Kurt Brindley's Blog, page 123
November 25, 2014
Stationed
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Filed under: Photography Tagged: caboose, design, graphic art, graphic design, main street, photography, pictures, solitude, stranded, towns, train stations, trains
The Human Touch
He believed the internet could not deliver a message as the mailman can.
It can deliver it quicker, surely; however, it cannot deliver it personably, with feeling, with the tangibility of the touch. Not with just the touch of the mailman, the mailwoman, necessarily; but with the slow, lingering touch of the sender—his subtle scent, her wavering pen, their desperate struggle in the fold.
As a mailman man, he, predictably, eschewed technology and all its cold, hard factual laws of exponentially expanding silicone speeds, of quantum speeds. All its qubits of progress, a byting progress lashing out at and making extinct whatever mailman-like Luddite befalls its singular path. All its promise of a terrifying future, a future never far from the madding crowd sourcing its virtueless reality.
He eschewed it for he relished the wait. He relished the slow and tantalizing wait for it was freedom, freedom that only the non-factoring, calculating, unaccountable emotive exploitation of the timed delay and rigorous sentimentality the aching human response can provide. He eschewed it and, consequently, did not have to fret the lightening speed receipt of the non-receipt that it inflicted with such precise and heartless certitude of LORAN’s many co-conspiring devices.
He would wait because he could wait. Even when it did not come he knew that it could come. That it could be coming. He would wait for all eternity if need be, knowing that it could at least be on its way. On its way but delayed, perhaps. Delayed not by neglection. Delayed certainly not by rejection…no, not by that, never by that. But instead delayed by the sweet, the capriciously sweet, the heartachingly sweet, unreliable nature of the human touch.
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Filed under: Flash Fiction Tagged: drawings, emotions, feelings, fiction, flash fiction, humans, mail, mailman, quantum, qubits, short stories, technology, touch, writing
November 24, 2014
Boundaries
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Filed under: Photography Tagged: art, corn, design, fields, forests, graphic art, graphic design, harvest, nature, photography, pictures, trees, woods
A Little Newsletter Love (002-14)
This current edition of love in the form of a newsletter provides a WEW recap of the week past, which includes links to most of my articles and photographs, as well as my musings of what I expect in the week, and days thereafter even, to come.
But more importantly, this edition includes links to the past week’s submissions to the Relating to Humans and IABS&R Volume 2 features. And these are:
Relating to Humans submissions:
TOTAL WAR OR TOTAL PEACE by Paul Xylinides, Political Issues
how it was by Gifford MacShane, Poetry
IABS&R Volume 2 submissions:
The Wild Horses of Hiroshima by Paul Xylinides
The 14th Mansion by Robert Mitchell
While Mitchell’s submission didn’t come in until after the Newsletter was already published, I figured, what the hay, I might as well include it here since we’re already discussing the topic of submissions…or something like that.
You can read edition 002-14 of newsletter love by clicking here.
And you can subscribe to receive future editions by clicking here.
Enjoy!
Look, I get it, okay. I understand that the primary reason to have a newsletter is to discuss things outside of the happenings of the website and to not redundantly post what’s going on with the newsletter on the website (was that redundant?). Unfortunately, the subscriber-ship to the newsletter is, let’s just say, not where I would like it to be. Which is why I’m harassing you about it here, and, more importantly, which is why I didn’t profile any subscribers’s websites or work in this edition – when I do I want to make sure the profiles are receiving their proper do with as many eyeballs as possible reading them. So, I’m considering holding off on any additional profiles until we reach 500 subscribers. We’re almost there, which is a good thing, and it would a be great thing if you would subscribe to help me reach that easily achievable goal.
Geez, did that sound as much like an annoying public radio membership drive plea to you as it did to me?
Sorry about that…
Anyway, hook and brother up and just go ahead and subscribe, will ya?
Right on?
Write on!
