Chess Boy: Capablanca’s Golden Bishop, Part 8

Created digitally, kind of a different look. I think I like analog better for Chess Boy, but doing stuff in color on digital is pretty sweet, stay tuned...

Chess Boy: Capablanca's Golden Bishop, Part 7

Chess Boy: Capablanca's Golden Bishop, Part 6

Chess Boy: Capablanca's Golden Bishop, Part 5

For some reason the scan picked up a lot of what I thought were erased pencil lines, maybe I'll try to clean it up later.

Christmas Bugs

I actually drew this comic last year but I just found it. I had drawn two more empty panels after these, but I can't remember what was going to go in them, likely more bugs.

4 Panel Space Saga

Well, folks:

I am pleased to present you with the product of several weeks' intensive comic drawing labor! 

Might Sound Better With the Sound Turned Off

Some have asked, "UNK, how do you get those strange sounds from your piano?"
So glad you asked! Here is a two-minute illustration of my piano fisting technique.

Chess Boy: Capablanca's Golden Bishop, Part 4

Skating Song Snippet

 

The short video, below, is a test of a new recording format for me. I'd appreciate any comments on the visual presentation and the audio. Is it too loud? Too muddy? This snippet is similar to "The Skating Song" on the CD "Christmas Raga." Notice the iconography! Enjoy!

 

HUMBLE GIVINGS

*KhRRRM* (to quote Conor)

I hereby propose to announce a new Christmas Policy, or rather, thematic guideline, proposed to me by m'colleague Tom, on Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve EveEve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve EveEve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve

* * * *

WHEREAS the truest gifts, are those which cannot be grasped nor even seen and

WHEREAS the spirit of the season is frequently burdened, obscured, clotted and obstructed by excess, and

WHEREAS a proliferation of bohemian decision making has deprived all but the patriarch of substantial means, and

WHEREAS the young, also, due to the arrival of many new "little tubs" are not only constrained monetarily but temporally, and

WHEREAS resourcefulness and scrappitude are guiding principles of the culture, as passed down especially from the matriarch, and

WHEREAS the greatest gifts come in small packages, and

WHEREAS the Lore of the Season emphasizes and enshrines especially that which is of especially small stature

SUCHAS The Tim of small proporsh in the Carol and, also, the Givings of a petite percussionist, and 

MOREOVER the smallness and humilitude of even the central figurine of the Babe, and the most humble quality of his bedchambers are immortalized and preserved in many songs and verses, 

THEREFORE

In the spirit of past guidelines such as Many Gifts, we resolve to institute a guideline of "Humble Givings" to be instituted in this season. 

SUCHTHAT those participants may be not only liberated but encouraged to fixate upon that which might be overlooked due to its diminutive nature, either in market value, physical size, or that which, in form or function, attains or aspires only to the smallest. 

* * * *

Merry Boxing Day Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve EveEve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve

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Chess Boy: Capablanca's Golden Bishop, Part 3

Cardboard Rhino Live (read down, then second row)

Sunday Comic from Cardboard Rhino Live

Space Comic

Dad suggested that people make space comics so I made one.

Chess Boy: Capablanca's Golden Bishop, Part. 2

Chess Boy: Capablanca's Golden Bishop Part 1

Poem about things

fantastical actresses collapsing their passing praxis till they're strapped with molasses my masses of mattresses ask pastors for plasters while my blasters last longer than a stronger man's masters a big dog on top of a log asking god for a frog to sing songs on a ponderous slog my slugs buddies a nugget a bug who's ugly but studied his ruddy thugs run drugs to bums while their brothers are bloodied I've got no love for weevil they're evil like Stevie the weasel who sneezes bees into my easel  while wheaties please my aunt Edie my people get down and clown around bounding through boundless counties their round hienies are shiny but tiny like Pliny's mind in a mountie karate choppers and potty shoppers keep popping Pilates while poppas basmati rice is topped with bodies

Some poems

The troubled bluster of the sublet was but less for the butler's subtle bustle.

The staple leapt into the pasted petals, pleats of pastel on a pallid plate.

A Special Message for Yinz Frenz from Chickie Siciliano

Composure

Composure
for Sonny Rollins

Every note I hit is wrong.
I hit it too hard or I hold it too long.
I play it too slow or I play it too fast.
Or I play it just right without knowing what's next.
Hearing the gap          I start to panic.
My left hand goes in search of the tonic.
My right hand sends out a sonic array:
Surely one of these notes must be okay?
On my way to it I hear something strange,
So I back right up and play it again.
There's something to it so I keep on diggin'
Trying to get this new stuff to fit in,
Hoping it doesn't all sound like crap
As I start trying to find my way back.
Before I get there, it all falls apart
My right hand and left hand grope in the dark.
Mercifully, the piece is now over
As I sit weeping and try to recover.

On listening back the all angst is gone!
So is the feeling I've done something wrong.
All that is left are the notes of this song.

The Pillow Thief

The Pillow Thief by Steve O'Keefe

Ascension - UnPrepared Piano by Steve O'Keefe

Soundcloud won't let me post the full story about this strange recording, so I bring it to Cardboard Rhino for your consideration. Feedback welcome!

 Ascension - UnPrepared Paino by Steve O'Keefe

On Tuesday, I heard this amazing symphony on the morning show on WKCR public radio from Columbia University. You can get it online or on Echo or Google Home or Tune In. Just get it! And listen to the morning (usually) piano set from 10 a.m. to 12 noon weekdays and you will hear a lot of good music and improve your work productivity.

