My latest obsession is using 3×5 cards as flash cards to improve my memory. Especially as I’m preparing for this documentary, there are so many people and dates I need to keep in my head, that I need a new tool – and there’s nothing that says ‘new tool’ like creating flash cards out of a pencil, 3×5 cards and a rubber band to hold them together. I’m using a regular old notebook for taking notes while I read books. The 3×5 cards I’m using to capture the key names, dates, ideas, just like a traditional flash card – question on one side, answer on the reverse, and I’ve got a pile of them wrapped up with a rubber band, that I go through a few times a day, to test myself. I’m also using groups of cards for other things – memorizing The Raven by Poe (which I used to know but have forgotten some of the verses) and the opening soliloquy from RICHARD III. Also using a separate pile for BIG IDEAS – I’m trying to write down the biggest idea I have every day or the best thing I learned and then I’m reviewing them every day. I’ve tried using notebooks and Evernote for this for years, but there’s something about cards that I really like – they are small, which force me to be succinct, they are easy to keep on my desk, and they are easy to randomize (a quick shuffle). And I’m crazy about pencils these days. There’s something about writing something with pencil on paper that makes part of my brain come to life – typing on a computer doesn’t have the same effect.
In other news: Chelsea Manning gets out of jail today. I hope she gets some peace, but I doubt it if she stays in America. So nice to see that “Backers have raised more than $135,000 for housing and other essentials and to assist her with her reentry into society after seven years in prison.”
Meanwhile, as I’m done with my Cold War research for this week’s recordings, I’m reading an actual hardcopy book (I typically only read ebooks) that I bought from eBay because it wasn’t available in a digital edition: THE MYTHMAKER: PAUL AND THE INVENTION OF CHRISTIANITY by Hyam Maccoby (1986). Maccoby was a British Talmudic scholar who makes the case that Paul was born a gentile, converted to Judaism, and later invented Christianity. He believes Jesus was a Pharisee who would have been horrified over what Paul did in his name.
This has to be one of the last times Lou ever performed his biggest hit live. I saw him play live twice over the years and never saw him play it.
Speaking of Lou, I stumbled across this VERY high quality live bootleg from 9 October 1974 (the day before my 4th birthday), the “Sally Can’t Dance” Tour, featuring Prakash John on bass but without Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, who had left his touring band by this stage (ROCK N ROLL ANIMAL was recorded ten months earlier). This was the tour where journalist Nick Kent from NME commented that Lou looked like a “ravaged monkey”.
The latest version of Garageband iOS is really a fun composing tool. I spent my lunchbreak adding a guitar track to a song I’ve been working on. So much fun.
I”ve been working on client stuff all day, now I’m going to try to get in a few hours on the documentary.
I like to listen to instrumental music while I work, sometimes jazz, sometimes classical, sometimes techno, or Rob Zombie, or Brian Eno. Tonight I wanted to listen to Wardenclyffe Towerby Allan Holdsworth. I haven’t heard it in a long time but I owned it on CD back in the 90s. Anyway I went to Wikipedia to find out what he’s been doing lately, only to discover he died a few weeks ago, heart attack, age 70. I bet a lot of people have never heard of him, but he was one of the most influential guitarists of all time, according to people like Eddie Van Halen (from who I learned about Holdsworth decades ago), Frank Zappa, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, etc.
Another guy who died today was Powers Boothe, who played Cy Tolliver on Deadwood, among many other great roles, usually playing the villain. A great actor who will be missed.
I spent most of today working on the script for our Christianity documentary, which is a complete mindfuck. So many rabbit holes, the story is so complex, it’s hard to know what to leave out. I had a phone call with one Aussie scholar who is going to be on the film, Mike Bird, and got turned down by another who doesn’t want to appear on film. Meanwhile, for research, I started reading a couple of books by John Dominic Crossan – The Historical Jesus in Context and God & Empire: Jesus against Rome, Then and Now. I’m sure they will open up completely new cans of worms I’ll have to unpick.
As I told Mike, my study of Christianity is the inverse of every other subject I’ve studied, in that the more I read, the more confused I become. It’s a complete clusterfuck. The scholars disagree on nearly everything, it seems.
Meanwhile Chrissy and Fox are still in the US, visiting her family. They’ve been away two weeks, due back in one more week.
Kind of embarrassing, but until recently I had no idea how much of the world’s economy is based on coal from QLD. For example – Queensland exports half the world’s coking coal which is used to make steel. HALF! That means 50% of the world’s steel is manufactured with QLD coal. For the last year I’ve been working with a client who are coal mining consultants in QLD. They’ve been giving me an education. Mining – mostly coal, coal seam gas and bauxite with some oil shale and natural gas – makes up about 9% of the QLD economy. Meanwhile the cost of solar is dropping exponentially. I have to wonder what’s going to happen to the QLD economy over the next 20 years when coal becomes a dirty word and people are using solar-generated electricity to make steel instead.
