Friday August 6th, 2010

Yeah, a blog entry, why the hell not? I haven't done this in nearly a year, I see! The last time I wrote (an entry I never even posted online) I was commenting on the arrival of of autumn, whereas today I'd intended to comment on how the summer is taking it's usual toll on me. So another year older, nearly.

Heat, sleep deprivation, work run amok, and countless little things that need doing and thinking about. In June and early July I was floating around in our swimming pool and loving the weather, but summer has more recently been in familiar form: stress.

But I didn't come here to bitch about the weather (or the stress), I came here to talk about music. There is a little something going on, and it seems like enough of a foothold that documenting the progress might help it stick. I finally got back to spending time in the basement this past week; set up a couple of mics on and around the drum kit; ran these and a Variax into my laptop and out to a big (for the room) P.A. Now I can sit at the drums and loop percussion, bass lines, synths, and of course guitar, pretty much instantly. Yes, this is the same wheel I've been inventing again and again for about 10 years now. But I'm taking it more as a spiral than a circle. Having largely abandoned music tech last year - after noticing it was making me nuts, and otherwise making very little music - I'm now approaching it refreshed, with an eye toward practicality, an insistence on simplicity and reliability. Point being, this works, and I'm not going to mess with it much.

The next hurdle is the one I've always struggled with: pressing record. There is some real music happening in the basement, if only sporadically. I just have to get past my terror re: the Uncertainty Principle, and document some of it. And then refine the process, allow the music to mature into something more. Part of the problem is the fear of the recording process itself, and part of it is a chicken-and-egg stalemate: do I wait for the music to warrant recording, or do I record in order to draw the music forward. Yes, it's an absolutely stupid question, especially after 20 years of repetition. I'm merely admitting that I continue to struggle with it.

So, on a more specific, practical level, there is the nature of these loop-based improv sessions. They sometimes sound really good from where I'm sitting, but by nature of the technology, they don't tend to go anywhere. They're vamps, or perhaps chord sequences with riffs, but it's difficult to introduce any real movement. In fact, most of the commercial material in genres that prominently feature looping tends to "move" by introducing and stripping away supporting layers, rather than moving through song structure. If I can find a way to address this, and become comfortable with the process, it will open some doors toward spontaneous writing. What will come of that, who knows?

Also sitting with the acoustic and working on Beatles songs, and sometimes wondering whether it isn't a bit late to finally be approaching this essential repertoire. Same stupid questions, same obvious answers. Just watching the wheels go round and round.

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

An old familiar smell is always a wake-up call. In this case, it's the first "Pumpkin Spice" coffee of the season. I know this flavor is probably stored year-round in a silo in New Jersey, and probably manufactured in a labratory right next door, but some marketing types have decreed that this be a seasonal thing. So around this time every year, it's all pumpkin this and spices that.

So now it feels like autumn, my favorite time of year. The temperature drops, various tensions wane, and for me, it all feels like a new beginning (whereas the conventionally accepted "beginning" in the Spring strikes me as just so much mud, recovery from the holidays, waiting on the summer.) But this year, I don't feel ready. Probably a lot of people in the Northeast U.S. are feeling that way about now, since the summer passed silently by as one long, rainy day. Somewhere between mopping up floodwater and shaking my fist at clouds, half a year got past me.

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Today, for the first time in probably 5 years, I am a hundred and something pounds instead of two hundred and something pounds. (Or at least I was before breakfast; we're talking some pretty low tolerances here.)

I was actually very excited to be able to share that, finally, but then... I read the news today, oh boy.

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

This lonely document... I imagine that I have nothing to write, for months on end, and then suddenly I'm aware of all of the buzzing in my head - inner turmoil - and realize there's more to write than I possibly could. In fact, I'm presently flitting from paragraph to paragraph, a word here and a word there - I literally do not know where to begin. Are my musings appropriate for this blog? Probably as much as anything else I've written, intermittently, over the past few years.

