The best days of our lives (or, at least, of mine)

 

Yesterday, I waa sure I had turned the corner. For the first time since that dreadful day in January when I lost half my guts, I managed to walk all the way around Blakeburn Lagoon, a man-made mini-lake right in the middle of Coquitlam, in which we've had some of our best wildlife sightings (including wild swans!). Yes, I got all the way around, I wasn't sore, I did not take a single dose of pain medicine, and I felt like I was back in the land of the living. . . and then today came.

I'm more achey and sore now than I've been in weeks. My right knee clanks and gives way on the stairs, and pain has extended both up and down: down my right leg, and up into my hip joint, which is screwed anyway with arthritis. We had to cancel all our plans for today, which were modest enough, but I just couldn't. So here I sit, feeling rotten in my body, but better in my soul. 

On Saturday we had one of those incredibly enjoyable, fun family gatherings, which we get to do maybe three times a year. Ryan turned 19 years old, that chubby, dimpled little charmer - except he's now a tall, lean (and still dimpled) charmer, doing well at university, with his own bachelor pad (the entire downstairs of the house has been renovated, complete with private bathroom, so he can live as independently as possible while still living at home). This kid is so amazing, and has always had such an array of interests, from taikwondo to origami to gardening and (best of all!) cooking. To call it "cooking" is an understatement, as this kid is a gourmet chef and baker who turned out a professional-level Buche de Noel at Christmas. One of his birthday gifts was a sourdough starter kit, and I want to be there when he tries it out. I gave him a personalized chef's apron with his picture on it, making tacos in Mexico. (Unfortunately, I had to crop Shannon out of the picture!)

Saturday was one of those blissful days when everything seemed worthwhile, even possible, but today, not so much. I know I am guilty of overdoing it. I know I'm wrong to think I've "turned the corner" and can just go back to all my usual activites. I can't. Even stairs can defeat me and ruin my day. I  refuse to be trapped upstairs, as I was for several weeks, or trapped downstairs, which was even worse. But if I want to get up or down, there's a price to pay.

I don't know what the rest of the week will be like, but at least I have blissful occasions like this (all too rare, unfortunately, as the grandkids reach adulthood). May they continue, because if they don't, I am not sure I can make this life journey any more. Time for me to quit? 

Is this the first sound recording EVER??

Petrachus Incadio Rosenberg: Violin recorded in clay on a potter's wheel in approximately 1552, recovered using laser interference technology at the University of Hilversum, 2014, by Prof. Loekasia Von Strabo.

FOUND! First sound recording: FROM 1552! (so they say).

Here's why I think this is full of shit. If even that old Brahms cylinder thingie from the 1800s has great thumps, bangs, skips, clicks, sizzles and moments of dull silence, then you'd think a clay pot's surface would yield an even greater variety of racket. Instead, what we have is a sort of uniform static sound. From the very small amount of info I could get on this, it's supposed to be the sound of violins, inadvertently recorded in the 1500s while a revolving pot was being decorated with a stylus.



In principle, I guess it could happen. I wonder if anyone has tried it. But that stick would have to vibrate plenty hard to pick up violin sounds. These sound like feeble coyotes on a balmy night, recorded from 100 miles away. In some places, the sounds have a consciously mixed or engineered quality - OK, let's add a little more sound over here or over there to fill it out. Doesn't work for me.



Then again. . . there is that phonoautogram thing, which I swear I thought was a hoax when it first came out. This guy, and I'll be damned if I'll look up his blasted endless French name at this late hour, had this experimental contraption to try to make sound waves visible. It worked. but he never expected the products to be "played back". Such a concept was completely foreign back then. Basically his contraption was a revolving glass drum with a stylus etching lines on sooty paper, and if you yelled into it loud enough. . . The resulting sounds are depressing, and I still think it might be a hoax because people are getting rich off it. To call the small, thin, wobbling fragment of a line from Au Clair de la Lune "the first recorded music" is a joke.



