Lexicon. Music that blends into the background. Originally used by Trudeau about New Age (or newage, rhymes with sewage), but Classical, or Jazz, or coffee-shop guitar… All will do. (Which only reminds me of Larry Niven’s bon mot, “The applause should be louder than the music. Play better, or softer.”)
This is mostly to provide links for myself.
Anyway… Dami Lee has a great interview with Scott Kemp, and his design process with First Nations throughout British Columbia. What’s notable, to me, is not only how this creates good buildings, but it appears to emulate processes recommended by Christopher Alexander. Just a really, really interesting interview all around.
When the Bistro by Airways Brewing closed in downtown Kent, I wrote an email asking for the recipe of one of my favorite cocktails (brands in parentheses):
Hi, Hal. It’s one of my favorites, too. Glad you like it, and thank you for coming in and supporting us. Here is the recipe:
MIDNIGHT MANHATTAN
Glass: Coupe
Ingredients:
Preparation:
Dione Dittmar
General Manager
Both Airways and Sidetrack Distillery appear to be out of business, alas. Airways’ home base was in an industrial part of Kent, WA. That area had a lot of railway sidings, and one can easily see why it might have given rise to “Sidetrack.” My google-fu is too weak to confirm this, but I think Sidetrack was an offshoot of Airways. So they may well have been serving a Nocino from their own still, and when Airways went under, Sidetrack went as well.
Don Ciccio & Figli nocino claims to stick to the tradition of gathering walnuts on June 24th, San Giovanni’s day. The result is very dark, and looks wholly appropriate for something called a “Midnight Manhattan,” so it should work admirably as an alternative.
Back to Gumperstown. The bank. “What’s my balance? I think I’m overdrawn.” Foxes to the right of him, foxes to the left of him. Goddamn branch hires tellers the way restaurants hire waitresses. Sell some tit with the sausages to stimulate appetites, better tips, return trade. But a bank?
“You’re not OD’d.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re not overdrawn. This is your balance.” She passed him a slip of paper that read $126.23.
“Absolutely ridiculous, madam. I haven’t had that much in there in months. Why do I give you my money to play with?”
Lexicon. I usually rephrase as, “Why do I let you people play with my money?”
From Stephen Minkin’s excellent 1979 novel about play (“Ludics”), and Northern California in the late ‘70s, A No Doubt Mad Idea.
“One of the more interesting and thought-provoking courses given at the Academy was the class in writing orders—the most useful English Department course Heinlein ever got. Each midshipman was given a tactical situation for which he had to write an operations order. Then everyone in the class would pick it apart, trying to find a way to misunderstand the order. This process was called “Major-Browning,” after an officer in General Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War staff, whose sole duty was to misunderstand Grant’s orders. If the order got by Major Brown, Grant okayed it for release. At Annapolis, the Major-Brown test was pass-fail: if anyone could colorably misunderstand the order, the midshipman got a zero mark for the day. This process, with its panic-making incentive, “gave me a life-time respect for exact meaning of words and clarity of construction of sentences.””
— William Patterson, In Dialogue With His Century, Chapter 6
(This has got to be in one of Heinlein’s novels, because I knew this story long before I ever read Patterson. I just can’t remember which one. Comment below — preferably with a citation — if you know which one.)
”“Someday I’ll catch that man without a quotation and he’ll look undressed,” the Duke said.”
— Frank Herbert, writing about his character Gurney Halleck, in Dune.
That is, well designed buildings/cities/what-have-you will encourage positive events. Poorly designed, the reverse.
And so, a reason (among many, but still) for the crazy history since… Adolf Loos? “Ornament and crime.” (.PDF)
“It’s discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty, and how few by deceit.”
Noël Coward
Blithe Spirit
“Friends who know me get real tired of hearing me talk about the stories I’m going to write. And what they hear me call them are usually not the titles you know them by.”
“Like, “The Ugly Chickens” was referred to as “the dodo story.” “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll” was variously called “the doo-wop story” or “the piss-drinking story.” “I’m going to write a doo-wop story,” I would say. “Ike at the Mike,” on the other hand, was always called “Ike at the Mike.” “The alternate-Africa story” meant “The Lions Are Asleep This Night.””
“In my imagination, “What Makes Heironymous Run?” was always “the painter story,” and that’s what it says on the working title of the file folder with the research in it. (The research consisted mostly of looking at about 2000 Renaissance paintings until my eyeballs melted like lumps of Crisco in a skillet.)”
Howard Walrop
Introduction to “What Makes Heironymous Run?”
All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past
Lexicon, to a degree. “You know… The Africa story.”
NB: Yes, I know Bosch spelled his name Hieronymous. But in Strange Monsters, Waldrop spelled it Heironymous. Vast, multitudes, etc.
Sweating a little, like a dewy apple,
As round and rosy, always a shade disheveled,
Of whom one thinks, “There goes somebody pleasant,
Not beautiful, of course, but with an air
Like a small tune half-forgotten.”
A little
Lovelier than beauty, your face revealed
Or hid the sun for me — though now no face
Does that — only the opening or closing
Of my own eyes — still if I were to see you
Passing alone the street, I would come stand
Before you, arms hung limply at my sides
To say, “I love you, but it doesn’t matter.”
— Vassar Miller