I should be proofing the ms about now

Some people the other night were praising Banksy's guerrilla art. I like Banksy too but he has a hard-working and very protective agent and licenses his works, neither of which is that guerrilla. The London guerrilla artist I really like is Slinkachu, who makes tiny street art. I've also discovered the work of W. Eugene Smith, who took photographs only from the window of his New York apartment. He also secretly recorded jazz greats. I wish I'd known about Smith years ago -- it would have saved me making up stories in that vein.

The article on Smith is online at the New York Times, which plans to charge for content. It's the one online paper (sic) I'd probably pay for although I will always pick up the print version. (Sometimes I think newspapers are really nothing more than a crossword delivery platform.) The NYT announcement is thought to chime with Apple announcing what Gizmodo calls the Jesus Tablet. If what blogs are saying about an Apple tablet is true then it will be good for print journalism but I still can't see it working for novelists, at least not directly.

The issues around e-books are so complex I could write a couple of thousand words on the subject, which I don't have time for -- I have an actual novel sitting in paper form (pictured) that I really need to proof, and typing this bl*g is not getting that done. But in short, it is the hope of the publishing industry that e-books will shore up their business. This plan is a paradox because it aims to use disruptive technology to preserve the status quo.

Mr Paul Reynolds' blog introduced me to a New Zealand project, 1000 Great New Zealand E-books. I refer to slide two of the project presentation, under the heading "Market focused aims": authors are the second to last priority, readers the last. Not to criticise the project per se, but this highlights the above paradox. MP3s and file sharing were a consumer-led disruption of the status quo, the piracy creating a new business model which forced change on the establishment. With e-books, book publishers are hoping to let the genie out of the bottle a little bit at a time.

To wit, some are trying new things, such as giving away e-books for free.

Neither Amazon nor other e-book retailers make any money on these giveaways either. But it is a way of luring customers to their e-reading devices. Free e-books are also a way of distinguishing a less-well-known author from the marketing juggernauts of the most popular books.

Publishers -- and record companies -- have always given away free samples, but what is new about it this time is that they are doing so to attract subscribers to a device and network rather than readers to an author:

Book publishers, who rail against the dominance of Amazon and its insistence on discounting new releases to $9.99, are now playing the tech titans against each other.
In the process, they may be rushing from the clutches of one tenacious chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, into the arms of another, Steven P. Jobs, whose obstinacy over pricing has given the music industry similar paroxysms of anxiety.
“Will Kindle pricing trump Apple sex appeal? Isn’t that the question, really?” said Richard Charkin, executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing in London, who has been watching developments in e-book sales with keen interest. “I haven’t the faintest idea. All I would say is, great. The more people that are out there marketing books in digital or any other format, the better.”

All the publishing notes from the above are from the IHT / NY Times but I read them in the print version first.

Mike W Hall interview

For almost 25 years now Mike W. Hall has been supplying tropical fish to the glitterati of Auckland. Here today in this interview he speaks with Jazz Dispatch editor Janwillem Dorin about his personalised work for the Muse Lounge before and after its move to the Whyte Tower.

JANWILLEM DORIN: How long have you been dealing with fish?

MIKE W. HALL: My father imported tropical fish in the 60s. He and my mother were naturalists - nudists, actually - and he himself was very active in promoting bio-filtration to New Zealand breeders and fish enthusiasts.

JD: By bio-filtration, you mean using plants to clean the tank water.

MH: Yes. It creates a more natural environment for the fish and of course it doesn't waste power. My father despised undergravel filters - I remember accompanying him on a protest march once outside one of the major tropical fish dealers. He and his friends were campaigning for better pet environments in general and the machine filter suppliers were getting pretty annoyed. It was a close thing actually. Anyway, I took over the business after my father retired and it looks like my son will be running it too, someday. He has a real knack.

JD: You of course are very well known for your work with the fish tanks at the Muse Lounge, both at its first and second venues...

MH: That's right. I had met Gretchen at a nudist beach near Opotoki and we had a long conversation about tropical fish. She had been standing out waist-deep in the water bending over trying to spot tropical fish through her swimming goggles, and of course she hadn't seen any, and she was very disappointed. I remember her hair was up in these sort of plaits and her eyes were red - I thought from crying but it was just the seawater. I had to explain to her that New Zealand isn't a tropical country - she was surprised by that, I think Cedric had misrepresented it to her slightly when they came out here.

