It's that most optimistic of times. Pitchers and Catchers report. All things are new again, anything is possible.

Oh, there are teams where everyone knows better. Which doesn't matter at all now, because there are new kids coming in, and who knows, you might get a chance to say "I saw him" before anyone else did.

Or maybe a little magic will appear; the Miracle Mets kind of thing, a happy fluctuation that none of the stat heads could predict, the big money couldn't bet on or wrap up in contracts, and the talking heads will bandwagon jump into in September. It's happened, on occasion.

The great gift of the game, this moment. That knowledge that every year turns, that optimism and hope renew. All things come around.

Maybe this is the year.

Live albums are a crapshoot, aren't they? You can just imagine the conversation, "Hey, you can't capture how good you are in the studio, let's make a live album and get the real you recorded, the one the producers and engineers..."

Does it work, though? Used to be, it was a sign the band was about to break up. Or change labels, management, something, because the live album seemed like the last ditch effort, throw something out there and fill the channels, fulfill the contract, whatever.

There were, of course, exceptions. Frampton Comes Alive, Live at Budokhan, Live Bullet, Eagles Live. Hell, the entire Unplugged series relies on the fact that a good live recording can be, should be, magic. Still, at least for pop and rock acts, the live album is, I think, more looking for gems.

One thing seems for sure. For rock and pop acts, finding someone who can do live albums across decades is a true rarity.

Jazz, and blues, well now. That seems like a different story altogether. Duke Ellington Live at Newport, Count Basie in London or at Newport, Ella Fitzgerald (I love Ella's small band live recordings, she's playing in those settings in a way that is unique for her; like her recordings with Louis Armstrong these trio and small group live sessions seem more intimate than the big band and studio work), Sinatra's live recordings have their own literature. Coltrane, Dizzie, Parker, Miles, Brubeck and Mulligan and Chet. Seek out ye wandering soul, there are balms for thy wounds here.

And then there's B.B. King. The king of the blues. His live recordings, his own released albums span some forty years of work. From the master at work to the gentleman player.

Cook County Jail and the Bobby Bland pairings were soundtracks to my youth. My mother's albums, but I played them just as much or more than she did. I may not have been there physically, but I could be there in those magic moments whenever I needed to be.

San Quantin, the Apollo, and then Ole Miss... those are the albums (cd's ok) where I consciously chose B.B. King as being my music, not just my parents'. It happened when San Quentin came out; that one I bought as soon as I was aware of it, just to see what the king sounded like these days, when I was a broke teenager never to be able to afford to catch him live but I could scrape together the ten bucks to get the cd and dream.

I bought Ole Miss and Apollo just as soon after that as I could. Apollo was like San Quentin and the others; Ole Miss was something else altogether. Even by double album standards Ole Miss was a monster of an album, in terms of length and number of recordings. In terms of the time in those concerts.

For my generation, seeing Lenny Kravitz was... like going to a revival meeting. Three hours of worship at the altar of all that is performance in its purest, sexiest, most intimate and rocking form. Too young for Prince (there's another story for another time, I was too broke to get tickets when he came through and played Hofheinz Pavillion, a friend was supposed to get tickets but then backed out when another in our social circle got involved. I stood outside the Pavillion for hours waiting for someone who never showed, watching everyone going into the concert and feeling like shit.), I saw Metallica and Guns N' Roses at the Astrodome, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam in that magic moment right before Ten came out (Fitzgerald's if you're familiar), No Doubt in front of close to half a million lunatics at Texas Motor Speedway and Gwen had every last soul in the palm of her hand... Lenny for three hours anytime anywhere was something else entirely.

B.B. King at Ole Miss gave me the first taste that he, and oh that band, had that same magic touch. That when the drums and horns fired up and the hype man stepped up and gave the crowd what they knew, what they'd paid their money to see and hear... that they were in the hands of the master, the king.

San Quentin is the album I return to, when I just want to hear the power and the music. And remember what it felt like, I guess, to discover that someone I'd known since I knew what music was had something far more yet to give to me.

Reminder to self: trust in the work and the art. Have confidence in it, because no one else will.

Necessary sometimes to put it that bald way; I had a good day storywise, got a story bit down I needed to write. It felt good to do it. As always, I did my best with where I am, and that's the only part of this here writing thing that matters. I do what I can to do justice to the story, the characters, and after that it's up the readers, and not anyone else. As it should be.