My ambivalance toward my relationship with the guitar is at an all-time high. "Ambivalence" may be the wrong word, and "hysteria" may sometimes be closer. I'm never indifferent - that's certain - but my outlook doesn't hold steady for more than a day at a time. There is this sense of potential that borders on the absurd after all these years, but won't let me free. I know I can play, but increasingly feel that I have nothing to play. (And at the very same time, that there is too much to play, so little time and no specific drive or direction.) There's too much at stake, and there's absolutely nothing at stake. And there is rarely any sense of progress. Sometimes, like a man in quicksand, I feel like I'm losing ground for trying. At lessons - nearly the only time I play for someone else - I consistently and grossly under-represent my abilities - an old frustration that's become self-parody in its extent. (My poor teacher, trying to work with a student who not only cannot decide what or how to learn, but whether to learn!) So fuck it, I'll just walk away... no, I'll dig in deeper... to what?

In a word: madness.

As an underlying parallel, thoughts return more frequently to Guitar Craft. Since my return from the course in Argentina roughly three years ago (wow) there has been this arc in thinking, from my original, naive impression that GC was uniquely and exclusively "the way", a path that literally everyone should follow; to a sense that my experiences in GC had been invaluable, but had come at a significant cost; to an occasional sense in the present day that, just maybe, GC did more harm than good. None of these are quite right - even the seeming truism that "I got what I paid for" neglects some profound part of the truth - but none are entirely false, either. I have to be clear, though, that even in the harshest light, I'm not critiquing GC itself, so much as the ways in which it ultimately resonated with my own predispositions.

Regardless, I've been out of that loop for a very long time now, and probably had never been so much in it as I'd imagined. A prior, less intentional distance from GC saw nearly 10 years pass by while somehow, in my mind, I was still very much engaged. As the nominal completion (per Robert Fripp's announcement earlier this year) of GC approaches, I've sometimes wondered whether I should attend another course, and particularly, whether I "belong" at the closing course. On the one hand there is a sense that there should be proper closure - respect paid for an important part in my life - and on the other hand there is the sense that this would be empty posturing, devoid of real purpose. To complicate matters further, RF's recent diary entries make me question whether I'd be welcome. (Well, perhaps that is the very opposite of complicating.) It saddened me to read about GC memoirs being written, and to realize that I wouldn't even be a part of them, and I had to take a moment to consciously center myself on the rich life that is properly my own today. Embarrassing to think that as a young man I held an illusion that I was somehow central to GC!

I have said before that GC has been a series of near-misses for me. Now that I've intentionally taken a miss or two, it's striking to see how quickly its distance compounds.

Other, more concrete news - I'm dieting, with some success, and I finally bought a hardware looper. Boss RC-2: dead simple, runs on a 9V, I love it. Random factoid - we tried to have our driveway sealed. Began 2 months ago and it has been raining every day since. Huzzah!

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Aside from the Wine Flu springing eternal (yes, much like Hope) I had a wonderful weekend. Much of this can be attributed to advances with music - time spent practicing alone and with others - but probably best not to burden that with too many words. Instead, the wonderful and mundane:

This is the week I realized that it's entirely possible (and maybe even "OK") to enjoy a video game that, by most reasonable measures, is Not Very Good. Ordinarily my "inner critic" precludes this outright, but for the past few days I let my guard down. And I can tell you, sitting comfortably in front of a big TV playing Fable II (which I've bashed for many reasons, primarily for being just a little too "lite"), with a cat in your lap, a hot cup of coffee at your side, and a clear resolve to surrender several hours blurring the line between meditation and sloth... this is actually quite heavenly. (Note: my resolve was perhaps aided by there being few alternatives, courtesy of said Wine Flu.)

But that's not the worst of it. On Saturday night a few of us spent a ridiculous amount of time playing Peggle of all things, and we had fun. I'd say that puts me about 40 minutes into my own personal VH1 Behind the Music special - eg. "Rock Bottom." After the commercial break I'll head off to XBox rehab, and then maybe have a minor comeback playing acoustic gigs with some old bandmates.

And I thought the jigsaw puzze habit was embarrassing.

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Months since I've written. And looking back at my last post I realize there are good friends I haven't seen since my birthday party, which was nearly half a year ago. This won't do...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way all of the "social networking" technology seems to alleviate the need to write in more formal ways. As people find ways to express their every passing thought in semi-public, I notice less and less daily blogging, as one example. There's definitely a spontanaeity to it, and maybe it does away with some rote typing that was unnecessary in the first place, but I also wonder whether part of us isn't sort of boiling away in real time without adequate... gestation. What will finally come of our hourly witty comments about next to nothing? Will we ever bother to look back and consider the story they told? Or didn't? For some of us, it seems the pressure goes away, and then we just don't write at all. OK, not me, obviously, but there are a few friends whose online presence I've missed recently.

