70179

70179 is the PLU code for Thompson's organic raisins at the HEB on Oltorf. I bought a pound of them last week but the mice were into them a couple hours later. I rifled out of bed when I heard them scrounging and... didn't even see them. I had to toss the whole bag.

It's been a great weekend. I found out the best way to make it an effective weekend is to pack as much in as possible.

I went out to eat with my sister and ended up crashing there Thursday night. She needed a ride to the airport early so we were up and moving at 6. I dropped her off and she presumably made it to Denver. I went back to her place in the hills and slept for three more hours before being awoken by a screaming hawk outside. It was pretty cool. When I went out on the deck, I found out it was actually a rotary saw screaming through a piece of lumber. I can't say I wasn't disappointed.

I scratched the classical guitar and washed clothes for a couple hours. Then John called me from the tablet repair shop in California to tell me all was good and the machine is fixed. Apparently a memory socket had failed and... it just seemed like a power issue. It's as good as new and the USPS is bringing it on back to Texas :) John tried to tell me that the failed socket had completely corrupted the brand new OS I had installed and that they needed to charge me an arm to reinstall it. After I informed him this was not the case, he backpeddled awkwardly, upped the price on the physical repair and then we talked about payment :) So instead of paying an arm and a leg, they made off with my leg and I'm happy about it. I ran home, updated all my PayPal info and got it done. I'll have my beloved machine back shortly :D

I checked the UT music schedule and saw there was an organ student performing his master recital at Bates. I had just enough time to pedal up to Wheatsville and grab some frito pie before running to the concert hall. I ate half of it out front and then had to get into the hall.

This was the first time I had ever actually wanted to hear organ music in person. I was not raised in a religious environment and every exposure I've had to the instrument in my life has been through some hollow, repetitive piece that just begged for an ending. Last night, however, was nice. I was bowled over by the 50 feet of pipes on the wall in front of me. The picture above is the organ in Bates Recital Hall taken on some other occasion. Some pipes sounded like MIDIsauce trinkets and others sounded like barges' horns. It was tremendous. I had an old lady sitting behind me the entire time content to clear her throat once a minute. One cell phone went off, but it was otherwise a great show. The program was varied, contemporary and ancient and not too heavy on the musical indoctrination. I found myself grinning and cringing interchangeably through an incredibly demented Bach piece, lost but for a few moments of kind melody. That freaking guy. I'm glad I went. I was underdressed and I know everyone around me was jealously aware of the frito pie in my backpack.

After taking his bows and enjoying his veritable graduation into the Masterful realm of organstuffs, he sat back down and finished with some flipshit piece that I think he might have written. I can partially understand why he performed it if it was his... some kind of personal celebration. But if it wasn't his, he should never be allowed to touch an organ again in his life. And if it was his, he should never be allowed to compose another piece for any instrument, especially the pipe organ, again in his life. What he played, what he left the audience thinking about, was easily the most disgusting collection of notes I've ever heard. There was not a single melody. There was not a single coherent statement made throughout this five minute long death of Beauty. Please bear in mind that this is coming from someone who can comfortably listen to Herbie Mann's Gagaku and Beyond. Anyway, I guess since I just went to hear sound come out of the pipes, I'm partially happy I heard what purely bad organ music sounds like. It was so fucking bad. I was reluctant to clap and acknowledge his musical accomplishments as a whole simply because he subjected his friends and family to what is easily one of the worst-assembled compositions known to mankind. I'd rather listen to 40 cats having sex in stereo. I heard someone asking him about it in the lobby after we all stumbled out of the auditorium and he said he considered it "enchanting" with a grin on his face. A goddamn volcano is enchanting but that doesn't mean you tell your friends and family to go swim in lava. Anyway, I heard a huge organ being put through its paces. Mission accomplished.

I rode on home and although I had intended to post on here last night, I started watching Bones on Hulu and was unconscious about 20m into it.

I was up around 9 today and scratched on the electric for about an hour. There's not much better than playing an electric guitar naked. You can't play a church organ naked, anyway.

