Essay: Future Technology #1

Future Technology #1

(or The Shape of Things to Come)

Future technology, earlier today

Civilisation, back in the '90s

If, back in the 90s, you played Sid Meier's Civilisation, on a DOS computer, and if you were very good (Rosemary regularly achieved Moon landings before 1730) then it was possible to reach the end of the technology tree...

(Aside, for the uninitiated:  a "technology tree" is a set of available upgrades in a video game.  The player typically has some sort of resources to spend on upgrades and chooses which to develop next.  Upgrades give benefits in the game and unlock the later technologies.  It's just like life.)

However, it is a tenet of geek philosophy that there is no end to the technology tree, and game designers are a sub-species of geek, so beyond the end of the tree lay more technologies:

• Future Technology #1
• Future Technology #2
• And so on...

They served no function, except bonus points...

...but I loved this idea ever since I first saw it.  Future Technology #1 is wonderfully non-specific, whilst saying precisely what it means.

FT#1 could be a pocket hadron collider, smartpants (tm), or an ambiguous phase psycho-encapsulator (which we all could use, if you think about it...)

It could be tomorrow, or a thousand years hence.

And if we achieve FT#1 then there's FT#2 (henceforth to be known as FT#1).

So what is FT#1 for poetry?  I feel strongly that there ought to be something: a killer app for the Sonnet that takes it somewhere it's never been before and makes everybody say:  Well obviously I bought one; I can't understand why nobody thought of it sooner!

Which is not to say that poetry-1.0 (poet stands at front and declaims) or poetry-2.0 (words arranged on page) have had their day.  Far from it, poetry-1.1 (poet on radio/TV/YouTube) is quite popular, and 2.1 (words arranged on internet) has a variety of interesting new angles, but neither of those feels like a real FT, they've basically still just words in sequence, or words arranged in a space.

So every now and then I have a go.  I started with an example of animated poetry, but while that was pretty popular, it's basically a movie and as nicely as self-editing text works for that idea, I am not sure it extends to many other poems...  (see however Kinematic Typograthy.)

It ought to be possible to do more than mere animation, and Jenn Zed (of whom more later) has suggested that videos turn the poetry consumer off.  I hadn't realised it, but I recognise it in myself, and I think it is similar to poetry vs. lyrics  An element of time travel is involved in reading a poem — the eye tracks up and down the page, effectively forwards and back in time — which it can't when listening to a song, as the music proceeds at constant rate.

Something similar applies to videos.  A voice recording of a poem, accompanied by still text, doesn't suffer quite so badly, because the eye can still do a little out-of-order processing but a moving video is really hard to get right, because it is simultaneously distracting the eye, and locking the words into a fixed time-frame.

For lyrics, the fix was to adjust the words, you fit them into the experience already created by the music...

However for poetry-FT#1 I want the reverse.  What happens when we fit the medium as closely as possible to the words?  If the user (reader) needs to control time, then why not let them?

Well I don't know.

I'm still working on it.  It isn't easy.  It's not that poetry's difficult (I think that goes without saying) or that technology is hard to master (although certainly it can be awkward.)  The real problem is, in a world where:

this or this or even this
are easy to achieve...

...what do they mean?  It's more or less a brand new medium, so it doesn't have any established rules.  I'm basically inventing everything from scratch, albeit with wanton theft from books, films, video games and comic books.

Anyway, a new attempt on FT#1 is under way.  I am working with the aforementioned Jenn Zed (who has poetic inclinations and is an accomplished artist...)  This is "mixed media" by which I mean "words and images and Javascript and HTML and CSS and mp3 and anything else that seems to fit..."

It's not huge, but it's slow going...  It will probably take at least another six months, but until then:

Installing FT#1
25%
Please Wait

To the sky - artwork update

I have to start with a small version of the image, because that is what Facebook and other semantic content scrapers will pick up.  So that's the one on the left...  but I'll include a full sized version as well.

This is the cover which Julia Eichhorn has drawn to accompany Hallam's forthcoming single: To the sky

We now have a firm release date of "next week, as early as we can manage."

While I have your attention, let me leak a preview of the lyrics (below.)

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To the sky

(Lyrics by Ian Badcoe, Music by Hallam London)


Those were our days
we would space-walk in the park
I made you laugh
we kicked the grass
I didn't float home until the dark.

And you never grew cold

but you grew distant, never told me why.

I was a clown

said I'd be around

I was a fool to let you fly.

