Biking around Rantoul has become a norm. Pedaling around, with only slight exertions for modest changes in elevation, it is easy to get lost in thought. In the breeze, riding around Rantoul’s airport, TIP, once the mighty Chanute AFB, thoughts of the Wrights, and Wright Cycles, and wings, and lift, drag, and aerodynamics are frequent trains of thought. The internal dialogue has now also given ‘pet names’ to the parts of the ride. “The North 40” is the segment from Garrard Street to the bike path that parallels 136, though several blocks to the north, then hooks south past the post office, crossing 136, down to the “Pond.” (The so-called ‘retention pond.’) Past the pond, we head south to Par Drive, a one way, that links to one of the ‘Perimeters.’ That’s ‘perimeter’ of the old AFB. Heads down to the ‘Lake.’ That’s Heritage Lake. Along the way is yet another golf course. What is it about fly-boys and golf? Today, I circumnavigated the lake before continuing to the west up to Prairie Pines campground. That’s an RV park, usually pretty well-populated in the summers. This summer, I’ve seen some great rigs there, ones that make my envy stir. I want a trailer so bad! Then, if we’re doing the ‘whole enchilada,’ (as I did today), I keep working my way west, past the ‘Little Wings’ daycare, over to the Hap Arnold Aquatic Center. (The ‘pool.’) The bike path picks up and runs along the road up from Urbana, Route 45. Then, 8 miles or so later, I’m home, full circle.

What are we pondering, these humid days? Well, there’s the “Synth Battle Royale.” Friday nights, on a streaming radio show that happens courtesy of the “Super Dimension Fortress,” (SDF), for geeks, by geeks, an assortment of lads twiddle their knobs and dials, patching and syncing, to make something on music synthesis equipment real time. I’ve written about it before on BGW. The SBR on SDF was going along ok for me, but I sort of caught some heat from the chief pooh-bah, smj. Mind you, I like and respect smj, whose name is actually Stephen M. Jones. He’s in Seattle, I think. He’s also an amateur radio operator, (Ham), callsign W0TTY. His geek cred is solid; he hosts a radio show just ahead of SBR about ‘vintage computers,’ and, of course, there’s some tty involved somehow. If not ttl. I was sort of warned about ‘prepping’ for SBR by making and using ‘sequences.’ Making anything in advance is against the rules, it turns out. The music must be made ‘on the fly,’ and the feeling seems to be, if I understand smj correctly, otherwise one is not ‘improvising,’ or, (gasp), being ‘creative.’ Needless to say, I think this is a bit narrow. Isn’t there a sliding scale of apriori items that have to have happened, no matter what? How far out does one need to zoom to be doing something ‘on the fly?’ If you are , in fact, flying, is prep such a bad thing? You maybe should check the plane out, test the fuel quantity, and quality. There’s a gauge for that; the little cup thingy in the wing. (I forget, it’s been awhile since I flew the Tampico.) Creativity in aviation is a matter of dealing with shit that happens. (Landing in the Hudson, for example.) Being live on the air is a bit like flying, if you ask me. I might want to put in fresh batteries. And, while I’m at it, prepare some material. Creativity is about getting something on the air, not so much inventing the wheel from scratch each Friday night. That, if you ask me, is tedious to listen to. But smj disagrees. It’s his show. Isn’t it? Is it? There’s another thing…