**Just remembered there's a St. Vincent album I need to get.**

After the guitar, my landlord called and we talked for about 30m. I'm gonna remote into his and his mother's computers sometime this week and clean them. TeamViewer rocks like that. And earlier in the week, my roommate told me he'll be moving out. There's a freaking chance I'm gonna have the place to myself for a bit.

In my endless pursuit of Consistency, I took off on my bike again around 2 this afternoon. I needed pecans so I went to Whole Foods and got 8oz. I also got a Jonamac apple which tasted like flowers of all things. Created in Geneva, NY, the Jonamac originated from a Mclntosh x Jonathan cross made in 1944. Formerly identified as "N. Y. 44428-5," the name "Jonamac" was selected on September 21, 1955 from a population of 2,474 seedlings originally planted. Yep.

Then I rode a few miles to the Green Belt to check the water levels after all the rain. There was a lot of standing water and even a big pool down at the bottom of Campbell's Hole. It was good to see water down there. I called my mom and talked to her a bit while I ate my pecans on the rocks. There were no people there and... it was good.

I left and went down the road to the Springs and put my head under a waterfall. It was also... good. I am rich with adjectives this evening. I watched the dogs bark and swim and the kids smoke their pot on the banks. I feel sorry for anyone who's not in Austin.

After that I just pedaled home, up Bouldin (literally) and made it back successfully exhausted. Then I went to the grocery store and got all sorts of good stuff including, but not nearly limited to, 70179, Thompson's organic raisins.

I also got a Key Lime Pie and ate a quarter of it a little while ago. But I need more. I just need more key lime pie.

>> "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley

I've got another note, now. Proofreading and music kept me from the pie. You know how sometimes you hear song that make you want to throw your hands up in victory and look around the room to see if any invisible people might want to celebrate the song with you? No?

>> "The Grace" on Act I of Neverending White Lights

The strength of the song is not in the lyrics for me, and is probably therefore not too rewarding to most the first time through. I think the dynamics were mastered in the most formal sense and the song is just presented very well over the air. Jimmy Gnecco will, in fact, be on Act III which will hopefully be released later this year. That album will probably pull me up by the bootstraps and single-handedly get me through a large part of 2010.

Key Lime Pie.

Completely off topic... if you have the time, watch some of the old recordings of Van Cliburn's performances on video.google.com.

To my lady, my lady

I swear to Dirt... there is no greater thing than this time and place.

House Fire Bird by Bumcello is built by masters of sound. It starts out with a rhythmic aria, the air terraced by installments of violins and cellos comfortable with their own presence. In the back is a drummer tapping his feet with zest... his left on the hi-hat pedal and his right on the bass drum pedal. Back and forth he goes. A quick tap of a wooden block off-tempo immediately takes an American listener from what might have originally seemed like a piece written quickly for a moment of cinematic sincerity into a geographic exercise in sound. Walking right into the middle of the scene is a jazz flute, singing and humming along. It's the kind of tone and melody you'd expect to hear from a couple city blocks away in South America and wonder who the lucky people might be who could possibly be enjoying their afternoon that much.

The flute and the drums continue a romantic conversation while the wind runs through the strings in the background. The flute player almost breaks ranks and starts singing through the instrument. It spills a metallic, tubular voice clumsily into the middle of the table rich with the enthusiasms only shared by friends. Then it breaks down and the true colors come out.

A classical guitar appears on the right channel and paints the full Portuguese portrait. Complete with percussive rattles and rhythmic melodies, a serious listener realizes the futile role words actually have in the world of music. The flautist returns to singing through the instrument briefly out of sheer excitement while the group continues to chip away at a sturdy slab of Composure.

The strings come back in a step lower and pull us back underwater for a moment of reflection. Wandering back across lines written in the sand, we wonder which lines ever held any meaning in the first place. One person's revelation is another person's preoccupation. The circular sound moves with the implied certainty of a circular wind. And wooden taps let us know that there are friends behind us.

The driven pace dissipates once more and gives way to the guitarista tocando su love. Encuentra what you love about the world and the world will provide que te encantas every time. Include heritage and value in your breath and intention will inherently be both kind and sincere.

