Did I mention?

Did I mention I'm in a band?

I am.

Investing in myself as guitarist and musician in general has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. And spending a lot of time with the same musicians has also been rewarding in the extreme. It's so great to feel them evolve with the music, read my body language and know exactly what it is that I'm trying to do with the music, where I'm trying to take it.

We have a show coming up soon, a very rare occurrence, unfortunately. It's a thrill to prepare a full set list and rehearse in the span of an hour and a half and be confident enough to let it lie until showtime.

This is really just a typical update.

It really is very hard for me to believe that Christmas is happening again. This event hurtles toward me, and I feel like a deer in headlights, watching it come, not understanding. It's not that I don't like Christmas, it's just that I have apparently fallen through some sort of time warp and I find myself completely unprepared for it this year.

Graduation also speeds toward me, taking the same road as Christmas, it would seem. This, too, seems like a dream; over and over again I try to imagine what it's like to never have to go back to school again unless I really want to... and I fail.

My break so far has been about work and Christmas shopping. Hopefully after that I'll do all these other, more nifty things I've been meaning to do.

I spent a couple hours in garage band tonight and came out with something I'm incredibly happy with. I suppose I have to mention that every time I post in this blog. I really need to start up that website of mine.

It's raining hard outside now. It's delightful.

My truck is trying to die on me, and I don't know if it's in my power this time to stop it.

REEEEEEMIIIIIIXXXXX

Interrupting your day to bring you a random fact:

I love remixes. Even if it's not a great remix, and even if the original song isn't so great, I love covers and I love remixes. I can't yet explain why.

History and Consumerism

I think in both high school and college history when I was lectured on the years immediately following World War Two, and on how the US finally pulled itself out of the Great Depression, and prevented another one from happening immediately after the war, my instructors always phrased it this way, "Factories began building consumer goods instead of tanks and war planes."

This is indeed true, but what is left unsaid is what drove them to make that switch. This phrasing suggests that the factories and companies acted alone, as if they were answering a demand that they knew was already there, that had just sprung up since the war had finished. That's seriously how it was taught to me.

Perhaps it would have been considered "too liberal" or too "down on America" if they had phrased it a little more accurately:

The government had an enormous stake in the factories that had been producing weapons of war by the thousands, and it was the government who had essentially paid all the workers in those factories. What were they to do once those factories weren't needed for the war effort any longer? The nation would sink back once again into depression. To prevent this, someone awfully high up suggested we change our entire economy from one based on agriculture, to one based on consumer goods. And that's just what happened, by God. And it's been just that way for 60 years. The consumer culture was pushed upon the American citizen by its own leaders. Washing machines and cars and refrigerators. Microwaves and televisions.

The consumer culture was sold to, nearly forced upon, the average American. And, it can't be sugarcoated: the fact is, Design shares some of that blame.

donuts on repeat.

Saw a guy in his little honda doing... I guess you call them donuts? Like when a large parking lot is slick with rain and you go speeding through in your car and make a sharp turn and spin around as much as you can? he was doing that. It was neat to watch for a minute or two, but the thing was, this guy did it for something close to fifteen minutes.

About the seventy-first time he makes a lap from one end of the lot to the other, a police car rushes in with lights and siren blaring. I felt bad for him, but man, you gotta know when to fold em.

Leonardo Drew: Existed

I went and saw Leonardo Drew: Existed. This was weeks ago.

It's an interesting juxtaposition of ruined objects arranged on a grid. A few of them evoke something like file cabinets that have been torn into; mangled contents spilling out. Everything is torn and/or rusty; everything is aged. It evokes time and memory, especially when objects—recognizable objects—appear in the form of paper moldings, tangled in the mess. 

It's a bit like memories having a sort of filing system, one that perhaps began as simple and neat, but over time things decay and fall apart, and perhaps memories erode, become obfuscated or confused with other memories. Drew creates very nice visual textures and some good installation pieces. At one point I wondered if perhaps all of the work was too similar; I wondered if there was perhaps two too many pieces, but then the work that was upstairs sort of changed in tone and all was well again. Some objects were encased in glass, as if they might be perfectly preserved, but closer inspection revealed more ruined paper casts, torn and stained and crumpled.

I think it was one of the better exhibits I've seen at the Blaffer.

Mr. Thompson Never Writes Back.

I've written a thing or two in physical journals that I haven't gotten around to putting in here.

