Tannishblog

I’m a musician, and I’m pissed. As a self-taught guitarist of many years, I pride myself on what little knowledge I’ve gained, and I am proud to represent an art form that helps to bridge gaps between sectors of humanity, allowing us all to enjoy life a bit more. That enjoyment is being infringed upon.

For years, six-stringers like myself have gathered to share their licks, techniques and bond as brothers and sisters of something greater than all of us. through discussion and hands-on learning we perfect our craft, laboriously listening to recordings to glean what we can from the masters of the day. Eventually a system was worked out, in parallel to traditional written music, to annotate guitar method on paper. Known as tablature, this system acts as an aid for the many play-by-ear musicians, and as a written system specific to the instruments evolution and it’s impact on musical theory. Many string effects developed within modern music cannot be rendered in traditional sheet music. thus, guitar tab is an intrinsic part of musical development for millions of aspiring players.

Until now. Tonight, I peruse the online tab archives to find them all shut down from fear of litigation. GuitarZone.com has this to say:

The company which owns this website has been indirectly threatened (via our ISP) with legal action by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) as well as the Music Publishers’ Association (MPA) on the basis that sharing tablature constitutes copyright infringement.

[…]

Apparently, the NMPA/MPA believes that the Internet may be on the foul side of the legality line they would like to draw here. For me, I see no difference. It’s teachers educating students and covered as a ‘fair use’ of the tablature. The teachers here don’t even get paid nor do the students have to pay this website to access the lessons.

Likewise, GuitareTab! is not functional without explanation. Mxtabs offers this tidbit when searching for a song’s tablature:

Due to recent controversy regarding the legality of free guitar tablature on the Internet, MXtabs is temporarily unable to display this guitar tablature. We hope to be able to offer guitar tablature again in the near future.

Music publishers are having a tough time thanks to Internet technology. From RIAA to NMPA, the traditional controls on music production and distribution are being subverted. Truth is that music companies are parasitic - they must rely upon the gifts of others to survive. Only through the means of reaching the public do they have anything to offer the aspiring pop star or diva. There are other means now.

What the music industry is experiencing is a natural progression. Market shifts brought on by emerging technologies is a fundamental part of a market-driven culture. Ask the railroad industry how that works. Unfortunately for the music tycoons, their well is drying up fast.

So they turn to another parasitic industry to aid them: Lawyers. somehow, by forcing lawmakers to reinvent existing laws in their favor (or so they hope) they attempt to stem the tide of progress. Lawyers are more than eager to comply, they make money no matter the outcome. and since their clients are so stinking rich, large fees can be expected. Unfortunately for musicians, our current administration is confused about what is good for Americans. Often industrial perks offered by lawmakers supercede actual benefits for consumers.

In the end, though, traditional music industrial tactics will fail. musicians will leverage consumer power whenever necessary to force the companies to comply with new needs. that is how capitalism works. Too bad for the likes of the RIAA, but their time is over. Give them time, they’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile I’ll have to do without guitar tablature. Future musicians and the next generation of pop stars will just have to work harder.

A couple of week ago, I found myself trying to relate Buddhist thinking to a Methodist friend. Dodging hurdles of not alienating a theist when speaking of a non-theistic belief, relating (literally) foreign concepts into an American mind, and expressing what caused me to abandon Lutheranism without dissing Christianity in general should not be attempted while driving. I’m not sure I did well.

Regarding my personal experience, there is one point I wish I had made clear. What struck me most about Buddhism as a philosophy is an attitude of "See for yourself." I found missing in the churches I attended.

Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjectures or with logical inferences or with weighing evidence or with liking for a view after pondering over it or with someone else’s ability or with the thought "The monk is our teacher," When you know in yourselves: "These things are wholesome, blameless, commended by the wise, and being adopted and put into effect lead to welfare and happiness," then you should practice and abide in them…

- the Buddha
Kalama Sutra

Trust your judgment; I like that. It affirms a trust in the individual, a belief that all men are inherently good, want happiness, and wish to reduce suffering in self and others. It assumes any person alive capable to know the difference in the wholesome and the harmful, and allows the freedom to chose. When wise choices are made, all roads lead to the Dharma and the betterment of mankind. Any decision that benefits others benefits the self.

All terror, all the time. Our News corporations are having a field day with the newest episode of the continuing drama of BushCo V. the World. Q: What do the War on Terror and the War on Drug have in common? A: Neither achieved what they intended. The moral: Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences.

