Archive for category Things To Listen To
Wake Up Gasping — an album!
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Performances, Publishing, Things To Listen To on April 8, 2021
Last year my friend Phil from SkyStudio Wien called me up out of the blue to ask if I wanted to record some poetry, so I did! I went in for another session later in the year, and that time I was more prepared — I gathered up everything I could find that I thought was good and made some kind of sense without too much explanation. We ended up with 39 poems recorded, so in order to bring the total up to 42, I added Why I Perform At Open Mics (previously released on Bandcamp as a single) and a few songs recorded in studios with Joey Marianer. It comes in at just under an hour — some of the tracks are very short #NanoRhymo poems. It’s called Wake Up Gasping.
A lot of these poems have been previously published on this blog in some form, but some haven’t. I included some poems I wrote before I started this blog (the oldest, Shooting Star, being from around 1996) and some I’d written more recently but which I’d only performed with sound effects (Negative Return, sometimes followed by Down while the noise was still trailing off) or just always thought would work better spoken than read (A Couple of Problems.)
The title comes from a line in A Skirmish [With My Least-Favourite Body Part] which I always thought would be a great name for a hard-hitting collection of powerful, emotional poetry. I do not think that’s what this is, but at least with 42 tracks, it looks like I was holding my breath for a while and finally let everything out.
The cover art is by Joseph Camann of The Camannwordsmith Patreon. I started out without much idea of what I wanted on the cover, which was great because his art is mostly abstract, but after looking through some of his existing art for ideas I thought of having the lost astronaut from Down floating through a colourful space-y background. Joseph has a lot going on: music, stories, paintings, poems (sometimes read to puppies), reaction videos, even wearable art, in case you’d like something like this album cover but on a dress.
Some of my tracks have unusual characters in the titles, and I’m happy to report that Bandcamp did not have problems with any of them.
In other news, about 48 hours from now, I’m doing a 50-minute poetry show over Zoom as part of the ‘Shadow Cruise’ of the virtual JoCo Cruise 2021. It will include some poems from the album, but also (thanks to screensharing) some which require or are enhanced by visual aids or additional explanations. I will also be singing a few songs, and reading one poem especially written for the event. Feel free to join — there’s no signup, ticket, or even pants required! As with most JoCo Cruise events I’ve been to over the years, I will post a recording of it on my YouTube channel later if you can’t make it.
Check out the rest of the cruise schedule, and the cruise Discord, too… this year’s cruise is obviously quite different from the usual one in many ways, but still hopefully similar in enough ways that you’ll get a feel for how much it influences my life. One important way it’s different is that it’s completely free and you don’t even have to get out of bed for it, let alone go to an airport and cruise port.
You should also see me participating for the eleventh year in a row in the Fancy Pants Parade. For a while, I was the only person to have submitted a video, but I encouraged some friends to (including some clients of Chromatic Verse Wearable Art, by the same person who designed my album cover) so that I wouldn’t just win by default. Now I can win by crushing the hopes and dreams of my friends! Later, I will post a short making-of video about the pants I appear in.
Who We Are (a.k.a. Wear Your Nametag) – a song
Posted by Angela Brett in Holiday Highlights, Performances, Things To Listen To on April 26, 2020
A few weeks before JoCo Cruise 2020, I wrote a song to perform at the open mic. It’s a singalong which I figured everyone could relate to, so I figured people would enjoy it. I came up with the tune myself, and Joey Marianer worked out some ukulele accompaniment. Then we found out there would be no open mic on the cruise, so we performed it at Beth Kinderman’s song circle at MarsCon, though there was a lot of background noise and not much singing along there.
I was signed up to perform in a shadow event called ‘A Bunch of Monkeys Read Some Stuff‘ on the cruise, so I also performed it there, along with some short poems I’d written during NanoRhymo 1 and 2, and Global Poetry Writing Month. Words and tweet links of the specific tiny poems are in the video description.
