Saturn's Day

It's amazing how Saturdays feel different even though I'm still at the cabin. Must be in my head; I know I'm headed back to Chicago this afternoon.

Yesterday, I O.D.'d on coffee and went a little stir crazy. So I took a couple trips out: to get oatmeal in the afternoon and then back to the bar for a beer and to watch the olympics. And somehow in between, I finished off season 2 of Lost. My mind was not in the right space for music, despite my best efforts, so after a couple hours of trying, I gave up.

At this rate, I'll be on schedule to watch the end of season 6, the series finale, on May 23.

It's funny: a couple weeks or a month ago, I was trying to practice looking deeper into people, strangers, imagining the strange chain of events that led someone to this moment, trying to imagine what their childhood would have looked like, which kid they would be in an elementary school. And now, Lost is helping me realize that dream. With all the flashbacks helping explain the characters' histories, it paints a more 3D picture of each of the characters, making it more all the more upsetting when they kill them off.

Music: Yesterday, I thought I could whip up an arrangement of a song I'd like to cover. But I couldn't. I came up with some ideas but nothing concrete. I think this next phase is going to be me concretizing more and inventing less. I'm getting the notation software fired up; I just need to get back in the groove.

Here's a piece by one of my favorite composers, David Lang. [He's part of Bang on Can in NYC.]

Sometimes I get too obsessed with being interesting and I forget about simple things that should be said.

Like:
* The cleaning woman came last week after my mom used the cabin with her friends. First the bad news: she broke my dish-scrub-brush. Then the good: she found my mom's lost set of keys.
* Ants have resumed their usual levels. I find 1, maybe 2, a day.
* I went to the bar last night, resuming a tradition that took hiatus last week. Watched the Canada-Russia hockey game, which was a lot of fun! The Canucks were slaughtering the Ruskies. Good thing this is sports and that's metaphorical.
* I'm half-way through season 2 of Lost. Overall, still enthralling. Nice to see some of the missing pieces get filled in--pieces I had even forgotten were missing. And the characters that I thought I wouldn't like are starting to grow on me; and vice versa. [I was getting a little tired of one-track Michael whining about his kid, and now he's gone--for a while.]

I've said this before, but I like the way that Lost and the Watchmen worked. You're going along enjoying the story, but then some detail from way back emerges from the shadows and suddenly becomes central. It's this manner of weaving that I would like to see more of--in plots, in music. Any detail that seems inconsequential makes it easy to ignore the details. And God is in the details. Or the devil. Depends who you talk to.


Last night after the bar, I came back and watched a couple episodes of Lost with some Scotch. [I'm trying to grow hair on my chest, but all I get are these random nomads. I do not come from a hairy tribe.] And I ended up sad. Sad due to some combination of the alcohol, the plot, and the jarring transition back from a desert island to a snowy cabin. In the plot, one of my favorite characters, Charlie, did some strange things that resulted in his ostracism from the group. Touched a nerve. It's probably healthy for me to feel lonely in a cabin in the woods all by myself for a week. It's a good sign.


I've been making some progress on the piece I'm "writing". At this point, I'm gathering ideas. Well, to be fair,first, I'm generating them, then organizing. I keep telling myself "Clean Space, Clean Mind", but I still can't quite keep things as ordered as I need my mind to be. But it's coming together--just slowly. Which is good. Things I write quickly end up being simple. Things that have a long gestation end up being richer, more organic.

Today, I also watched the CSO live broadcast of the announcement of their next season. While doing that, after getting a little bored with the pomp and circumstance, I checked out this site I saw on...um...this tv show...that I'm a little embarrassed to admit watching: Tosh.0. [It's on Commy Central, and so somehow after South Park or The Colbert Report, I found that it's actually kind of funny--not quite 13-y.o. boy humor, but maybe 17.] So it's this site called "chatroulette". You get randomly paired with someone and are thrust into a video chat. Totally scary, right? It's an interesting experience, nonetheless. I do NOT recommend it because of the obscene things you will inevitably find--even if that goes against their "policy". [You can report offenders, but by then the damage has been done.]

[If you didn't realize, the two photos above are of the same person.]

Off to sleep. To Dream of a better tomorrow.

makes us stronger

Some days are about coming up with new ideas, even if they suck, some days are about structure. I've been coming up with new ideas for a couple weeks but have been unable to bring myself to structure them. But it's a mindset. And mindsets bleed from one aspect of life to another. I've not been structured in my living--waking, sleeping, eating have all been improvised--so it's hard to think structurally in music.

Today, this morning, just now, I finally remembered that. There are many sides to an art object, or a life, and it's helpful to look at it from all angles. So I made a little structure for my day, something I used to intend to do but forgot about. In the morning, I need to remember Focus; noon is Mission; evening is People; and night is Dream, that is, Possibility. I go through this every couple of weeks and come up with a new structure. It's just practice. Practice creating structure. And as I go I'll get better at it and learn from my mistakes.

