iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Like Wes, that my compositional work will go somewhere. Not so much the pieces in hand (though they have their virtues), but the larger one of becoming a composer, reaching audiences, making things happen on stage, etc. @dame.is

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And on this, I don’t believe studying anything will save you from being a bore. You need to care about people and the world you share with them. Humanities classes are about that, but don’t guarantee you’ll carry that spirit forward into social intercourse….

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Confession: my formal liberal-arts background is quite weak. My BA was in linguistics, but I fulfilled the requirements in the most scattered way imaginable. I did not take history, or English beyond an intro, or literature beyond a semester of the medieval German kind.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

But would they want to talk? Shirley Jackson probably, but the rest would keep their own counsel

From David M Rubin:

If you could get everyone there a dinner party with Emily Dickinson, Alice James, Shirley Jackson, and Simone Weil.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My cat had a tooth out, and I OK'd the vet's suggestion of a slow-release anaesthetic. I hope it spared him some pain, because it has changed his personality. He's mostly away somewhere else in the house, rather than hanging around me, and when we meet he greets me like a friendly stranger

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I interviewed at Salesforce 15 years ago or so, and in one session with an engineer asking me technical questions, I became aware of a faintly yeasty smell. The liquid he was drinking from his ceramic coffee mug was evidently beer....this was not, however, the reason I did not pursue the job.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The dilemmas of setting Dickinson -- metrical poetry in general, but ED in particular. No question that a rhythmic song style, particularly an 8.6.8.6 hymn such as "O God, Our Help in Ages Past", lies behind Dickinson's work. hymnary.org/text/our_god...

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(1) It's great that the "incorrect" or mystifying variant appeared so soon; (2) The replies on this are classic peevery

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My library has a single “courtesy notice” email form, reading “The item(s) listed below are due in two days or have been automatically renewed.” You have to scroll down a full page to learn whether you’re in danger or safe….

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I was a little off. This was in 1955, accepting the Oscar for the score for "The High and the Mighty". aaspeechesdb.oscars.org/link/027-15

Lady and gentlemen, because I working in this town for twenty-five years, I like to make some kind of appreciation to very important factor what make me successful to lots of my colleagues in this town. I’d like to thank Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. Thank you.

(Transcription from some dubious website -- can't vouch for the eye dialect.)

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

#musochat ahoy! A1. Vance, he/him, San Francisco, composer. A2. I composed a bit at age 8 or so, thanks to a good teacher, then got started in earnest at 12-13. But I didn't stick with it, and swerved away for decades.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I sent a note to Institution Y to inquire about graduate study. Then I rewrote it to send to Institution M. When I reread them, I saw I had not quite said Y in my email to M, but instead "I plan to apply to [] this fall", with a blank in the text. I imagine these departments have seen it all

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Many will celebrate the early tonal and free atonal work, and rightly so. But I have a few favorites from the serial period too.... www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQL0...

youtube.com

Schoenberg: Trio for Strings, Op. 45

YouTube video by Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

“Dolores” is impressive in small doses and remarkable in a historical sense, but not the most interesting Swinburne to read now. The occasional comic polysyllabic rhyme is one flaw in the tone, and it’s punishingly long…

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

So, uh, how did that work out for him? www.marsyastrio.com/bio

The Marsyas Trio takes its name from Greek mythology, inspired by the bold, spirited passion of the celebrated pipe-playing satyr who dared to compete with Apollo in a musical contest.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

[“I was not familiar with your game” meme]

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I too have come to find the little 3/7 indicators obtrusive. I think what I’d prefer is just a mark showing a post is part of a thread, maybe that it has a predecessor or successor.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Did a human write this phrase? (“closely associated with the movement…”). Such an abstraction of lived history (next to an electrically specific image). It appears to come from this anonymous page: artistarchives.hosting.nyu.edu/DavidWojnaro...

artistarchives.hosting.nyu.edu

Artist Biography - David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Tonight was the board meeting for a little composer co-op that runs chamber orchestra concerts. One of us recently decided to write up a set of notation standards (comparable to mostlymodernfestival.org/institute/mu...). ...

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

RT with your home river. This is the river in its normal state, but I can remember driving across one of those bridges when it was in spate, and churning violently.

Lee Marvin in Point Blank (1967), on the LA River. It's actually carrying a bit more water than normal

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A no-joke no-qualification hot day in SF, but not for long.