One of the tenets of my life’s experience is this: "You can’t idiot-proof something. The idiots will always out smart you." To begin confiscating water bottles and baby formula on all flights is to try to idiot-proof airport security. The fact that we feel the need to ban liquids as a result of the latest developments of the failed "War on Terror" shows how the idiots have again won.

How far will we go? An article in Slate asks just that, as well as pointing out the obvious. Read the Liquid World. Envision, if you will, a world where cat scans, human x-rays, and MRI devices are required to enter an airport. Sacrifice the known dangers of gamma rays to insure the illusion of safety in the friendly skies. Frequent fliers earn Chemotherapy points. The contents of your bowels are posted as public information, deep inquiries about your orifices occur in unadorned rooms. Strip searches include penetration as standard procedure.

Naturally, Al-Qaida, boogeyman du jour, is being blamed. They don’t even have to take credit these days, it’s given freely. As the NY Times reports:

“It has all of the earmarks of an Al Qaeda plot,” said Mary Jo White, the former United States attorney whose office successfully investigated and prosecuted the so-called Bojinka plot to bring down airliners over the Pacific in 1995.

What exactly is an earmark? Perhaps that statement has all the earmarks of  an administration in terror months before a mid-term election? The real issue, probably, is more like this quote from the same article.

“The great problem is that Al Qaeda has moved far beyond being a terrorist organization to being almost a state of mind,” said Simon Reeve, author of a 1999 book on Osama bin Laden and his associates. “That’s terribly significant because it gives the movement a scope and longevity it didn’t have before 9/11.”

I cannot believe that Al Qaida is the only American-hating Muslim group capable of thinking diabolically. Contrary to the Redneck Agenda, Middle-Easterners have the same amount of gray cells as anyone else. The one thing the world should have learned from the Iraqi debacle is that murder is an art form in hues of red and brown.

Folly, however is a science.

A while back I bemoaned America’s lost Glory Days and the hype I was force fed about our "Great Nation." Today, atop the Reddit.com list, is confirmation from the Twin Cities of my negative perspective on the sad state of our country.

I hate it when my pessimistic ideas are vindicated. I keep spewing these downer-isms wishing against hope that someone with credentials would shoot holes in them. It doesn’t happen.

We were strolling through the annual art fair in Minneapolis last Saturday. Amidst comments on the size, quality and geographical origins of the many exhibits, we noticed ourselves at the World Market section of Hennepin Street. right before us is a Tibet shop. I always support the Tibetan community when opportunity arises. Among the many Dharma books and colorful wall hangings, imported hand-made crafts, clothes, and jewelry, were a few of the Dalai Lama’s teachings printed on burlap for inexpensive wall decor. One in particular, my (non-Buddhist) wife appreciated, nodding her head in time to the meter of the message.

The Paradox Of Our Age

We have bigger houses but smaller families;

more conveniences, but less time.

We have more degrees but less sense;

more knowledge but less judgment;

more experts, but more problems;

more medicines but less healthiness.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,

but have trouble in crossing the street to meet our new neighbour.

We built more computers to hold more copies than ever,

But have less real communication;

We have become long on quantity,

but short on quality.

These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;

Tall mean but short characters;

Steep profits but shallow relationships.

It’s a time when there is much in the window

But nothing in the room.

                                            His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama.

Saturday found us driving to Wabasha, MN to the Anderson Hotel, currently a B&B with the distinction of enabling guests to room with one of the six cats in residence. The oldest hotel in Minnesota, it's celebrating 150 years. Part of this celebration are painted cat statues scattered about town.

The Hotel:              

The Cats:       

Wabasha, a river town on the Mississippi bout 80 miles SE of the Twin Cities, is named after Chief Wa-Pa-Sha and is home to the American Eagle sanctuary. A peaceful old railroad town, it provides a bridge into Wisconsin at a narrowing of the river. My guess is the town grew up around a ferry crossing and the rail stop.

The Town:    

From here, we drove back to Chicago and normalcy. Today we chill out and phyche ourselves to resume the usual grind. School's starting soon, I'ts still the busy season at work, and it'll take most of the year to recover from our spending bltz. Driving the rental car back to the store acted as the proverbial nail on our mini vacation. I guess we should be lucky we could do this much. Next year, who knows?

What to do in the Twin Cities… the first thing that came to mind is Mall of America. As my wife loves to tell me, I don’t shop. I go into a store only after I have researched the item I need, then I get it, buy it, and go home. That, she tells me, is not shopping.