Got my space suit on...

I've got dotted arrows drawn upon the night
as the countdown runs
all the systems hum
I can follow arrows to the sky.

When the engines run...

I've got green lights right across the board

I locked everyone out,

but I do not doubt

and now it really seems

as if a man can touch the sky.

I lost those days

and how the vacuum's more complete

you are not there

not anywhere

that I can reach on aching feet.

I will not let it end

I've watched the wall clock since you're gone.

My head tilts back

to view the black

and you're a pale star in the dawn.

Got my space suit on...

I've got dotted arrows drawn upon the night
as the countdown runs
all the systems hum
I can follow arrows to the sky.

When the engines run...

I've got green lights right across the board

I locked everyone out,

but I do not doubt

but now...

Houston, I have a problem

it has to be there's love in outer space

but there is too much junk beyond the place

where all the blue turns black

and how can one man in his tiny can

have ever hoped....

I had a space suit on...

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(This is "Rock Music Description Language" again, verses on the left, choruses in the middle, break on the right...)

The Rain in Certain Car Parks (live performance video)

Here's a video of yet another song from my collaboration with Hallam London and one that's going into the pot for consideration for the album we're steadily grinding our way towards.

This was one of the earliest lyrics I wrote for Hallam.  It was the 4th that I completed, but the 3rd that Hallam completed the composition for—we have asynchronous parallel processing.  I am including the lyrics below, so you may be able to detect our style evolving (I can't, I'm too close to it...)

So, anyway, let me transport you to a secluded corner of an inner-city car park, where it is a dark and stormy night...

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The Rain in Certain Car-Parks 


I'm standing in some car-park with a case
that I can't open.  I've no plan, it's dark,
and raining and my shoes are leaking slowly
and I know the man I'm meeting: he's a shark.
The clever fish keep clear.  I'll do the deal,
but watch the larger shadows as they flow
between the BMWs.  I'm numb
but there is so much that I owe.

If I can just survive...
if I can just survive...
if I can only live...
through these next moments,
I swear it all will change...

Car-parks, darkness, rain and cases,
silent men with folded faces,
eyes that swivel in their sockets,
metal objects clutched in pockets,
I do this for the wad of green,
the wish that I can fall out clean.

What was it years ago, decisions made,

that brought me to this day without a choice?

But I at least can try a better deal,
a wilder card, a last throw of the dice;

and surely it's my life to gamble with?
I shouldn't meet this man without a soul

around to witness what goes down.  He's here

and nothing now seems under my control...

If I can just survive...
if I can just survive...
if I can only live...
through these next moments,
I swear it all will change...

It's always dark and always raining,
it helps me hide, I'm not complaining.
It's heartbreaking, but it's my trade:
the way my little money's made,
so do the deal and walk away;
I'll live to deal another day.

Watch this Space, Anger Bob is coming...

Anger Bob is coming!

In about a week Hallam London will be ready to release the next teaser track from his Sheffield Album (working title) for which I have been writing lyrics for about the last ten months.

This is our ninth song and hot off the press.  Add that to the two songs Hallam had already written and this means we are now past halfway to our target of eighteen.  Having that many available will mean there's a plenty of choice when it comes time to pick the final selection to go into the album.

Will this one be on the album?  This is a question about the future.  The future is unknowable: you should know that.  However at the moment this is definitely one of our favourites.

As a free sample and pre-publicity for the release, you will find below both the lyrics (these are the final version lyrics, exactly as sung) and also a link to me reading them (slightly shortened at the end, because twelve repeats are hard to get away with if you don't have musical support).

This is once again, Rock Music Description Language, so it's verses to the left, chorus in the middle, break on the right.  Anger Bob is nothing like our previous teaser release Identity, and I'd be prepared to wager a small sum that it's nothing like you'll imagine from just the words.

If you can only hear the music, that makes all the difference.

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Anger Bob

Anger Bob marooned in morning traffic.

Anger Bob shouts something at the cars.
Anger Bob perched high on night-time rooftops
shouts irate manifestos at the stars.

Anger Bob eats angrily from paper bags.

Anger Bob beats fists against the glass.
Anger Bob's a fixture in the city
as permanent as dead and dusty grass.

Did you wish to leave a message?

In your own words, please describe your early days
—please take a seat.

Complete all forms in Biro please;

list every item that you need.

Do not expect to ever leave the maze...
 

Anger Bob distrusts his own reflection.