Color your surroundings with Intention and you will be known for who you really are.

To my lady, my lady... maybe you're in Brazil playing a flute somewhere.


>> "House Fire Bird" and "One Two Three" on Lychee Queen by Bumcello

Weekend warrior

I got to sleep in this morning after a long week. I meandered through it comfortably and even found time to get a haircut.

I tooled around for the rest of the morning and watched the markets waddle into the weekend. I had good success on the charts this week with the British pound: 1 for 1 against the Swiss franc and 2 for 3 against the yen. The dollar generally moves inversely with the States' equity markets. The markets did well this week. When the US bailed out the Japanese banks in the 90's, the yen became closely tied to the dollar and it's been used as a commodity trade ever since (not so much in the last year, but in general). Weekly MA divergence has taken gbpjpy right down to the 200 daily MA and it'll probably press right on through the weekend. The 200 will be tested Monday and probably again on Tuesday. Hopefully the euro will break down against the dollar and let gbpjpy run down to about 140.

The mice in the house had a field day with the popcorn in the kitchen. There were kernels strewn all over the countertops and floor yesterday morning. I'm strangely alright with it. I'm just disappointed Johnny's dog isn't active enough to do anything about it. Traps are set. All I can do is wait.

I played the classical for a little while before getting restless and heading out to the front yard.

Johnny let the yards and the majority of the house fall into a state of general disrepair while he was living here alone. I know he's a smart person. He's just in a different place mentally. He wants Mark to repair things from Florida when they can be fixed with a little effort. And that's one of several reasons why Mark wants him out. Mark effectively wants to rebuild the house early next year and Johnny's response to the idea was less than encouraging. I'm not opposed to it in the least.

Anyway, I dug in and tackled a few plants out front. The neighbors' ivy had rolled both over and under the fence and blanketed most of the plants in the front corner of the yard. It felt good to get out in the dirt again. I even got to battle some old shrubs' stumps with a hatchet. I was victorious. It's a welcomed change not having to brush hair out of my face all the time now. Next week, I'll clean up the flower beds and.... everything else.

My dad's coming into town tomorrow on his way back to Houston. He and my sister and I are going to meet for food somewhere around town and enjoy the weather. It should be what most Americans would consider one of the few fine days we see here, neither hot nor cold. We get three or four in the early part of the year and usually about as many in the Fall. We still need more rain but I don't think any amount would get the water flowing before the cold hits. We'll see.

I'm getting tired of being in the city. I've been in it for a couple years now, working nonstop. I'm trying to think of things I can do to keep it changing. Maybe I'll start going up to the campus more often. I can't say I'm going to ride my bike any more often in the cold because... I prefer the heat. I should, however, have my tablet back shortly and will be able to read my ebooks again... yeah Google books :)

By the way, if you haven't seen Fast Flip, google it and... check it out.

Hooverphonic

There's water in the air but it's not falling anymore. It seeps up through your toes from the dirt but the ground is still very thirsty.

I don't remember what happened Thursday night. I think I just came home in my regular stupor after work and watched the markets roll into the weekend. The yen is still moving in step on the weekly charts so... gbpjpy can be sold a couple times a day. Ah... that's right. I fell asleep. I've been taking these fantastic, accidental naps when I get home in the evenings. I'll get home around 5 or 6 and watch to see how everything's moving before the Asian markets open. This past week, I found myself asleep like a dog. I need to start setting evening alarms again. I'm not even staying up late. My brain just needs to rest after hours of babysitting my customers'... my customers.