And yeah it feels good to stretch and dive into new territories.

Today's writing task for me turned out to be an example of something I mentioned yesterday. Basically, this bit of the story in progress turned out to be a version of a scene that I've turned over in the back of my mind for some time now.

This was the first time I've tackled it. At the end, I realized a couple things. One, that I'd done what I could with where I am as a writer, and that's what it is. I hope I've done the thing, and the characters, justice. But I leave it here.

Knowing damned well I'll come back to the subject again. Sometime somewhere, probably in an entirely different context, but it'll show up again, I feel certain. Again, just because my mind is like a dog with a bone. When I find some idea, some concern, some image, one of the good ones that lasts through many different considerations and turnovers and differing points of view, just like my dogs with their favorite bones there's always another chance to gnaw it over again.

Of course I realize I'm being vague. Know the best part of reading a writer's ruminations on this kind of thing? Soon enough the story will be out and you'll get a chance to ponder whether and when and how this little exercise made its appearance...

Had one of those conversations today that just didn't go anywhere. Too much of a divide to bridge, in terms of where everyone started.

Personally, it was worth it, simply because I had to keep coming back to think about where I'd gone off track, and keep from turning muleheaded. Admittedly, for me this isn't a far trip.

The real thing, after the dust settled and everyone agreed to disagree, was that something else occurred to me; that's the part of me-as-writer that asks, "Now what did you learn, what did you hear, what did you see? What did you observe?"

Ultimately, it'll come out somewhere somewhen, in a story. Probably in several stories, because I'll gnaw at it, and all the other little things I've seen/heard/done/observed in moving through this thing called life. Put them together take them apart, in order out of order and in as many different ways as I can.

Not to solve anything, or to not solve anything. Rather to build and think, and most of all tell new stories from new points of view as best I can.

The real reason no particular story, at least from my point of view, can capture a writer's point of view. Because if the writer's really working at it, really thinking and engaging, that point of view is formless and void and ever-changing, always reworked. At least for some things, if not all. 

oh, and in case you're wondering. In my little corner of the theory world, our practice, and the one I've followed, is to name equations, especially approximations, descriptively. One example that might be familiar, and which is so general it won't name any names, would be Mean Field Theory, or a Mean Field Approximation.

In our little corner of the world, there are a handful of named equations, reserved for the big ones, and then, usually, extensions or approximations and so on are named descriptively, rather than for the authors. This is pragmatic: one names the equations when deriving them, rather than have someone else do it for you.

The other pragmatic benefit is related to, but not identical to, the idea of beauty in physical theory. If one can descriptively name a particular equation in just the right way, then the name itself tells those familiar in the art pretty much what the equation does, and, in many cases, how it was derived.

Naming then is an art, occasionally abused; when done correctly one hopes for, ideally, an aid to clarity and new ideas.

There's also an ethical choice implicit in this convention; the idea is to attempt to remove oneself and one's ego from the process. This can be very hard to do, even for those who would normally be ego-less.

Theoreticians, those of us who work down in the weeds at least, don't get, nor expect, general recognition. That doesn't mean we don't have pride in what we do. This whole naming practice can be an interesting stumbling block in discourse, sometimes leading to vicious inside pool.

The canonical example is when someone comes in to give a conference talk about the latest and greatest equation they just discovered and named after themselves.

Ninety-nine percent of the time or greater, of course, the particular equation they think they've discovered was equation 34c in someone else's paper fifty years ago, usually a throwaway for a reason.

(Aside: If you think I'm kidding about the ninety-nine percent, understand that this can be a severe underestimate for some cases.

Consider that, for example, the three-body problem is centuries old, and remains unsolved. Further, this is no obscure problem, it remains the central unsolved issue for mechanics and all that derives from it. It's been looked at by an awful lot of very smart, very motivated, very well-trained people. Coming up with a new, original, and successful approach is, in real terms, vanishingly unlikely. That doesn't stop us all from trying, of course.

The extension to other areas may (and should! if we're all doing our jobs right...) change the odds fractionally, depending on the field; that said, there are very few areas of physical science that haven't had someone dig into them, even if only briefly. Your mileage may vary, I speak here only from my corner of the scientific endeavor.)