I wrote another post at ChicagoNOW. In this one, I ask people to respond to a poll: what's the best Classical music gateway drug? I posited Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which is one of John Adams' shortest and...er...fastest pieces. In a machine. If you have any to add, let me know: in comments or any of the other myriad ways of contacting me.

Yesterday, I only watched 2 Lost episodes--I'm about a third through season 2--and the South Park movie, which was entertaining but not side-splitting. Amusing. Political but not too much.

And I made bread. My eating is all messed up this week: I'm out of oatmeal, finished the butternut squash soup, finished the spaghetti, and am generally not feeling hungry. I probably could use a little more exercise. Can't wait to get the bikes out; lots of room to ride up here.

Musically, I'm trying to strengthen my imagination. Trying to visualize the piece so clearly in my head that I can just write it down. So practice visualizing, then practice writing it, then realize that the mental picture was too fuzzy and so back to visualizing again. It's foreign to how I usually write which involves improvising at the piano. But I think it will, ultimately, be better.

Work it harder make it better do it faster makes us stronger more than ever hour after our work is never over.

strength vs. flexibility

It's Tuesday. I missed posting yesterday, and I'm sure you all noticed. That wasn't meant to be sarcastic, so go back and read it with an earnest voice.

I drove up to Michigan on Sunday night. If you're in Chicago, you may remember the snow storm that happened right around then. The roads weren't great but weren't terrible. The worst of it was driving from Downers Grove to Indiana. On the highways, there was about an inch or two of something in between snow and slush but closer to snow: snush. I stayed in the tire ruts as much as possible and never really felt out of control. Being so warm, almost 30, the roads didn't seem slippery, just sloppy.

The weekend consisted of two operas, coffee or tea with some of my favorite people, hot dates, and a trip to see my sister and baby at my parents' house. Chocked full of nuts! Looking back, it was perfect: crazy and sane, planned and unplanned, all balanced. I reviewed both of the operas, so if you're interested: usw was on Friday; La Damnation de Faust was on Saturday.

Yesterday, I did no music, mostly recovered from the weekend--sleeping till 11:30!--and started another blog. Yes, another one. In the future, you'll probably see the Seeing Ear blog (the music-focused one) trail off and be absorbed by Beyond Words, a classical music blog on the Chicago Tribune's blog site, ChicagoNOW.

And then I watched 5 episodes of Lost, season 2. I'm starting to not care about the characters. Somehow, now that things are changing so much, there are too many loose ends; it's more about the plot (twists) than the characters, in spite of the flashbacks. But I'm curious. I'm going to take tonight off and watch the South Park movie that I've still not seen and then try to ground myself in real reality.

I'm back to my yoga "routine". I'm much more flexible than I was. I can do a headstand for almost a dozen seconds--for the first time in my life. I may be losing leg strength from not biking so much, but maybe if I can achieve a healthy level of flexibility I can maintain that as I do more miles in the spring. Just like life, you go through different periods. Thank goodness I'm in a place where the seasons force you into periods of outdoor and indoor growth. Having nice weather all the time would make it too easy to focus on outdoor activities, allowing people to forget about their interior.

ending / beginning

Most people can't wait for the weekend to come, but I always get to Friday an feel unready for the weekend to come again. I could do with 7 days on and 2 days off. Or maybe it could change every week. I like variety - sometimes too much.

And I'm almost at the end of another journey - the first season of Lost. Sometimes it seems so far greater than a tv show; sometimes it shows its roots as a prime-time drama. Either way, it proves, along with the Watchmen, that if you pay attention to the details, tying them together, connecting, you elevate an artisanal craft, mere entertainment, to something more profound, touching on the intellectual as well as emotional, hinting at the spiritual.

Once they start touching us physically, we'll know that we really do live in a hologram.

The ant problem has subsided to its usual level. I saw only one ant yesterday and disposed of it properly. I did, however, see a half-dozen dead ants in the skylight, eternally resting on the screen. Odd. Were they on their way in or out?

I found something useful yesterday, and it made sure it's point was taken. It started on the way back from South Bend. I thought it was a lot closer, but in fact it took 45 minutes of driving through the beautiful backwoods and farms of southwest michigan and northern Indiana. My favorite was a street that didn't show up on myPhone's map (at the level to which I was zoomed) called State Line road. Narrow, twists, turns, hills, and few other cars. Highly recommended. I finally got to South Bend and found the coffee shop I was looking for, looked around for 10 minutes for anything better, and ended up back where I started at the Chicory Cafe. Good stuff. Well, good beignets, weak coffee. The whole place has a sort of Cajun, Nawlins feel to it. I thought it a shame that I missed Mardi Gras - and Ash Wednesday for that matter - and that I had ignored the custom of giving something up. It's not really my thing, but I like the idea of it. And in my current religious drift, I have no period of fasting or giving up. There are worse fates.