Filed under: Writing Tagged: authors, books, ebooks, IABS&R Volume 2, Indie Author Book Selection & Review, Indie Authors, Newsletter Love, newsletters, Relating to Humans, submissions, subscribers, writing
ジョージ・ウィンストンのピアノの調べ。。。
The lovely and loving Megi at HappyNest In America has a posted a brief recap of her night with George Winston. However, at the travel website she writes for, she has just published the first part of a much more in-depth series of articles on the musician. While her articles are written in Japanese, all her lovely photographs can be understood in any language one may speak.
You can visit her travel website here.
Originally posted on :
行って参りました！
３０年来大ファンのジョージ・ウィンストン氏のコンサートへ！
コンサートの後に、夫ともども記念の写真まで撮らせていただき、大感激。毎日あのコンサートの話題で盛り上がっています。詳しくは、こちらでもどうぞ。。。
↧
愛と祈り、そしてジョージ・ウィンストンの音楽。。。インタビューさせていただきました！ジョージ・ウィンストンのウィンター★コンサート ～ ２．
参照：
ジョージ・ウィンストンのオフィシャル・サイト（George Winston Official Site）
①１１月３０日（日曜日）のコンサート（午後３時開場）
ストラスモア・ミュージック・センター（THE MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE））
・会場：THE MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE
5301 Tuckerman Lane North Bethesda, MD 20852-3385
・電話番号（Ticket Office Phone）: 301-581-5100
・ァックス番号（Fax）：301-581-5101
・メールアドレス：tickets@strathmore.org
②１２月１日（月曜日）のコンサート（午後７時開場）
セラーズビル・シアター（Sellersville Theater）
・会場：24 West Temple Avenue Sellersville, PA
・電話番号：215-257-5808
・８時開演
・チケット: $39 – $55
＊ ＊ ＊
にほんブログ村 アメリカ情報でも、更新記事をお届けしています。
Filed under: Music Tagged: classical music, contemporary music, George Winston, Japan, Japanese, Japanese language, music, music reviews, performances, photography, pictures 
November 23, 2014
Dark Waves
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Filed under: Photography Tagged: art, design, forest, graphic art, graphic design, grass, nature, photography, pictures, sky, waves, woods
November 22, 2014
You know, sometimes it’s okay to meet your hero…
Most of what little refinement I have can be attributed to my lovely and loving wife.
I would say all of it could be attributed to her, but I do have a pretty good three-object juggling technique that I’ve worked hard on over the years to perfect.
Metaphorically speaking, the wife can juggle just about anything thrown her way; non-metaphorically speaking, however, she’s not a juggler by any stretch of the imagination.
But other than my juggling skills, just about anything else refined about me — especially anything artistic or intellectual — more than likely has its foundation somewhere within in my wife’s lovely and loving intellectual and artistic brain.
For instance, my love and appreciation of George Winston’s music is wholly responsible to my wife.
My wife and I met waay back in the Eighties. And waay back in the Eighties when we first met, my brain was only used to hearing such base, animalistic music as Led Zeppelin and The Smiths and Tom Waits and, unfortunately, all that New Wave pain with its fake drum machines and stoopid hairdos that was inflicting itself upon humanity at that time.
But after I met my wife and we started dating, she immediately introduced me to something strange and different. Something called Classical Music.
She introduced me to all the masters, of course…Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and, my favorite, Vivaldi, among others…
And she also introduced me to some contemporary Classical Cat named George Winston.
Yeah, that cat was not just classically Big in Japan (like that slick Tom Waits reference?), he was huge in Japan. Immense.
And I listened to Autumn and the rest, as they love to say, is musical history.
And I have been a huge, immense, fan of his ever since.
Guess who’s the lucky guy
I remember when mp3 players first came out. This was at the turn of the century; several years before the iPod.
I bought one for my daughter and my eldest son.
But since these mp3 players were new and all the copying of the CDs and uploading of the files was so tedious and technical at the time (Apple hadn’t yet come along to tell us that these new players were going to be important and all the copying and uploading would become second nature to us), the kids didn’t get much value from them.