Later in the cruise, Joey hastily organised an especially unofficial open mic, so we performed it there as well. By that time I was slightly more confident about remembering the words:
Here are the lyrics. They contain much haplology, and work best in an accent without the trap-bath split; I had to change the way I pronounce ‘demand’ to sing it, and I didn’t always keep that change consistent through the rest of the song.
We’re close, and I’m finally here with you.
You don’t look like your avatar.
Until I demand all
your names and your handles,
I probably won’t know who you are.
You’ve changed name and gender
your hair, or your shirt
You took off your glasses
your beard or your skirt
You left for three seconds,
your mouth’s now ajar.
I probably don’t know who you are
I probably don’t know who you are.
I probably don’t know who you are!
Your name and your face too,
I just cannot place you.
I probably don’t know who you are.
You’ve just really killed it at open mic.
Your singalong chorus went. far,
but nobody says so
when you’re off the stage, so
they probably don’t know who you are.
They snubbed you at dinner
they brought the wrong beer
Regaled you with stories
you told them last year.
They won’t share their stateroom
or give back your car
They probably don’t know who you are
They probably don’t know who you are.
They probably don’t know who you are!
Even if someone knows ya,
there’s prosopagnosia —
they probably don’t know who you are.
You once seemed at least somewhat normative
but each year things get more bizarre.
There’s joy and there’s strife while
you’re changing your lifestyle.
You probably don’t know who you are.
I couldn’t write this part;
It wouldn’t be true.
Just think about things
That are changing for you.
It takes time and patience
To tune a guitar
You probably don’t know who you are
You probably don’t know who you are.
You probably don’t know who you are!
You’re constantly growing
new parts for not knowing.
You probably don’t know who you are.
We probably don’t know who we are.
We probably don’t know who we are!
And we don’t know whether
we’ll find out together.
We probably don’t know who we are.
It’s all based on truth. Every JoCo Cruise I spend an action-packed and sleep-deprived week with people who are, to varying degrees, my friends. It’s a cruise where people’s clothes and makeup are often far more memorable than their faces, so I may or may not recognise my new or old friends each time I see them during that week. The subtle difference between formal night and pyjama day attire in the videos above can’t compare to the costume changes some people go through. I spend the rest of the year connected to many of these friends via the internet, where I learn their full names and/or other handles, but (despite the name of one of the websites) not necessarily the faces which go with those names. Then we meet in person again, a year of growth different.
Sometimes they grow a full beard between cruises, and then once I’ve figured out who they are, shave it off during the cruise (you know who you are. I didn’t.) Sometimes they transition, tell me their new name, and I don’t connect that ‘new’ person with the name and face they had previously until weeks after I get home. Sometimes I accidentally tell people their own origin stories.
I perform at many open mics, and often love the performances as they’re happening, but don’t remember exactly what the performers looked like or who did what. When people come up to me afterwards and praise my performance, I want to do the same for them, but am not sure whether or what they performed.
I wrote the ‘I’ and ‘they’ parts with no particular plan to turn it into something serious at the end, but then a ‘you’ section seemed like the obvious continuation. That part is true for me, too — the most predictable thing about my life is that it will keep getting ever more ridiculous. May you all find a Jim Boggia to help tune your metaphorical guitars, and if not, time and patience.
Three more Hallelujahs
Posted by Angela Brett in Holiday Highlights, Things To Listen To on April 5, 2020
You might have noticed that Joey and I have been writing original songs and new versions of existing songs set to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Here’s a playlist of 24 Hallelujah videos we’ve recorded so far (including one of Joey singing part of the original in a choir.) We have many more lyrics waiting to be sung. We started writing these after getting the song stuck in our heads from hearing Beth Kinderman’s ‘Stop Covering Hallelujah‘ at MarsCon 2019. The day after that MarsCon we went to the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, in formalwear, because it’s a ball.
