August 28ths

8/28/1963 

Field recording: March on Washington. (Audio Snapshot)

 

8/28/1999

My approach to music: Design a system that allows you to express ideas, rather than using a configured system and thinking of ideas based on prepackaged concepts. (Exploration rather than a guided tour).
            
[8/28/2024: 20 years later–the Songday system. I love working this way]. 

8/28/2002

Story idea: Set in Anytown, USA, where every character is a cliche (the old woman, the barber, the criminal, the crooked politician, the idiot savant), but we find out at the end of the film that the people are not ordinary at all. Possible title: “Everyone’s Got One”.

8/28/2004

Baptismal:

8/28/2008

Obama is nominated at Dem convention and gives historic speech in Denver. His “Big Night” 4 years in the making, and 45 years after King’s “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. (“The fierce urgency of now”). I like what congressman James Clyburn said about the impact of this moment—that 4-5 year olds will see it as a paradigm shift, similar to the effect Kennedy had.    

[8/28/2024: Those 4-5 year-olds will be voting for the first time in 2024. I’m not sure if Clyburn was alluding to that fact, i.e. a paradigm shift rivaling Kennedy. I think that would be true with Kamala Harris. “We’re not going back” is the human universal of liberal democracies].  

A simple folk song possibility (Feel free to use and expand)      

Urgency of Now (8-28-2008) by meta4s

 ChatGPT Lyrics generated on "The Fierce Urgency of Now":

 (Verse 1)
Time slips away, no promise for tomorrow,
Every second we borrow, we gotta make it count.
The world’s on fire, no room for our sorrow,
We rise from the ashes, no time to slow down.

(Chorus)
Feel the heartbeat of the moment, it’s pounding loud,
In the fierce urgency of now.
We won’t back down, we won’t stand still,
In the fierce urgency of now, we climb this hill.

(Verse 2)
The winds of change are blowing through our veins,
Breaking the chains, we won’t live in vain.
The clock is ticking, but we’re not afraid,
In the here and now, we’ve got choices to make.

(Chorus)
Feel the heartbeat of the moment, it’s pounding loud,
In the fierce urgency of now.
We won’t back down, we won’t stand still,
In the fierce urgency of now, we climb this hill.

(Bridge)
No more waiting, the future’s ours to steal,
The time is now, and the wounds will heal.
We’ll forge our path in the here and the real,
With every step, the truth revealed.

(Chorus)
Feel the heartbeat of the moment, it’s pounding loud,
In the fierce urgency of now.
We won’t back down, we won’t stand still,
In the fierce urgency of now, we climb this hill.

(Outro)
In the fierce urgency of now, we’re breaking free,
Writing our story in the here and the now,
In the fierce urgency of now, we find our peace,
No turning back, we live it out loud. 

8/28/2010            

Fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In another year we will have gotten to the 10th anniversary of 9/11. They’re not so much ‘anniversaries’ as they are milestones that allow you to compare your position in history. 
            
Finished another in the ‘bubble’ series. (“New Urbanism”)

8/28/2022

On music fusions and hybrids: Hybrids and fusions are always possible. You’d swap the rhythm styles and the harmony finding the commonalities. They’d both be “African” in some ways. Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure was a “boomerang” of African music and American blues.

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In music, I never thought people would teach with the real intentions to get likes and subscribers, rather than seeing their students become more proficient and knowledgeable. How can you have meaning in your life while just being concerned with your own ratings?