I'm going to post twice in a row because I didn't see this post before.

Cheryl, if you want to go, try to make it happen. It's well worth it. The Guthrie center is a great place.

hi alicia:

So you are my daughter's age and all the rest sounds pretty familiar. It's cool. Sometimes people are a drag like bark is what a snake needs to shed skin and grow the new one. Music is the balm on the touchy spots while that is going on.

When I was your age, it was Arlo and the cast and Crew of We Are the World In Jeans and Patchouli Oil.

The good news: it passes. The bad news: in the rear view mirror, it is one of the best times.

Good luck!

Len, that Second Life is a dangerous place! It's a lot of fun, tho, and someone who had been around awhile showed me around and gave me some lessons on how to navigate, find free clothes and stuff... I was up WAY TOO LATE!!!

The person was also very frank...it seems there's social predators there, too..looking for the unwary. I'm glad I have myself firmly rooted in real life...I can see why some would prefer their cyber life.

@sue: I would never recommend Second Life as the place to host a virtual Guthrie Center. I'm familiar with the problems there and besides, it is a closed proprietary client-server system. I sent that URL along to illustrate what some musicians are doing. I played the first virtual reality online concerts back in the 90s in Cybertown when it was all VRML. We used recordings for those while our avatars played and we chatted. It was eerily like meatspace gigs in some aspects with some of the same user behaviors.

The option I would go with is the ISO Standard X3D worlds using for example, Vivaty or X3DDaemon. That way the center would have full control of the world and what goes on there to the extent this forum has that kind of moderation and full rights to the content. Trust me that I would never ask the Guthrie's to get involved where the weather does not suit their clothes. There are options for hosting themselves, having it hosted, etc. But NOT Second Life. I don't think the weather suits the clothes.

Because I sit on the Board of Directors of the Web 3D Consortium, I have access to other more open IP-unencumbered technology, companies and volunteers who would like a project like this specifically because the ideas the Guthrie Center espouse they share. I was the jefe of the project that created IrishSpace in the mid-nineties and it was the highlight of that former life for me and my family. Long story....

If you want to look at one of these built for standalone use (non-multi-user) with music in mind go to

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/rol/Titleworld.wrl

I built that as a concept for a virtual reality album: the notion is one where the 3D sound engine uses ambient music and multi-arc characters to create a non-linear presentation inside the world. So instead of a world hosting the music like a video, it actively mixes and switches it. It is an album that you navigate and it even surprises me what it will do sometimes.

To explore that, you need the BitManagement plugin and you'll need to be on a Windows machine. Also, it's a very rich world and you need to let it load. If you aren't on broadband, I'd not do it because the sound file load times even with compression are onerous and it uses a lot of textures for those Hindu temples.

http://www.bitmanagement.com/download/p ... t_VRML/X3D

The viewer is free, safe and you can deinstall it easily.

I'm really not trying to sell this. It's not about that. It's about outreach and fun, and where a new way of working with music can be had. IOW, my way of sharing with this community and one of my all time music heros a bit of the magic I have. If there is no interest, no foul either. I've been working on combining my music with real-time 3D for over a decade so call it a real Jones on my part. It is the art form of this century and I'm just one of the sheepdogs holding a door open for kids who's artform this is and they will be the masters.

When the pianoforte was first introduced, the harpsichord and guitar players fought it tooth and nail. When Dylan brought The Band out, same results. Change always meets the troll beneath the bridge at the gate to the city.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/rol/TitleWorld.wrl

I hate case sensitive URLs....

Sounds like when you were my age, the world was an alright palce to be. however, I have decided that being who I am in this world is okay. That's another thing that I finally learned at the Guthrie Center, but that's another story.

It's not the time or place, the zeitgeist, it's the person it helps you to be. My time was war, assasinations, innocence, corruption, government conspiracy, and movement stacked on movement, but also the race to the moon, music that beat most of what has happened since because it mattered, the Smothers Brothers, Laugh-In, Hair, the Beatles, Emma Peel, and on and on.

There is nothing to fear and everything to love and no buts that matter if you can just do that. At the end of the day, breath and the touch of another are all that really matter.

Obviuosly I wasn't around then, but when I look back at that time period that things that I see are completely magic to me. It really intrigues me. There was so much happening. Iunderstand that you guys had things that were unpleasant happening such as Vietnam. The generation that I'm part of doesn't seem to have a real motivation for anything. There isn't that spark there.

Alicia wrote:

"There isn't that spark there."



Hi Alicia! Start makin' some sparks!

I'll try!

Alicia, don't you want some things bad enough to spark a fire to get them?

We were living in a time of death and sorrow and hope and comfort. We were living when TV worldwide was exploding. But with the exception that we are a mostly tolerant nation now, all of that is with us again. They just threw a war that makes zeros of us. Hopefully that will wind down but it is just another war. We keep having them. We don't seem to want to stop bad enough to stop.

"When will we ever learn?"

Unlike then, you don't have to go far to find mates. You have that now here. When I was your age, I would play my Arlo Guthrie records and dream of meeting the man I was copying. He was a hero in so many ways and not that much older than me. In 2009, in a way because of work I and friends of mine did in the last forty years, I can do that sort of. The Folksinger hangs out.

But you need heroes of your own generation, and they have to believe in something, represent something, be something that you want to be too. That's what heroes are for. They are guideposts for your heart, mind and soul.

First, you have to ask yourself what you don't have and are hungry for, then what you do have and can use to meet that hunger? Life is a hunger for life itself. That's why vampire novels do well. They reflect what will not be reflected in the mirror unless you look very well: a hunger for life itself.

And it's all out there. What is in here are distant voices, quite real, but disincarnate. The life you want isn't that. Not at fifteen.

It's with your mates, whoever they are and whatever they become.

A poem from a long ago summer....

"We are voices of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are.
And we are very proud of ourselves.

We must begin here and now
A new continent of Earth and Fire
We can be together laughing
Tear down the wall.
Tear down the walls.
Won't you try?" -The Jefferson Airplane

I dunno...for someone who's goal is to get there...and at this point in life is wondering if it will ever happen...a virtual one might give some comfort...

It isn't that I odn't want that spark to be there, it's just hard to get it there. I can't really get in my peer group, the main reason being they see me as someone who is different. I'm not well recieved at my school, but I'm not going to change who I am for that. I figured that maybe if I still stood for what I believe in it would help someone stand up to people who are bullying them.

It makes a difference, Alicia, but a gift given with something expected i in return is not a gift at all. It is a bribe. It can take a while before the good things you do roll back over you. Do them anyway. It will make not just a difference to others but to your own perspectives.

Sounds corny but it works. Here's a gift. Do you know who Cecile Chaminade was? She was once one of the most famous composers in the world. After she died, she has been almost forgotten by the public, but her works are quite beautiful and so was she. I used images of her and Cecile Mendolsohn to make the following, but primarily Chaminade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgOTCxkhqog

I don't expect anything back in things that I do. I just hope that I can help someone. I want to give what I can, and I don't want anything back. It doesn't matter, just knowing that I did something good is enough for me. I want to give to people, and I really don't expect anything back.

Also, I will look into her. I've never heard of her but she sounds good.