But while I have the opportunity, I have to say this:

I just wrote my favorite song ever.

I've been into Garage Band in a big way for over a year now, and it just keeps getting better.

Mr. Thompson Never Writes Back.

Maybe I can figure someway of adding songs on here?

Shrug.

School Tuesday. Argh.

I went to San Diego

I took a trip to San Diego for four days last week. It's a different place.
I would actually say it's probably the most different place I've ever been to. At least as far as cities go.

The biggest difference is the weather. That is to say, it's good.

San Diego is located in a desert region; it gets less than ten total inches of rainfall per year. It's more or less surrounded by mountains, except for its western side which is of course up against the Pacific Ocean. Rain rarely reaches the city because most systems rain themselves out before they can make it over the mountains.
But looking at it, you'd never know it was a desert 200 years ago. It's beautiful out there.

The view from the front of our hotel.

Today it teems with all sorts of plant life, a wider variety than any single location I can recall seeing. This is because here along the gulf coast, we cultivate whatever grows naturally here. But almost nothing grows naturally in SD, so a hundred and fifty years ago, the township sent out a call for seeds. Lots and lots of seeds, and they were extremely indiscriminant as to which seeds they asked for, as well as which seeds they planted. With a little irrigation, it seems, there was no problem getting anything to grow.

Balboa Park

In fact, in that place, I saw the reddest roses I've ever seen in my life. And I used to work for a nursery-- I saw a lot of roses.

This photo is untouched.

And although it's a desert out there, at least technically, the weather is 70 degrees year round. The whole year. It never gets above 80 and almost never gets below 60. This is because on the Pacific side of the US, the current flows south from Alaska, while on the Gulf and Atlantic side, the current comes north from the equator.

And so the weather is perfect. It's far enough away from the San Andreas Fault that there is no need to fear Earthquakes; the ocean is cold so there is virtually no threat from tropical storms or hurricanes; too dry for tornadoes; sunshine all year long; no extreme temperatures, ever. Clean air. It's just that there's no rain, and they have to steal their water from elsewhere, mostly the Colorado river/Hoover dam. San Diego is the perfect City but for its dependence on Nevada for water and its location in a bankrupt state.

But anyway, about the trip (which will continually come back to the weather).

We landed in SD at about 8:30 local time. So we had the whole day ahead of us. We made it to the Zoo by ten or so.

It's pretty much everything you'd ever want from a zoo. It's huge, of course, but it also makes sure you can see most of the exhibits from at least two, often three vantage points. And in many cases it lets you get startlingly close to the animals. The polar bear exhibit included a low viewing area which put you at about eye level with the water level in their exhibit, and all that's between you and the bears is glass. They wrestled with eachother in the water for about ten minutes, then went their separate ways to go stretch out and generally be lazy. They're my favorite animals now, by the way, because they're like giant dogs in the way they play with each other and in how they chill out.

So again, all of these animals in these shots were never more than twenty feet away, and in many cases it was half that. The final thing worth noting is the fact that there tended to be more animals in each exhibit than I'm used to seeing. When the Houston Zoo had its gorilla, it was always alone as far as I can remember. The SD zoo had three adults and two kids. The bonobo exhibit had two or three kids and five adults. And there were probably eight or nine elephants, maybe more. I think this fact, combined with the less oppressive weather, encouraged the animals to be more active, less depressed an listless, so it was rare that we just saw the animals sleeping. We got to watch them doing things that they do, especially interacting with each other, which was the coolest thing about all of it. The bonobo kids came up to the glass and tapped on it and stared at the crowds for a while (Michelle nearly flipped out and burst into tears).

Left the zoo at 3:30, too tired to do anything else.

Woke up early again the next day and made to Sea World by 9:30 or so.

Caught the shuttle to Sea World and this was the first thing we saw.

The Shamu show didn't start for a while, so we caught the Dolphin show first. It was cute. Except for the guy who was supposed to "warm up" the crowd before the show started. He bored me.

Killer whales are amazing. The show was pretty cool. EXCEPT. They try to add some really hokey narrative to the show. Something about "believing." They never really specify what you're supposed to be "believing" in.

And, no joke, this is a 95% accurate quote from the show. Spoken in a voice that sounded like a cheap Don LaFontane impression:

"Two different species, reaching out at their very core... to make a connection."

When I tried to talk to Michelle about it, she said, "what talking? I don't remember any speech over the speakers." She was too engrosed in the Killer Whales to even notice the cheesey storey they put to it.

