Roadblock Identified: Everest On Road

(Don't try too hard to make sense of that title; I'm not in writer mode...)

Since I feel so inadequate about writing down the brilliant (I wish) choreography in my head and being utterly unable to read it back later and figure out my own work, the other day I Googled 'ballet choreography notation.' I didn't hold out much hope as I'd done this several times before with no notable results.

This time though, I found a couple of decent sites (no, not Wikipedia).

Or at least they looked decent.

There was this one site that was really making sense. I looked at their preview lessons and was actually beginning to understand it (typically it takes me about three years to pick up on complex things like when someone says they hate you that means they don't want you around). However, the writer of the preview lessons said it was highly advisable to learn the official, more detailed version of notation before moving on to the shorthand (which was what I was viewing). Conveniently, this was also available on their website... somewhere.

More than an hour later I finally came to the conclusion (like I said, I'm slow) that this 'original' version of the notation system was apparently intelligence on par with the highest of Cold War-era US Naval Defence secrets* or something because it was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. It appeared the site had a grand total of three pages and they all linked to each other and back and no matter what you clicked you ended up cycling through the same three pages over and over and over again.

So I went back to the original Google search results page and ended up on the official Royal Academy of Dance website. Perfect.

I went to the shop and clicked on 'books,' since that seemed the most likely to have something that would help me. There were a few books, but no summary of whether they contained famous dances written in said notation or if the books would actually help me learn to write the notation myself.

So I looked for software choreography programs. There were several that looked quite good -- for a cool grand I could order a sort of 'word-processor-like' program. (That term wasn't really explained, but as the previous computer program I looked at required a doctorate in nuclear-phycisist-level math just to place one hand, 'word-processor-like' sounded attainable.)

I would have actually considered the 'word-processor-like' programs too (thousand dollars and all), until I looked at the all-important system requirements: 64MB RAM (check), CD ROM drive (check), hard disk space (amount not specified but if you're asking for only 64MB RAM I have enough hard drive space to correspond to that), 233 MHz processor or more (check), printer (check), Windows 95, 98, or 2000.

Crap.

(It got better: 'Windows 95, 98 and 2000. Untested on Windows ME and XP; NT is not supported. The [software] will run on Windows 95 but the platform is now obsolete.' Then why bother keeping it up?)


I knew software for the Mac OS is harder to find but given Apple's huge advertising push (and the exposure they get from the iDevices) over the past few years and the fact that now everyone probably knows at least one person with a Mac, you'd think that Mac software would now be almost as easy to find as software for the Windows PC.


Alas, apparently this is not yet the case.


I went back to Google search and looked for 'benesh notation' which, I've heard, is the most-used system for such things.


Nothing. At least, nothing on how to learn to write it -- but plenty of articles lamenting how almost no one -- dancers and choreographers alike -- can read choreography notation of any kind.


Well... it would certainly help the case if the materials were available, wouldn't it? I mean, I'm not the sharpest petal on the rose but it makes sense (at least to me anyway) that if you want people to learn this, making it readily available to them would go a long way to accomplishing that goal.


Just a thought.


But if any of you happen to find some kind of a book on learning to write Benesh movement notation (not famous dances written in Benesh notation), do let me know, because it seems my brain will refuse to thaw and let me do this until I can make it understand that yes, I will be able to later understand what I wrote.


*I realise the US Navy might not have been a big player in the Cold War, but the term 'US Naval Defence secrets' in conjunction with nuclear threats sounds very impressive and probably very accurately describes the secretive state of this elusive choreography notation system.

Why Wikipedia Should Be Blocked After 9.30pm

I have come to a conclusion.
There should be a plugin built into every web browser on the market that blocks all access to Wikipedia after 9.30pm local time.
It's not that I'm addicted to Wikipedia. If I have a question about something, I usually go to the library and borrow a half-dozen books on the topic. If I need something right this minute I'll ask a friend who I think is likely to know the answer. Rarely do I turn to Google and by extension, Wikipedia.
However, on the rare occasion I do Google something, I tend to end up on Wikipedia, because it's the first link on the page and it generally doesn't have viruses that screw up people's computers (I'm a bit paranoid that way about Google searching).
And let's face it, it is informative... too informative. I looked up Rich Mullins once and I learned everything I could possibly have ever wanted to know and then some about microcassettes, analog generation loss, and Space Cadet Pinball for Windows 98 (plus, of course, Rich Mullins).
And that's the whole problem. If they didn't link to other interesting and informative Wikipedia pages, I wouldn't be writing this post. It wouldn't eat five irretrievable hours of my life at a time.
And I wouldn't end up terrifying the living daylights out of myself for a few days.

