Waltered States Blog
Waltered States
We found a place for Eternity a few items back. Today we find time for Infinity, with a canny focus on the sky, which is both near to hand and about as infinite as things get. Significantly for Infinite Sky, today’s song, it is much bigger than we are.
Adherents of God, a god, tend to blame a lot of bad things on the Devil, a fallen angel. Meanwhile, the Devil, for all his legendary verbal skill, is at a serious debating disadvantage: he can only speak through the mouths of infidels — and who listens to them?
Today’s song is You’ve Been On My Mind, which lays bare the thoughts of an obsessive, confused, isolated, resentful man (though not Walt). Now, as he heads down the road and away from the life you shared, it seems that all he can think about is you.
The perpetual creative ferment of the Waltworks owes its continued vitality to a caffeine-driven organizational paradigm — to regular jolts of joe. Learn the secret behind Walt’s famous coffee, including valuable safety tips. And that’s just half the story!
The only thing that makes the Universe interesting is the diffusion of energy from places where it is concentrated to places where it is rarefied, but we are approaching that dreary unstoppable dénouement where all the energy just sits around. So what of Love?
Today’s song, I Think I'll Ride, examines a relationship-management strategy that Walt calls Projectile Decommitment. To apply it, one partner leaves the other as abruptly and rapidly as though fired from a gun, goes to a place without problems, and never returns.
When you get down to the street-fighting level of note-by-note rhythmic activity, the small numbers hold sway. It’s almost impossible to play a series of notes without implying a regular stress pattern — a meter — that groups or subdivides the pulses in twos and/or threes.
Nothing enlivens one’s writing better than a well-chosen verb, it is often said. Other parts of speech are hardly in the running. And that’s because actions, for all their other faults, are at least not lacking in clarity. And here’s the song…
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: We get a lot of sunny days here at this time of year, and it really brings out the best in the exquisitely groomed and manicured postcard scene that is Victoria’s Inner Harbor. My song Victoria comes out today in unqualified support of tourist bliss.
Burl Ives, the American singer and actor, toured Australia in 1952, and recorded a celebrated album of Australian folk songs. The era of American folk song discovery was in full swing and now it was to be Australia’s turn. Today is Burl’s birthday. Here’s one of those songs.