On the way back from S.B., I listened to 3 classic TED talks that I had on myPhone. All three were about happiness and/or creativity, all three concluding that we are happiest when we are in the Flow, not when we are isolated (ahem) and thinking about our own happiness. I would posit that we have to think about our happiness in order to find the flow that suits us best. Which is what I'm trying to do. I may not be happy all the time up here, but hopefully, through regular practice and work, I can create the structures that let it flow. Whatever it is.

The most direct of the talks was the one I embedded below. After getting back to the house, my mom called from the car on her way from Springfield back to the burbs. She had listened to the same TED talk at some point recently and brought it up before I even could. Odd. The point that I'm taking away is that the secret to creativity is being in the Flow, which is hard to do. Like meditating, you get better over time. Like meditating, you can't reproach yourself for not being a rockstar right off the bat. So, for want of anything more specific, my goal these days, as it has been in many previous moments in my life, is to practice being in the Flow - come what may.


In a few hours, I'll head back to Chicago - via car - going to see this avant-garde opera USW by Opera Cabal. I should read about Rosa Luxemburg, because from the sounds of things, they don't give you a clear narrative of who she is. She's apparently important. I'm a little tired of Marxists - but not as much as libertarians or the people who think they know what our founding fathers thought.

Tomorrow is La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz at the Lyric. Had the usual date trouble but found a suitable one yesterday.

Then Sunday to the family's house in the burbs to see my sister and her baby. And then back. I had some great ideas yesterday and I'm excited to build on them. To be fair, the ideas that I had yesterday were built from fragments I had a couple weeks ago. That's how it works, you produce a load of crap from which mushrooms grow; then you eat the mushrooms and have hallucinations of the music at the end of the world; then you write it down.

First it was the Watchmen; now it's Lost. I am filling my head up with drama, human drama. But in each case, there's something else going on - little puzzles that reveal themselves, giving the experience more depth than just entertainment.

So far, the Watchmen achieved greater depth than Lost. But, again, I'm only in the early stages of my journey through Lost. It's interesting to see how each experience changes my awareness of the real world. For instance, there are all sorts of themes and parallels tying together each episode of Lost; there are even more details woven together in Watchmen. Suddenly, I start noticing details connecting in life.

Today there was a sudden influx in the number of ants in the cottage. I think the culprit was some sticky buns that my mom left for me on the counter. Ordinarily, I would have eaten them the first day back, but the weekend ended with massive amounts of sugar, leaving me disinclined. I've discovered ants in the cottage before - one or two each week - but today I must have killed almost a dozen. They're not the little, annoying ants but the big black ones. Nice and slow. Not too hard to take care of. But I've disposed of the sticky sweetness and wiped the counters down. I'm not a big fan of killing insects - the Jains believe they could be your great-grandfather making amends - but what else to do with ants in the house in the middle of winter? Build them a solarium?

All this reminds me I should get back to reading Walden, which I put down last weeks ago. He had a much different relationship with ants, one that I could maybe learn from: not how to deal with ants but how to look at them.

As if to prove their point, an ant just crawled across the bed. This seems to support the theory that the ants are just bored, exploring the house for fun. Or they have that parasite that makes them do crazy things, like the parasite that infects a mouse's brain making him fearless and eaten by a cat - which is where the parasite wants to get. I guess in the ant's case it's a fungus.

mission creep

I've been thinking about mission. If I had to pick one mission by which to organize all the others, what would it be? Something to think about and always be in the process of answering. Maybe it changes in different stages of life, but in each moment, it's nice to know precisely what's #1.

Without a clear sense of it, it's easy to get lost, which is what I've been doing this week (and last). My head is clearer this week but my progress is impeded by trepidation and distraction.

And I've been getting into Lost - the tv show. I'm not sure why, but it's been something I've been passively interested in after hearing some of the buzz about metaphysical and sci-fi plot twists in recent years. I'm partway through season 1 - so far, so good. I can see why people get excited about it. For me, I am totally aware of how it is manipulating me emotionally, and yet I submit myself to it anyway. It's like emotional porn. In fact, I would say that most entertainment is, in some way, related to porn in the sense that it's artificial manipulation of our mental state, eliciting various feelings and thoughts to make up for their lack in our own lives. Watching a show about people stranded on a desert island helps make up for the lack of desert islands in my life. [And in a way, I, myself, am in a castaway period.]

Pull the Strings!

I'm betting it will transcend this base level of entertainment. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail. Maybe "Art" is when you're not overtly aware of the manipulations and the intent of the manipulation is ambiguous.

I worked a fair number of hours yesterday on music but with nothing significant to show for it.

