Mapping Dreams

This is unlikely to come as a great shock to those even casually familiar with me, but let me say it: I'm a dreamer. Virtually everything that I have done with any enthusiasm over the course of my life has been an extension of those dreams. I've worked in theatre. I've written symphonies and short stories. I play games. Dreams even shape my travel, since I yearn to see those places that most inspire my own creativity. But perhaps most relevant to the story I've lately been telling on thisforum, I spend time crafting elaborate environments where the corporate dreams of myself and others can unfold. Sometimes this is expressed as models, which impulse is amply displayed in many previous posts. At other times it comprises scratchings on paper. I sketch out notes, character descriptions, lists of names, flowcharts depicting fictional organizations, family trees, and even maps . . .

The above is an example of the sort of thing I might draw quickly for use in a single game. I'm not going to call it a "disposable" map, as I never throw anything away, but it's one that doesn't require too much time or effort but still conveys the information needed. I can look at it and use it as a visual reference as I try to get my players lost in the world. Sometimes I might even show them.

For a moment I'm going to step outside my story and along pass one small piece of information: The Compser's Cartographic Works is back in business. In fact, if you've a map you'd particularly like for a game or your wall, drop me an e-mail. I'm accepting commissions. To skip the fluff and simply see what I can do take a look here.

But if you've the time I'd like to take you on a journey of imagination through a fairy world, its history, and about thirty years of my own life. Come with me to a place I call Abithar.

It's a lengthy trip and it starts in what could be either an unexpected place, or perhaps an entirely predictable one. If you're geeky, from the U.S., and of a certain age maybe your first map looked something like this . . .

What we have here is a dungeon map loosely inspired by Abu Simbel drawb on graph paper using standard elements taken from the D&D basic set that came in the red box. Ah, the musings of the ten year old mind. Mine was quite symmetrical but with just a touch of right-brain whimsy: note the little efficiency apartment at the back and the museum the players might visit if they survive a half dozen dragons, some trolls, three horned monsters, and so forth. (The little boy brain is a goofy place.)

Like most little boys, my first character was a "fighter," as recommended by the introductory solo adventure. In spite of TSR's nomenclature, I preferred to think of him as a knight. And knights need castles . . .

. . . and castles don't float in space . . .

. . . so I had a third map. Ultimately, an eleven-year-old's fantasticalized version of Cornwall was born from this original impulse.

Abithar was an imaginative collage of every piece of fiction I'd read at that point. Places were stolen from Lloyd Alexander, Anne McCaffrey, Susan Cooper, and T. H. White, among a great many others, and dropped into my rescaled land. American boys generally have no real conception of the actual size or geography of England, so thar be mountains and dark ancient forests and many many times the acreage. The size has fluctuated a bit, alternately growing and shriking. The road distance from Abithar to Caer Dathyl, (or Dafyl, in later editions) has varied from about four hundred miles to perhaps six hundred, which is a bit larger than the two hundred driving miles between the approximately corresponding Kelynack and Bristol. Despite the coastline I eventually came to conceive of Abithar as a roughly England sized part of an approximately Japan sized country. 

For a time, I was content to draw inside these new lines. I made castles for my friends, I connected Abithar Halls to the outside world via Portsmouth and a few bridges, and I began to flesh out the other towns.

There was initially some ambiguity to the location of Abithar. It started in the South of England, but moved briefly to The Forgotten Realms, where it acquired a few new placenames and landforms.

At about this time the humble knight disappeared from the story, replaced by his son, who was perhaps my last bone-fide D&D character. As my own role changed from that of a player into the game's master the character was rewritten as king of a new realm.

One of my several complaints with the Forgotten Realms was that there simply weren't enough maps. I wanted more. The sixteen year old me set about charting my own corner of the world with tremendous care. (The careful observer will note the forms of the original village in the center of the growing city immediately below.)

Frighteningly enough, there are more. This is a good sample from the period, but I was a busy little beaver. I mapped out large cities and tiny crossroads alike. By this point Tolkien had made his influence much more known in my fantasy imaginings and while the placenames from other sources were retained you might notice his ghost hanging over a few cities. Simultaneously England crept into churches and castles alike. In the meantime, I was growing increasingly unhappy with the setting. The graduation to high school afforded me with both better research materials and more artistic, historical, and geological sophistication. A bit of sketching one day and some experiments with continents breaking up and drifting about propelled on a variety of oceanic spreading centers led me to the realization that I didn't need anyone else's landforms.