While talking to our hitchhiker ‘Bernie’ (actually Byron) back at the MarsCon hotel, we realised that ‘Minnesota’ scans to ‘Hallelujah’, so I decided to write a Hallelujah version of Weird Al’s song, The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. I did so a few days after JoCo Cruise 2019 ended.
At MarsCon 2020, we found ourselves again in the song circle at Beth’s Space Oddity room party, so I convinced Joey to sing the Biggest Ball of Twine Hallelujah, but then I was unexpectedly recruited to sing a verse, which I think I did terribly, and then we skipped the last few. Here’s that performance:
And here are the full lyrics:
I had two weeks vacation due
From Big Roy’s Heating, Pipes and Flue
Asked kids at dinner where they’d like to go to
They made their choice as noodles twirled
Of anywhere in this great big world
The biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
Next day we loaded up the car
With wieners, taters, rhubarb pie
And rolled out in our 53 DeSoto
Picked up a guy as children fussed
His sign had said “Twine ball or bust”
The biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
We could not wait to see the twine
We only stopped when we were buyin’
More wieners and a diet chocolate soda
We sang for the 27th time that day
When we saw a sign that showed the way
To the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
As sun was setting in the sky
Before our unbelieving eyes
A shrine beneath a makeshift twine pagoda
To see that huge majestic sphere
I had to pop myself a beer
the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
Just who’s he trying to impress
There’s no bridge guiding to a guess
O, Twine Ball Man it seems we hardly knew ya
It’s a strange and what-on-earthly thing
Some twenty one thousand pounds of string
It’s a twisted and a ballsy hallelujah
hardly knew ya, Hallelujah, hardly knew ya, hallelujah.
I wept with joy before the ball
I bet if we unrolled it all
It’d reach right out to Fargo, North Dakota
“That’s what our country’s all about”
But then the henchmen threw us out
Of the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
We slept a night at Twine Ball Inn
Next morning, headed home again
But I can’t think where else I’d rather go to
We didn’t want to leave; that’s clear
I think that we’ll be back next year
At the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
When Beth Kinderman played her song in concert later at MarsCon, she flattered Joey and me with a special dispensation to continue singing Hallelujah.
A few days after I got back home, it was Joey’s birthday, so I sang a birthday Hallelujah I’d been planning ever since my own birthday. I used Joey’s Sore Throat Hallelujah as a backing track, simply by playing it on my iPad while I sang. I think I did a better job on this one, but still felt pretty uncomfortable with the high notes:
Lyrics:
Today’s the day we celebrate
recurrence of a great first date;
it’s Joey-left-the-womb-and-came-to-Earth day
and made it better than before;
I hope you’ll stay for many more,
so I can keep on singing happy birthday.
Now, four days into JoCo Cruise, COVID-19 was declared to be a pandemic, so by the time I got home, social distancing, quarantine, and self-isolation was the hot new thing. I got enough groceries to survive and then stayed strictly inside my apartment for 14 days to make sure I hadn’t picked anything up on the cruise or in the four airports I travelled through afterward.
I also wrote lyrics for an ‘isolation’ Hallelujah. But Joey had seen my birthday Hallelujah, and somehow become convinced that I could sing Hallelujahs all by myself. So we worked out a key I was more comfortable singing it in (A, in particular) and instead of singing it for me, Joey sent a backing track in that key and got me to do it myself. I happened to record it while still in costume from an online open mic I’d participated in, so at least nobody will know it was me if I sang badly.
Lyrics:
It follows a logistic curve.
It’s serious, and we observe
a median of five-day incubation,
so even if you’re symptom-free,
and so are all the folks you see,
please stay home if you can in isolation.
Isolation, isolation, isolation, isolation.
Since then, I’ve been uploading more videos from JoCo Cruise — I’ve just about finished uploading the entire land concert at Santo Domingo. I performed a few other things on the cruise (and one other song at MarsCon) but I’ll post about them when all the relevant videos are up.
