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
:)
September 09, 2009
September 04, 2009
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
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
September 02, 2009
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
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
September 01, 2009
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.
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.
August 31, 2009
Music is starving
I cut all my nails off my right hand tonight and effectively removed my ability to play guitar. It's like trying to play a drumset with pencils. I played for a few minutes out front after I worked on my charts but decided to come in when a truck slowed down next to me specifically honk and leave. I don't understand it. I take that back. I don't understand people who choose not to use words. It's a beautiful night and the moon is hunting. I didn't need a car horn 4 feet from my head on an otherwise silent night. He did, however, have the good graces to leave me in a cloud of diesel exhaust.
It's been damn near comfortable outside. We've had winter skies for the past few days. If you were to just look outside, the colors could pass for about 40 degrees cooler. I'd rather it not get cold again when it comes right down to it.
I'm listening to radioactiv, a student-run radio station out of Mannheim, Germany, filled with all sorts of fun stuff. The day I can stream European radio on my mobile device is the day I don't ever need another mobile device. I told myself I wouldn't buy a cell phone until I could wear it on my wrist. And I've technically adhered to that since my phone/mp3 player/hockey puck was provided to me while I was working on the festival last year. LG actually has a watch phone out but the technology isn't where it needs to be. It has to be waterproof with a thin build, a Windows mobile platform, large storage, audio out and great reception. Mmm and an AM/FM tuner, too. Come to think of it, every popular cell phone should have come with a radio tuner rather than a low-quality camera. I guess I have to wait for the Mac tablet. I won't be able to afford it so I should just fix my HP tablet and keep working on my time machine. It's almost done anyway.
I'm going to go get upside down and think about the weekend... think about being on a beach in a place time forgot.
It's been damn near comfortable outside. We've had winter skies for the past few days. If you were to just look outside, the colors could pass for about 40 degrees cooler. I'd rather it not get cold again when it comes right down to it.
I'm listening to radioactiv, a student-run radio station out of Mannheim, Germany, filled with all sorts of fun stuff. The day I can stream European radio on my mobile device is the day I don't ever need another mobile device. I told myself I wouldn't buy a cell phone until I could wear it on my wrist. And I've technically adhered to that since my phone/mp3 player/hockey puck was provided to me while I was working on the festival last year. LG actually has a watch phone out but the technology isn't where it needs to be. It has to be waterproof with a thin build, a Windows mobile platform, large storage, audio out and great reception. Mmm and an AM/FM tuner, too. Come to think of it, every popular cell phone should have come with a radio tuner rather than a low-quality camera. I guess I have to wait for the Mac tablet. I won't be able to afford it so I should just fix my HP tablet and keep working on my time machine. It's almost done anyway.
I'm going to go get upside down and think about the weekend... think about being on a beach in a place time forgot.
August 30, 2009
Still looking up.
After sitting at a desk all week, there's not too much I like doing more than loading some new music and riding my bike aimlessly around the city for a few hours. The weather was kind on Friday after the storm and I don't think it got over about 100. I rode down to the springs but the water level was still pretty low. I ran over to the Green Belt to check the water level but it was pretty dry there, too. There were some puddles in the crevasses but nothing substantial. Since I was the only person out there, I ended up doing handstands on the rocks and inspecting various things on the ground.
When I was a kid, I used to sit on my driveway on hot afternoons and fix my eyes on one position in the concrete. Aside from being generally absent minded, I did this to see how many different worlds were alive on a different scale. It usually took a little less than a second to find 3 or 4 miniature storylines unfolding on the alien landscape. I'd put my face right on the surface to get a terrestrial view of the landscape before becoming an obnoxiously omnicient cameraman with some particularly bad commentary. As I remember it, I'd spend about 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon with my miniature buddies before being distracted by something else. If using 75 years for the average human life expectancy and 90 days for the average life span of the common Texas ant, I spent about 6.34 ant days with those bugs in a small part of my Saturday afternoon. I must have considered this to some degree as a kid because I was always more than able to provide life-changing, truly awesome situations for those poor ants. They were troupers, a great cast.
After playing on the rocks for a bit, I took my usual route to the recreational fountain next to the Long Center and watched the kids perform a ballet with the water. As many years as I was tortured for being the smallest kid, I miss being able to look up at the world. The fountain was a veritable oceanic circus to these kids. I must have made a subconscious note of this because I ended up peddling downtown to watch some skyscrapers go up.