Got back to the hotel in the mid-late afternoon and ate a nice little cafe next door. Good food, GREAT margarita. Went to bed, very sunburned.

Woke up early again Wednesday for a tour of the city.

A brief and somber moment

I checked in on August Burns Red and found that there's really nothing more they can offer me. I listened to three songs from their upcoming album and I didn't hear anything that set it apart from Messengers. I'm sad to admit it to myself, but I don't think I have any reason to buy their next album or really support them any longer.

But I'm sure they'll be fine without me. They're doing quite well for themselves.

Music consumption vs. experience

Ever since the Beatles, music has been on a path of consumption rather than experience. I mean, it's really the Beatles that started what we think of as "pop music," so, as with so many other things, it all comes back to them. Sorry, guys, but I guess it comes with the territory. Remember Pink Floyd? Or Grateful Dead? People would wait and wait and wait until they finally had that vinyl, probably the one record they would get that month, or even longer. They’d take it home and either they’d crank it on their stereo or they’d put on their headphones with the curly wire and drift away, enjoying every second of the music. Maybe they’d gather all their friends to listen to the record and be blown away together.

Now, people download music from musicians they’ve never heard of, from people they’ve never met, dozens at a time, hundreds in a day, so much music that they forget everything they’ve downloaded and don’t even listen to all of it. Even average computer owners and internet users have songs easily numbered in the thousands. Five Thousand, ten thousand, fifty-thousand songs. Before the late nineties, an A&R rep or collector like John Cusack’s character from hi-fidelity, could scramble all his life to assemble the most staggering collection of music he could, and he would still never come close to the number of tracks some sixteen-year-old in Indiana has. Cusack’s character could arrange his entire album collection in the order he procured them (autobiographical), while the kid in Indiana hasn’t even listened to every album he has.

Back in the day, there were, like, ten bands. And you were a fan of maybe two or three of them, and you were a die-hard fan, and if you lived during that time, you’re probably still a fan. Now, anyone can record a record for maybe a thousand bucks, and they don’t have to package it in any way; they just put it online. Kids are exposed to ten new bands everyday, often bands that they like, at least to some extent, with the help of things like Pandora and last.fm. And they’ll post links to the band on their myspace, or become a fan on Facebook, or tweet about how “OMG Waking the Cadaver is teh shizz. TOTALLY CEREAL LOL”

But the chances are that these kids won’t like that same band this time next year. They’ll listen to the band, use the band, and then throw them away.

I single out “kids” because it’s generally the youth that support bands the most, especially smaller bands and in live settings. It’s also kids who change their interests and identities over and over again.

But all of this has just really changed the way music IS today. It’s made it grow artistically into things that are sometimes genius and sometimes ridiculous, and both ends of the spectrum start with the same potential for exposure, and the music gets out there, good or bad. That would be a good thing, except it’s made us value music less and less. This is far beyond pirating music, because it’s not even really about ownership, but accessibility. There’s not a whole lot of difference between having a song on my hard drive and having to look it up on the internet. It’s out there, almost all of it, any time I want. Youtube, myspace, last.fm, I can hear it when-the-hell ever. So is one song, or one album, or even one artist as important to me as they would be to a music fan twenty years ago? Absolutely not. Most bands, I wouldn’t even notice if they were gone. There’d be a dozen bands that sound just like them—and I mean that, just like them—TOMORROW.

I hear people now saying that they listen to “everything.” Most of the people I know who have said that, it comes off kind of ignorant, because I’ll play them a genre of music that, for one, they didn’t even know existed, and for two, they hate it. Loathe it. And that’s fine, but it sure does poke holes in your assertion of listening to “everything.” Because I bet I could find a half-dozen other genres that would make you cringe, too. Just because you listen to top 40 stations and you like everything you hear doesn’t mean that you like “everything.”
There are some people, however, who listen to almost everything. And I think these people are in many cases a symptom of what music as consumption (as opposed to experience) is doing to us. These people don’t like all of that music. They can’t just flip a switch from Ne-Yo to August Burns Red to Madonna to MGMT to George Straight to Daft Punk to Johnny Cash to Lady GaGa to Cannibal Corpse to Nickelback (okay no one likes Nickelback anymore, whatever) to Radiohead to Anberlin (of course the list goes on). These people don’t like all of this stuff. What it is, is they get a thrill out of hearing something NEW. They experience a kind of relief that approaches elation when they finally discover music, no matter how bizarre, tasteless, boring or inane, that doesn’t sound totally familiar to them.

