"Hey, how do I get my crew's spellbooks, and how do I equip their armor?"

So if you follow video games, you'll notice that there's every kind of simulation game out there. There's also every kind of racing game out there. I was wondering if there were any sailboat racing sims out there--since they're conspicuously absent from any high-profile console. I found two so far: "Sailing Simulator" and "Virtual Skipper."

When I opened up either, I suddenly realized how I must sound to non-MMORPG-playing people when I talk about either "City of Heroes" or "Dark Age of Camelot." There's a great deal of knowledge that either sim requires--while some of the terminology (mostly relating to directions) are glossed in the objective screen in "Virtual Skipper," the player finds him/herself thrown into a situation that requires a great deal of a priori knowledge. And here I thought sheets were things people slept on, and my main was a troll bonedancer.

Another problem is that I'm not used to dealing with inertia--especially inertia found in a fluid medium--in games. Sure, "City of Heroes" and the "Grand Theft Auto" series have some physical modeling, but nothing like what either of those two sims have. The controls in most of the games I play are rather heavy--if you want to turn right in Liberty City, you have to move the digital joystick on the controller to the right. Not so in a boat. For one, there's no brake that I found (unlike Grand Theft Auto or your average MMORPG), and secondly even if you do manage to stop, you keep going for a bit because inertia actually matters. There's no way to go in reverse, either. Turning right means you turn whatever-it-is-that-controls-the-boat to the left.

Water effects are hard to do well in games, and while "Sailing Simulator" isn't overly special graphically, "Virtual Skipper" has some eye candy. The water looks really good, considering it's not as graphically advanced as some games. When I started looking at the water, it was game over. Literally. I get seasick easily. As in I'll get queasy going over the 520 bridge in Seattle. If I'm on a boat--such as a state ferry--so long as I don't look at the water, I don't do the Technicolor yawn. Maybe I'll try them again sometime when I've got some Dramamine and ginger tea in me.

Christmas and birthday was drama-free. The Hoopy Frood (whose birthday is the same day as mine) and I went for sushi, then I came down with the flu his dad had. But that seems to be abating. For Christmas we went to his mom's for a bit, then came home and made Rev. Mommy's heart-attack-in-a-bowl, a.k.a. shrimp and grits. Absolutely delicious stuff, but I don't think we'll be making it every day...not unless one can substitute fat-free half and half for the heavy cream.--nevermind all the cheese in the grits--but for Christmas, you have to splurge.

I was totally gobsmacked that I got enough to upgrade my computer. I'm using the same athlon thunderbird I built 5+ years ago when I first moved to Seattle, and it's getting a bit slow. OK, slow is an understatement--try weird, as all old computer equipment gets, the motherboard is kind of flaky (as it's survived two failing power supplies and a lightning strike), and it takes me an hour to compile a 5 minute (stereo) piece. I'm digging around whitepages and the like to see if dual core is really the best bang for the buck on floats over AMD. I like AMD, but it looks like intel's faster and cheaper for what I do. (I build all my computers.)

So happy holidays to all who lurk here!

Random things and updates

1.) an update of the dissertation meter:

315 / 4,500 (7.0%)

Fifteen seconds may not be much, but in between updates I switched from Common Lisp Music to csound and some lisp software to generate csound code that my chair wrote. Muuuuuch easier. I will say one thing about his software: if you screw up, it's obvious. So instead of ugly csound code, I'm writing standard LISP. Much easier.

2.) Nothing much to write about lately. I really don't like Christmas, with all its social obligations (Christmas card lists, presents for people, etc), and Mass on Christmas is almost pure torture (filled with people who never go and whose kids don't know how to behave in a Church--not faulting the kids, but I sure am the parents; filled with references to family and how wonderful it is; and the closest Church out here has to advertise that they don't compromise on what they call "authentic" Church teaching. That raises my defenses right there--I drag the Frood with me on Christmas and Easter, and I don't want some self-styled defender of orthodoxy "saving" the Church from the likes of us non-Catholic-dating, chapel veil hating folks.) Meh. Sorry to be cranky. One of the most joyous holidays really isn't for a lot of people.

Misheard readings

I have no great love for EWTN. I think it portrays a version of Catholicism that is dishonest about the Church, and makes Catholicism about as interesting as drying paint. That having been said, it's good to goad me into doing things I don't want to do. I'll put it on and won't turn it off until whatever onerous task is done. Like today and my laundry. (I'm leaving Seattle on Wednesday for a few weeks. Never fear! The Hoopy Frood and I have about 8 computers between the two of us.)

The first reading today I heard as, "It is for those with a journey to make, and on it the redeemed will blog."

Transcendence

In writing in this blog, I try to keep in mind the adage by St. Simeon, "Sit in your cell, and it will teach you everything." I've been trying to discuss the intersection between the urban monastic (as a friend puts it) and academic lives.

When I first came across The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, I pooh-poohed it. It's used superficially to describe why people don't get anything out of prayer or other religious observances. But that's not really what he's talking about--he's talking about something deeper, less understood than the light contemplation that came before it.

Beginning composers are a lot like beginning contemplatives. At first everything is golden and wonderful--pieces come easily, and it feels like one is tapped into a spring that won't run dry. And then everything changes. It becomes an effort to do anything, and it feels as though one is slogging through note, by note.

But in that state of complete abandonment, one begins to notice different things, things far more subtle and delicate, things barely able to be described. When I began this degree, I could write pages about what I thought composing music is like and even more pages about whatever piece I was working on. Now when writing my dissertation piece, I'm barely able to say anything at all about it.

It's similar to being in love with someone. Really in love, not just infatuated, and beyond the kind of love one has for the first few years of any serious relationship. It's a terrifying thing to think one understands one's partner, but a few years later realize that the whole relationship is beyond anything imaginable. I think that's why so many people break up after five or six years--they find this darkness staring them in the face and take it for an absence of love, when in reality the potential for much greater than what they had is staring them both in the face. Likewise, I think beginning composers often quit for the same reasons--they think their creativity has dried up, when it's really becoming a deeper part of them.

I think this mystery and darkness, the "night more lovely than the dawn," is more feared than understood. Sure, we all have our dry times when relationships, prayer, or composing is difficult or trying. This is beyond that--it's not just mouthing the words of the Divine Office, putting notes on paper, or making love with one's spouse. This state is about abandonment--complete abandonment of our preconceived notions, lies, and all the little things we hold dear to with our egos, which reject that there could be anything beyond it. When this desert opens, it's too easy to fill it with words. There are countless websites on why "good" Catholics only need verbiage from the 19th century as prayer. Couples bury themselves in anything other than the embrace of their lover, and composers hide in volumes of program notes and charts.

More than anything, when people shy away from this dark night, it's a fear of intimacy--real intimacy, where nothing is hidden, whether it's before one's deity, one's spouse, or one's music.


"O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased;
I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies."(St. John of the Cross, Stanzas of the Soul, stanzas 5-8)