I don't want to dwell on work because it's an entirely worthless exercise. But I should say that even as a self-proclaimed optimist, I'm finding it harder and harder to chew the leather provided. And I've eaten a lot of leather. I got paid the same to sit with dogs in a yard and watch them lick eachother. Right now, I save thousands of dollars of computer equipment from being thrown away daily and I'm being compensated the same as the folks telling customers to switch the cords around to, "see if it works." That building provides all the anti-love and emotional punishment depicted in the movie Martyrs. Purported vertical movements translate into horizontal movement with greater workloads. Why those running the place don't just overhaul the entire payroll scheme to operate as a real IT company is so far beyond me. Maybe it's not even an IT company. I don't even want to think about it. I could write for days about it but they're not paying me to write. And... yep... there's the humor. I'm already writing for them... just for my own enjoyment, apparently. The main page of the company's website has grammatical errors. Company-wide, individual performance is judged on how many bear traps a person has sprung in the last month. I'm done with it. If they paid anywhere close to the industry standard, they'd be pretty goddamned surprised to see just what exactly happens which Richard gets excited about the work he's doing. Again, maybe I've just been incorrectly assuming it's an IT company because of the intricate (and exceedingly extraneous) technical knowledge required to appease angry customers. Maybe it's just a technically-oriented customer support service doing emotional damage control. Well, that's exactly what it is. The only things keeping me there are the physical location and the few older people I get to talk to in the Northeast who are still realizing the benefits of having the internet at home.

My friend Shelley and I went to see Inglourious Basterds yesterday. This was the second time I had seen it in the theaters. She hadn't seen it and... I wanted to see it again. It was just as good as the first time. It might have actually been a little better. Staying with the plot required some effort the first time around. The hardest part the second time through was maintaining my composure in the moments just before Tarantino's trademark "shock" scenes. I found myself giggling comfortably out of step with the rest of the audience after the bludgeoning/maiming/abrubpt pain. The sound on the reel was crackly and inconsistent for the first 3 minutes of the movie. But it sorted itself out and my blood pressure dropped right back in line shortly thereafter.

After the movie, Shelley opted to go up to her cousin's place way up North rather than hang out for the evening. This was entirely agreeable. She's going to move out of her Austin place shortly and just stay in Boston. She's a sweet lady but I don't think either of us were intending to take it anywhere definitive. I dropped her off and celebrated my Saturday by getting a table for one at the Spaghetti Warehouse.

I sat in a traincar as the only passenger next to a stuffy company party of some sort. I had my headphones in and basically just disappeared inside my tall glass of beer and sturdy chunk of lasagna. I gorged myself and displayed my satisfaction by scratching myself victoriously after the dust settled around the table. I'm a predatory animal. And last night, the pasta just wasn't fast enough. The cheescake was also unable to elude my cat-like, Tabletop prowess.

I've been playing with my song in my room like it's a shiny new toy. It's pretty fun. The verse breaks down and enters the chorus seemingly prematurely. It catches whoever's listening and gives me some space to play both of them a little lazily... closer to free verse than a strict tempo. It's different every time and has therefore kept me happy :)

Today I backed up all my gigs of trading stuff and looked at charts. I updated my COT sheets and reinstalled my MT4. I actually have more to do, come to think of it.

Then I did a little maintenance and reinstalled my tablet OS so I can ship it out to the repair folks later this week. I'm looking forward to being mobile again. Don't tell anybody but... for the price of a Kindle, you can get a TC1100.

I found a pretty cool Belgian band called Hooverphonic this afternoon. Actually..

Before I write more about music, I want to take a minute to write about the rain. This was easily the most rain we've gotten in Central Texas in a year. My front yard was one massive puddle. Even the dinosaurs across the street were taking shelter. It rained steadily and heavily for at least 45 minutes here and it's stayed pretty cool into the evening. It's supposed to rain a bit more tonight.

Back to music, Hooverphonic is a group out of Belgium with a trip-hop, ambient foundation and some clean female vocals on top. Their music has been used in a few movies, commercials and shows, but apparently their frontlady just left the group to pursue her own musicstuffs. I'm getting their discography as we speak so I'll have a better idea of their sound shortly. So far, it's clean, rolling and comfortable. It's light but direct with pretty decent instrumentation and colorful, classically European pop melodies.