JD: So Gretchen was the tropical fish enthusiast of the two of them?

MH: They were both keen on it, if I remember rightly. I checked out the club when I was back in Auckland - it was very hard to find then, in a very odd place - and Gretchen introduced me to Cedric. He was a little slurred, from the drinking and everything - I mean, I don't know what else was going on there, I'm a pretty straight arrow. Anyway, I said I dealt in tropical fish and he was immediately very excited about it, and said he wanted to turn all the walls into fish tanks.

JD: For the first venue?

MH: Yes, that's it. We didn't do that of course, because the weight alone would have gone through the floor. But we set up the big tank by the lift entrance with mostly anabantids. We needed a good community fish and that was a good place to start. We had Dwarf Gourami and some bubble nesters -

JD: But then came the second venue.

MH: Yeah, yeah, and that's when Cedric went for a grander scheme, with the big oval windows and the uplighting and the big tanks surrounding the couches at the north end - three giant walls of tank with the water and the fish.

JD: And the girl?

MH: Yes. Yeah, Tania - she was in the tank on some nights.

JD: Swimming and performing for the guests with the music and so forth.

MH: I don't know how it came about. It certainly wasn't my idea because the perspiration off a human body alone is raising the urea levels in the water, let alone the vibration. And a large body - anything larger than a fish, I mean - is stirring up the temperature layers that naturally settle around the plants in the tank, and that's not good. Apart from that the tank size worked well. Bio-filtration really comes into its own in the larger tanks because it works with the natural currents and movement of the fish.

JD: How did Tania actually get into the tank?

MH: I think she fell in.

JD: Really? She was intoxicated?

MH: Oh, probably. She slipped - she had these very high platforms on one night and she was leaning on the tank talking to someone and she leaned back a little further and she just... slid under. The water was very warm. We ran the tanks at about 27 degrees to support the fish's immune systems. Tania, of course, thought we kept them like that just for her.

Janwillem Dorin
Jazz Dispatch 1997
translated by Kirsty Widdell

(First reproduced | Dec 06, 2002)

Not about: Bob

It's sad that Robert B. Parker died but his books went long before he did. The early Spenser novels were good but they tailed off. The last one I attempted was Playmates before closing it around page 20 and never picking it up again.

The attraction of writing a series based on one character is obvious and an author must never begrudge another his living. The first half dozen Spenser novels were fine records of time and place, and I still owe them the tip about warming tomatoes before using them in a salad. (Women have told me many times -- Spenser only had to tell me once.) But inevitably any serial fiction will peter out, falling prey to success or jumping sharks. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hated Holmes; Ian Fleming tried to kill Bond more than once before Bond killed him; James Lee Burke moved Robicheaux around to keep himself entertained, as did Walter Mosley, who jumped around enlivening all sorts of minor characters. Martin Cruz Smith did the best job with Arkady Renko: the latest Renko novel Stalin's Ghostis melodramatic but maintains its predecessors' sparse, surly and deeply intelligent form. (Do readers beyond the crime genre realise how good a writer Smith actually is?)

Raymond Chandler was right to let it all fall apart: the last Marlowe novel Playback is a self-destructing meta-fiction, as if the pages of the earlier books had become jumbled. By that stage he was writing in a stupor: drinking heavily and dictating from the couch until he passed out, then waking up and dictating again, drinking, passing out again and so on. Chandler's secretary sat by 24/7, apparently, stenographer's notebook in hand. Still, a couchside attendant and the deadline pressure of a best-selling series: I should be so lucky. RIP, RBP. I'll always toast you with the salad.

Fullness of Wind

Judy Nylon clarifies Brian Eno's oft-quoted sleeve notes for his 1975 album Discreet Music:

So it was pouring rain in Leicester Square, I bought the harp music from a guy in a booth behind the tube station with my last few quid because we communicated in ideas, not flowers and chocolate, and I didn't want to show up empty-handed. Neither of us was into harp music. But, I grew up in America with ambient music. If I was upset as a kid I was allowed to fall asleep listening to a Martin Denny album…I think it was called "Quiet Village". The jungle sounds, played very softly made the room's darkness caressing instead of empty as a void. Pain was more tolerable. Brian had just come out of hospital, his lung was collapsed and he lay immobile on pillows on the floor with a bank of windows looking out at soft rain in the park on Grantully Road, on his right and his sound system on his left. I put the harp music on and balanced it as best as I could from where I stood; he caught on immediately to what I was doing and helped me balance the softness of the rain patter with the faint string sound for where he lay in the room. There was no "ambience by mistake". Neither of us invented ambient music; that he could convince EG Music to finance his putting out a line of very soft sound recordings is something quite different.