Anger Bob slides nervously past shops.

Anger bob means something to commuters,

but this is not to say they'd like to swap.

Did you wish to leave a message?

In your own words, please describe your early days
—please take a seat.

Complete all forms in Biro please;

list every item that you need.

Do not expect to ever leave the maze...

A patron saint for modern time,
I see his only states of mind
are anger, fury, irritation, rage.
Did you once live ordinary days?

Did you wish to leave a message?

In your own words, please describe your early days

—please take a seat.
Complete all forms in Biro please;

list every item that you need.

Do not expect to ever leave the maze...

Don't expect, don't expect, don't expect to ever...

Don't expect, don't expect, don't expect to ever...

Don't expect, don't expect, don't expect to ever...

Don't expect to ever leave the maze...

Don't expect, don't expect, don't expect to ever...

Don't expect, don't expect, don't expect to ever...

Don't expect, don't expect, don't expect to ever...

leave.

Identity — a demo song from Hallam London

Hallam London and I have been working on songs for his next album, working title: The Sheffield Album.


I'm excited to announce that he's now released one of these as a demo track!


This song is Identity.  It's about all the miscellaneous bits and bobs of different personalities that we carry around with us, and the problems we might have making our different selves get along with the other people in our lives.


Hallam currently has it on his front page, in the link above.  However he'll change that when even more exciting news comes along, so here is the SoundCloud page.

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Identity

She's taken my imaginary friend
and I'm upset I think I think.
Things get more complex, it's a trend
I hope that I can grasp before I sink.
He's left me for my spirit guide
I now doubt things I know I know
are real.  Keep calm.  I won't hide
my disappointment, everybody goes...

How can he leave

with the boy who isn't here?

How can he love the girl who can't exist

in this or any other world?

He's run off with two characters I wrote
short stories for so long so long
ago.  I think one left me notes
in margins but I may be wrong
and never worked them out anyway.
My other other self has gone
a partial person ought to stay
forever--so I thought, turns out I'm wrong...

How can she leave

with the boy who isn't here?

How can she love the girl who can't exist

in this or any other world?

Where have they done?  Where am I now?

There is so little of me left to show

and once I would have fought

but these days I am caught...

There are more people here than you and me,
though none agree what's real is real.
There should be someone I can be
to keep the gang together.  Seal
all the doors and count my shadows.
There's more and more of them abscond.
I need to be the one who's quite
certain where his fragments are tonight...

What have they done?  What can I do?

They think that I'm imaginary too

and once I would have argued

but recently I'm not so sure...

Bright Girl

You can take the girl out of the reactor...
...but you can't take the reactor out of the girl.

This is the lyrics for the song "Bright Girl" that Hallam London and I wrote, and which he performed in the first round of Emergenza.  Luckily for you I won't try to sing it, I'm just reading.

See my previous post for things I have learned about writing lyrics.

What I am reading here is v2 of this lyric.





The general process goes:

1. I write, erase, rearrange, scrap, edit. swear, laugh, cry etcetera until I get a first draught of something that is both coherent and rhythmical, this is v1.  I give it to Hallam.
2. Hallam has a list of my v1 lyrics.  He looks them over until he gets inspired with a musical idea.  He records a small piece with a rough approach (his idea of rough is already impressive) and shares it with me.
3. We discuss what's working and what's not.  This generally leads to a rearrangement of the lyric: stronger chorus, simpler break, one less verse etc etc.  This is v2.
4. In the meanwhile Hallam has been recording longer segments and usually fits v2 to the music as soon as we have it.
5. Then we discuss some more, and now we change smaller things like single phrases that don't work.  Another common adjustment at this stage is inserting more repeats of word phrases at points where the musical phrases require them.  This leads to v3.

So the main difference in this case is that v3 contains more repetition repetition.  That works beautifully for the music, but for just reading aloud the less lyricky and more poemy (technical terms) v2 is best.

So that's what you get.

Below the video I have pasted the lyrics expressed in RLDL (Rock Lyric Description Language).  I suspect I'm far from unique in this, but it goes: verses on the left, choruses in the middle, break on the right.

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Bright Girl


Cherenkov reactor light shines blue
and pure and bright and deadly--seems she's home
behind the shutters in her attic room.
How might she spend her evening?  You don't know:
maybe splitting atoms with a finger nail,
or biting spiders into superheroes?

You suspect she is atomic,

they must have hushed her up.

She dazzles through your sunshades

and if this close isn't safe, it isn't close enough.

