I was reading “The Intellectual Life” by P.G. Hamerton the other day, as you do. It’s a book of hypothetical letters to some imaginary friends around the theme of being a proper Victorian intellectual (it was published in 1873.) And in one essay, I was much amused to find an unexpectedly-modern usage of the term “level up”. On a brief rummage around the internet, I find a number of people arguing whether the term first came from D&D gaming or video games a couple of decades ago. I’m sure Hamerton’s can’t be the earliest usage, but perhaps fairly early, since it was printed in scare-quotes, to make people think through the meaning of the phrase. Hamerton is talking to his fantasy recipient about how hard it is to be a modern languages student, learning a language that other people speak natively. By contrast …
The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may “level up” by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from protracted application.
Another great video … this one is about the constant undermining of decisive speech by, like, you know, nambypamby fillers. I’d like it more without the audience noise, I confess, but that’s just a picky detail.
Every now and again I search YouTube to see what people are doing with LibriVox files or saying about the site. And found a really lovely video – this is a dance to a remix of Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice. You can hear my read along with lots of other LibriVoxers (it was a Poem of the Week, so remixers have lots of versions to choose from.)
From the Youtube description:
Cera Byer, the visionary behind Damage Control Dance Theatre and Shoebox Studio, dances to “Fire and Ice” from Manko Eponymous’ 2008 cd “Kaihealoha.” Original poem by Robert Frost, performed by librivox.org volunteers.
My original idea for this website was to create an Encyclopedia Piratica, hence the domain name. However, I never found the time and energy to do the vast amount of work required; too much time spent proof-reading and recording audiobooks. However, this weekend I’ve sat down and used a few different resources to pull together a listing of piratey works … which can now be found at:
This is a bit of a hotchpotch at the moment, since contemporary and modern works are mixed, as are fact and fiction, and sea pirates with thieves of other stripes. I’ve simply labelled books according to source. So it will evolve over time, and I hope it proves of use / fun to someone somewhere along the way.
Collections included so far:
Project Gutenberg
LibriVox
The Internet Archive
To come:
Google Books (the public domain ones, anyway)
Other free online sources of piratical text & audio as I find them
My New Year Revolutions didn’t really get made this year, but I have some ideas in my head about numbers that I’d like to hit this year, including 100hrs of LibriVox recordings, something about posts, something about podcasts, something about blog posts.
I’m signed up to the One-Book-a-Week challenge again, but knowing the pace I normally read at, I’ve had a binge this month on short novels, and am currently have completed 10. Ha!
I also spruced up this website a little, adding actual widgets and Gargle Analytics. I’m not completely happy with them yet, I can feel a little tinkering with the CSS coming on, but still, close enough.
And finally, it was suggested to me that it might be much fun to Wordle the recordings I produce when I announce them here. Which is definitely a plan. I’ve already made the picture for the next (very short) piece I plan to record, which I know will have an audience of about one, assuming I listen to it myself. But perhaps that’s what Posterity is all about. Talking to ourselves and hoping mebbe someone else will want to overhear. We shall see.
I was tagged by LibriVox ductapeguy, Sean McGaughey, and while I’ve done my time as Meme-Servant and moved on … I thought I could spin this one on-theme, so … here goes.
* The most common background noise you may hear in my recordings is that of seagulls — their piercing shrieks go straight through double-glazing and my sound-dampener. Luckily for me, I love the sound.
* The modern book I would most like to read is The Hungry Cloud by Tom Ingram. it has cult-status amongst those of us who’ve read it — it is a formidably good fantasy story for older children. Sadly out of print and apparently unheard of by anyone who didn’t read it, I’d still love to meet its author and say thankyou.
* My microphone is a Samson C01U. It was probably the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought in pursuit of a hobby.
* I’ve contributed 293 audio-files to LibriVox, MCed 75 projects past and present, and recorded in 4 languages (mostly briefly and badly, though!) In addition to that, I’ve hosted 15 LV community podcasts.
* I have 3 solos on the go at the moment and am about to start a 4th (but will work on finishing up the others once it’s begun.)
* I like getting feedback. It’s fun knowing who’s listening to what, and which bits they’ve enjoyed or have reservations about.