I've not been listening to my French stations recently. I think I need to stop watching so many movies on Justin.tv and get back to freakin work. If I stop watching Jtv, I will effectively be without entertainment through the week. Jesus... my exercise will have to be my entertainment. I'm going to have to brainstorm on this. I'll write about that soon. Actually, what I really need to do is find a lady who likes to take naps after a long day and then work the rest of the night on things that make her happy. Of course, I'll have to work less to do that. Tastes like irony to me.

>> "This Is Not An Exit" on Stay What You Are by Saves the Day

Songs songs

I wrote my first song in several years yesterday. I finished it today and... am happy to have something to come home to.

I actually went straight to my mom's place after work and helped her with some things... hanging pictures and cleaning her computer. She's feeling a lot better and is back up and moving. She's got more optimism in her breath and she's had a steady stream of friends and family keeping her mentally active. She's still moving slowly physically, but she's improving noticeably.

The skies have been stepping back from the ground, recently. The morning clouds stay longer, for a few hours. And once they finally burn off, there's what appears to be a crystal ceiling perfect for breaking sunlight across the ground. The recent soft heat inexplicably adds depth and dimension to the already scalar sky. And the clouds' movements resemble those of tides instead of waves. Winter is clearly on its way.

One of the joys I've found in the world of computers is being able to open several streaming radio stations in different instances of browsers/media players. I've got three French talk radio stations going right now while I attempt to immerse myself without buying a plane ticket. I also found what I think is a pretty great language utility provided by BBC... http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/talk/. Realplayer doesn't stream in FF, but IE will run it all. I'm sure it has other languages, but I haven't looked yet.

The days of my week are falling like banks. I watched a seriously disturbing French movie called Martyrs on Sunday night and have been recalling the more colorful scenes while helping various people at work. If you're easily (or maybe not so easily) disturbed by scary movies, this one might be more trouble than it's worth. 50 First Dates, however, was a great look in the other direction. Martyrs is highly disturbing. You've been warned. It's an experience.

I'm going to go listen to some more streaming traffic reports from Dijon.

Annnnd... I made a particularly awesome wallpaper out of pictures of Natalie Portman, lasagna and key lime pie. I could probably live off of any one of them for any amount of time.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/__cw1i5ytxys/SqdG8iItpFI/AAAAAAAAD1U/YhIVifnwC9g/natalie.jpg

:)

Last train to Lhasa

Last night was my Friday night. Tonight was my Saturday.

I rode up to the UT campus both nights to enjoy the remainder of the warm weather. The seasons are definitely changing, but I'd personally like it to stay around 95 all year :) There's not much better than sweating, methinks :D

Fall's been riding a Canadian wind through the state the last few days. After I crossed the Congress bridge last night, a stiff wind ripped through the buildings between 2nd and 4th and almost blew me off my bike. I pulled onto the sidewalk to face directly into it and felt just like a dog with its head out the window of a moving car. It was nice.

I took my usual route around the capitol building and along the Blanton Museum before weaving around the campus streets. It's good to see people back up there. It starts to feel desolate in the summer, a little like the stereotypical desert everyone thinks exists in the middle of Texas. It's nice going up there infrequently because I continue to find new, increasingly awesome parts of the campus I've never seen before... that and I enjoy getting lost.

So last night I came across an absolutely huge stone plaza somewhere to the East of the tower. I rode around and picked out the magnolia tree I'd most like to climb should I get the chance. And the moon reminded me of Cairo.

The plaza was about 200 yards long and 50 yards across with two lawns on either side of the main stone esplanade. It overlooked a long row of academic buildings straddling yet another vast mall rolling down a big hill. The lights illuminating the tower behind me were so strong that they cast a watery, ambient glow across the stone surface. The old oak and magnolia trees surrounding the plaza were busy dancing in the wind and sending the season's confetti across the shiny view. The big moon over the grass mall seemed pinned to the sky behind a thin, dirty and humid haze that was being whipped around violently with a mess of oak leaves.

Billie Holiday and I hung out there for a little while on the stone before I started back. I was hungry and stopped for some lasagna on the way. It's never too late for lasagna.