I parked around 3rd and Colorado in some fancypants new residential area and watched the housewives do what they could to keep the local economy afloat. I watched the construction crew across the street haul load after load up and down the 40 story scraper with their monster crane perched precariously on the roof. It was nice. I was a comfortable ant again.
I burned across the bridge and headed over to Freebirds for a monster burrito. I made a quick stop at a custom guitar shop and wondered how anything less than 10,000 years old could possibly cost so much. I still don't understand it, really. Why not donate the money or teach yourself how to make guitars if you want to spend that much? A piano is one thing... but a guitar? Really?
I got my burrito and decided to take Riverside to Alameda or Alta Vista through Travis Heights. Those are my favorite streets in Austin, side by side. They're hellacious on a bike, but they remind me of the houses up in New Hampshire where I used to spend my summers. It's quiet and clean and... just generally fantastic. On the way down Riverside, however, I performed some impromptu acrobatics for the birds. I wanted to go from the road to the sidewalk before turning the next corner because it was more of a switchback... more than a 90 degree turn. There was a spot in the road with a tapered curb that I incrorrectly assumed was all asphalt. It seems the road crew who recently made the curb only made half of it out of asphalt. The other, taller half connecting the asphalt to the sidewalk, was dirt. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but it was like quicksand after the hard rain the day before. My front tire went about 8" into the mud and it ran into the face of the sidewalk underground. I flew over the handlebars and thankfully saved the burrito in my backpack. I landed on my hands (gloves!) and my shoulder took most of the impact. I have no idea what happened to my bike but the seat looks to have taken the worst of it. It must have gotten airborne, too. I ended up with a kind of scary looking shoulder and a sore palm. Thankfully there was no audience for the performance, but it certainly would have been a good show.
Johnny's dog helped me eat my monster burrito after I rinsed all the mud off when I got home. I was back on the bike and riding again yesterday. I blame the music. I blame Ariel Ramirez.
My week started today. Johnny got back from New York this morning and I no longer have the house to myself. I'm gonna update my COT sheets and do some work before the rest of the world starts moving in a few hours.
August 27, 2009
It rained hard for the first time in several months this afternoon. I made it home just in time to change and run out to get drenched by one more Texas summer.
As the storm passed, there was a moment that reminded me of the aftermath of a truly awesome event, one of those instances in life when you're caught off guard so thoroughly that the following few moments seem to float entirely suspended in time. I'm under the impression the only reason a person ever comes back to reality in these situations is because there's another person present with a far weaker imagination. Interestingly enough, I was alone.
The rain continued heavily well after the sun broke and I was for a moment perfectly in between two fantastic things. Looking down my street, the lightning kept charging westward. The thunder must have beaten it out of the city because it wasn't any more than an afterthought. To the other direction was the afternoon sun already busy stealing the water before it hit the ground.
The rain fell steadily for several minutes with nothing less than a beautiful sky looking South off the porch. There were kindly no cars on the street so I just stood in the river in the road and listened to the rain applaud its own show against the oak leaves across the street.
Like any other Texas storm, it's turned into a thick evening. The sounds of the engines rattling away from the restaurant across the street move through the air just as heavily as the train's horn a mile away. There isn't a breeze that could move a feather but I know that's what the mosquitoes were counting on.
Growing up in Houston, there were two kinds of storms. Winter storms started around December and ran through March. They'd roll in at about 9am and turn the sky pitch black for a few hours before the skies finally opened up. All the creeks and bayous filled quickly around the neighborhoods and it would keep raining steadily for between 6 and 48 hours. It would always be overcast for the entire week and they made for some particularly awesome muddy afternoons. The other kind of storms were the ritualistic afternoon summer storms that showed up at about 5pm every day through August and September. That's what we got today. The storms would crash and bang and shake the world for about ten long minutes. Those who waited it out were wise. Everyone else just got wet.
So I met my weekend with a shower, a scared cat and a disgruntled peacock from across the street who apparently had no reason to find shelter through the deluge. The ragged looking dinosaur was perfectly content shaking me down for cat food when the rain stopped. I obliged as I so often do.
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