Thus the humble castle had grown to an entire globe. All that remained was to refine the new world. Names would change. New maps would be crafted. A few minor elements might even move around. Obviously interruptions would eventually be necessary to shrink the ocean extremities and fit a flat vision onto a round dream. But the basic shapes of the world and even much of its contents were now set, so I moved on to crafting its history and ultimately fitting Abithar properly into it.

And there Abithar sat for some time. In college version 1.1 I probably did more role-playing than any time before or since. Consequently I got a lot less done. Eventually a fatal error in the programing left me without a regular role-playing group, but still longing for a fantasy fix. I turned back to my own maps. I now had a big fat college research library available, and several friends who had done time in the SCA. Lined paper and crude sketches no longer seemed appropriate, so I began revising, rescaling, and generally artsifying Abithar.

This last is still ongoing. As I work on it you, dear reader, are invited to commission your own gaming map. For a quite low low introductory price I'd like to try my hand at making a map for you, suitable for hanging on your wall or handing out to your players. The place names and land forms can be very much to your taste. It can be as simple as a pen and ink line drawing or as complicated as an isometric view or even a painting. Interested parties are requested to e-mail:

symphonicpoet@gmail.com

Uninterested parties are given my sincerest apologies for the rough ride. All are given my thanks for their patience. I hope you have found something here to your liking.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Gas Powered Perambulations

Please bear with me as I take one of my occasional breathers from the world of modeling and delve back into other subjects almost as far removed from poetry and the symphonic, but still closely entwined with art.

A bit of background to catch up my newer readers: my wife is from Vietnam so I have recently had the pleasure of periodic travel to East Asia. While there I've spent most of my time in  a lovely vibrant town once called Saigon and now officially designated Ho Chi Minh City. I've come to the conclusion that one of the more characteristic things about any given place is the way we get around. Ho Chi Minh is quite unlike most other places I've been. (And I've covered some distance in my short life, touching the soil of forty-seven states, nine countries, and three continents. Typically for at least 24 hours and in many cases quite a bit more than that.)  The US is a car country defined by fancy highways of almost exorbitant length, with a few significant exceptions. (And even the exceptions have their share of pavement.) Europe, with less space for roadways and more people per square klick, is remarkably multi-modal.

Asia, particularly South and East Asia, make Europe seem only slightly more densely populated than the moon. I expect most people have seen pictures of Asian traffic; the solid walls of people on the streets of Mumbai, the miles long parking lots leading into Beijing, the trains breathing pressurized human life in and out of Tokyo. Ho Chi Minh isn't quite like any of these. There are no trains to speak of. There is but one highway (though a second is under construction) and it isn't as yet a parking lot. And no one seems to walk much of anywhere. (I'm a little surprised people walk from their bedroom to their front door, but the houses are small and vertical and motor vehicles don't do stairs well.) So what is Saigon traffic? Motorbikes: mopeds, scooters, crotch-rockets, even the occasional cruiser. It seems as though all the bikes at Sturgis have been hit with a shrink ray and gotten very jiggy populating the streets and lanes of a large, but surprisingly compact Southern Florida style paradise by the millions. It may be the largest collection of two-stroke love on earth. And of course everyone is honking or beeping at all times, traffic laws are fluid, and signals are scarce. In short, it . . . is . . . FUN!

Some minor temporal liberties have been taken, but I hope this gives you a flavor of where I'm going. It's a fun town, Saigon, a great place to relax, eat, visit friends and family. It's a busy, bustling place where a lot of people work and play hard. It makes for a truly memorable power-assisted walk in the park.

Work, websites, and piano concerti

My most loyal followers might note that I am, as usual, overdue for the annual fleet review. I am sad to say that this will continue for a little while longer, but do not fear, ships will assemble in the harbor very soon. But first, a bit as to why this has not yet occurred. (After all, the Grand Empress just had her first jubilee. It is that time.)

Ships have lately taken a back seat to music . . . or at least thoughts about thinking about music. Or perhaps more accurately fury at a website lost. For somewhat over twenty years I, your humble composer, have been a minor functionary at the local ShowMe University Inc. I was mostly retained for the sake of hanging heavy things in the air once or twice a year. Well, said University has revamped their HR procedures. They used to purge the rolls of employees who had not worked for one calendar year. Now they do it every six months. One rigger who works twice, or maybe once a year never got the memo.