At this point I’m s’posed to tag on to another six people, but I’m just going to leave it open to anyone who’s not done this meme in a while, and is in the mood … if you-who-are-reading fancy a go, the rules are below, and feel free to drop a comment here with a link to your own post.
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
As part of the LibriVox London get-together this weekend, we sauntered along to Greenwich, to record in the foot tunnel which runs under the Thames. We hadn’t planned it in advance, and simply took along a giant book of poetry to dip into. My dips were pretty random, but I’m most happy with how one particular poem came out — an untitled piece by James Henry. Google was determined to tell me all about Henry James but, no, I am not that much of a dolt … and when I titled JH ‘poet’, he popped up in Wikipedia readily enough.
James Henry (13 December 1798 – 14 July 1876) was an Irish classical scholar and poet.
At its best his poetry has something of the flavour of Robert Browning and Arthur Hugh Clough while at its worst it resembles the doggerel of William McGonagall. His five volumes of verse were all published at his own expense and received no critical attention either during or after his lifetime.
Could be my new favourite poet. The piece I recorded had more of the Browning than the McGonagall, not that McG isn’t very dear to my heart too!
I’d love to go back and work with the echo more, now that I have something of a feel for how it records … but … that’s probably not practical in the near future. This will have to do for the time being, unrehearsed and unedited as it is.
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My first recording in weeks … and is it the Gibbon I owe..? No. A bit of J.S. Mill..? Nope. More Elegaic Sonnets..? Unfortunately not.
It’s the first fifty digits of pi, read in a single breath (for one file) and in the World’s Most Awful Pirate “Accent” (separate file, and you’ll have to look it up if you care, I refuse to link such dreadfulness directly.) I’m not the only fruit-cake around, there are 54 other variations on the theme. Almost completely pointless (especially for people living in countries where the date will never read 3/14), but a huge amount of fun to put together. And if anyone ever DOES find a good use for this little lot, I’d love to know about it!
Should this, however, merely have whetted your appetite for number recitals, you can find a great recording of the first one-thousand pi digits in the Insomnia Collection. ’nuff said.
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I invented this before the Short Non-Fiction Collections came along, so it’s part-filled with people begrudgingly handing over things which THEY thought were really quite interesting, but conceded the rest of the world might find a bit nod-worthy. I contributed the starting piece of fiction on Shakespeare’s Insomnia … which IS a spoof, even if it does quote convincingly from his works at the start. Completely pointless literature. And if nothing during the recitals of reagents, walnuts and osteopathy gets the listener to sweetly slumber, I’m pretty convinced repeat play on the last track (first thousand digits of Pi) will do the trick.
During proof-listening, the only subject which incited actual snores was Some Mooted Questions In Reinforced Concrete Design but I’m looking forward to the ongoing feedback from a wider audience. Comments welcome!
My reading of the short story A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, translated by Ian Johnston, has just been catalogued. Hunger artists are, of course, people who starve publically — in a performance sense, not a documentary-on-countries-with-famine sense. Linking getting thinner with getting the public’s attention has media-anorexia overtones, though masochism and traditional views of Starving Artists come into play too. Before recording, I read around the web a bit, and found this particularly good study guide. If you have a spare hour, the interest and some brain energy available, I’d recommend it. I ended up being particularly struck by the sadism of the voyeurs/audience who encourage the starving artist, but there are a lot of other ways to interpret the story, depending on your own world view.
One other thing, this is where people adding to the public domain are doing such an amazing service. The translator here has produced various other Kafka stories too (mostly also in the LibriVox catalogue) and they’re recent translations which makes them very readable and accessible. Without him, I’d know nothing about this story, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to read it into the public domain myself. Many thanks, Ian.
Listen below … or visit the link above to download a higher-quality recording.
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Have a bit of a cold; hence I sound like a soprano Darth Vader. Interesting but uncomfortable, don't expect recordings sounding like this! 2010-01-13
Edited a quarter of the new mini-solo, while I impatiently wait for the right time to set up my new recording 'studio'. 2010-01-09
Trying to think up something simple for next week's community podcast (I may not have a lot of time for messaging/recording/editing nxt wk.) 2010-01-08