So I heard this music, and it just keeps swelling and swelling, lots and lots of strings piling up on each other and horns blaring and timpani rumbling. I'd never heard anything like it. The announcer said it was the 9th Symphony by Anton Bruckner, and Austrian composer who was active at the end of the 19th Century.

I told my wife, collage artist Deborah O'Keeffe, about the Bruckner and she said, "Oh, yes. Bruckner. I have several of his things." Sure enough, she had symphonies 3 through 9 on CD. She brought them as we headed out the door for a six day road trip.

I did all the driving -- a couple thousand miles -- and we listened to two symphonies a day. They're all different flavors of the same thing: really, really big sound! Fanfares. Swelling. Endless building and building, with big waves of chords crashing down like thunder. Yum!

We got home and my hands and arms were vibrating from two straight days of controlling the wheel and every time I closed my eyes I saw objects whizzing by. Jacked on coffee to get me through the West Virginia mountains, I needed a release.

Down in the basement in the poured concrete cellar in the back room is a piano. A really big piano. A Schiller Grand Upright pre-war piano with a rebuilt action that I purchased at Goodwill Industries a few months ago for $65. I paid $150 more to intern it in the basement.

Down in the basement I have a set of tools I purchased from Werlein's Music in New Orleans that used to belong to a piano doctor of some reputation who had passed away. I asked to look at the tuning hammer -- which is really a wrench -- and they said sure but they are not breaking up the set. So I purchased the whole kit.

The first time I tried to tune a piano, I snapped a couple strings. I decided to leave tuning to the professionals. But I hung onto this kit all these years in case I ever needed to fix a piano. Then I had a dream about six months ago that I was playing a solo piano concert using a crowbar and a chainsaw. I just can't get the piano to make the sounds I want it to make.

I have always wanted to attach a bass drum pedal to an upright piano so I can bang the box whenever I want. I also lust for a high-hat or sock cymbal by my right foot. Lately, I have taken to playing with a tambourine under my left foot. Some of those recordings might surface someday. Now I have a piano I can break any way I want and who cares? And I can record the whole thing.

It's not that I want to break a piano (I do), it's that I want different sounds to come out of it, sounds that match a real world that's very messed up right now. "All the sounds a piano makes is too pretty!" (Sun Ra) So I did actually put a crowbar across the strings, ok, but I also wove wire between the strings and used clothespins to dampen notes and even went at some of the string with a Ryobi cordless power drill.

Nothing really worked. The best sound I came up with was to attach metalic cup hooks to the strings on the bass octave of the piano. It makes a ghostly rumble heard at the beginning of this track, like old Jacob Marley rattling his chains or Davy Jones banging around in his locker. The sound contains sustaining harmonics thanks to the metal, as well as the rustle of the cuphooks rattling. I like it very much!

So I come home from this long road trip, hands shaking from the wheel, mind rattled from the road, and I go down to the poured concrete cellar and hit that bad note. Next thing you know, I was rolling five bad notes in the bass, with the sustain pedal wide open so those weird harmonics won't ever die!

Then I started rolling the right hand, too, and before I knew it the piano was bouncing and the walls were shaking and the vibrations travelled down this big rock I live on in the Appalachian Mountains and all across the Shenandoah Valley -- from Winchester to Blacksburg -- began to rumble from the thunder of the Schiller playing Bruckner!

The hammers were flying and the chords were stacking up like only a church organist can do (Bruckner was an organist). Every time I thought I was getting too loud, I doubled down and laughed and roared and played some more! I felt in control, not of the notes, but of the sound. I felt free.

I didn't record.

But I had learned a style -- Bruckner -- that I wanted to try again. And so I have.

I've made several recordings; "Ascension" is the best so far. Because the piano is so badly out of tune, if I leave my thunder chord in the left hand, it all falls apart. So I have to stay down there and play by modulating the volume and the pace and forget about the pitch. In the right hand, I'm trying to be brave and looking for anything that works.

My wife heard this and she said it sounds like I'm reaching for something I haven't grasped yet. That might be a polite way of saying it sounds like crap. But I'm okay with that. The world is crap right now and I want to make a sound that is authentic to the experience. And I think the sound of reaching is the very best sound of all -- don't you?

And so I give you Ascension, the first of the Bruckner recordings from the broken Schiller piano played by Steve O'Keefe. Enjoy?

Image of Anton Bruchner by Ferry Bératon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Barry Donald Drawing Games - Tokyo Edition

- Ugly Donald by Barry
- Ugly Barry by Donald
- Pig-Snake-Ant and Duck-Shark by Barry
- Heron-Turtle by Donald (dotted line shows leg extension)

Happy Birthday Mom

Happy Birthday Mom!

Its kind of a strange card, but it popped into my head so I went with it.

- D

Happy Birthday Diana

Lord of the Rings Poetry Continued

Barry O'Keefe

Twunce wuz a wiz. Call 'im Sharkey.
From high towers he shouted malarkey.
But the hobz up'n shoved 'im,
Even squirmtung unloved 'im
Thus concluding his crupt oligarchy.

Lord of the Rings Limericks: Please add your own in comments

There once was a wizard named Gandalf,
Who fought the Dark Lord to a stand off,
Then the lad from the shire,
Brought the ring to the fire,
But Gollum bit poor Frodo's hand off.