I'm headed into Chicago this weekend to see some operas. Friday and Saturday is the performance of USW by Opera Cabal. I'm going on Friday so I can go to the Lyric Opera on Saturday. They're doing the Damnation of Faust by Berlioz. I know next to nothing about it.

I'm closer and closer to actually going to South Bend to sit in a coffee shop. Let's get some work done and see what happens this afternoon.

deadlines and deadends

I allowed myself leisure on Monday. Ideas are the source of my power, but when I forget them, I am powerless. So I have to rediscover the things I believed weeks or months ago.

I slept in late, did a fair amount of thinking, still keeping up with mini yoga routines, and ended up watching the Watchmen movie in the evening. There was a little work on music somewhere in there.

The Watchmen movie was surprisingly good - about as close to the novel as you can get. They changed a few details - like how the good/evil mastermind ushered in a new world order - but they gave a great overview. Especially to people who've read the book.

I've decided that to work on music necessitates a clear mind. And yet I've been spending a lot of time filling my mind up, leading to distractions or just unclear thinking. Everything you learn must be assimilated, organized in the structures of your mind. These periods seem to come and go in waves. A period of intake followed by a period of purging. A period consuming, a period digesting, a period excreting the excess as waste. So I'm back to saying no to say yes. Limiting my intake so I can process what I think I know. Synthesize. It's just that it's hard to create in a period of intake. Creating is synthesizing, purging.

So that's what's on the plate for this week. Info fasting and synthesizing. [read: less internet.] Adhering to a more rigid structure, treating it more like work.

And then to Chicago this weekend for operas upon operas.

monday - quick - take 2

Two other things of note. When I got my flat, I didn't think about it, but such things always come in threes. The second flat of the weekend happened to Tina's friend's car. And the third was a jeep I passed, parked on the side of the road.

Making the train after the Belgian party on Sunday was its usual last-minute dash. I had thought I was leaving myself a 5-minute cushion, thinking that the train was at 9:22. But I checked after I stored my bike at Bobby's, and the train was at 9:15. At that point, that was 10 minutes away and I had at least a 15-minute walk to get there. So I ran. I made it to Columbus and hailed a taxi. Another costly mistake resulting in the second taxi ride of the weekend - this one only $4.

unnecessary taxi rides and plusieurs fêtes

It's Monday morning again. After a whirlwind weekend, I'm back, ensconced, in the solitude of the other side of the lake. It's no secret that most Americans, and anyone else for whom the workweek starts on Monday, harbor resentment of the day. [Some Middle Eastern countries begin their workweek on Saturday or Sunday.]

What reason do you need to die? Tell me why.

[I've always hated that song, but now, I've heard it so many times that it just is what it is. It sounds so cheesy and banal, but it's about a girl who went on a shooting spree in 1979, stating afterwards, with no remorse: "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."]

But this Monday is not one of those Mondays. I feel unburdened, unhurried - coming off a good weekend in the city. The weekend started with me taking the train into the city. No car, no worries. I walked from the Millennium Station to the bike shop at River East and found Martin working on some bikes. Retrieved "my" bike (one that a roommate left many years ago and that has been passed around as needed) and headed up the lakefront path, fueled by a Chipotle burrito. Tragedy struck. I got a flat tire at around Addison, a full 18 blocks south of my destination in Andersonville. So I walked. And walked, pushing the bike. After quite a while, I started to notice the cold. My phone said it was 14, but it felt a little warmer than that. Finally made it to the "Valentines day means chocolate" party and warmed up.

Saturday morning, I took the bike on a bus - before coffee I should mention - to go teach Tina piano. Got off the bus, got coffee at Caribou - really good coffee - and as soon as I walked out of the door, realized that I had left the bike on the bus. Tragedy. Clear thinking ensued, aided by the coffee. I mulled a few options and decided to track the bike down. Found a taxi and said "There's a bus a mile ahead; I need to catch it." No questions from the taxi driver, and we were off. Finally, after what seemed like 10 minutes, we caught the bus, almost 2.5 miles south of Tina's. Got the bike, loaded in the back of the taxi, and got back to Tina's. A $15 dollar slip of the mind.

At some point I made it back to Darick's with enough time to watch the first two episodes of Lost. I'm ambivalent about getting sucked in, but I want to know more before I decide. Right now, I'm thinking of watching the first season, reading summaries of the second, and maybe watching bits and pieces of the 3rd and 4th.

Then to a drink with a new friend. Then riding my bike - flat fixed at Tina's - from Rogers Park to Skokie for a soirée des crêpes. Through couchsurfing.org, I was invited to this francophone party, organized by some français who teach at the lycée française. Good times. Good food. Good mixture of French and English.

Then, finally at 11, got to a party for Sarah's roomate's birthday. Busy day.


