Reaching Out, Future Post Topics

Some nice things happened over the weekend.

Andy Aldridge dropped in to say "hi" on a post dedicated to my 3000th visitor. Hi, Andy! To see how great and loving a fanpage can be, check out his A Head Full Of Wishes (*especially* if'n you like the Galaxie 500 or the Luna -- there be no greater site).

I also received an email from Stanley Demeski, drummer for the best band in the world saying, "Thanks for the kind words." Hi, Stanley! And you're welcome! And you're wonderful! To hear what I am constantly pumping up, you can pick up a custom, burned CD of The Feelies' second album, The Good Earth at Twin Tone Records.

However, if'n you don't feel like spending money due to the high cost of gasoline, you can instead devote a portion of your reserved stock of psychic energy (yeah, I know you have been squirreling some away) to will a full-fledged Feelies reunion into existence. For God's sakes, tell me if your efforts work! I don't want to miss it.

---

This kind of feedback gives me not only encouragement to slosh my feelings, thoughts and opinions onto the Internet, but also to reach out and attempt to make contact with others.

Here's a few of my "reaching out" ideas currently in the hopper.

1) I outlined my idea for an online application where users can supply a hummed snippet of a song, and others would then try to help the user identify the song. Well, it appears that this concept already has a name -- Query by humming. In the cases I have found of this on the web (at NYU for example) the project seems more geared to having a machine doing the song recognition, rather than other people. I am going to try and contact someone at NYU regarding their project, asking them if it's possible my idea could somehow be integrated with theirs. If a "humming library" could be gradually built up organically by people identifying other people's song submissions, this could complement their machine-identification algorithm application nicely.

2) The recent movie I worked on that I mentioned briefly had a majority of its scenes shot at the lovely Portage Park Center For The Arts, which was formerly the Nebo Lutheran Church.

The church was deconsecrated before being converted into a neighborhood arts center. I find the concept of a sacred space fascinating, especially the unsacred-ing of it (even the terms of the sacred are interesting -- consecrate, desecrate, deconsecrate). I asked the Portage Park Art Center's director Jennifer La Civita what had to be done to deconsecrate the church prior to the handover, but she indicated that whatever ritual was done had already taken place when she got the building. I'd like to ask various denominations what actions have to take place for a sacred place to become a space of the profane.

3) David Patrick Kelly hopefully has my interview-by-letter racing towards his eager eyes.


Okay, ta-ta for now.