Today, I get a huge helping of what shopping means. We get to MOA by 9:40, before the stores open. We leave at 9:30, after the stores closed. In those almost twelve hours, we walk 4 miles of corridors and scores of stores. I say "scores" because we agreed to stay clear of the familiar ones we can shop in Chicagoland, concentrating on the unique shops, local interest tourist traps, and local restaurants. No sense in driving four hundred miles to shop at Bloomingdale’s and eat at Ruby Tuesday’s, when each can be found within a mile of our house. Even with restrictions in place, we barely managed to see the whole place - it’s that huge.

Collapsing gratefully in our rental car, we get lost in the dark highways of Minnesota. Chicagoland is almost famous for its nimbus of orange light eminating from the many thousands of sodium street lights, so bright that a drive sees better in the night time than in daylight. No so, here. It’s a straight shot from the mall to our hotel, perhaps seven minutes, yet in the unfamiliar dark I managed to turn off the route and end up in Saint Paul by accident. Our seven minute drive took half an hour.

So that was our day, paying homage to America’s favorite pastime - Shopping. Highlights included the many various Minnesota-themed stores, an artsy venue called "the Afternoon," and the "Lake Woebegone" store. Also, I found a place that custom embroider baseball caps. Now I have one that says "Tannishblog."

Tomorrow we kick about for half a day, then drive south along the Mississippi to Wabasha, where we stay at a B&B and take in the riverfront. If Internet is available, I’ll write more, otherwise, the story will continue Sunday night, when we get home - with pictures.

I’m blogging at you from St. Paul, MN, where the family and I are having a mini-vacation. A bit burned out from the seven-hour drive from Chicago, but I’m well. Whenever we go on a road trip, we budget enough to rent a new-ish car to take along. Pretending we own a new vehicle is part of the fun. The rental place didn’t have the Chevy HHR we requested, so we got a Pontiac G6 (which I’ve never heard of before). It rides nice, is about the same size as the new Impalas, but the wife is too short to be able to drive it comfortably. She has that problem with most models.

It may sound funny, but its nice to have a car that actually has a CD player in it. Our regular cars a each fourteen years old and only have cassette decks. How primitive. The three of us each got to chose two CDs in turn for the drive, and we were rocking the whole way. WE stopped for a bit at Castle Rock in Wisconsin to climb around the base of the sandstone pillars and take lots of pictures. I’ll try to post some this week.

Now that we’re up here, we’ll visit the Mall of America and then tool around in an aimless and spontaneous manner peculiar to people who plan out their lives in minute detail - except when vacationing. So, don’t expect new for the next couple of days, my brain is turned off.

I’ve been getting into online comix lately. (I spelled that intentionally.) While most showcase artists and/or writers with much talent to share, they are just a lineal extension of the old paperback comic books and , as such, nothing new. That doesn’t deter their entertainment value, not does it demean the art form. But the Internet is used only as a new form of distribution. The paper version of the art, from Superman to Snoopy, has run its gamut whether it is online or not.

Sometime there are visionaries able to merge an existing art form via technological advances. One such site, Electric Sheep, does just that. The creators have taken the linear story board and married it with wen design tenets to great effect. to morph the art in order to fulfill the possibilities of digital media. In a real sense the results are a New Media, as communication of a story line is enhanced through a fresh vision. Check out the online comic the Spiders, as my favorite example of a powerful story enhanced by the medium, instead of being distracted by it. Check it out.

Have you ever noticed how our media attends to war coverage in disproportion to other news? War and Terrorism, it’s all the same thing.

It’s only some wars. If Israel or America is involved, sometimes the UK, the news is unavoidable. News outlets squeeze the story for all its worth. But in the rest of the world all we hear is the sound of crickets. Wars happen everywhere, all the time. IN Sri Lanka a civil war has been going on for two generations. In Africa, war is endemic. American news outlets care little.

Have you ever noticed how the way wars and terrorism is covered resembles the style used for sports coverage? The late Howard Cosell would be proud; every grunt and curse is broadcast in the news equivalent of high-definition, propagated through news wire services in cyclic regurgitation.

It must help to feed the Money God. Newspapers and television stations are businesses, and businesses have only one purpose - to make money. They wouldn’t be the way they are if it didn’t sell. That brings up the question of who is responsible for the outlandish sensationalism in today’s media. The answer seems obvious - the consumers are. If we didn’t continue to buy it, watch it, read it or listen to it, these same businesses would have to find another way to turn a profit. If we weren’t so perverse as to suck up all the bad news in lieu of the good, things would be different.

Kind of gives a new spin to the phrase "You get what you pay for."