So I found myself without benefit of the free (though less than completely convenient) web-hosting services I'd enjo . . . excuse me, used for the last eight years or so. I have been reconstructing my website in the wilds of the internet, away from sheltered academic surrounds. In short, I am back. It took some real effort to get here, and there will no doubt be one or two bugs to work out, but I'm back. I may not be completely finished with my U career, since they do still need to hang heavy things twice (or once) a year, but the terms of any engagement will henceforward be different, more interesting. Indeed, more rewarding. And I will maintain my website elsewhere. More fun anyway. I pay a little for the privilege, but I have more freedom and better access. It's hard to complain now that the work is more or less done.

So if you can stand a little music, take a poke around my new demesne. I had long meant to talk about music on this blog and do so only rarely. I even have good reason to do so presently. I'm releasing the first elements of a Piano Concerto into the world on my new works page. This is yet another piece whose thematic material came to me in the shower one day. I like to think of it as Rachmaninov meets minimalism. Sort of. With luck it's one of my more approachable pieces. In any case, I hope that you might enjoy it.

Sincerely,
The Composer

A brief poetic distraction . . .

Several years ago I wrote a poem while in transit between one place and another. At least, I believe that's when I wrote it. You see, I got home, edited it some, and promptly lost it. Well, I finally found it, edited it some more and appended the date when I think I wrote it. I hope the date doesn't make it fiction, but even if it does I still think it's one of my better travel poems. Without further ado I bring you:

Information Dance

Sound.

Color. The

Air is a confusion of

Information.

Esters bunch in pressure waves as

Frequencies collide. One

Wave transmits another, permits

Passage, but

Not

Without

Interference.

Photons skim past the

Rarefied stuff of

Matter.

In the same

Space other ideas find

Transmission.

Above us

Grand algebraic

Dragons bound among fluid clouds of chaos

Transposing genes through

Non-Euclidian space,

Fermenting synaptic construction and

Mixing,

Matching, giving

Passage while

Changing like

Two particles in a

Vacuum.

In this vast cosmic

Radiation of information

Our own attachments

Are both

Distinct and

Infinitesimal.

Next to unity

Beethoven measures the same as

I.

9 December 2011

A bit off topic but oh so important . . .

Here's a little photo-essay that explains a few things.

(The baby is unrelated. Well, not unrelated, exactly, but not ours.)

This is a little overdue, but hopefully it gets the point across. Thank you.

The Face of the Earth or Where Have I Been Lately?

First, to discourage the ugly rumors that might pop up when you disappear for six months:

I am not dead. In fact, I am VERY not dead. I'm so not dead I'm getting married. (Death tends to annul marriages in even the most conservative of cultures.) Which also explains why the 2012 installment of the annual fleet review didn't happen in 2012. It's been rescheduled as a coronation review. More on that later. But for now I give you a few photographs from a recent trip to visit my intended Queen:

These things tend to begin when you arrive in distant places. It's been my turn twice now. Next time she can do the arriving.

Once you're done arriving, you might pass an immigration interview.

After which celebration might be called for . . . 

Sometimes young Beans like to shoot zombies with peas . . .  

More elaborate celebrations might call for trips to visit interesting places like museums filled with rusting locomotives. (I do have a somewhat anomalous definition of interesting.)

Thank goodness she loves me. I enjoy my locomotives, but they'd be a lot less interesting without good company.

Buddhist temples are also worth seeing.

If you chance to visit Vietnam, do eat the food. The food is generally incredibly fresh and very very good. And the array of different eats is positively dizzying.

Did I mention temples?

The landscape is also quite lovely.

Since Vietnam is conveniently located between India and China (hence the regional exonym Indochina) Vietnamese religious culture is nearly as rich and ancient as Vietnamese cuisine. Buddhism is much more prevalent than Hinduism, but both can be found. I believe this is an older Khmer icon but I will not attempt to comment on who might be depicted.

Somewhere in the above room I can only surmise there must also have been an icon of Shiva. As it happens, he's not the only creator/destroyer who can dance.

Of course, smiles from loved ones do give us a reason to dance. Cam on em yeu. Gap lai em rat sau.