ComicsChrome

I'm currently reading my way through Google's online manual/exegesis on their new browser, Chrome (hat tip to James Fallows, who's worth reading as well). It's a pretty great piece of work; I can't actually use Chrome yet because the Mac version is still in development, but reading the manual is interesting to me in that I've retained just enough tech savvy to understand 51% of the content. The combination of graphics and text is also fantastic; Google has the clout (or the money, or even just the idea) to get Scott McCloud to illustrate their text. McCloud is not merely a comics author/artist in his own right with respect in the independent comics world, but he's the author of Understanding Comics, which I've never read and is not without its detractors but is largely acknowledged as the preeminent work of comics theory on the market. Understanding Comics is, of course, written as a comic, and McCloud has written other books of comics theory/evangelism which push for expanding and exploiting the unique possibilities of the medium while simultaneously providing an example in his own use of comics techniques to communicate a non-narrative, intellectual argument of the sort you'd normally encounter in a literary journal.

I haven't finished the guide yet, but one of the things I find interesting and (usually) appealing is that Google does seem to have really re-thought the precepts of using a web browser to better suit the uses and developments of browsers that have taken place over the past decade: tabbed browsing, the use of the internet to handle personal information and life management and the corresponding security concerns, and of course "Web 2.0" [gah]. What follows from this but I'm less immediately taken with is the attempt, which shouldn't surprise me coming from Google, to create a browser that will guess what I want to do. I generally don't like it when technology or people try to guess what I want. I don't mean a music service or Netflix tossing me recommendations, I mean making behind-the-veil decisions which constrain my options and make me workaround to do something else. Some day I'll figure out how to control all the different formatting options in Microsoft Word so that I don't need to keep correcting the computer manually just to get bullet points here and indented text there. Somebody, meaning well, was packing stuff in my dad's home to ship to the condo here, but they included all sorts of stuff that we didn't ask for and in fact didn't want here, and some of this stuff was broken in transit. If you just DID WHAT I FUCKING TOLD YOU then my trinkets would be safe and sound where I wanted them in the first place.

On the other hand, maybe Chrome is smart enough to work around this. One of the designer/characters complained about the aesthetic and practical frustrations of the URL bar autocompleting the addresses he starts to type, and how at first he rebelled against including that feature in Chrome, but in fact in Chrome this feature Works Better! because it will only autofill for things you've actually explicitly type. Which means, since I doubt you typed the URL for a specific story on (to use their example) CNN.com, you won't get that prompt. "Fuckers!" I cried, "I use the autocomplete to find shit like that all the time! I like the fact that if I want my last day or two of browsing is preserved and I can find something that was difficult to navigate to the first time around!" But then I read that Chrome will let you hit the Tab key to search within the website whose address is autocompleting for you. We'll see, I guess; this could be cool, or it could suck, or it could just be a more elegant way of executing the search terms I use in Google anyway (if I'm looking for a story on CNN.com, I'll type my search terms and then add the string "site:cnn.com").

So there's that.

Mused While I Should've Slept

(1) Multi-instrumentalists are really cool and impressive, but even someone like Prince, who plays lots of instruments (but not as many as the often claimed "fourteen" or "thirty" or whatever) extremely well, is basically doing it one bag - Prince is a supergreat multi-instrumentalist at the intersection of rock and r&b, but all that sick funk drumming doesn't mean he could hang with the Mahavishnu Orchestra behind a kit. Really, I would say that from what I've heard of his playing he's a guitar player (I've also seen him so identify himself) who happens to have chops and imagination but not quite so much personality on other instruments; in other words, when I hear Prince play bass, I hear Prince executing his idea of "Funky Bass Player," vs. hearing him play guitar and thinking "that's Prince's guitar style; check out the way he uses diads in his funk comping, that's so him." It's HARD to develop a Personality on more than one instrument.

(2) There's a school of thought that argues even against playing extremely similar instruments; I've seen an interview with at least one saxophonist who argues that you should pick one horn and stick with it; if you're splitting time between alto and soprano, both will suffer, because you have to put all your musical time into developing a relationship with YOUR instrument. On the other hand you get modern phenoms like James Carter who says "I play woodwinds" and busts out on all saxophones plus bass clarinet (dunno if he plays flute).

(3) I'm most intrigued by musicians who play multiple instruments and sound different on them. Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophonist, is a different musician than Wayne Shorter, soprano saxophonist. I wonder if he ever thinks about switching musical processes when, mid-performance (as I've seen him do), he puts down one and picks up the other.

(4) I often wished that I played instruments other than the ones I do. I love both the piano - the instrument my parents chose for me - and the guitar - the instrument I chose for myself - deeply and the idea that I might focus on one to the exclusion of the other is upsetting. The practical fact that right now I can practice guitar but not piano just means that I think things like "Well, I'll get my guitar playing together, and then in a few years when I can have access to one I'll really put my piano stuff together, too". This is probably naive. But the guitar and the piano are, you know, the GUITAR and the PIANO - the most common instruments in the western world. The body of repertoire for both of these instruments is immense, the history of the breadth of what's been done with them can be awe-inspiring to the point of paralysis.

(5) My personal ultimate goal as a person with a relationship with an instrument is to be like Bill Frisell, probably my "favorite" - certainly top 5 - jazz guitarist. Frisell is instantly identifiable, completely himself with his own vibe and sound, but also somehow able to sound at home in any context - rock, metal, mainstream jazz, nonidiomatic improv, country, whatever. To me this is the personal emblem of highest artistry. It's what, in my frustrated and self-defeating and unproductive way, I aspire to. But to do that on the GUITAR? Or the PIANO? Sometimes I wish I'd never started playing guitar, because then I'd only have the piano (and associated keys) and say "This is my instrument, I didn't choose it but I've been playing it, however badly, since I was seven years old". And sometimes I wish I'd only ever played guitar, because then I could say "This is the instrument I chose at a formative time in my life and I know millions of other people want to do something similar with it but it's MINE anyway."

(6) Neither is the case, though. I wish I played something a little more esoteric. I don't mean, like dedicating my life to the veena or the saz. I mean that, given that I don't aspire to be a classical violinist, playing the violin/fiddle would be a little more unique. Pipe dreams of stumbling assbackwards into rock success become a little less plausible, but if I were a fiddler whose goal was to synthesize elements of the classical repertoire with swing violin, Ornette Coleman, Celtic/Appalachian fiddling, and Arabic-diaspora influences (which is exactly what I'd want to be doing if I played the violin) then I'd have a clear goal and an interesting one without quite so fucking much clutter in my way. An hour ago I spent two minutes seriously toying with the idea of abandoning everything I've worked on musically to take up the violin and the mandolin (hey, they've got the same tuning, and it'd be interesting/fun to have two instruments that sounded completely different but occupied similar musical spaces and on which I'd do exactly the same things) as my exclusive instruments. That's crazy, of course; it'd take me forever, I assume, to develop even my current level of guitaristic ability on a violin, but I guess I'll keep on wishing.

(7) I wonder if I will, or could ask to, inherit my grandfather's violin. None of his other immediate descendants play music anymore, and as far as I know he himself barely touches it these days, which is a shame. He isn't a terribly educated musician (he didn't play classical, he played Portuguese folk), though if I remember properly he could kind of read music, but he was an incredibly musical guy. He used to sit next to me while I practiced the piano and offer assistance and advice, despite having no idea how to play the piano. No, he'd say, and then he'd sing to me how it should've sounded, helping my phrasing, working with me on music neither of us had heard before.