Today, I took my time and made my very comfortable way until I went back to the campus for the Bach concert. There were so many bikes on the roads tonight. It was amazing. I rode North with a super sweet "Julie" who apparently handles VA stuffs for the university. She was pretty and I was hungry, a terrible combination. I kept riding with her into the bowels of Hyde Park just to see where it would go (figuratively, literally).

It's a little known fact that up around Speedway and 30 something there are about 40 square blocks that are actually spinning on a giant, mechanical lazy susan. No matter the direction you're going when start, you'll always be heading somewhere else when you leave. Up turns into down and left into right. Everyone switches their nouns and verbs and... it's just a scary place.

Julie completely called me on my geographic ignorance and politely told me the fastest way to Wheatsville. We parted ways and I certainly wouldn't mind running into her again.

I slammed the vegan frito pie at the newly renovated Wheatsville co-op just as the clouds were rolling in. My full stomach and I made it to the concert hall just before the thunder. The storm lasted for about 20 minutes and it was a good dousing by anyone's standards. I stayed outside and watched the clouds until they turned blue again. I did have a book, but rain has generally been just as exciting as the circus for me.

In my opinion, almost any performance at the Bates recital hall is a good show. Growing up in Houston, I was exposed to a really great Arts program. There were Parisian ballerinas in The Nutcracker and all kinds of people playing with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

Regardless the musical program, I'm a sucker for raw sound in a concert hall. I'll listen to someone whistle and play the spoons on stage for an hour and a half just so I can listen to the acoustics bounce around. I prefer headphones for my music typically. But classical music should really be heard in an auditorium built for sound.

The performance was brilliant and the musicians outstanding. I reached nirvana and Bach does not suck. I burned home and the streets had already dried.

Now I'm tired and have a little lasagna left. I also have an urge to watch something by Akira Kurosawa.

Three little birds, each by my doorstep... singin' sweet songs of melodies pure and true...

>> "Last Train to Lhasa" by Banco De Gaia

My home.

When I was young, I told my mom I could see sound... physically. I'm sure it was some skewed childhood epiphany, but it cemented in place an everlasting affinity for musical awareness.

My parents used to put me to sleep with cassette tapes of Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Beethoven regularly. I typically just stared at the ceiling and made shapes out of nighttime shadows. Sometimes during the more raucous moments, I'd be inspired to grab my flashlight and play Airplane. Airplane consisted of standing on my bed, reaching way up and holding the light as close as possible to the ceiling. When the light was as small as possible, I slowly started pulling my hand back and moving it farther and farther away from the ceiling. The expanding circle of light mimicked an onncoming airliner with frightening accuracy to a 5 year old. In order to get the full effect of impending doom, I'd often end up on my back with both my arm and my flashlight far off the side of the bed well below the rest of my body. My eyes would be large and my open mouth was usually making a fairly stupendous noise. A quick test in a dark room will show anyone just how fiercely awesome Airplane actually is. It works under the covers, too. But it's always best when the airplane accompanies 60 trained musicians rattling the sanctity of a concert hall built for that very music.

The following statement is being made only after I convey clearly that I feel all people are perfectly different. I do not and wish never to resort to any kind of gross generalization or categorization when forming an opinion about any one person. With this in mind, I continue.

There are two types of people in this world: those who expose their minds to the Arts to learn about themselves and those who expose themselves to the Arts to learn about the world.

I'm entirely convinced that the nature of conception, composition and performance, the life span of the Creative process, is one of the most important aspects of our life. At least it has been for me. There is, of course, the steadfast spiritual notion that one must embrace directly what he or she imagines in order to satisfy the soul. This is not the notion I'm going to talk about tonight.

I'm going to talk about my experiences with music over the last 15 years.

After being classically trained on clarinet and understanding what sort of attention classical arrangement actually requires, I decided to begin experimenting a bit more with composition. I chose, however, to do so within the realm of contemporary song structure and cadence. In short, fame and fortune readily awaited behind a sturdy mound of youthful enthusiasm.

