There are two cavemen
in a cave in front of
a cave drawing of an elk.
They are staring at an object.
One says, “It’s art”
The other says, “It’s just a rock, the drawing is art.”
“If the drawing of the elk is art, then the elk is art and so is the rock.”
The other asks, “Should we save the rock?”
david michael jackson
Actinium
Janet Kuypers
from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#089, Ac)
So at my old job
we had to work with
this piece of machinery
that in order for it to work,
needed to be powered
by eight D cell batteries.
Yeah, we could have
plugged it in,
but there never was an outlet
in the places where
we actually used
this machinery.
And these eight
D cell batteries
we had to use
were lasting only
like
two to four hours,
so we had to
go through anywhere
from four to eight
sets of batteries a day.
I mean, that’s insane,
having to go through
all that battery power,
so I called the manufacturer
to see if any battery packs
had a longer life,
I even asked
if rechargeable battery packs
existed for it.
They said there were no
rechargeable battery packs,
but a sales engineer there
said they had a special
long life battery pack
that lasts several years.
Sounds like a good plan,
so I asked for pricing,
and found out it was
thousands of dollars.
Yeah, this battery pack
could run from
fourteen thousand dollars
to upwards of
forty thousand dollars…
But I was prepared to go
to our supervisor with
these figures, because
yeah, that’s a lot of money,
but if we keep using this machine
we’ll spend that on batteries
in less time.
So I called that sales engineer
again for more information,
and that’s when he told me
sorry, we couldn’t buy it.
Now, I know it’s expensive,
but I had to know what’s up,
and he said they could only sell it
to NASA,
the DOD,
and select US government agencies.
So yeah, I had to ask why,
and found out it was a special
radioactive thermoelectric battery
for use in outer space.
it seems that the
radioactive Actinium
was the fuel
for the work
that I need to do.
I guess it figures,
that the only thing
that could help out my work
is something insanely rare,
and insanely expensive,
and it’s best suited
for spacecraft —
not down here,
where I’ve got work to do….
Tracey S. Rosenberg
StAnza digital slam 2013
Good job Tracey. We love a good story. Good job Stanza poetry
Always trying to be social, always failing, I joined Indaba, a social music site. It is an excellent website for musicians. Collaboration is what it’s about. With the advent of low cost recording, more musicians are recording at home and collaborating over the net. Indaba is one of the good places. They have contests and you can submit music and do “re-mixes”. Famous groups put up the tracks for their songs and people use those tracks to make new music. Imagine getting just the drum track from a hot song and playing along with it to create something new.
I found that these members awesome and it was hard to compete but I did write a song or two and I deduced a few things about the music industry. It wasn’t just the advent of the mp3 that made the industry stumble, it was also the advent of low cost recording.
These days a studio that would make Elvis drool costs a thousand bucks and people are pulling it off more cheaply. With drums and loops from a machine and some talent an artist doesn’t end up in “debt” to a label. This creates, shall we say, an increase in the number of artists and in the volume of material available.
If you visited a friend in 1975 you’d know every name in their music collection. Today we have trouble keeping track of who is a star and who isn’t. Do we have star overload? Is there a limit to the number of famous names we can remember? We certainly have music overload.
With any art there is always the feeling of rolling a message into the bottle and casting it into the sea on a lonely beach. In my new thing I am casting songs into Itunes. It’s especially lonely in there. In Indaba it was, “I listened to you so please listen to me”. It’s about trying to get a bunch of faces under your song. It’s about singing to the choir, but Itunes makes me miss the choir.
Here is the song I wrote for some contest at Indaba. I never intended to release it, I may even have missed a beat, but it strikes a note. The outcome fitted the song, the bottle sank, but it’s still a good message. Even if no one hears it, like all art, it never quite was about them, was it Vincent?
Oh my pot farm it died one day on Facebook
Cause I had no friends in my social network
So I went to Indaba and I joined up
I picked up some old songs and I put them up
Oh the cold, cold wind it blows when nobody likes you, you suppose
Oh nobody will ever hear this little song I wrote
When they see my little picture they’ll skip right over it.
I’m just a little bird who sings mhis lonely song
I suppose it shouldn’t matter if no one sings along
Oh the cold, cold wind it blows when nobody likes you, you suppose
I should get another account so I could have a friend
And every song I sing he could press like again.
I sent myself a message, said I really like your songs
And I’ll be sure to listen when another one comes along……..chorus
Well they’ll put up with me cause I paid my fifty bucks
And I’m gonna stick around until I catch up
Cause every little bird that sings has a song all it’s own
And you can’t teach the bird to sing you can only sing along
And the cold cold wind it can blow…it can blow it can blow it can blow
Cause I have to like me this I know and you have to like you this you know
I know it’s crowded here but you were once alone
Look around you.You are as rare as the precious stone
So give yourself a break this year and rejoice in your song
And when I see your picture here I’ll try to sing along.