Sunday was more episodes of Lost before my friend Veerle's birthday party. She's Belgian, and when I arrived, just a dozen minutes after the official start time, there were only Europeans there - mostly Belgian. The party turned out to be mostly Euros but from all over, the common language being English. Good times. Good food. It inspired me on my quest to know German better. I think I'm going to be more proactive about it this week.

Speaking of this week, today is my day to set everything in motion. I am finding Mondays to be great for future-thinking and structuring. The rest of the week follows from Monday's thinking. I'm feeling fairly motivated again to work on music for the CD and performances. I think the orchestra project is too little too late. But I'll keep musing over those ideas and let them grow more naturally.

ü

Ultimately, it's all about balance. I was in search of motivation all week, thinking that it was somewhere inside. Instead, I found that it also lies outside. To move forward, I need to balance out the inside and outside. I enjoy creating music for its own sake, but that gets old after a while. So I need to keep my audience in mind, imagining the performance, the moment what's going on in the Self comes out to interact with the Other.

The Übermensch generally gets a bad rap. Nietzsche recognized the inherent danger in the concept and so balanced it out with the idea of eternal return - to prevent against a dangerous slide into nihilism. Nietzsche's concept is more of a thought experiment, imagining that the universe repeats itself in exactly the same way an infinite number of times. Whatever choices you make today (or made yesterday) are permanent for now and for all time. Accepting the burden of this weight requires the strength of a superman.
I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I see the Übermensch as being internally motivated, self-confident and powerful - good, but only when in moderation. But, to prevent against collapsing in on itself, like a black hole, there need to be external factors keeping it balanced. Like performing.

smoldering

Where there's fire, there's heat, but the reverse is not necessarily true. I made a fire tonight, trying to only use two logs and some newspaper. Yes, and some lighter fluid too. Fires like that can start off looking promising but then quickly die down to smoldering logs. There's heat, there's a little smoke, but no flames. I either get some more paper or blow on it, but it's takes a while, without kindling, to convince two thick logs to really catch.

Which is how I've felt all week. I left my focus, my vision for the future, somewhere either at the cottage or in Chicago. The flames have died down, and, although I'm super hot, there's no visible sign of fire. Hot with potential that is. I'm not too worried, just annoyed that I made little, if any, forward progress. Some days, some weeks are like that. I have to remember this weekend that, just as tomorrow begins tonight, next week begins this weekend. I'm going to have a weekend that doesn't take two days to recover from.

I figured out what's missing this week: a goal or deadline. I forgot to think about the near and distant futures at all this week to find a new one. I say a new one, because last weekend was an arrival point if only in my head. Several weeks ago I set the Saturday night party as a deadline to come up with some new stuff. There was a remote possibility that I would play this stuff at the party. Even in the days leading up to last weekend, I kept telling myself it was a possibility - clearly a lie but one that produced results.

New deadlines have arrived, so I should be cooking with gas next week. First, I came up with some new ideas for the orchestra piece, bringing that idea back from the ashes. These ideas are much more manageable than the vague concepts of chaos and order I was attempting to incarnate last go-around. Second, I got word of a little competition, deadline in a couple months.

The album idea doesn't motivate me right now, but if I can remember why it was important to me, I'll resurrect the best tracks and make another push.

Errata: I didn't leave the house today and am forgoing my weekly trip to the Roadhouse. I'm quitting drinking for a little while. I left my yoga mat out all day so that I can do 5 minutes of stretching every break I take. I can touch my toes again and am working on upper body strength so I can do a handstand.

I'm thinking about joining the circus.

No I'm not. Say no to say yes.

Here's a clip from the South Park I linked to last week. You should know that there's a running gag with Jeff Goldblum making crazy associations. But the punchline comes towards the end of the clip. It's only 2 minutes but will give you the idea.

process

The wave of indifference that washed over me yesterday receded throughout the day today, but I still feel a little numb. I realized that my diet hasn't been all that great - not necessarily my food diet, my mental diet. When I first got up here, I was inspired to better myself in all ways, including intellectually. More recently, I think the balance has shifted resulting in some bad habits. Yes, like South Park. It is horrifically funny, but I don't need to watch it every day (or 4 in a row like I did on Saturday on Netflix). Comedy can take up a small portion of my diet, but it's the dessert to more nutritious forms of infotainment. (That's apparently a word.)

Today, I had some coffee, did some writing, and went for a walk. Writing things down is so helpful to purge your mind of them. All those niggling thoughts just want to get out, and once they are, you can focus on more important matters. Unfortunately, while walking, I was bothered by Sarah Palin. The quotes they have from her speeches were just so trite and unhelpful to the national political dialogue. She's more of a comedian delivering one liners about Hopey Changey stuff. It's a distraction to what is more important, just like South Park is to Nietzsche. But the news media, the so-called liberal media, obsesses over her. What they should focus on is how the U.S. has rested on its laurels for too long, getting fat and lazy on the post-war surpluses, how China and the rest of the world has caught up and is overtaking us as we speak. But I hate politics. It doesn't have to be easy, but we should spend all of our mental and emotional energy just making the goddam country work. If we realized that our opinions are just opinions and that compromise is the only way to live in community with other people, then maybe we could set up a system that works pretty well, freeing us to pursue our personal goals.