My first independent adventure in sound was through rhythm. My dad taught me how to keep a standard beat in 4/4 on the dashboard of his old Jeep to the Doobie Brothers cassettes that had gotten him into trouble in college. I have ever since considered rhythm to be far more important than any possible collection of notes. If you can't maintain an audible thought process through rhythm, you're a mental invalid drooling your way through the air... and uncomfortably, at that. Stomp your foot and clap your hands to the beat and you're 90% of the way there. Once the shimmer of a new, sociable talent wears off, once a person begins to track their own progress with their own practice, weaving diddles into songs makes afternoons go by surprisingly quickly.

My parents got me a drum set during the trickier part of my life. I have no recollection of life at home for a couple years because that's... just the way it is. I do, however, remember the drum set. I played it until every playable piece was broken. It lasted about 3 months. When I was done with it, it sounded like, well, it sounded like a disgruntled fourteen year old banging on a broken drum set.

I accidentally joined a band at 15 and was intending to play the drums for our inaugural performance. However, while practicing in the garage and running through the set list we deemed suitable for a sibling's 16 year old party (yeah Edwin McCain), it was discovered that I was the only one able to carry a pitch.

I sang for the next 3 years and played about 50 shows for some pretty fun kids. I spent weeks on end in recording studios in Los Angeles where we worked 20 hour days doing what we loved. We made contacts and contracts with some fancypants folks and created some great music.

After I dealt with some internal creative conflicts, I resigned comfortably and cast my adolescent pen back into the spinning maelstrom of alternative rockstuffs. And good riddance. I hope you had the time of your life.

I stopped singing and started playing a classical guitar not-so-classically. I started listening to what makes music enjoyable rather than looking for enjoyment in music. It was not uncommon for me to charge my knobs-to-eleven sound system with the task of filling my immediate vicinity with Rachmaninoff's various piano concertos. I was happy to be the crazy guy in the apartment upstairs, a veritable Doc Brown playing music at 1.21 jigawatts. As far as I was concerned, I could play a little Tejano followed by some European black metal and as long as I finished with something happy like Louis Armstrong, the folks around me knew there wasn't anything they needed to worry too much about. Whether or not they were happy is probably another story. Jazz has never carried through walls very kindly.

In the last couple years, I've added a number of ambient and chillout dub artists to my collection. Rough and crisp highs on synthesizers mixed with lightly Middle-Eastern influenced melodies win me right over. Add some fluffy, well crafted strings and rolling but not pounding drums and I'll damn near make you breakfast just to hear it.

When I was trading London sessions, I got into Hearts of Space, an atmospheric experiment of sound and color running across hours-long songs. I hope to begin meditating again shortly with the Hearts' assistance.

So I've acquired a bit of a producer's ear over the past few years. Going from writing recreationally to being a performing musician and then to being a recording musician was terrifically exciting. Our producer and engineers didn't hesitate for a moment to let us know we, at 16 and 17, were competing with our multi-platinum idols. Given the texture of my audience, I simply chose to pursue a different style of painting.

When I hear songs now, seldom will I listen to any of the words the first time through. My ears turn into the ears of a dog as I mechanically scan the available spectrum of sound for audible suggestion. I've always considered the cadence and color of a voice to be more important than the words. Anyone who knows what they're doing can sing about a loaf of bread. If the vocabulary, prose and the pitches are correct, you can make Alfred Hitchcock float like a summer breeze. Further into the song, my breath either shifts to follow the artists' thought process or it doesn't. Such is the mindset of those "in the know." Such is the nature of the greatest music we have. In my opinion, the thought of conveying human Inspiration and Pleasure inside of three single minutes of a person's entire lifetime requires an enormous amount of energy. It requires such a clear examination and subsequent presentation of one's thoughts that the artist must be so laden with raw love and emotion that the magnificent seems mundane and the petty seems comfortably perfect.

So do different people hold art, and music in particular, in different regards? I think some people use the words of what they consider to be "wiser" artists (writers, poets, songwriters) to piece together solutions to their own problems. Others choose to devote themselves to creativity in general. These people address quite different priorities and seek personal and emotional growth specifically to uncover a way of life that provides a greater frequency of moving moments, of experiences with love and profundity at their core rather than a life relying on the experiences and summaries of others. I think the real idea at work here, regardless the profession or medium, is the willingness to recognize wisdom, to step on the shoulders of lessons learned whether or not they've taken place in the particular manner implied.