The Impossible Journey (a song)
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Things To Listen To on March 21, 2020
With The Terrible Trivium being a little too tedious for the judges’ tastes, The Quantifiers were eliminated from round 2 of SpinTunes #16, but the competition encourages ‘shadow’ entries from people not competing, so we wrote a song for the next round anyway. The challenge was:
Write an uplifting song to sing for a Graduation, Dedication, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Funeral, Baptism, or similar event.
We decided to continue writing songs about The Phantom Tollbooth. Joey came up with the idea of writing a song for the ceremony at the end of the book celebrating the protagonists’ rescue of Rhyme and Reason. I thought we could recap the events of the book in such a way that the lyrics could also be interpreted to be about any celebration of somebody’s hard-won achievements. Here’s the song we ended up with:
Here are the rest of the entries:
We got the challenge on Saturday morning (in my timezone), with the deadline being the following Sunday, and the next Thursday we were both flying to Minnesota for MarsCon 2020. Usually I start off by writing a full draft of the lyrics over the weekend, and then I sit back while Joey writes music for it, sings it, creates instrumentals, and mixes the recording. We didn’t want to take time out of MarsCon mixing a song, so I thought we’d probably end up recruiting some of the musicians at MarsCon to perform a live version.
Instead, while we were discussing it over videochat on Saturday morning, Joey immediately recorded a trumpet tune and sent it to me. That afternoon, I sent lyrics to that tune as a chorus, and suggested writing verses abstractly describing the things the characters had fought through. I planned to read the book on the plane so I could have the lyrics written by the time we met in Minnesota.
That night before I went to bed, I sent Joey a recording of myself singing a couple of possible lines for the verses, in a tune I’d made up based on the chorus tune. On Sunday evening, Joey sent back a recording of my chorus lyrics with extra trumpets, just as you hear it in the final song.
On Monday, I felt like I was way behind in my part of the song, so that evening, I skimmed through the book and wrote a line for each scene, unrhymed, and a final eight resonably rhymed lines about the scene where Rhyme and Reason were rescued. I arranged the unrhymed lines in quatrains with the fourth line of each a little shorter, and choruses between them.
By Tuesday morning, Joey had already recorded a great ‘quick and dirty’ version of the song, with more instrumentation than our previous songs had. It had fewer choruses than I’d imagined, and the last four rhymed lines were cut. I submitted that one as a ‘safety’ in case we didn’t manage to finish a better recording, but I also pointed out some small things which could be improved.
On Thursday morning, I got up at something like 4a.m to go to the airport, and Joey had sent an updated recording, so I quickly updated our Spintunes submission before getting ready to leave. That was our final entry, and I like it more than the songs we spent the full week on. I probably should have taken the time to fix the slightly shorter lines that were once at the ends of quatrains though — one of the judges commented on how they didn’t fit properly into the tune.
The final four lines, in case you are interested, were:
Your every action has a tiny effect
To never fail would be a sorrow
What one day seems useless will later effect
the wonderful secrets of tomorrow
‘The wonderful secrets of tomorrow’ being a direct quote from the book.
The prompt for the fourth round of Spintunes was:
Write a song about something that seemed a good idea at the time, but ended very badly. Maybe you should have given it a little more thought…
We did not submit a shadow for it, since we were busy on JoCo Cruise (and yes, we considered writing one about going on a cruise during a pandemic), but here are others’ entries:
The world was quite different when we got back to port, with all future cruises and many flights being cancelled, but as far as I know we all made it home, and nobody on our cruise had the virus. I’m now staying at home, like most of you, and uploading my 29 hours or so of JoCo Cruise videos — so far, the New Monkey Orientation and part of the first Red Team concert. Subscribe to my channel if you want to see the rest, but be warned that there will be a lot of uploads over the coming months, so they might flood your recommendations or notifications.