Google weather forecast with a high of 87 F today, then a more tolerable 75 tomorrow and a more typical 66 on Friday

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Choosing a title for a piece recently, I went with "Kingfishers" -- arbitrary in a sense, but between this and Olson's kingfishers, they triangulate an area of poetic meaning. Plus they look good! www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54310/...

Common Kingfisher, photo from Woodland Trust (UK)
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/animals/birds/kingfisher/

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It's well past midlife over here, but I'm changing career direction after 40 years as a computer programmer.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I've posted at least one Sol LeWitt video before, but I think this might be the best. (I do wish there were more detail at the end.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnKg...

youtube.com

Sol Lewitt

YouTube video by ConcentrateTV

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I was not previously aware that Franco Moretti and Nanni Moretti are brothers.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Emerges from oblivion (though famous in the US)

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I see my cat post was approved by Federico da Montefeltro and Cattista Sforza en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diptych...

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I think my cat and I may have figured out how to play with real reciprocity. 1. Nobi hides 2. I fling out one end of the worn audio cable 3. I slowly reel it back 4. At some point, he bursts out of his hiding place and kills the cable Repeat as necessary. theonion.com/war-on-strin...

theonion.com

War On String May Be Unwinnable, Says Cat General

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Not sure who needs to hear this, but the death of the author wasn’t an irrevocable event that happened fully and decisively because one Parisian decreed it

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Turning on the radio, I realize how deeply the distinction between a step and a skip has been burned into my ear

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Let me know when that well-known historian poster stops posting long threads of insults to the appearance of administration figures

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Did Bluesky just add automatic numbering of posts in threads? 🎉

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I see that one of the movies the San Francisco Symphony is presenting with a live soundtrack is The Ring. No, not that Ring. Nor that Ring either....

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I hate the sentiment “you have to know the rules before you break them”, or the variant claim that artists must excel in traditional styles before they have the standing to attempt experiments. But you know who would have passed with flying colors?

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I've been thinking about the poetic trope that animals are like us, but better -- that they don't suffer from certain human defects.

Tweet from @jon_snow_420, on 11:54 AM · Oct 28, 2015

god: i have made Mankind
angels: you fucked up a perfectly good monkey is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

[not sure if there isn't an earlier tweet/tumblr version of this]

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Heard something pretty good on the radio -- the website said it was Brad Mehldau, Nocturne no. 4 in Eb. The playing wasn't smooth in the way classical pianists try to perfect, but it was a pleasant surprise. Then the announcer came on and clarified that the composer was actually Fauré.....

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

My vestigial perfect pitch means sometimes being able to hear specific familiar pieces in the right key in my head. Before clicking “play” on this, I paused to audiate the first note (in context, the raised fourth degree) as clearly as possible, and was right on

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Submissions are anonymized. With one score PDF, though, the composer's name appears briefly on the title page and then fades to white. (Reload and it does it again.) How? and Why?

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The occasion is that I'm judging submissions to a call for scores. I'm currently at the stage where they all sound bad, including my own. (Yes, the judges overlap with the submitters. We're supposed to refrain from voting on ourselves.)

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I find it annoying and antimnemonic that the opposite of "concert pitch", in musical scores, is "transposed". Because either way is transposed -- the sounding notes of the horn are a fifth down from the written part, or the written part is a fifth up from what we see in the score.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The horrifying exchange WW is referring to is a good test case for a majoritarian or statistical understanding of word meaning. In particular, tradition is something more than just some numbers of people.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

My cat is having a bad day after getting his shots yesterday, first clinging, then hiding behind boxes for hours. I brought him some of his favorite treat — frothed oat milk — and he perked up, drinking it all and then wandering around to investigate things

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Currently on day N of fussing inconsequentially over tiny details in a short piece. Putting it in a drawer is not an option, for reasons including a deadline. The procrastination/writer’s block has to be addressed somehow. For the moment, the way out is through.

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

To my surprise, this got at least two angry responses from people who then blocked me. As we used to say, if you made a joke on USENET, would anybody know?

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Welcome to Bluesky. Please familiarize yourself with the following accounts to understand the range of opinions it is acceptable to express

Edward Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs (1880). Supposedly there were different models for the different figures, but it takes a subtler eye than mine to distinguish them

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Vance Maverick @vancemaverick.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

RIP Yayoi Kusama. The early phase of her career in New York is fascinating -- and then what followed was incredible, with global fame in her old age. www.mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/...

mplus.org.hk

The Life and Career of Yayoi Kusama: A Timeline | M+ Museum

Learn about the biography of Yayoi Kusama with an illustrated timeline from 1929 to now and witness the healing power of art.

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