Mass consumption of music is destroying identities, even as fierce marketing, aimed at music aficionados, attempts to sell identities.

It's ODD.

I went to taco bell for lunch a couple weeks ago (yes I do that) and saw the strangest thing. Just ahead of me, four older women were dropped off by a van at this taco bell. All four of them were in pretty bad shape. Three of them were obese, and the other was overweight. Three of the four of them were using walkers, the kind that have four wheels so you never have to pick them up, and they’ve got little baskets on them so you… well, I guess you just always have a basket. I’m sure that’s handy.

Whatever.

Fat people at Taco Bell, of course, is not a shock. What struck me is odd is how old these women were. The youngest, who was also the most rotund, had to have been fifty-five, and the oldest had to have been seventy-five, no sweat.

And, again, three out of the four of them had walkers. These ol’ gals were not in the greatest shape.

I mean, that’s old, right? Old for Taco Bell? Isn’t taco bell something that you eat when you’re young and reckless and broke? At some point, don’t you just have to say, “okay, I have to stop eating taco bell”? I plan to. Really, there’s your health to consider, and then, don’t you just think old folk learn to eat other things besides the Bell? I’ve always thought so, if for no other reason than—well, just look around you the next time you’re at a fast food joint. How many old people do you see?

There you go. It’s ODD.

Another Comic Sans Rant (Sorry)

Generally speaking, I really hate chain emails.
Jokes that I’ve heard a dozen times already—hate those. Boring anecdotes—no thanks. Ridiculous and ignorant political propaganda messages. Those probably irritate me the most. But my agitation is compounded when any of the above are written in Comic Sans. I just can’t stand it. Why would you do that?

So imagine my consternation when I get a chain email with useful information written in Comic Sans. I get utterly nonplussed. Do I take the message to heart, or do I stick to my PRINCIPLES and discard it immediately? Ultimately I can't help but try to imagine the kind of person who actually has valid insights but is so inept to the basics of type that he or she would use this clownish face. I try to imagine this person, time and again, and I fail.

Disconnecktie: The Faithful Vampire

There is this song from Norma Jean that has vexed me for months. And when I say that it has vexed me, I mean that the fact that I take such unmitigated pleasure in it vexes me. It really doesn't have that much in common with other songs that I never tire of; it's hyper-repetitive (musically) and not complicated or challenging either physically, mentally or emotionally. It's lyrics are good, but not clever, really. Clever is generally what I go for, but this... I think this is just honest. And I think that's something that's really nice about this song but it's not something I normally care about.

Anyway, it just won't go away. When I think of lyrics, this is the song I think of, ditto with dynamics and building an emotional experience and getting a listener to invest.

Disconnecktie

It's taken me fifty-thousand separate wrecks to get here, and I've learned absolutely nothing.

As I'm standing here alone, upright and motionless, I'm drowning in her sea.

The rising and sinking of every consciousness I've ever known, now detached and disconnected.

The endless cycle of idea and action, endless invention, endless experiment, endless hope, endless disappointment.

And I thought all I needed was just one breath to stay afloat.

For me it was like... like a breath, the last breath that I never wanted, any of this.

And I never thought that this would capsize, but this isn't a boat, it's a coffin, and now I'm moving forward into the sea,

Into the great sea.

So I begin with the end in mind.

Cycles of Heaven, twenty centuries gone by. Come home.

I've fallen three miles now, and I still can't shake this dragon.

And the end is coming like a flood. It's going to be a year for growing, and the greatest amount of forgetting.

My sea is dying, but death is a doorway, and at the very root of me I know this. It's the greatest reminder, what a bored world to roam in, what a sea to swim in.

So I begin with the end in mind.

Assertion: Composition spans the senses.

Assertion: there are many similarities between the composition of aural space (i.e. music) and the composition of visual space.

If I knew more about cooking, my assertion might be stronger, but for now,

Suspicion: similarities also exist in composing not only visual and aural experience, but gustatory experience as well.

And of course, composition of tactile experience is something for which more and greater consideration is required and will be required the more we gravitate towards tactile user interfaces.

And! Let's not forget, Smell-O-Vision has actually been attempted. Poorly, yes, but it was considered. Misapplied, probably, but people are thinking.

Honestly, Seriously.

Good lord. Another blog.