And now for something completely different: I’ve also uploaded a guided tour of Space Shuttle orbiter Atlantis, recorded a few days before the cruise:
I recommend watching this immediately after the full pre-show video I uploaded earlier, if you haven’t seen that already. Joey and I also sang a few things at a song circle at MarsCon, but perhaps I’ll put those in a different post.
The Terrible Trivium (another song!)
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Things To Listen To on February 22, 2020
With Dining in Dictionopolis, Joey and I came eighth over all in Spintunes #16 round 1, and with all the rankings close to the extreme ends, were apparently Marmite for judges. This means The Quantifiers were indeed qualifiers, making it to round two of Spintunes #16, though we would probably have written a song for this round anyway. The challenge was:
Your lyrics must prominently feature counting. How and what you count is up to you – you can count up or down, by ones, fives, tens, logarithmically, exponentially; you can count steps in a process, miles in a journey, hours in a day…
Which seemed like an invitation to stay in the Phantom Tollbooth universe, and sing about Digitopolis. We ended up writing about a scene from after Milo has visited Digitopolis, in which a demon known as The Terrible Trivium engages the protagonists in easy but worthless tasks, in order to keep them from their goal. As before, I wrote most of the words (though Joey suggested the scene) and Joey did the music, most of the singing (I sang some additional vocals), and the arranging. Here’s the song:
Click through to see the lyrics or download the song for free. Milo ends up using the magic staff (a pencil) he got in Digitopolis to calculate that the tasks would take them 837 years to finish, so they escape thanks to the power of arithmetic, although that part didn’t make it into the song.
The rest of the songs submitted for this challenge are in this album:
Commenters at the listening party surmised that we would end up writing a Phantom Tollbooth musical, which is probably the case, although despite one person’s suggestion, it probably won’t be on ice.
The next challenge will be due while we’re at MarsCon, so rather than spending a lot of that time mixing a song, we might recruit some of the musicians there and record our song live. I’ve already put my copy of The Phantom Tollbooth in my carryon luggage.
Dining in Dictionopolis (a song!)
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Things To Listen To on February 4, 2020
Joey Marianer and I knew that it would be ridiculous to enter into SpinTunes #16, what with the deadlines for later rounds falling just after times when we’d be busy at MarsCon or on cruises, so obviously we entered. I’ve been passively following SpinTunes and its participants since before it even started, with its inspiration Masters of Song Fu, and this is the first time I’ve teamed up with someone musical enough to actually join in the fun. We called ourselves The Quantifiers, based on what we wore to MathsJam 2019, and filled in the rest of the entry form with the first things that came to mind. We continued to foolishly use the first things to come to mind as the contest started.
The first challenge was, “Write a song based on a scene from a book or movie”, so I thought of one of my favourite books which Joey has also read, and one of my favourite scenes from that book, and started coming up with lyric ideas while Joey was still asleep in another time zone. At some point Joey wrote some music and made a first recording while I was asleep. Joey also contributed lyric ideas, and I contributed music ideas (and one line of singing) but mostly the words are mine and the music and singing are Joey’s.
The book is The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, and if you like puns, you would love it. The song is about the scene where the protagonist, Milo, is invited to a banquet lunch with King Azaz the Unabridged, of Dictionopolis. As guest of honour, Milo must choose the menu, and he gets exactly what he asks for.
Click through to see the lyrics or download the song for free.
The rest of the songs submitted for this challenge are in this album:
I haven’t listened to them all yet, but I’m listening to them in the SpinTunes listening party right now and following along with the comments. The actual listening party for this round starts at around 53:10. The other songs have more instrumentation than ours, and it generally sounds like the artists have more experience with this kind of thing, which they do, but one commenter described our song as “A less trippy early Floyd”, so I’ll take it. I don’t know what possessed Joey to do this with me, but my main goals were to have fun making the song and make a few Phantom Tollbooth fans smile, and we did both. If this inspires you to reread the book, consider reading it in another language or in another version of English — I know there are a few sections that are noticeably different between the edition I have and the one my nemesis in the US has.