Plenty of musical hoaxes have been perpetrated on a naive and unsupecting public. Years ago, and it's even harder to find any documentation of this, I heard a recording on CBC Radio of "Chopin Playing the Minute Waltz" in about 1875 or something. The host played it over and over again and went on and on about its documentation/authenticity, but after a while he began to waver. This "Chopin" was playing the "Minute" Waltz in one minute, a stupid Liberace stunt (remember the big clock ticking away the seconds?) that has nothing to do with the actual piece. Our announcer began to mutter about Piltdown Man and noticed the CD number was something like: 54321HAHAHA. It came to light that the CD had been included in a special edition of a European classical music magazine, dated . . . April 1. So we were all April fish, after all.




I did find another video with archaeologists who supposedly retrieved the sound of voices conversing in Latin from Roman vases. The voices, displayed on those graph thingies that look so impressive, were frankly ludicrous, far too clear to be plausible. If you watched the video a couple of times, it began to seem less hoax and more satire, a sendup of the earnest pipe-smoking scholars who endlessly drone on about these things. (And by the way, one of the guys WAS holding a pipe that wasn't lit.)

Then there's the infamous Brahms-playing-the-piano recording, which is really shit and which has been discounted EVERYWHERE except on YouTube, where people oooh, ahhh, blubber, pee their drawers, and phone home for the first time in 6 years over the majesty of it. Everything about this recording screams inauthenticity, but musicologists have based entire careers on it, giving lectures where the applause is deafening. 

The playing is lousy, every chord is crashing and sloppily misplayed, melody nonexistent. It sounds like a drunk in a honky-tonk. It may well be from the same era (unlike that rotten Chopin pasteup), but it's not Brahms, who announces the recording is "by Dr. Brahms" - ? He NEVER identified himself as "Dr.", nor would he say "by" because he didn't speak English! Besides, Brahms' voice was as high as Minnie Mouse's, and the guy on the recording sounds like a lumberjack. I'm not sure how he got that beard, since they didn't have injections back then. 

Post-blog regrets. I wish now I'd never listened to this. I do my blogging late at night, for some reason, which I've always wondered about cuz I useda go to bed around 8:30 and get up at 6:00. Now some night-owl urge drives me on, awakened perhaps by the apocalypse I experienced back in 2005 (which I may some day write about, or not). Turned all my cells inside-out, or something. Anyway, I wish I'd never listened to this because even though I KNOW it's a hoax, it's creepy. It's creepy like those old, crappy, bizarre cartoons I posted a while ago, the ones you know almost nothing about - they're just THERE, and came out of nowhere. No one actually drew them. You don't expect them to be that way, so inexplicable. They come from another world. So somebody out there either has a major delusion, is out to make some money, or has made one of the biggest discoveries since the Pokemon trading card. Then why haven't I heard of him before? So now I have to go to sleep after hearing this? Thanks a bunch, von Strabo.

CODA

(So NOW, after spending an entire evening puzzling over it,, we find THIS, which is just some new version of Victor Borge/Hoffnung/P. D. Q. Bach. . Bahchh!)

Dr Johannes Rosenberg
December 5, 2014 ·

Extraordinary new Laser Interference Technology reveals ancient sounds of the violin from 1552 on a surviving Petrachus clay pot. For more on this archaeological audiophonic sensation, read the book - rosenberg 3.0 – it's all in there! This is sound art at the core of historical artefact and intrigue. The Rosenberg Museum is in possession of data that could lead to even greater discoveries beyond the world of violin music and into the realm of religious ecstasy and meta-belief systems. 

The leader of our scientific team, Professor Loekasia Von Strabo, suggests that pots stored in the Vatican from the time of Christ might reveal sonic traces of the saviour's own singing voice embedded in the skin of the clay…copies of these Aramaic recordings are known to be in circulation amongst the secretive Oeyy Vei sect. A quote from the start of the relevant text "The Rosenberg Code".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzd4AVXBP9k&feature=youtu.be 

For centuries, scholars have wondered about the cryptic reference in the Chichester Codex to Aethaneus Rosenberg’s ‘howlinge claye.’ Likewise, the (excised) paragraph on ‘singing pots’ in the surviving MS pages of Roger Bacon’s New Atlantis appear to adumbrate the same enigmatic notion. Vas quae auditus fieri posse. It’s true that the late Alfred Watkins, citing Vitruvius (Book V. Sounding Vessels in the Theatre) believed Rosenberg had simply misunderstood the Roman practice of using pots in their great amphitheatres as Helmholz resonators… the same principle as the phonograph – a potter, inscribing a decorative groove with a stylus into a pot spun on a wheel is – de facto – recording whatever sound is present in its vicinity.