So I took a walk to the lake, to see how violent it was. I can hear it roaring all the way from the cottage. From the I tried to walk to the edge of the second ridge of ice, but the ice wasn't solid between the first and the second, and my left foot broke through, getting all wet. Fortunately, my boots kept the water out. So I walked back, getting so warm from all the trekking through snow, up and down stairs, that I had to take my coat and hat off. I made a resolution to sweat once every day so that I can avoid that pins and needles sensation that you get when your pores forget how to sweat.


For me, in my creative process, I really think that if I can just get my head into the right space, I can make great things in a short time. If my head is in the wrong place, I can work and work and only come up with stuff I'll despise later and throw out. I'm still not quite in the right space, but I worked on music during the afternoon into the evening. I didn't invent anything but worked on an old piece.

I had more of the soup from yesterday for lunch, and smoked salmon and spinach salad for dinner. Eating well these days. Taking vitamins and acidophilus. To feed my brain, I read some of Also Sprach Zarathustra and did some serious journalling. And now, I just signed up for Netflix so I can watch movies on my computer at will. It's only 9 bucks a month. Now I can be more in control of my own infotainment.

Here's your moment of Zen:

zzz

My day started out ok. I made my bed, neglected any exercise, and had tea instead of coffee. I worked on some writing, mostly on a post about the Wagner adaptation I saw over the weekend. I thought it was well worth seeing despite some structural flaws. About 60% finished, I emailed the theater to see if they had any photos. Really, though, I emailed the woman who was with the media contact with the publicity company. Me writing a review did NOT sparkle with her. Apparently, it's still a "preview" so things might change, making it against the "rules" to write a review of it. She then emailed the guy at the review site and it became a big mess. I just thought they would some buzz; any press is good press. Even though it was a preview, they can't change the important things. I must approach reviewing from a different perspective than most - perhaps less detail oriented, focusing more on the choices made long ago. Like the music being inappropriate. Like the cool shadow puppets and inventive other shit. I really just want people to go and to help make it better, but I don't really care any more. The file will probably fester and rot on my hard drive.

Mostly though, unfortunately, the whole ordeal drained me. I distracted myself by hearing the leitmotifs of the cycle and reading some articles about it.

I then made my food for the week: butternut squash, sweet potato soup and rice. Tastes great. Today. Let's see how I feel in a couple days when I'm still eating it.
Around the afternoon, I felt unmotivated and hazy - like I just woke up from a nap. I watched some History channel programs on the Earth and its place in the galaxy to help put me in my place. Apparently our sun has orbited around the center of the galaxy (the massive black hole) only 18 times in billions of years. Then some more tea, and I forced myself to listen through some stuff I did last week, hoping to get inspired. There's some good stuff brewing, but I couldn't bring myself to delve back into it.

Overall, I felt kind of blasé and half-asleep. I blame coffee: I had way too much over the weekend, so I was in mental and physical withdrawal today. I'll get some sleep tonight, but I think I'll have one cup tomorrow. This is a short, short week, so I got to make Wed, Thu, Fri really count.

Now that I'm thinking about the huge black hole at the center of our universe, I can't help but think how wrong the ancient myths are. Christians can use the Sun as a metaphor for God, bringing light to the world. Greeks talked about Apollo. It's amazing how far we've come in our thinking, from seeing the Earth as the center of the universe, to seeing the Sun as the center, to seeing this black hole as the center of our galaxy, which is only one of billions in the universe. Now maybe we'll see how we need both the light and the dark: the Sun keeps us warm, but the black hole keeps our solar system from flying out into intergalactic space.

This is the appropriate South Park episode for this discussion. The Earth gets cancelled.

if it pleases and sparkles, a third post

I know it's been a busy blogging day, but this is one of the most insightful look into how girls make decisions. The rest of the episode explains how good looking kids rely on their looks and never develop character.

writing requires thinking; thinking requires writing

One hand is washing the other, but my hands have gotten dirty over the past few weeks. I've been putting less and less effort into the blog, and it's starting to show; people are starting to talk. And worry. I should set the record straight; I'm feeling really good about things - finding newer and deeper meaning in life; writing better and better music; content - but just haven't been motivated to write blog posts as much. Writing is one of those things, like yoga, that takes some effort to do, but once you do it, your investment pays off dividends. I haven't been doing any reviewing recently - though I could have - I just didn't have the obligation or the motivation to review things I didn't have to. Or, in the case of the Hyde Park salon, the intricacies of the situation were complicated enough that I opted to wallow in the beauty of the flawed gem, dwelling in the contradiction like a warm zen koan. So today, I'm writing like it's my job. Words today; music tomorrow.