And on singing for John Cale:

The very first time my name appeared on a sleeve was more or less, voiceover with John Cale. I got the job ("The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy") over the telephone... I was at Eno's house painting the walls. [John] called Eno who wasn't home and he got me and I was sort of hired over the phone. I wrote everything I say on the spot because there were no words except the chorus and got paid twenty quid and a line of coke from my best friends Brian and John. I thought only the person who wrote the music was the songwriter. By the time I was next in a studio, I'd learned about publishing.

In 1977 Judy Nylon recorded a montage of sound samples:

...An American expat in 70's London, [Nylon] started recording with Patti Paladin as RAF, using tape solicitations of the police in Germany, accessed by dialing 1166 on the phone in Cologne.

The recordings formed the basis for the Eno-produced Snatch single 'R.A.F.' (1978), which appeared as the B-side to 'King's Lead Hat' off Before And After Science. Says Nylon:

Right after the Schleyer [kidnapping by the Red Army Faction in West Germany in 1977] you could dial 1166 in Cologne and get these pre-recorded police tapes. The German woman's voice in it is a police women in Cologne. And she's saying, "Do you recognize this man's voice?" etc. "If you have any information..." (Search and Destroy #8)

From 'R.A.F.' it's a direct line to Eno and David Byrne's use of voice samples on My Life In The Bush of Ghosts (1981).

My other favourite Brian Eno story is when he rang up Phil Manzanera in the middle of the night because he didn't know how to finish 1974's Taking Tiger Mountain. So Manzanera drove over to Eno's studio and went through the individual tracks -- not the songs, but each track -- and told Eno what they were. ("That's a bass line... That's a chorus...") From that, Eno was able to start assembling the songs.

BBC's Arena will screen a new documentary on Eno tomorrow night in the UK. I wonder if the contributors to his career such as the above will get a mention. (A: One of the contributors is Malcolm Up For Grabs Gladwell so, probably not.)

Work in progress

Message of Love

East London, very late. Been working with the White Album on a big sound system (borrowed) and thinking yeah, actually, 'Birthday' actually is pretty punk insofar as that's what the people making punk were referencing. It must surely have been a template, as much as 'Taxman' anyway - you can hear it in Magazine and the Buzzcocks. Conversely Chris Thomas - also Roxy Music's producer - said he was merely doing glam with the Sex Pistols (layered guitar, no bass) and there are plenty of vids / documentaries around demonstrating the fact. Maybe you and your friends can find some of them online - ask mum or dad to help.

Anyway... So then it was The Pretenders for Chrissie's voice. Debbie Harry was the one you dreamed of but Chrissie Hynde was the one who'd call back. Hopefully dressed as a diner waitress but we'd go for the puffy shirt look as well. All good things. And now it's down to Harold Budd and The Plateaux of Mirror and, after lotsa words, bed. The new ms is all spick and span and ready to go out into the real world. It's raining like crazy and there's a good bar up the road but I've uncovered vodka and the IHT is sitting ready to go and, you know - we're all going to die some day. I say that without rancour.

L.H.O.O.Q

"New research has found that the Mona Lisa’s famed smile is almost certainly ‘forced’ – raising the intriguing possibility that Leonardo deliberately portrayed her that way."

-- Neuroscience News, 2019

"Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci's muse for Mona Lisa may have suffered from hypothyroidism, according to an Indian-origin scientist who studied the features of the world-famous portrait. Mandeep R Mehra, from Brigham and Women's Hospital in the US, summarised the possible medical conditions visible in the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the woman pictured in Mona Lisa, and proposed his own interpretations."