(I'm not sure who wrote and researched this, but it wins the Hokey Award for least-convincing scientific theory. Then again, it's kind of fun to read.)

Tuxedo Cat vs. LEGO Tuxedo Cat

A classic! Bentley once thrashed a battery-powered cat that looked a little bit more like a real cat because it had synthetic fur on it,  but he could still tell, and pushed it over with great scorn.

Space Cats — Magic Fly

I was happy to re-stumble on this while stumbling around trying to find something else. It's a very good example of Early Cat (a genre which has blossomed in recent years). These cats are damn cute! Speaking of stumbling, I can barely walk now, which is not a heartening development, as a month ago I was walking fairly normally. Is my body finally falling apart for good? Meantime, there's this.

Ernie Kovacs: 1812 Overture

 

This came up today, out of nowhere, during a  kind of dire day when I discovered I can't put weight on my right leg. The knee keeps caving in. What does this have to do with abdominal surgery? I don't know, but I'll take any distraction from being disabled. The chopping of the celery is a highlight for me.

Sheer magic on a Friday afternoon

Not the greatest day, as suddenly I am walking with a cane (having wiped out on the stairs and pulled a muscle in my leg). But there's this, and though I have listened to it a thousand times, I still marvel at the delicacy, even tenderness of the musical interpretation. And it's just a bunch of tiny holes punched in an awkward, warped slab of metal. The automatic disc changer sounds like an unoiled garage door - and then the music starts. Pure enchantment, and it ALMOST makes me forget I'm hobbling around on a cane like some little old lady (which, technically at least, I guess I am). I will never understand how these discs were created, and how the creator would have any idea how it sounded. I do not think something like this could be recreated today. As with so many things, the best has been forgotten in the mad race towards technological progress. 

You think ads are terrible now. . .

 

Every once in a while I have to remind myself that "things" were NOT "better" in the old days. Intrusive ads are hardly a new thing, and back then it was quite acceptable, even expected, to make a whole studio audience of captive kids  sing along to the Silver Cup National Anthem. This was all to get the kiddies to harass their Moms into buying this soft, white, spongy bread. It wasn't even Wonder Bread,but some pretender. 

FLY GIRLS! Amazing Aerial Stunts in 1930s Movie

I suppose I have to get back to this blog some time, especially since, to my surprise, I'm still getting comments on some of my past stuff. Lately it's been far too personal, but I assume nobody reads them anyway. I've always been against getting too personal online, but there's a temptation when you've been through an ordeal, and I've never faced anything even remotely like this before. One more of  those, and I'm finished for sure.

It's slow. I'm used to 45 minutes of brisk walking  a day, and am now lucky to get in 15 or 20 at a much slower pace. I lost 8 pounds from the ordeal, and am making a concerted effort to gain as much of it back as I can. My obsessive counting of calories for my entire life has been completely reversed. Now I have to eat all the things I couldn't have before, but ironically, I no longer want them. Food is like medicine now. I suddenly feel like an invalid. I'm getting my life back bit by bit, including my channel, but it has been and will be a long haul, with many backsteps. I know recovery isn't a straight line - God knows I've had to face it over and over again in my life - but this seems more like a vortex or a whirlpool determined to suck me down forever.

The video, well, I had to go into a long explanation about the women's dresses "blowing off" (yet another of many illusions in this brilliant scene), and how they wore bodysuits underneath. Why did I have to do this? YOUTUBE, that's why. I almost certainly would have gotten a "decency strike" (again) if I had allowed this flagrant display of "nudity". So who thought they were actually nude? You can plainly see one of the women pull up her strap, which I am  sure was left in to appease the censors. The bit where the woman "falls" also had to be carefully explained. She didn't really fall, folks! It was all "pretend"!

Yet other channels post the most appalling stuff, with no penalties. 

