of his boys and there is no way they will return to the dreary, dull life a farmer leads.
That being said, it was the chords in this song that really drew me to it. A sweet sound throughout most of the verses, Bird has a way of suckering the listener in to a fanciful tale only to reveal a dark, unsolvable subtext that is present not only in the classic story but in the chord voicings used.
The masterful use of A7 and G7 in this song make the song dive to new depths of muted pain, but the choice to use a D chord in an otherwise F major progression was a particularly adventurous path to choose. Still as I listened to it a myriad times over the last 4 months or so, its dissonance only whet my whistle and made me want more. Here is my interpretation of Andrew Bird’s version of “How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm”. I hope you get as much enjoyment out of it as I did. (P.S. fingerpick it.)
How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm
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