What, in fact, IS the protocol of these ‘open mics’ on SDF? I don’t find much guidance in the documentation. So, it might be yet another disappointing instance of the pissing contest; another monkey-on-monkey shriek-a-thon. All the more disappointing, since it means I mis-judged smj. He seemed so much more loose than he turns out to be. And then, of course, it’s billed as a ‘battle.’ He’s the enforcer. My participation is entirely voluntary. I recall making a speech once upon a time. An acid-fueled rant about the foolishness of arguing over art. ‘It’s not a competition,’ went my bitch. I was thinking of the great Brahms vs. Wagner debate, late 19th century. But then, later, I learned about cutting contests in the early 20th, and, of course, about that time Muzio Clementi and Wolfi Mozart squared off at the request of the Emperor Franz Joseph II. The final tally was… well. Whatever it was, Mozart was pissed off. Sure of his worth, but unused to competition, Mozart could not quite put Clementi in the same box he’d put Vogler in earlier, documented in a famous letter to Papa Leopold. Maybe competition is good for the soul, good for the artist. Certainly, rules are good, and playing by them is worthy. I think my bitch is really that I have not been guilty of pre-composing my bits. Sequences have a lineage in synthesis, and so does preparation. That does not mean that there is still not plenty up to chance, and to be molded by improvisational skill. The odd thing is that smj’s work often sounds perfectly polished. It might well be that he has better gear, which he knows well. Is that not a profound form of preparation? It seems to me to be splitting pointless hairs.

In any case, I reverted to a much more primitive mode. For the battle on August 5th, I did virtually no prep, other than turning the noise-makers on. I’ll go into this, perhaps, later… there are other irritants tugging at my attention presently.

(later)

But then, another eruption from smj over some dickish misunderstanding of something I posted on “Mastodon,” the SDF social media platform, and I am putting my participation on hold. I have developed enough material that I can concentrate on recording it, making something really listenable out of it, and to hell with the stinking rules. To Mr. Jones, I have this to say: ドロップデッド

And I mean that sincerely.

(even later…)

I had thought a few words on the current political situation might be in order here. I thought that a coupla weeks ago when I started this post, but I got distracted. Good thing that I did, since things have continued to evolve and the evolution has clarified the ghee. So to speak.

1. Top secrets at Mar-A-Lago. Well, of course. The question in everyone’s mind is why? I’m not going to bother recapping this. One either keeps up with such things or, mercifully, one doesn’t. Just this, for frame of reference: Trump took a bunch of stuff from the White House that he shouldn’t have. These were documents. We all saw pictures of staffers loading their cars with knick-knacks (chairs, paintings, desks, doors…). But apparently, Grump threw a bunch of stuff marked ‘top secret, do not take to mar-a-lago’ into some boxes. The National Archives is supposed to get this stuff, and they track it, and asked for it back. They bent over backwards, cutting the Rump all possible slack. But Dump insisted this stuff was HIS, and besides, if he took it, it wasn’t ‘secret’ anymore, was it? So… the FBI ultimately raided Mar-A-Lago and got some of the stuff back. Did they check the golf carts? We don’t know. We also don’t know why the fool wanted this stuff. The idea that he wanted to show various guests top secret stuff seems like a stretch. Even for Trump. And because he can never admit a mistake, or error of judgement of any kind, he’s off on a sort of ‘double down on stupid’ tour.
2. The supremes, striking down the ‘settled law’ that was Roe v. Wade, have given the Dems a priceless gift ahead of the midterm election. The Dems are infinitely capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but certain of the primaries that are occurring latish have seemed to offer a promise of reinvigorated hope for those of us who think this is the last election before the republic falls to the barbarians. Even those white men, so enamored of their freedoms and rights, might realize that if they knock up daughter, sister, in-law, or just random grocery store pick-up, access to discreet abortion might be handy. The rest of us, alarmists all, see this heritage foundation overreach as portending bad news for such things as the right of lgbtq+ folks to conduct their personal lives as they see fit, for access to contraception, for the right of women to vote, and etc., etc., ad infinitum to the limits of white male rule wet dreams. When settled law becomes unsettled, the shock waves spread out across the nation in ripples of infuriation, and people, the people, become agitated enough to get out and vote. We are voting as if for the last time, we feel.
3. Then there’s Ron DeSantis, down in FL. He’s like Trump, but worse. He is just devious and evil, as opposed to mentally ill. It is this man taking the banning of this and that, including abortion, up to 11 that really makes me nervous for the fate of the nation. Should tRump, for one reason or another, cease to be the gift that keeps on giving, DeSantis might very well be the next… king.

So, these are the thoughts floating in my mind as I ride around Rantoul on a bike.