So I assumed control, first over my son’s (my daughter was older so her giving up on her mp3 player would come several weeks after my son’s giving up). And I loaded all our George Winston CDs onto it. And then I pressed “Play” and it never stopped playing his music for the next, oh I don’t know, three months or so.
Seriously.
We just kept George Winston’s music on. Day and night.
It was magical.
And after the son’s player died from exhaustion, I loaded up the daughter’s and George’s music continued to play, day and night, until it, too, eventually bought the technological farm, so to speak, from overuse.
My sister and her family came to stay with us for a few months during this period of George Winston as the soundtrack of our daily living. She mentioned not too long ago that one of the things she remembers most from that time was the beauty of George’s music constantly playing. Day and night.
Grand memories they are when they come with a soundtrack.
A few years ago, George came through York, PA, and played its Strand Capital Performing Arts Center. The wife and I went to see him perform for the first time as part of a wedding anniversary treat.
And what a treat it was. But we didn’t stick around after the performance to try to meet him. To be honest, I didn’t think anyone of his stature (An example of his stature is illustrated by the fact that he has close to 2 million followers on Soundcloud. Soundcloud! My guess is many of you haven’t even heard of Soundcloud, yet he still has such a following there.) would bother coming out afterwards to meet his fans.
Boy* was I wrong…
My wife, as artistically and intellectually talented as she is, writes and photographs for a Japanese travel website. And when she discovered that George Winston was once again making his way through our neck of the woods, she boldly (she is completely fearless) sent out interview requests to him.
And he responded positively and kindly said to make all interview arrangements with a member of his team.
Which she did.
And just like that my wife and, by extension, I were going to be able to meet this long-time musical hero of ours.
The show was magical, of course. Sublime…
As we were waiting for it to begin, I couldn’t help but overhear all the conversations going on around me. It was interesting, and rather amazing, that they all were basically saying the same thing: How they have been long-time fans of George’s and how important his music has been to their lives.
Man*…
How wonderful life is that there are such people who can make it so wonderful…
George is one of those wonderful people.
And he would be such a person just by his musical contributions alone.
But, I’ve come to find out, that he is such a wonderful person even had he not been the genius of a musician that he is.
After the show, the wife and I, somewhat nervously, went down to the stage to wait for this wonderful musician.
And so did a gaggle of other dedicated fans.
As I waited for him to come out, I wondered how we all, this gaggle of fanboys and girls, would be received.
To be honest, I was a little worried.
This man and his music have been such a solid, foundational element of my life for so long — over thirty years — and that of the life of the woman I love the most, that I was worried that we were going to be disappointed in him as a person.
How many times have I heard that old saw of a saying, Never meet your heroes.
Forget how many times I’ve heard it, lord only knows how many times I, personally, have said it.
I, the skeptic’s skeptic, can be very skeptical of the human species, to say the least.
I’ve always had a short list, a very short list of heroes.
Mostly I believe heroes are for kids.
Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny…
Make believe.
I didn’t really believe that George Winston could live up to all that my wife and I had built him up to be.
And I was worried that my most lovely and loving wife would be let down, hurt even, because of it.
But then George came walking out as if he hadn’t just played his heart out for the last two hours.
As if he hadn’t been performing for the last thirty years or so.
As if he were really looking forward to meeting with those who were so anxiously waiting to meet him.
George came out with a bounce in his step and the most welcoming of smiles.
And he headed head first into the waiting gaggle and he shook hands and he hugged and he signed autographs and he took pictures as if he truly enjoyed doing it.
And he did enjoy it.
It was so easy to tell…
By the twinkle in his eye and the ever-present smile on his face, it was so completely obvious that he did really enjoy meeting with us who were so looking forward to meeting with him.
And finally, after all the hand-shaking and all the hugging and all the autographing and all the picture taking, the gaggle went on its merry and mesmerized way…
And then he turned to my wife.
And I thought, okay, how is he going to respond to someone who has come not just to worship, which we of course did, but to also question him and photograph him for a purpose beyond just pure fandom.
