Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence @ Radio Shack, Part II

"Driving at night with my son in the car-seat, I perceived an amber light floating over the corn-fields.  We frequently see such things out here in the fields, and I wanted to show these quantic phenomena to my son, but he was asleep.  On the radio, Barney's transmission from the secluded residence."

The Court Ensemble
What a nice day, thought the monk's dog.  He had made his rounds, visiting every pine in the grove in a way he had developed, a way wherein every pine was visited in a different way every visit.  You see, the monk's dog, in his  companionship with the monk, had learned some of the arts of CHAOS MAGIC, but adopted to a dogs way of being, so he knew the importance of not creating a locked habit, as dogs in the suburbs do.  There, in the dusky outskirts of the city, dogs trode paths in their yards between playsets and grills, and always pooped in the same place.

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There in the pine grove, the monk's dog delighted in the subtle differences between pine roots- the scent of their rosin, their mottled curly forms in needly shade.  It was silent: the dog noticed this.  His master was standing in the courtyard, his hair braided, with an attentive look on his face.  The dog wondered what he was looking for.  The dog ran to the monk.  They walked in the paths.  All the buildings were clear of debris, and smelled like fresh clay or wood since the monk had swept there...

There are men in the courtyard.  The dog barked as the men were jumping and twirling in the air, their hemp clothing snapping which made the dog think of snapping bones.  Quantus Barney was back in the courtyard, talking with the men.  He asked them to pull their car, a silver sport utility vehicle, up to the edge of the courtyard dais, and then the men unloaded poles, beams, gongs, and casks of silk-wrapped wooden bodies: the lutes of this particular "ji" sect, visiting musicians at secluded radio transmitter.

The court ensemble was composed of one rack of stone chimes, held and struck by Chin Wong Feng, a finely clear set of brass bowles, managed by Bing Zi, two lutes strung with silk, held by Xiao and Lao, and a leather drum played by Cold Lake, who also had an eagle.  A set of bone trumpets complimented tin whistles played by elves.  Also there was a nylon mouth organ played serenely by Sereno.

The monk had a big job ahead of him: to accurately and/or artfully transduce the sounds within and without these bodies.  He brought out lead and ceramic "piezo" materials to capture the crystalline resonances of the stone chimes.  Soldering and affixing the sensors with pine resin took him through dinner.  He chained them all into a cheste in the shrine at the dais, which served as preamp for the gentle ceramic mana.  This he thus took to the house of the transmitter, draping the rubbered copper between roots so as not to be tread upon by the court ensemble.

The dog liked to pee on this rubber cord, in the darkness of the night.  Looking up through the blown smoke of the ceremonial fire, he saw the rotating red light of the antenna tower, hovering above the pines.  The dog knew it was to be a powerful transmission for the monk was working very hard.

In the next installment of "Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence,"
What happens when the most proud and austere court ensemble encounters the debauchery of Barney's city friend, Monkletto?  How well does this system of transducers and preamps pay off for a radio-phonic transmission?

Present About Virtual Reality

for Roulette Mixology Festival, February 8, 2014.

Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence @ Radio Shack, Part I

Barney is on the radio.  He has taken up residence at the station, padding softly on the root-encrusted paths between the transmitter shack and the zither shed.  He wears his monk's robes on the compound, situated in a pine grove between two soybean fields, farmed by men with corn cob pipes- upright men that are never seen but for their work, which is crafting furrows in the wavy land.  The wind at night in the pines, when it is radio-phonic, is often the situation around which the monk builds a show.

He plays the zither, his zither, made from the Pawlonia which grows to the east, in the Broken Lands.  The monk's zither is of a special, "eclectic" form, made from multiple puzzle pieces of the Pawlonia, which had been struck by lightning, which was a toasty brown.  The wood, having been struck by lightning, was prepared and dressed by the train tracks where it fell by a man with a special "safety orange Carhartt"  and a Sears chainsaw.

On certain spring nights at the station, Barney could be coaxed to play a special rendition of "Sears chainsaw" on the radio zither, involving many special effects and loud buzzing drones.  However, it was rare for him to perform a war-like piece on the zither; as is dictated by good taste, compositions regarding the serenity of nature should prevail by almost ten-to-one in a program.  Since I have good taste myself, I especially enjoy the monk's rendition of such pieces as "Red Lights Flashing in the Pines at Night" and "Subterranean Waters: a Hole in the Forest Floor".

It is the monk's dog-companion, or the dog which companions the monk, who enjoys musical portraits of chases, which when played on the high string of his zither, remind him synaesthetically of the squirrel hunt: the smell of a sweaty dun, fattened by acorns and spring bulbs, in his mouth.  A violent shake to break the squirrels neck; the dog feels like a Tyrannosaurus.

The monk's dog is without features; he has a definite lean shape but the way his shag hair falls, no one can look him in the eyes and he likes it that way. 

In the next installment of "Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence,"
What is contained in the broken lands and warehouses of New Jersico?  What goes on in the mind of a monk's dog, accustomed as he is to the ultrasonic whine of radio equipment and the lonely pine trees at night? What is the meaning of the red light beacon in the pine trees?