If you’re familiar with The Phantom Tollbooth, you might think it a bit weird for two people dressed as mathematical symbols to write a song based in Dictionopolis, but we’re both into maths and linguistics, so let’s just say I’m the Princess of Sweet Rhyme and Joey is the Princess of Pure Reason, although I believe this song was actually edited in Cubase.
Here’s hoping we have just as much fun in the next round, whether we’re still in the competition (in which case, The Quantifiers will be Qualifiers!) or we just decide to submit a shadow entry.
I Love Your Body is a song again, and other news
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Things To Listen To on May 6, 2018
Remember how I wrote a poem called I Love Your Body, and Joey Marianer sang it, and then I wrote another version/parody of the same poem? Well, Joey also sang that version:
In other news, I’ve recorded myself performing at open mics a few times lately, but I’m mostly focusing on uploading JoCo Cruise footage first. I did, however, upload this video of myself performing Mike Phirman‘s song Chicken Monkey Duck:
It’s always a crowd pleaser, and this video also pleased Mike Phirman himself, so that’s great. He deserves to be pleased!
I’m wearing an official Back to the Future hat that I bought from Universal Studios in the year 2015 (the future!) and some leggings made with Chicken Monkey Duck fabric designed by Jade Gordon specifically to go with the song.
On the subject of merchandise, I’ve made my They Might Not Be Giants poster available on Teechip, as that seems to give a better price and shipping than the other platforms it’s on. Ignore the ‘Last day to order’ warning; the campaign restarts automatically. But hey, do order soon if you want to get the poster soon. That’s how causality works, you see.
I’ve also finally started a Bandcamp page — everybody else is doing it, so why can’t I? Right now it just has my ‘Why I Perform at Open Mics‘ rap, but I intend to add many of the other recordings that have been either on The FuMP Sideshow or my long-neglected podcast, just as soon as I gather together lossless versions of everything. The podcast was a pain to update, and I think Bandcamp will be a much easier way for people to find and download all of my recordings.
I’ll also add the recording of They Might Not Be Giants I did for the poster video, and any further recordings of poems, raps, or robot choir or even human-choir songs that I happen to make. Some might feature my musical friends. Most, if not all, will be pay-what-you-like. If you want to know as soon as I add anything, click the ‘Follow’ button on my shiny new bandcamp. Do you have a favourite poem of mine that you’d like a recording of? Let me know, and maybe I’ll make one.
≥3 (a poem and song)
Posted by Angela Brett in The Afterlife, Things To Listen To on March 25, 2018
A while ago I wrote a poem about love, and how much more complicated it is than mathematics, and how the <3 heart symbol is a little oversimplified, or at least misleading to any mathematicians such as myself who come to believe that love is a strict inequality. I didn’t publish it here but I did perform it at my show in Café Concerto, while Johanna Van Tan improvised backing music:
I also performed it at A Bunch of Monkeys Read Some Stuff on JoCo Cruise 2017.
This is one of those poems that was always secretly a song in my head, so while we were on a train to Minneapolis I told Joey how the tune went, and when he was back in stationary accommodation he sang it to a slightly better tune:
So in a sense that’s two (which is less than three) musical versions of it! I can barely come up with anything coherent to say about this. ❤️
Here are the words:
‘Accessible’ and ‘Back to the Future Song’ as actual songs
Posted by Angela Brett in The Afterlife, Things To Listen To, video on March 23, 2018
I’ve been away in the Bay Area, on JoCo Cruise, on trains, and at MarsCon, and too many things have happened for one blog post, but here are a few of them. Just before the cruise, Joey Marianer sang ‘Accessible‘, my parody of James Blunt’s ‘Beautiful’ about accessibility:
Joey sang a few other songs of mine during and after the cruise, but I’m going to save them for other posts so that this one is less of a mish-mash. If you would like a preview of those along with a recap of other things I wrote that he sang, here’s a playlist.