In the most rudimentary sense, one person will have either more or less quantifiable memories than the other person in any one conversation. The scope of human emotion, however, does not vary between individuals. Greatest and worst memories move side by side between friends and strangers alike, regardless the age or particular experiences. Some clearly strange people (myself included), actually do outlandish things to manipulate their bodies and recreate the biological effects of the great moments to which we aspire. But I'm getting off topic. The human emotional spectrum exists only in relation to personal, individual experiences. I generally use this as my justification for flooding the other party in a conversation with emotional information before they even know if they can trust me as a human being.

My experience with the life of the Creative process, with conception, composition and performance, have together shown me the true potential of my words. It led me to a very conscious decision I made a few years ago to speak my mind more often, regardless the emotional effect it has on other people (within reason). I personally feel we don't pick up rocks to make sure what's under them stays hidden. I know I'm also guilty of being pretty quiet. I've always been. Several people who don't know me consider me perfectly flipshit and lost in a dream world of enchantment. Interestingly enough, after doing what I've done, magical enchantment along with an eye on the distant future are all that actually interest me anymore. Women often think I'm implying something sexual. It's terribly off-putting for many people when I say what I think should be said because the last things people expect to come easily in conversation are Trust and Respect. Once those are addressed emotionally, the remaining impact on people's egos leaves them just confused and generally opposed to further conversation. I know it's supposed to be this way and I'm doing what I can to figure out where to go from here, into and through tomorrow as comfortably as possible. But people generally seem like they've wandered unknowingly onto my emotional railroad tracks on the Plain of conversation and can't wait to get off of them.

I still eat my words far too often, but I'm really working on making them more palatable.

So these are the colors of my home. If I didn't have eyes or ears, I'd still be able to hear and see sound at the same time. I'd bang on pots and pans and make everyone else wish they could experience actual, biological enthusiasm again. My imaginary conversations with the artists I feel I know so well are some of the few things that make me laugh anymore. The others are poorly constructed plot possibilities that end up looking like an elephant on a tree limb. Ears are in short supply and as baffling as it sounds, apparently in short demand. Should we be having a conversation any time soon, my favorite conversation is about travel and about people who might have made you laugh at some point in time. Otherwise, I like being generally quiet and watching things come and go with good people.

This is my home.

>> "That Home" and "To Build A Home" on Ma Fleur by Cinematic Orchestra

ADD

ADD isn't so bad. Being mentally rampant has left me optimistically imaginative. However, I just started looking for figures on Japanese balance of payments in Firefox and ended up tooling around in Safari with Azam Ali on Pandora and Natalie Portman's wiki page in the second tab. And now I'm invariably on blogger rocking my housemate out of his capris with Banco de Gaia's remix of Endless Reverie. I really wouldn't want it any other way.

I pressed hard and was able to get out of work just an hour late tonight. I got home and traded the Asian open. The yen did its job and let me get out to the barn to hang like a primate shortly thereafter. Now that summer's over, the markets should move just a little farther just a little faster.

I tried playing guitar but was again relegated to a horribly pitiful state. Like trying to play a drum set with hot dogs, fingers without nails do not make classical strings sing. It makes them stare at you ridiculously. It makes them question your masculinity and insult your personal character. They are unwavering in their pursuit to destroy any creative confidence that might have manifested itself throughout the day. Inspiration seems to have taken a back seat to physics today.

>>"Scratch" on Collide by Beats Antique

I've been on an ambient dub kick for the last two years and I don't know if I'm ever going to get out of it. I need to get back into Rachmaninoff and blast my hands every night again. That's when the colors come out. This EU-UK-NY underground stuff is crystal clear, but... I've gotta get back to some raw roots. Overproduction killed the cat. I need to dig up some old flac recordings of the Louisiana blues men. It's situations exactly like this that make me wonder if ADD is a disease at all. The mind is a muscle.