Taking it back down to Earth, though, sometimes I just have a bellyache that can't be cured by chatting with myself in 140-character snippets. (My thanks to Twitter, for precisely quantifying the 21st-century attention span.) Today's rant is brought to us by a (presumably) young man named "Number Blocked". Mr. Blocked called my cellphone at what I can only guess was about 3 o'clock this morning.

When you're trying to kick a cold, sleep is serious business, and sleep did not come easily last night. It took a pile of cold medicine and stupid TV - through about 1AM - before I could ignore all of the strange muscle pains provided c/o the Wine Flu. I'm guessing I'd been asleep for a couple of hours when the phone rang. I got my bearings and answered with a "Hello", and Number replied very matter-of-factly (almost seeming impatient that I hadn't picked up sooner) with one word: "Bob."

I told him he had the wrong number, and he said, "Sorry." I didn't lie by telling him it was alright, which is about as rude as I typically get on the telephone. He hung up. The funny thing is, it might have been alright if he'd started the "conversation" with "hello", or "sorry...", or even "ummm?" Just about anything besides, "Bob."

Now, I know the drill. We hadn't done the whole, "Is this (xxx)xxx-xxxx?" routine, so he'd probably call right back. (I imagined him standing outside a nightclub at closing time, pitching for the ride he hadn't thought to work out in advance.) I waited 5 minutes, then started to doze off. 10 minutes later, the phone rang again. I picked it up, barked "You still have the wrong number" into the mic, and turned it off (setting a new record for how rude I'll be on the phone.)

For the next hour or so, predictably, I couldn't get back to sleep. What really set me off wasn't the call, or even the follow up call, or even the caller's tone. (Or even knowing that this tiny misstep would probably take its toll on my health the next morning.) It was the "Number Blocked" thing. I tried to imagine this idiot's motivation when he blocked his number. Was he James Bond, configuring his slick new mobile? Or perhaps a stone cold playa' handling the the ladies? A gangsta dodging the man? I don't really give a shit, frankly - the idea of anyone deciding I can't call him, but he can call me at 3 in the morning, made me pretty much homicidal. I just couldn't stop turning it around in my head. What does "Number Blocked" say about a guy? That he doesn't want to be accountable for even the most mundane process of a making phone call (or, preferably, not), or perhaps that he's subconsciously aware that he's such a pain in the ass that nobody would answer a phone displaying his name?

Look, if you have a confirmed stalker, with a restraining order and the whole bit, I'll let it go. Otherwise, don't block your number. Just call the phone company and ask them to make your phone say "Coward" on my caller ID.

And... rant off. (Besides, I've called the phone company twice, and my phone still says "Cynthia".)

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Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Nearly a month's absence. The condition persists: it's easier not to write than to do so. This isn't always true, actually. Oh well, watch this:

This reminds me: motivated by an unusually generous discount, I went to Sam Ash on Saturday, hemmed and hawed and finally picked up the new JM4 looper, thereby delaying and diminishing a recording session... And I have been hemming and hawing since trying to decide whether to keep the thing - or even open it! - thereby delaying and diminishing all kinds of things. What a bargain.

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Monday, January 12th, 2009

A new year, and for me a new decade. 40. Whoops. But acknowledging my age is made somewhat easier by the transition into a new home, a sense of having achieved something significant on my begrudging passage into middle age.

i.e. I am not a rock star, but this house is fantastic.

We moved in gradually beginning in late November, and my 40th birthday party doubled as a housewarming. It was wonderful, but also a little weird: We'd put a lot of expectation on that night, and I'd imagined our celebrating with abandon for days. But alas, it was Tuesday, and it was a fortieth birthday party, and it seemed like I spent the first half greeting people and getting them settled, and the second half - which came too soon - seeing them off, and I wasn't quite there with any of them at any point in between. Still, I'm grateful to everyone who made it, and I really hope they enjoyed themselves.

Tzu played "Happy Birthday" on the piano while everyone sang. And I stood in the middle of the room like a deer in headlights, feeling self-conscious, my mind racing about how fortunate I've been, and also how difficult - and therefore generous - it must have been for Tzu to play in front of all those people. Situations like this sometimes make me overly emotional, but I kept it together. When it was time to blow out the candles, it was impossible to wish for anything more. All of this, and to share all of this.

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