It's Monday, the third day of my three-day epic weekend. This morning, I finished Watchmen, yesterday, I saw a theatrical adaptation of Wagner's entire Ring Cycle. What would have taken 20 hours of opera, they condensed into 6, including a 45-minute dinner break and two intermissions. Having given my reaction to Watchmen already, I'm still brewing a reaction to the Wagner, which I'll post as a review (both of the production as a whole and then the music). It's nice to have these Mondays to stop and process. Even though I'm not go-go-going during the week, I still tend to spend most of my productive energy thinking about music, the rest of the time either relaxing or eating. So I'm still trying to find the appropriate time to process. For this weekend, now is that time.

To summarize, for those of you who've missed some episodes, a month ago, I quit everything, cutting myself loose of a handful of jobs, my apartment, and the city to partially move to a house in the woods to focus on my self and my music. I'd been finding that, neck deep in rat race, it's easy to lose focus, hard to keep your eyes on the prize. You learn to be patient, but you forget what you're waiting for. I was headed in too many directions and needed to pick one: Say No to Say Yes. Saying yes to everything is saying no to everything. Keeping all your options open is to forge no path, to stay motionless admiring the landscape of possibilities without exploring any one in particular. Even if it's just a matter of 3 or 4 options, it's still a problem. These days, after over a month of this, I have managed to prune my tree of many unnecessary, distracting options so that it grows taller and straighter. I don't think this necessarily means that you can't change your mind later: once the tree grows tall, you can branch out later. The only other time I've done anything like this was grad school, and now, 5 years later, is the perfect time to refocus. It's turning into a whole-self project: physical, intellectual, emotional, musical, spiritual.

So, weekdays, I'm in Michigan; weekends I'm in Chicago. Last week was a good one, although the blog posts are just so so. I learned a lot about myself, about what I'm looking for at the bottom of the well of music, and ended up coming up with a couple pieces that are big steps forwards down a path I've been trying to hew for a while. It started with an intense conversation with a medical intuitive, who, like a psychoanalyst, shed light on dark rooms I never knew existed. It was époustouflant, mind-blowing, turned my thinking inside out and upside down, leaving me with a great deal of new information that I had to somehow weave together with what I thought I already knew. I came up with some decent ideas early in the week but nothing that I could carry to term and birth. Each week, I start things, polish things, finish things, and edit things. Every day is different, but I tend towards spontaneous creation. When it's good, the other tasks are simpler, manageable.

Friday night, I drove in in another flurry of snow. This time, the roads seemed better but the traffic seemed worse. Or maybe the drivers were just less careful. I saw 2 or 3 cars in the ditch, one I didn't even see until I drove past and its headlights hit the side of my face. I saw 2 or 3 accidents with or without emergency crews. I, though, was appropriately careful and made it without too much delay. I drove straight to a friend's housewarming, which was only a slight shock to my system. I couldn't quite get the small talk juices going and didn't know that many people to begin with. I ended up leaving to join up with Darick.

Darick was going to his friend's show at some place called the Mopery. I had never heard of it, nor had he, but it was in Logan Square, presumably some new bar or club. Neither. It was like a basement but on the second floor. More of a "Space" than a "Venue", it was pretty well packed with hipsters, art students, and punks, all in their early twenties. Very urban and ironic, I felt like someone had brought in New York hipsters from the 70s through today. The music was appropriate for the venue and crowd - to a point. The first person I saw was a girl with a loop pedal, some analog pedals, and a tape deck. The tape deck presumably had some of the beats and other extraneous noises that accompanied her looped and layered moaning and chanting. Like an artist making sound art more than a musician making music. Then there was a band. The band wasn't terrible but it wasn't good. Drums, keys, overly dramatic singer (think Dead Can Dance), and DJ doing some scratching. The DJ part was fun to see again, and it was just good to have on in the background of our conversation. Then Darick's friend went. She was a much more skilled and professional version of the first girl. An artist with a loop pedal looping her voice, random percussion, hammer dulcimer, glasses filled with water. It was a good performance. BUT. By that point, 1 am or so, the hipsters had drunk through their first 40 and were on their second. [Darick had picked up some beer, so we were drinking Maudite. At the very least, we felt superior in our drink of choice.] So the drunks wanted to rock, or punk, out, and were a tough audience for the mostly ambient layers of sounds coming at them. Some in front wanted to fondle her instruments, her decorative elements. Venue is so important.