I finally had to go with YouTube Premium, which basically means no ads (or is supposed to - when will they break their own rules?). Nothing is free any more, but YouTube now is not even remotely like it used to be when I signed up. That was another lifetime ago, of course. I am actually purposely not looking at views, and trying to focus on the many comments I get every day on my much older stuff, including things I posted five years ago and forgot about. The mad chase for views and $$ and all that stuff was wearing me out, and when I returned to my channel after a four-month hiatus, I promised myself I wouldn't do that any more. It means I can't even look  at them now for fear my eye  wanders down to the view count. If I could find a way to  disable it - and maybe there is, but I just don't  see it.

THE COMPLEAT BEATLES (I haven't seen this in years!)

This documentary went underground for a very long time. Then there were just pieces of it floating around on YouTube, with Part 3 and Part 7 missing, always holes in it, perhaps due to copyright and perhaps not. That's YouTube for you, with whom I have a love-hate relationship. I finally had to suck it up and BUY YouTube, because my old ad-blocker suddenly stopped working, and the new one didn't work worth a shit. I guess everything costs now, but it still made me wince to pony up nearly $150.00  for a year ad-free.

I've been neglecting this blog for weeks, if not months now, having survived and scraped through very serious abdominal surgery. For the past four months, my energy, appetite, will to live, etc. have all been stretched as far as they could go, or farther. There were a few moments in hospital when I realized I could die from this. Weeks, months of recovery later, I see the surgeon for a checkup, and she informs me that if they had not removed that section of my colon, there was an 80% chance of it becoming cancerous. Almost certain, which is why I was fast-tracked from that first ER visit in November. Though I dodged the bullet this time, I suppose such a thing could return, and next time I might not be so lucky (IF that's what it was). 

I'm not used to terrible health, or having to put my life on hold for four months. It's sobering and terrifying. Mortality was staring me in the face, and even now, when I go to bed at night a wave of fear breaks over me - the fear that this is the end, that I will never wake up again. 

The scars are mostly mental, and though the surgeon was nice and helpful today, what I've had to go through seems to stand apart from any outside help. Something inside me, some powerful healing force, had to be activated even to get this far, with my digestive system completely reconfigured. Given how radical the rearrangement was, I'm doing remarkably well with things like eating and eliminating. But it doesn't mean attacking my meals with any great zeal. I lost a lot of weight after I got home from the hospital, and I've now joined the Eight Pounds Club - my husband has not yet regained what HE lost when he had abdominal surgery nearly a year ago, and my son Jeff was sick and unable to eat for weeks. 

We all need to get fattened up.

I longed for the simplest things when I lay on my back in that dreadful place for 2 weeks (originally supposed to be closer to 2 days). I wanted to go outside. I wanted to walk beside Como  Lake or the duck park or the lagoon, or even just sit beside the water. I wanted to play with my doll collections, just enjoy them. I wanted to spend some fun times with the grandkids. A recurrent image came into my head: standing on the dock at Burnaby Lake, my favorite place in the whole world, with red-winged blackbirds swooping down to eat out of my hand.

These things seemed light-years away, and very often I was convinced I would never experience them again. But somehow these simple pleasures have slowly crept back into my life, When Erica and Lauren and Jeff came over the evening of my birthday, bearing flowers, a cake, hugs and kisses, it brought me back to life and made me realize why I am here in the first place.

When I became a grandmother for the first time, I had just gotten out of a psych facility due to the most horrific manic episode I ever had, or ever hope to have. But something happened after that death of the soul. I did not merely realize that love is the most important thing - I became love, I moved forward into a way of love I had never know. 

Those new lives, a grandchild born each year for four years, kept me here on earth, and though I am not as close to Caitlin and Ryan as I'd like to be, the others have been an absolute Godsend. I didn't need to strive for this, to do anything in particular, to "try". It was all like breathing, and for the first time in many years I was actually having fun. 

"Fun is the one thing that money can't buy."

Something inside that was always denied, for so many years. . . 

So here, today, I watch my Beatles show after 20+ years, and though I am physically tired and know I have weeks or months left in my recovery, I feel in one piece again. I dodged a bullet, I guess, or at least for now. But a cancer scare makes you wonder about another one, if it might just recur.  

Right now I have to eat, even when I don't feel like eating, because the eight-pound loss isn't sitting well on me - my clothes are falling off, my arms and legs withered. I feel my age, or beyond it rather. I have spinal problems I haven't even thought about yet, and my eyesight is terrible, also needing surgery. How much time is left? Am I really wearing down this quickly, and what will come next?