Adventure awaits

Those two words well describe the state of affairs these days, a personal stasis. No big romance, no big projects, no big trips. On the other hand, no news can be good news. I'm in good health (knock, knock), our soccer team is steadily improving each game, jazz guitar lessons are both humbling and inspiring, and one year after ending a 2.5 year relationship - which neither of us regrets - I'm feeling calm, steady, and ready to begin again.

Color and the hive

I work in an office where there are well over 100 people. This gives me an opportunity to observe some interesting phenomena among my co-workers. One of these what colour people wear to work. Last Friday seemed to unofficially be brown t-shirt day. Today, it's wear black. The weather today is cool and grey, so perhaps that has affected people's moods and their choice of what to wear. It may also be that the clothing stores near work have mannequins and photos of people dressed in black and white.

I've done a quick Google to try to see if anyone has studied how and why people gravitate towards certain colours, but haven't found anything yet to explain it (beyond the effect of marketing). If you've found something or have an opinion, go ahead and post a link in the comments.

iMorality

There's a Friday column at the Wired site I like to read called Sex Drive in which the author discusses sexual and relationship issues in the cyber age. Occasionally, it's a gadget review of eyebrow-raising uses for technology, but it often looks how technology is changing how we interact and what effect that is having on relationships. This past Friday's column continues a discussion about when online interaction with someone could be considered cheating. If you've ever sent a flirty e-mail or Blirted, you know that the answer is not clear cut. While the article doesn't provide all the answers, it certainly raises some interesting points to ponder in how we view and value our interactions and relationships both on and offline.

Travel wise

I haven't traveled extensively, but have been fortunate enough to have backpacked in Europe as many others do. Although that trip was ten years ago now, the lessons I learned and its effect on me still hold. I witnessed the change it made in a friend who came to Montreal to visit this past weekend. He'd been invited to visit Montreal from Toronto by a number of us who worked with him, but always declined. He went to Europe for two months this summer and came back with a fresh perspective. He was in Montreal this past Saturday after spontaneously deciding to visit after having traveled to Ottawa earlier that day. His experience let him see that he would have nothing to worry about in making a simple trip to Montreal where he knew people. It was great to see that change in him and to see that in general, change is indeed possible.

Beyond cowboy chords

I've been playing guitar for years. I've never taken lessons, but used whatever knowledge I had from having studied piano and having taken some music classes in high school to learn to play. There's also been a lot of learning by ear, that is, generally trying to imitate what I heard being played in a song. For the past number of years, however, I've thought of taking jazz guitar lessons. The sounds and rhythms of jazz have interested me for a long time now, thanks to my brother-in-law, who began that education when I was about 14. I'd taken history of jazz courses here and there, but never really studied it to learn to play it - to learn to play all those interesting chords and of course, to unravel some of the mysteries of improvisation. On Wed. of this past week, however, I finally took my first jazz guitar lesson, 20 years after having been introduced to the music.









One of the things the teacher had me do was play various chords on the guitar to see how I played them. There are always different ways to play the same the chords since notes reoccur on the guitar. The chord chosen often relates to the chords which come before and after in order to create a certain pattern of sound or sometimes just to simplify playing the series of chords. When the teacher asked me to play a C7, I played the version in the first image above. He looked at me and said: "I call that a cowboy chord." I laughed. He explained what he meant and showed me that because the root note is repeated, it sounded heavy and thick. He suggested I try the following instead, a C9 (the second image). While not very different, the sound is definitely more interesting in that it adds a 9th giving the chord a lighter yet fuller sound.

And so began my education in jazz guitar.