Have you ever looked up the Wikipedia page for Elvis Presley?
I swear you could print it out on regular paper 8.5 inches wide and lay it across Canada and it would reach from Vancouver at least to Winnipeg. It's insanely long. I'm a fast reader (the fastest I know), and it took me and hour and a half to read it. An hour and a half! And I didn't even read it all... I skimmed quite a bit (mostly the bits about his, ahem, very private life).
A quick subpoint here -- there should seriously be an adult content warning label on that page. Mostly it talked about his songs and movies and maybe a bit about his family life (especially in the earlier years), but I saw -- even though I started skimming -- far more about his, er... intimate life than anybody needs to know. I know the Internet is kind of a free-for-all, but seriously, what if it was your eight-year-old doing a report on Elvis and decided to look at the Wikipedia page? Have a little consideration here, people. No, a warning label is not going to prevent you (or your child) from continuing to read it anyway, but at least then you have a heads-up and if you've trained your kid well they'll at least come ask you if they should continue reading.

Back to Elvis.
I don't even know what possessed me to start reading the Elvis Presley Wikipedia page at eleven pm, knowing the chain reaction Wikipedia lays down for you.
I had been looking for album artwork for my iTunes library and randomly decided to check out the Imperials Wikipedia page that appeared in the list. Why, I don't know -- I could ask my dad about the Imperials and he could tell me more than the Wikipedia page did. And why I opened the link to the Elvis page from there I don't really know either.
I mean, I knew all I really cared about -- singer, started his career in 1950s sometime, acted a bit, served in the US Army, died of some kind of overdose in 1977. Sure there's more than that, but I didn't really care about any of it... except for the question 'what did he actually die of?'
From laypeople (most of them aged four or younger when he died) I'd heard it was drugs, I'd heard alcohol, I'd heard he starved himself to death trying to lose weight but I'd never heard from a slightly more reputable source. And since I apparently have some kind of morbid fascination with how famous people die (especially if they die young), I decided to check it out.
I know, I know, they have that neat little box at the top of the page that links to certain segments of the article, but as the page was loading I suddenly thought, I wonder how he even got started in the first place.
So I read that part. But you know how it is -- as soon as you start reading something, anything, you have to continue; you can't just stop.
So I continued.

Finally, at about 12.30am I reached the part with a heading about the decline of his health.
Now put yourself in my place.
It's 12.30 in the morning.
You're fighting to keep from falling asleep over your keyboard.
It is completely silent save the very, very soft whirring of your laptop (city people may struggle with this one).
Aside from the computer's screen and one fluorescent bulb, it is completely dark.
You've just spent more than an hour with your (very vivid) imagination firmly locked, no distraction, in the world of Elvis or at least his fans.
And you have an irrational terror of music being garbled or messed up.
I'm not kidding about that last point. As far back as I can remember, the drone of a cassette tape in a faulty player would give me nightmares for weeks. I hated that sound -- the slow, painful, mournful death of music. I would hear a song droning like that in the daytime and then in the dead of night I would close my eyes and the song would suddenly be in my head, warped and moaning, almost melting slowly in a flame as the proverbial ghost was wrenched from its being. And I would be too terrified by the awful sound in my head to even consider seeking reassuring company in my parents' room at the other end of the dark house.
I still hate that sound.

And as you sit there in silence, only half-awake and barely aware of your surroundings as the darkness presses against the window just above your head; like the beginning of a horror show -- creepy music in your head and all -- it's as if the light takes on an eerie reddish cast, turning everything that isn't in tar-black shadow into an hazy, choppy scene the colour of blood.
Your eyes become stuck on a paragraph which, coupled with your very focused, very vivid, half-dreaming imagination, becomes a nightmare as your brain invents the sound... like watching a horrific accident that's too terrible to look away from... the account of one of Presley's musicians about a concert on what I gather was his last tour, describing how Elvis had to hold onto the microphone stand for support, how he was so drugged and listless he couldn't even sing the words to his own songs...
And your primed imagination pulls together a shaky, unfocused hand-held video recording of a rock star clinging to a microphone stand with the band thumping and crashing along behind him as if all's right with their world and yet it's so obvious something is very wrong... the singer tries to form the words of his own songs and he can't make them work, he can't keep up with the band, his eyes are half-closed as he channels all his strength into clinging to that microphone stand... the band continues to play along behind him but all that comes through the lead microphone is irregular mumbling... droning and patchy against a much stronger and steadier beat...
You blink and return to your bedroom thirty-five years later but only momentarily as you're suddenly thrown back in time again, a child standing in the doorway to her bedroom, swaying, the sound of a badly dragging music tape looping through her head, echoing through the pitch darkness as she tries to gather enough courage to make the sprint across the house to her parents' room through the sound of the dying cassette tape coming from all around.