But Joey is not the only person whose name starts with ‘Jo’ who has sung words that I wrote! A while ago, my friend Joseph sang ‘Back to the Future Song‘, my parody of Moxy Früvous’s ‘Gulf War Song‘ as part of his Patreon. Lately he’s been opening up older posts to be visible to non-patrons, so now you can also hear Joseph singing Back to the Future Song. I changed that one line that I didn’t like very much.
You can also hear the cover of Moxy Früvous’s ‘Downsizing’ which Joseph sang for me after I lost my last job. If you like these covers, check out some of his other covers, short stories and poems on patron, and become a patron; I’m sure he’d appreciate the support, and you, too, would be able to request things like this.
I’ll post a few more times to update you on some other cool things, and who knows, perhaps I’ll participate in National Poetry Writing Month again. As is usual at this time of year, I’m spending most of my free time lately uploading videos from the JoCo Cruise, so if you want me to entertain you in some way and you can’t wait for the next blog post, subscribe to me on YouTube to see my latest uploads.
They Might Not Be Giants: now a song!
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Things To Listen To on November 18, 2017
The other day I discovered that the ukuletrically charged Joey Marianer has once again set something I wrote to music! Truly, a Joey is an exciting kind of friend to have. (No, not a joey. Not everybody‘s got a baby kangaroo.) This time it’s They Might Not Be Giants.
On the subject of people who could conceivably be called Joey, and who make music, my friend Joseph will be singing a parody of a song I wrote on his patreon some time soon. I’m looking forward to it! If you support him on patreon you’ll see it as soon as it comes out — check out some of his recently-unlocked older posts to get an idea of what you’re in for. The patreon is his only source of income at the moment, so your contribution would mean a lot to him, as well as being good value for you.
On the subject of They Might Not Be Giants, I recited it at the MathsJam Annual Gathering last weekend. It was my first time at a MathsJam and it was great fun. At MathsJam, anyone can give a five-minute talk about anything mathematical, and newcomers were especially encouraged to, so I decided to present The Duel, a more mathematical poem than I would usually do at open mics. I even made some slides depicting what was going on. Eventually, though, I started to think The Duel wasn’t very good and I should do They Might Not Be Giants instead. After reciting both to a focus group of order two a few hours before my talk, I made the switch. With my remaining talk time, I showed some of the haiku I found in the Princeton Companion to Mathematics. It seemed to go down well. I had brought along a few of my posters in case people would be interested in them, and came back with none.
The rest of MathsJam was amazing, and I’m sure I’ll be back. There were all sorts of talks, including another mathematical poet, as well as magic, coin-floating, robotic cube-solving, juggling, puzzles, balloon animals, fancy yarn spinning, mathematical song parodies (I also sang Tom Lehrer’s Derivative Song for the people at the MathsJam Jam, since they hadn’t heard it), mathematical cakes, and a competition competition!
I won an origami double-stellated tetrahedron in a competition competition competition. It might not technically be a double-stellated tetrahedron, but the competition was to name it, and, inspired directly by the talk by the shape’s creator (Kathryn Taylor), that’s what I named it.
I was a bit worried that it was going to be a pain to get that home without damaging or losing it, since it would get crushed in my bag and I’m not used to carrying something in my hands constantly. At first it had a string or rubber band around it which had been used to tie it to the competition box, so I tied it to a belt hook. At some point it fell off and partly came apart, but I was having dinner with other MathsJam attendees at the time, and one of them knew enough modular origami to fix it (Kathryn had run a table devoted to modular origami on the Saturday night.) After that I held it by hand, until I realised that it could be suspended quite securely in the Acme Möbius scarf I was wearing.
I heard, repeatedly, that there’s a magazine called chalkdust which I should really be submitting some of my mathematical writing to, so I’ll do that. First, though, I will read the copies I picked up at MathsJam.
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