Hmmm, I just said "too fun not to share" in my last post, after claiming I am writing only to/for myself in the previous one. I may have to amend the way I am thinking of this blog. Pretending to have a readership seems to be my direction, perhaps is my as heretofore unrecognized (by me anyway) wont-- mock sharing with the world. Yes, that's it. "Dear Diary..." There's a history of this, Anne Frank.
As ever,
MH
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Interview with anagram-elicious Brave Combo member
This is too fun not to share. (My husband Evan does this sort of thing, too!) --MH
The Anagram Times Interview: Jeffrey Barnes
Anagramming is an art as well as a science. From time to time we'll interview master anagrammers who combine the two to produce anagrams that are filled with ingenuity and display their passion and devotion to anagramming. Our first interview is with Jeffrey Barnes, a Grammy Award winning musician from Texas.Q How did you get into anagrams?
A Circa 1980 I began writing palindroems, little "poems" whose lines are spelled the same backward as forward. Trying to make some kind of crazy sense within a very constrictive framework was fun!
Books by authors like Willard Espy showed me other ways of "making the alphabet dance", including word squares (the apotheosis of palindrome), charade ("poems" where couplet lines are spelled the same, but with the word breaks in different places), and anagrams.
Q Do you remember the first anagram you made?
A I don't remember my first, but Thursday night as I was going to sleep, my brain jumbled the word "Batman" into "Bantam". I had a short dream about a guy fighting crime in a chicken suit and woke up laughing. My wife woke up too, but not laughing.
Here's an early "poem" where every line is an anagram of the title:
Existentialism
X is a silent item.
Examine its list:
It's man's exile. It
is Time's tax line.
Next it is a smile
-- snail-exits Time!
Next, a missile. It
lies in state. Mix
six mentalities...
Mine is late. It's X.
Q Do you have a favorite anagram?
A Surely "Twelve + one = Eleven + two" is hard to beat!
Q What do you do in your non-anagram life?
A I'm a musician. My wife Gina teaches dyslexic children to read. We're both interested in language.
I've played in a band called Brave Combo for 26 years. I perform on saxophones, clarinets, flutes, harmonicas and other noisemakers. We play many different musical styles, but won the Grammy for Best Polka Recording in 1999 and 2004. (Sadly, that Grammy category was discontinued several days ago.)
My band appeared on an episode of The Simpsons, called "Co-Dependence Day", for which I arranged the closing theme.
Q Describe the moment when you are working on anagramming a phrase and the last few letters just fall into place and you realize that you have an outstanding anagram on your hands.
A After choosing the source, separating and alphabetizing the vowels and consonants, putting carats on every five letters so the count is correct, finding a starting word that's rife with promise, separating the other letters and trying to use the odd ones (j,k,q,v,x,z et al,) repeating the process over and over using Anu's amazing Internet Anagram Server or little wooden letter squares or just a cocktail napkin, sometimes reaching blind alleys and disassembling words for their parts, one winds up with a small handful of letters and...*click* everything comes together! Not a word (or letter) is wasted. The result is a cogent, pithy, pertinent comment on its source -- often hilarious, but sometimes serious, or even heartbreaking. The anagrammatist has manipulated the primary elements of language with great skill. All the elements of artistic performance are there, except...the anagrammatist is not really responsible for the result. He or she is like a pythoness at the Delphic oracle -- only the conduit for a message from beyond, one of many that existed within the source before the anagrammatist even began.
Q Approximately how long do you spend on an anagram?
A Sometimes it clicks in at 15 or 20 minutes. Sometimes I'll run into all manner of blind alleys, get obsessed, work for hours, and finally (1) get a satisfactory result or (2) give up in disgust.
There is a 28-letter source, which uses only 1/2 the letters of the alphabet plus one, that I've worked on for a couple of years without exhausting. It's generated thousands of viable anagrams, which I'll put into a book eventually.
Long boring trips with the band make this sort of thing possible -- maybe inevitable.
Q Anything else you'd like to add?