-- India Times, 2022

"For centuries, art historians have been troubled by Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile - but, according to one doctor, her cholesterol levels were more worrying. For Dr Vito Franco, from Palermo University, she shows clear signs of a build-up of fatty acids under the skin, caused by too much cholesterol. He also suggests there seems to be a lipoma, or benign fatty-tissue tumour, in her right eye."
-- BBC, 2010

"Recently, it has been speculated that Mona Lisa's famous smile is caused by facial muscle contracture and/or synkinesis after Bell's palsy with incomplete nerval regeneration."
-- Klinikum der Universität Düsseldorf. (article in German)

"It is believed, however, that the Mona Lisa does not smile; she wears an expression common to people who have lost their front teeth. A close-up of the lip area shows a scar that is not unlike that left by the application of blunt force. The changes evident in the perioral area are such that occur when the anterior teeth are lost. The scar under the lower lip of the Mona Lisa is similar to that created, when, as a result of force, the incisal edges of the teeth have pierced the face with a penetrating wound."
-- Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1992

"Why is she looking so sad? . . . She married at the end of 1488 when she came to Milan but she had a big problem. She married her cousin, a beautiful man but he was a drinker, and he had problems with impotence."
-- The Age, 2004

"Researchers studying 3-D images of the “Mona Lisa” say she was probably either pregnant or had just given birth when she sat for Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th-century masterpiece. "
-- Associated Press Sept. 27, 2006

"People have long been fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Her enigmatic smile has been the subject of debate for centuries, even leading Sigmund Freud to speculate that the painting was actually da Vinci's self-portrait."
-- Medhunters.com

"The Mona Lisa originally had eyebrows, according to a French art expert who has analysed Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece with a special camera."
-- Telegraph, 2009

"University of Illinois researchers last year used facial-recognition software to analyze the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. They concluded the model was happy, with touches of disgust, fear and anger, at least as Leonardo da Vinci painted her, the Champaign (Ill.) News-Gazette reported Tuesday."
-- Physorg.com, 2006

"For centuries, artists, historians and tourists have been fascinated by Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. Now it seems that the power of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece comes in part from an unlikely source: random noise in our visual systems."
-- New Scientist 2004

"What put that smile on the Mona Lisa's face? S-E-X! She was a 16th century hooker!"
-- Weekly World News, 1991

"A male apprentice, longtime companion and possible lover of Leonardo da Vinci was the main influence and a model for the Mona Lisa painting, an Italian researcher said."
-- CBC, 2011

"An Italian researcher says the key to solving the enigmas of Mona Lisa lies in her eyes. Silvano Vinceti claims he has found the letter "S" in the woman's left eye, the letter "L" in her right eye, and the number "72" under the arched bridge in the backdrop of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting. According to the researcher, the symbols open up new leads to identifying the model, dating the painting, and attesting to Leonardo's interest in religion and mysticism."
-- CBS News, 2011

"On the basis of subjective (thirty-two participants estimated painter–model constellations) as well as objective data (analysis of trajectories between landmarks of both paintings), we revealed that both versions differ slightly in perspective. We reconstructed the original studio setting and found evidence that the disparity between both paintings mimics human binocular disparity. This points to the possibility that the two Giocondas together might represent the first stereoscopic image in world history."
-- Claus-Christian Carbon, Vera M Hesslinger Perception, 2013

"The Mona Lisa was based not just on a Florentine merchant’s wife but also on Leonardo da Vinci’s male apprentice and probable gay lover, an Italian art detective claims. Silvano Vinceti said the portrait, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, is an “androgynous” amalgam of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy merchant from Tuscany, and Gian Giacomo Caprotti, better known by his nickname, Salai."
-- Nick Squires (in Rome)  The Telegraph,  21 April 2016

"Perhaps the Mona Lisa had syphilis... If the Mona Lisa is a portrait of someone with a sexually transmitted disease, these hints of death and illness suddenly make sense. As for her half-smile, it becomes a wry acknowledgement that sex can make you sick. This macabre message fits well with Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo. Freud argued in his 1910 book Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood that the polymath researcher who not only painted but also filled notebooks with his scientific studies was repelled by sex. Leonardo was homosexual, he says, but afraid of intercourse with men or women. Instead, he "sublimated" sexuality into research."
-- Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, 2017

Addendum:

"A spring-propelled car that Leonardo da Vinci conceived five centuries ago could have paved the way for the Mars rovers, researchers say."
-- ABC News, 2004