Hello, old friend

Goodness. It's been awhile. I've been _pretty_ good about putting a new song up on my other bloggy thing, Gallopinging, every week - but admittedly, LISSENUP has suffered in the past year or so, as many other distractions have claimed my time, brain, ears. Against all odds though, I've been making radio! Two stories have gotten some decent circulation - in Chicago on Third Coast's Re:sound, on APM's The Story, and on the BBC's Something Understood.

I've been honored for all of it, and hope it's not too long before the next story spills out. In the meantime, have a listen if the spirit moves you:

Dear Z, my audio love letter to a superhorse. Once a horse girl...

Yours Truly - another letter-centric program that muses on letter-writing through the lens of a long correspondence I had with a very special person, and including audio postcards from Rick Moody and Simon Roche (The Radio Post) and an amazing essay on letter-writing by Lewis Carrroll.

That's all for now. Very soon a lot of new sounds will fill the house, and am guessing I'll be musing about them in due time.

LISSENUP plan C

It's not that I suddenly have more time on my hands to keep this blog updated, but over at thirdcoastfestival.org we've been offering "staff picks" over time, and I may as well post them here too, as they're all about the listening, or the radio, or the audio, or the noise. 

Currently:
Q: What does the Jurassic Park theme sound like, slowed 1000 times?
A: Unexpectedly and enjoyably, this.

Recent:
Sound + Postcards = sound postcards!

And before that: Radio Philately
Two of my favorite things in one place! (Reminds me of early Reese's commercials. "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter...). Be sure to hit the tab that lists the countries, and take some time to open the images. Stunning! And did you even know 'philately' was a word?


P.S.
gallopinging

Reality Check pt. 2

Along the lines of that Aug. 29 post, I'm finding it near impossible to update LISSENUP with any semblance of regularity. But I am managing to keep up with Gallopinging v2 - the condensed version of my CHIRP radio show. (Condensed from three hours of DJing to one song selection per week.) So for now...I give in. Please enjoy one song/photograph a week there, and check back here for semi-occasionally-sometimes thoughts about other thingees aural, sonic, radio-y, noisy, musical, etc. 

black and white

Watched Genius Within last night - the 2009 documentary about Glenn Gould, who I've thought, read about, and listened to maybe more than anyone else in the past 10 years. 
Especially memorable:

1. Footage from concerts in Russia (1963) where he unleashed his unforgettable versions of Bach, who most had never heard. He was 29.

2. Watching him direct/conduct CBC engineer Lorne Tulk while producing his seminal radio documentaries, the Solitude Trilogy. Watching Tulke take a razor blade to the tape, and make some of the thousands upon thousands of edits that introduced a totally new radio creature to all of Canada. And to me.

3. Ridiculously wonderful tape of Gould singing to elephants, (watch til the end of this link) who seem slightly aggravated by his musical selection. 


4. Gould's prediction that one day we'd all have "kits", and would disassemble and rearrange popular music. He knew!

5. His funeral. Never imagined I'd see footage from Glenn Gould's funeral. Was floored, saddened, thankful, crushed.

Still feeling some of all of that...and enjoying a little Well-Tempered Clavier while writing this - which, by the way, is traveling at great speed away from us into the depths of interstellar space, and always will be.

Light Goes Away

Another Sunday, another musical suggestion. Plus a picture from the Richfield Public Library, where I spent a few magical hours with my niece when back in Ohio, a few weeks ago. It's not 'my library' but I do love it. And I love it.