An Obscure Place

Welcome to the home page of Timothy Ballan. If you came here without knowing much about me, I am a writer whose creative focuses include neoclassical music, poetry, different types of essays, and different types of stories. This site currently hosts a sampling of curious albeit unprofessional visual art and, in the form of sound clips, (finished and unfinished) musical pieces. It also includes links to stories, poetry, essays, and written music available elsewhere on the web.

So why the title "An Obscure Place"? Well, it is the title a story I've written that is rather representative of my penchant for following strange, absurd, and obscure paths in my creative endeavors. It is about a boy's journey into a nonsense realm, where he learns many interesting philosophical truths. (I also have written a score to accompany reading of the story!) It will be released in the book "Stories and Poems from Underground" through createspace.com.

Feel free to link to my Youtube page (which could have been its own page here entitled "Videos"), youtube.com/timdb85, my Scribd page (which houses written music of mine), scribd.com/timotree, and my store at createspace.com, www.createspace.com/3548591.

This site is updated often, so check back again soon if you wish. Hopefully you'll find this place to be a pleasant diversion, even just for a one-time visit.

--3/3/12: Replaced most of the music files with versions recorded using the latest version of my music composition software; the result is a more realistic sound. I also added four new pieces and a link to my first album for sale (for cheap!) at amazon.

--8/31/11: I added four musical pieces I wrote recently, and added two photographs I took recently. Also, I updated a lot of existing music files with versions that more accurately reflect intended tempo changes, dynamics, etc. in pieces. I did this mainly with the files for twelve pieces I intend to put out as a demo CD for local recording companies working with local artists in my area. I intend to call it something like "Music for Life's Film", suggesting a film music-esque nature to the music. I would also label the genre "Accessible Contemporary Classical", to distinguish it from the majority of today's classical music.

--4/9/11: Put up links to my books soon to be published through createspace.com: "The Theory of Happiness" and "Serious and Experimental Poems".

--3/10/11: I replaced most of the synthesized music clips with updated versions, based on an upgrade to the music writing program I use.

--10/27/10: Replaced several music files with updated versions, added photographs and drawings, and added a link to a twenty minute documentary I made on urban sprawl.

--10/22/10: Added a new piece to the music page and a link to a recently published book of mine to the stories page.

--10/3/10: Replaced the MIDI file "Floating Through Jupiter's Atmosphere in a Glass Bubble" with an updated version, and added a new file "Play and/or Improvise On".

--8/5/10: Some old music files were updated with revised versions while new pieces were also added.

--12/19/09: I replaced three music files with updated versions, and I added three new samples of pieces.

--12/5/09: The "Essays", "Poetry", and "Stories" sections have been reworked to link to work on my "Scribd" page, scribd.com/timotree.

--9/3/09: In the "Essays" section, I replaced "Fundamental Beliefs" with a new version of it, entitled "Highest Gratification, Highest Social Effectiveness". I then added a link to a related article composed mostly of material lifted directly from the old "Fundamental Beliefs" article, entitled, "Points Supplemental to 'Highest Gratification, Highest Social Effectiveness', Extracted from Old Drafts". I also deleted "Defining to Then Pursue 'Happiness'".

--8/24/09: In the "Essays" section, I uploaded an outline to "Fundamental Beliefs" and added a summary of it entitled "Defining to Then Pursue 'Happiness'". I also replaced several music files with updated versions while adding three new clips: "Nayef's Song", "The Conception of Life", and "Fall in Sturbridge, Massachusetts".

--8/3/09: I once again redid "Fundamental Beliefs" and added another new article, "Anti-X".

--7/29/09: I redid "Fundamental Beliefs" and a new article, "An Overconfident Person Replacing Their Overconfident Religion".

--7/13/09: I've come to find the original article entitled "A Basic Articulation of a World-View", its simplified version, and its summary to be unclear in the ordering of their ideas, so I took them off the site. I've come to feel that I communicated the same ideas more clearly in "Fundamental Beliefs", which I think I'll make a more detailed version of soon.

--7/2/09: I added a link to a new article still basically summarizing "A Basic Articulation of a World-View".

--5/31/09: A link to a summary of "A Basic Articulation of a World-View" at one-tenth its length was added.

--5/28/09: A link to a simplified version of "A Basic Articulation of a World-View" entitled "A Simplified Articulation of a World-View" was added.

--5/26/09: A major crux of "A Basic Articulation of a World-View" was removed, decided to overreach. Also, the old music file for "Score to 'Positive Images'" was replaced, as several other old music files were last week.

--5/19/09: Two new pages, "Stories" and "Essays", with links to google documents of mine were added. Updated versions of some musical pieces were posted in place of older versions, and some new-to-the-site recordings were added, along with new poems, photographs, and drawings. (As an interesting note, the photograph "The Soul of a Computer" was taken of a random printer "test page" that seemed too beautiful to be labelable as such.)

--8/27/08: Several musical pieces (two piano improvisations and two MIDI realizations of chamber works) were added.

--6/21/08: On the music page, I added a link to a Youtube video of a performance of a showtune I wrote––which accompanies no specific real or imagined show.

--6/2/08: A short improvisation based on an intensely bittersweet experience was added to the music page.

--5/25/08: Several photographs were added (albeit cell-phone-quality, unfortunately) as well as a farcical song about Christian nationalism, and an actually serious poem loosely about the possible superior intelligence of tortoises. I've also added a link to the site of my friend's who is a marvelously talented illustrator.

--12/9/07: Site was pretty much reworked.

--9/24/07: Several poems were added and some empty pages were deleted.

--9/15/07: A link to youtube of a humorous music video has been added to the music page.

--6/23/07: A new page entitled "Drawings and Paintings" has been added (with a link to it on the bottom of all other pages). It presents some of my drawings and paintings from over the years.

--6/22/07: A new clip has been added--"Meditation--A Beginner Playing the Shakuhachi; Dedicated to Perry Yung".

--6/06/07: A new poem has been added entitled "An Unfortunate Event, Described to Matt on the Phone".

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Drawings and Paintings