Leave other girls tattoos and piercings,
their slightly freaky needs;
this one has reactor shielding,
a double fail-safe coolant feed,
and if her heart is wrapped in graphite bricks
perhaps they're cracking now?

You believe she is atomic,

she outshines the very day

a blast-wave ripping through your life

that blows your burning heart away.

You've just got to appreciate

the way that girl can radiate.

She's really glowing!

Does she really need that shielding?
Do you really need your hazmat suit?
If you dare to knock upon her steel-wedge door
and stammer somehow that she's cute,
drink a glass of something blue and glowing.
You need to make your move, she is on fire...

...because you know she is atomic,

the armed guard shows that you were right

her lips melt through your visor

and you feel you are alight.

You know she is atomic,

she outshines the very day

a blast-wave through your bedroom

that blows the ashes of your heart away.

Waxing lyrical

Another essay.  Later in the week I'm going to post the lyrics I wrote for one of Hallam London's songs and this moved me to think about what I have learned in the process.


Learning to write lyrics has been interesting, it is a slightly different activity from poetry without music, but the difference is a little hard to describe.


What may seem most obvious, but which took a couple of songs for me to get my head around, is that rhythm plays a different role.  In poetry the rhythm is flexible and variable and you use it to carry the words.  There's all sorts of techniques for how the rhythm can enhance the words: long lines, short lines, sections that run faster or slower, smoother or more-brokenly, changes in rhythm etcetera etcetera...

In a song the music does all that, and what the rhythm of the words has to do is repeat consistently so that each verse or chorus can be fitted to a similar musical phrase.  Then, when the music and words are together, you can consider tweaks to the words so that they and the music do even more together.


Another difference is a matter of targeting and this is where it gets hard to explain.  In a poem you have to set your sights high.  You have to convey emotion and you have to illustrate it rather than explain it.  You have to trust the reader to understand the things you aren't saying, and so not hammer them home with a mallet—you have to be subtle.  You have to deal with concrete things (doors, spoons, sunsets) and use them to illustrate abstract things (love, memory, political unrest).  You have to consider characters—even poems without explicit characters have a narrator, and even if the narrator is the poet, they are still a character (for example an idealised version of the real person).  And so on, and so on...

For a song, all this remains true, but the emphasis is very different.  You may have fewer words (exception: really short forms, like haiku :-)).  Even when a song is long it often repeats more than a poem would.

However, you've also got much more limited time.  This really isn't obvious, because a page of words doesn't look like a period of time, but it is; and it is different for poems and songs.

For example: reading a poem the first time often proceeds something like (i) start reading, (ii) get a bit lost, (iii) look forwards and back, (iv) realise some things, (v) begin again, (vi) find bit you like, (vii) read it twice—and so on...  Even when you do proceed straight to the end, only a minute has elapsed and you often then go back to review parts.

The slight time-travel required for that is possible because the words sit stationary on the page and the eyes can scan them in any order they wish.  With a song no time-travel is permitted.  The music runs forwards at a constant rate and carries the words with it.  More than that, the listener's attention is carried forward by the music, and more still, their emotions are also carried along; making it even harder, and less desirable, for them to break out of the moment and work out an interpretation of what they just heard.

So for a lyric the words have to be more direct, more immediate.  They have to work right there in the moment they are performed in.  They may be in one sense a little simpler, but they have to remain equally expressive with it.  Depth is possible, I am sure, but anything the listener only gets on the third play can't be anything that spoils the first two times with its absence.  (However if you are listened to three times that is *SUCCESS* !)


I'm only about 5 or 6 months into this journey.  Learning poetry took getting on for 20 years, so I'm sure if I was being taught by a mystical monk he'd still be telling me I have much to learn.  I'll keep you posted.

Ian

Collaboration with Hallam London

Hallam London is a German singer/composer with whom I have been collaborating to create some new original songs.  We've been making progress quite quickly but obviously it is quite time consuming work.  We have three songs nearing completion, a few more just beginning the process and quite a lot more sitting in "Ian's ideas bucket."

We do not yet have an ETA for any releases but we have started to trickle a little publicity into the public ear...

Hallam is a great singer and we are both very excited by the project.  I will keep you posted as it develops.

I may also post things like teasers of the song titles, extracts of the lyrics and recordings of me reading them—as poems, you'll be pleased to know I won't be singing.  I leave that to Hallam as he is infinitely better than I could ever be.