A Oh, yes! Something about the ethics of anagramming:
There's a passage in Book XII of The Odyssey, where Odysseus must sail through a narrow pass between two rocks, one of which houses Scylla, a monster whose six heads devour sailors, and the other which has Charybdis, another monster whose giant mouth creates a whirlpool that can suck down a whole ship. (A less classical allusion would be "between a rock and a hard place" or "between the Devil and the deep, blue sea".)
This reminds me of our ethical plight. Remember that an anagrammatist, our "hero" surviving by virtue of his wits, is not completely in charge of what he expresses. He often risks saying something abjectly evil -- and you decide whether he's "channeling" some evil spirit or expressing a dark aspect of his own psyche -- to avoid the bottomless pit of nonsense which always threatens to engulf him.
Of course, "a little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men". On the other hand, we may be tempted to say something morally reprehensible because it's often richly comical to assume the persona of a villain, but it's probably a good idea to edit yourself -- or let somebody responsible do it for you -- than to have righteous people feel offended, or wicked people feel justified.
Some of Jeffrey Barnes's recent anagrams:
- Sotomayor hits Hill again as GOP's race rhetoric cools
- Will denying Kim cognac have any effect on N. Korea?
- Al-Qaeda deputy denounces Obama
What anagrammers would you like to see interviewed here? What questions would you like to ask them? Post your questions and comments about anagrams, this interview, or The Anagram Times below.
Ltr from Dad + and return to blogging
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Now that I have that off the table I can tell you that we left a 105 degree day time temperature to a 36 degree night time temperature the same day. If either of you have any control over temperatures would you please send some of ex-president Gores global warming up here. The MN natives like Suzanne Marline say “if you don’t like the weather wait 5 minutes and it will change’. And it does. The only thing we haven’t experienced since arriving ere a Kansas tornado or snow, sleet or ice.
now we are at the point of asking what is going on in the Evan and Mary John world and how do we tune into the splendiferous Evan John solo” As you probably know we as usual, forward our telephone number and our e addresses here just a tad south of the arctic circle.
I don’t know if I ever told you the story of Lady Di’s birth. Her blessed sainted mother Alyce was carrying Diane while working at the Marlin dry goods store in Osseous the bible mentioned, her time had come while she was waiting as usual on a customer so, without stopping work she mentioned to Diane that she was waiting on a customer and Diane would get first priority after she finished with the current customer.
At which time the biblical created of the world in 6 days, this was before the unions and he said to Diane, because you have been so good and patient, I will create you as the most beautiful and intelligent on my new planet. And he did but he said there is one stipulation for you by being so beautiful and intelligent. I will send unto you one of my greatest failures and you will marry him and cherish him until the end of his or your days, which ever comes first. She agreed and so it came to past in her third trimester of life he came upon her and thus endeth her care free, happy existence.
I am sorry to digress but since 2003, and with a cadmium mesh plate on the right side of my head (Where there was plenty unoccupied space, my mind wanders of its own accord. For example today I met a gentleman who is 49.5 % OJIBWA Indian formerly of the Sioux nation. Born and raised on the reservation, I learned in 15 minutes more about the MN INDIANS then I had ever even heard of. That was an example of my wundering wandering mind.
Sorry to have taken so long to get through the introduction to our move. Will have to wait until we hear from you regarding what you and Evan’s children and your children and grand children have been up to in the real world.
Love from dad, grand dad, great grand dad and long suffering Lady Di. Bye for now.
.........
There you have another of my dad's fanciful letters. It can be really fun to wander around in his mind. The composition is wonderful-- airy and light, yet not at all without structure. His "lovingness" always comes through.
I have not been blogging. I have not told anyone I have a blog. I have so many emails to continually write to a very large extended family I enjoy being in touch with that -- I don't write anywhere else. Oh, except in my numerous journals hand written and scribbled in and left lying in nearly every room of the house. I do have an ongoing novel I am piecing together, but I don't think that counts as really writing it if you don't sit down every day and pound out your requisite 2,000 words or so.
So here is what I think: I shall use this blog as for myself alone, consistency of content be damned. I shall plan to write something often, on whatever subject, and see what transpires.
Best regards, outside persona of self, and tata for now,
Mary H
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