DNS Updates or How Did I Get To This Website?

I recently updated DNS on websites that are not active to point here to my personal site. Thank you to the person who emailed me about that. Over the years I had many websites on different servers and I didn’t update DNS on websites I wasn’t using. When those old IP’s were reallocated, new owners would load their websites onto them. In plain english that means that when people would go to an old website of mine I wasn’t using any more they would end up on a different random site like “Norm’s Bait and Tackle Shop”.

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Definition of Entertainment

Did you know that the latin root of  “to entertain” means “to hold between”? (Official dictionary definition at the end of this blog post). When an audience is no longer held, they are no longer being entertained. The mighty brass ring for any theatrical production is to keep the audience engaged so they are not looking at their watches and counting the minutes until intermission.

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Britain’s Got Talent – Shaheen Jafargholi

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVU4IkzMNIo

12 year old Shaheen auditions for the judges on Britains Got Talent 2009 singing Whose Loving You by Michael Jackson.

There’s a great lesson in this video clip. There’s a tendency to think of artists as having a certain talent level – like someone has great talent or mediocre. It all depends on the application; artists that excel in one area may be weak in another.

So the secret lesson for artists is this: Identify your strengths and weaknesses and try to place yourself in the area you shine most. Of course, you can also choose to be in the one that is most satisfying rather than the one where the bulk of your talent lies.

Being a musician my entire life I’ve had the unfortunate experience of doing performances that were not to my optimum level. I imagine every trade has that same experience. But with artists the mindset is so important to garner the vision and drive needed to push each project to success.

Proper selection is paramount. Go to where you are drawn to, where life is sweet. It will give you unimaginable strength to reach for the next plateau. And there is always another plateau available if you desire it.  🙂

Nickelback – If Today Was Your Last Day

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-OlqERixVE

I have had interesting discussions lately with friends on the subject of love and of our paradigms and world views of what that is. My journey has been both wonderful and painful. In the process a friend from the Great White North sent me this song which is new to me. I hope you love the lyrics as much as I do.

I will tell you two things that came up in discussions on the subject of love that interested me:

  • We use words to describe what things are. But in different cultures those words carry different connotations. The thing itself has not changed, but the word we use to describe it can cause miscommunication. And as most of us know it’s our perception that is king. A thing does not necessarily have an inherent quality; it’s what we project on it. So two people might see something the same, but use different words to describe the same thing.
  • Are there many loves or just one? I had always had the understanding there were different types of love like Agape and Eros. But one person I talked to said “No! There is only ONE love”. This is a new way of thinking for me.

And this ties back into the Nickelback song posted here. Would your actions on love be different if it was your last day?

Cirque Du Soleil ZAIA Band 2009

zaia-band

The Cirque Du Soleil ZAIA band, June 2009 in Macau, China. A rare moment where all the musicians are together for a photo opp.

In this photo: Eduard Harutyunyan (percussion), Jay Elfenbein (viol, dare I say cello, strings, bass guitar), Darrin Johnson (drummer), Olivier Milchberg (guitar, Turkish banjo, plucked strings), Maria Andersson (singer), Steven Bach (keyboards – bandleader), Rose Winebrenner (vocalist), Racheal Cogan (recorder, EWI)and Conrad Askland (keyboards, assistant bandleader).

My First Private Lesson in Mandarin Chinese

I’ve lived in China over a year now and I don’t know any Cantonese or Mandarin. Surprisingly it’s been difficult to find a private tutor for Mandarin. Cantonese is the main language spoken where I live (Macau and Hong Kong), but variations of Mandarin are spoken throughout China. I had an interpreter tell me the best way to learn is to start with Mandarin and then go into Cantonese. Mandarin has four tones and Cantonese has nine.

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My Favorite Song

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TfAyX8l5-g

This is my #1 favorite song in all of music.  If you are interested in more information on this piece, I have a previous post with translation and background information here:

https://www.conradaskland.com/blog/2006/11/ave-verum-corpus-wa-mozart/

Ave Verum Corpus by W.A. Mozart.

Personal Evolution on the Language of Music

This is a thought on the language of music and how my personal vocabulary has changed since working with Cirque and working in China.

I don’t know if this would qualify as a “paradigm shift”, but I had an eye opener today. I had a friend send me a video of a music performance. It’s a group that plays a style of music I used to play. And when I watched it, it was like a foreign language to me. Like something distant I recognized just faintly. And this was a style of music I played for many years.

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Freddy Fender in concert 2003

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj4ohpzU4vQ

Freddy singing “before the next teardrop” and “wasted days and wasted nights” New Mexico State Fair 2003. Conrad Askland is playing keyboards with Freddy in this video. Not a great video, but just happened to run across it while surfing YouTube. Augie Meyers is also playing accordion with us in this video.