This whole naming thing also makes for head-scratching when one sees other schools and fields who practice a different style. Still, my own observation is that, for the most part, most of science and engineering has something like this as an ideal, at this time. I suspect there's always room to fluctuate, given that there's always another generation coming and looking to re-write the conventions.

A week or so ago, I griped to myself about a science writer confusing velocity with energy in a context where even a simple check of wikipedia would have made the difference abundantly clear (hint: when the velocity of a beam line is already 0.999c, ie. for all intents and purposes streaming at the speed of light, an upgraded beam line on earth is very unlikely to have a velocity 10 times that of the current source...)

Then I pop open my current issue of an important science journal and find someone writing that there's 500C (i.e. 500 Celsius) summer temperatures at the site of an archeologic dig, right here on the Earth. Umm, probably not. (Meaning, that should have read 50C, so it's a transcription error, and none of us can cast a stone here, now can we?)

Gentle reminders to be humble.

***

Oh, oh, now here's an idea for a mystery novel or a thousand of them: environmental DNA. Basically, there's enough DNA floating around in natural water systems, from animals and algae and all and sundry, to do meaningful surveys on. Or, to implicate just about anyone the killer wants, in the right circumstances. Can you say spray bottle? I knew that you could...

***

Ah, naming conventions.

Mineralogy does this -> all romantic Greek/pseudo-Greek derived names. Up to the point where everyone realizes they're running out of possibilities and moves to "Screw this we're just counting elements and going with it"-name conventions. (monohydrate, half-hydrate...)

Assuming this is a general pattern, movement from human-memorizable names to category-memorizable names (i.e. from specific examples to a classification system with a certain mechanistic taxonomy) may be indicative of a type of maturity of a field. Not "We know everything there is to know about this" maturity, rather simply "We can describe the broad types to our students in a systematic way that everyone can understand even if they don't agree with or use it systematically" maturity.

You know, like the SI units system. Useful as common language, if not for any given area of application.

Vis a vis organic chemistry and the naming conventions. More honored in the breach than the execution, admittedly. Astronomical assignments, I suspect, have a similar issue, though occasionally we still get little joys like Ultima Thule. And if you really want some entertainment try and figure out proteins and biomolecular systems of naming generally...

Just for anyone out there thinks I'm picking on them: theoreticians [waves hand] are worse. Once an equation gets to a certain status or level of use, the fights begin over who thought it up first... That may be why you end up with Maxwell-this and Einstein-that and Boltzmann-other, because it's an occasionally useful way to head off the part where everyone gets out their knives and starts carving up the literature and whoever else gets in the way in the process.

***

On a completely different subject. Listening to the radio the other day, and I discovered I want something.

Actually, I want two somethings.

Now, wanting is a good thing, right, because it teaches us what we can't always have. Still, I have hope. I hope, really, for two little somethings.

I'd like Tom Morello to play lead guitar, or maybe Vernon Reid, I can't decide which. Ok, let's say I hope for three things.

Tom Morello and Norah Jones, say.
Vernon Reid and Rhiannon Giddens, say.

Or any combination or whatever, covering the song "What am I Gonna Do (With the Rest of my Life)", by Merle Haggard.

See, what happened the other morning, listening on my commute to the day gig, I caught "What am I gonna do" for the first time in a while, and what caught me was Roy Nichols' lead guitar (Roy was lead for The Strangers, Merle's backing band for years). Roy is precise, stylized, clean.

Tom Morello and Vernon Reid, in their own very distinct ways, are also incredibly precise and clean players. Which is why it struck me: I would love to hear what they do with that piece. The lyrics, the style, adult, very mid-century American songbook, but they demand a primal scream of a solo, constrained in some intimate way.

Poor description, perhaps, but Tom and Vernon are the two who jumped to mind; besides, seeing that type of pairing, with Norah or Rhiannon, oh wow would that be a good gig.

That's two. Counting on my fingers and finding I'm one short.

But those two covers would be the appetizer.

The final one I'd really love to hear cover "What am I gonna do"?

Brittany Howard. With the Alabama Shakes, by herself, don't care either way. I just think that there's a song and singer and guitar player pairing I'd very much hope to hear someday.