Ha ha ha…
He didn’t even think twice about it.
His eye lost not a glimmer of its twinkle, nor did his smile lessen the least bit in its broadness.
He, much to my wife’s amazement and joy (and of course mine..but especially the wife’s), treated her to, quite literally, the time of her life.
I could go on and on in very vivid detail how impressive George Winston is. I could because I saw it first-hand, up close and personal for very near an hour. I watched in awe as he reminisced and laughed and joked – oh lordy is he a funny guy – and impressed us with his knowledge of Japan (he has been to the country twenty-six times and has visited over sixty cities) and its language and his humorous outlook on some of the funny quirks and peculiarities of the Japanese way of life; and I watched especially awed as he performed in his own unique and beautiful way traditional Japanese songs just for my wife…
While she sang to him!
Yeah…
I could go on and on…it was just that special.
It was just that magical.
But I guess it would be better for me to just stop here so I can begin reflecting upon that most magical of evenings.
Yes, I truly am the lucky guy, for I now have the memory of a lifetime, a magical memory, one starring a true hero, and one with the most beautiful of soundtrack from which I will be able to draw upon and play over and over again in my theater of a mind for the rest of my long and lucky life.
*non-gender specific
A selection and sample of George Winston’s work
The Official George Winston Site
Follow George Winston on Facebook
Follow George Winston on Soundcloud
Filed under: Music Tagged: classical music, George Winston, humor, Japan, Japanese language, Led Zeppelin, music, music reviews, New Wave, photography, reviews, The Smiths, Tom Waits, writing
A Story For the Misaligned, Sailor Or Otherwise
From the Dedication Page:
This book is dedicated to anyone — regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender and all its breathless facets, sexual orientation, non-sexual orientation, sexual non-orientation, spirituality or lack thereof, religion or lack thereof, nationality or lack thereof, political affiliation or lack thereof, occupation or lack thereof, education or lack thereof, good looks or lack thereof, height, weight, shoe size, or any other ways we have identified and implemented as means to compare and contrast and separate and segregate and relegate and rank ourselves as humans — who has ever once regretted his or her or their identity.
This book, then, is for us, all of us.
Learn more here
.
Filed under: Literary Tagged: abuse, authors, books, DADT, fiction, homosexuals, Japan, LGBT, literature, navy, perceptions, sexual orientation, stereotypes, writing
November 21, 2014
Burn
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Filed under: Photography Tagged: art, fields, forests, graphic art, graphic design, nature, photography, pictures, shadows, sun, sunsets, touched, zoom
Friendship Day
Today is the day they will open their base to our community, the economy, as they call it, and will allow us to enter without restrictions.
It is the day they will hold their own version our Obon, our summer festival where we honor our ancestors. They will wear our yukata and our happi and will cook for us our yakitori and our takoyaki. They will play recorded versions of our traditional music over their loudspeakers and will attempt our traditional dances. We will try not to smile too broadly when we tell them how nice they look in our clothes and how well they perform our dances.
Today they will sell us their beer and their pizza. We will forego the yakitori and takoyaki and will, instead, buy as many cases of their beer and as many boxes of their pizza as we can. We will then drink too much and eat too much while we sit on our blankets in a tree-covered park next to their small marina and their large McDonalds; or, perhaps it is our McDonalds since we will see that only our people are employed there.
Today, though, is especially the day they will give us tours on their ships. We will crowd into their buses and we will wait in long lines until we are divided up into small groups and escorted throughout their ships by their sailors in white hats. Mostly, we will want to tour their aircraft carrier. That is where our lines and our wait will be the longest. And when we finally reach the flight deck, we will take deep breaths of the salty air and we will look out across the expanse of the bay and we will try not to wonder why they are still here.
Filed under: Flash Fiction Tagged: empire, fiction, flash fiction, friendship, government, Japan, Japanese food, military, occupation, politics, race, security, short stories, writing