Saturday, I had brunch with Sarah B and then went back to Darick's. I ended up watching a bunch of South Park on his Netflix and then, wanting something less passive, I saw Watchmen sitting on Darick's shelf. He's been a diehard fan of the book since the early 90s when he read it as a teen. I had only really heard about it through him and knew very little except for his praise. I started in, got addicted, and read about half of the 200 or 300 pages in one sitting. Then, of the 3 parties I had to go to on Saturday, I started with the one at my old apartment, a housewarming for Alan and his roommate. I know Alan - we're friends on FB - and we often end up at the Gallery Cabaret for Sunday night open mic. It was good to meet his roommate and chill as we took turns playing Super Mario 3.

Saturday Party #2 was the release party of The Point magazine. I had been building this party up for a couple weeks in my head - for lost of reasons: musical, intellectual..."social" - and had a really good time. I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see but saw many others and met some great people. After a band that was good but too loud, the night devolved into a pretty great dance party.

Got back late, did a second amazing parallel parking job, did some South Park, slept till like 9.

Sunday was brunch with Darick and Tim, another illustrative artist, before convincing an exhausted Diana that 6 hours of Wagner's Ring was a good idea. I had already bought a ticket and was committed. The Wagner was amazing. It was a great, interesting, inventive production, pulling out all the stops: Shakespearian acting, puppets, shadow puppets, masks, great lighting. The acting was pretty good but inconsistent. The music was absolutely terrible. Absolutely. There is no depth to my offense at what they did. And yet I still loved the production. What's not to love? It's the epic to end all epics. It's the Teutonic version of the Lord of the Rings. And it's one of those stories that I had heard piecemeal over the years; seeing the whole story in one fell swoop really helped contextualize it. So go SEE it. It was by no means a perfect production, but it was certainly amazing enough to make the 6-hour commitment worth it. I would love to see a slightly more professional version, but they would have to keep all the magic and innovation. The shadow-puppet dragon, the giants, and the "swimming" of the rhinemaiden could not be done any better.

I'm nearing the end of my Monday. Soon I'll go teach Isabel piano and drive to Michigan. Hopefully the snow holds off. In general, I'm feeling confident with the present and optimistic about the future. But I'm also feeling a bit impatient. So I keep working to prune, so that I can nip those distracting thought branches in the bud.

Book Review: The Watchmen

I just finished a book, a book unlike any other I had read. In remarkably brief fashion, the author(s) managed to create and bring me into a world that bears a striking similarity to our own but whose divergences are as remarkable as its parallels. It's a world that attempts at every turn to prove itself as our reality just so it can overflow its bounds and flood our fertile minds with possibilities. The possibilities extend from our own reality like surreal protuberances, tentacles reaching, groping out in the darkness of time and space looking for a light switch.

Unlike all of the other books I have read, this book was illustrated, a graphic novel. Not just any graphic novel, the Watchmen is the only of its kind to be selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best novels of all time. I had never read any graphic novels or the comic books from which they emerged. My knowledge was limited, but I knew that there were two types of heroes—ones who possess superhuman powers and ones who are simply mortals with fancy gadgets. Supermen and Batmen. The Watchmen, as it turns out is a little of both: most of the characters are of the Batman variety; one, a Superman. And the Superman-type character is a conundrum, being both believable and unbelievable: he origins are rooted in the particle physics of our reality, but his powers are unimaginable, unbelievable, inhuman powers. Inhuman.

To me, the novel was a gigantic puzzle. The characters were deeply intense, the plot, an international intrigue, and putting it all together is a task partially up to the reader. Starting with a simple whodunnit, a single murder, it ends by involving the many more deaths/murders and an apocalyptic fervor ushering in a new world order. Luring you in with something easily believable, almost commonplace, it builds upon this foundation a beautifully grotesque monument to human existence. Along the way, it goes through a tangled web of characters, corporations, and other supporting evidence to lead you to a conclusion that is both optimistic and pessimistic and punctuated by a question mark. Supporting the story are details and interstitial commentary that, though seeming absurdly tangential and unnecessary, ultimately ties in. At one point, a character in the book reads a comic book—a play within a play? a commentary on using comics to escape the horrors of the world?—the plot of which seems parallel, unrelated, but ends up being almost related. The lines never actually meet, nor do they maintain their perfect distance. Thus it is that every image, each plot detail is a question mark, and every question is answered save the one posed on the final page.

Ultimately, at the end, it left me with a sense that I understand the world better, understanding good and evil in a deeper way, such that they never truly exist, that what is ostensibly good is, in fact, tinged with evil, and so on and vice versa: a full-color, three-dimensional yin-yang with goods and evils intertwining and containing each other. It demonstrates this through fiercely individual characters, each with their own morality, and, operating accordingly, they unfold the whole drama as if it were already written. Everyone's a hero, everyone's a villain, and in between are the watchmen. But who watches the watchmen?

happy Frigg's day

So we get to Friday, and I assume I know where Friday comes from. In German it's Freitag, which would mean free day. But it turns out it is the day of Frigg, wife of Odin, the only one besides him permitted to sit on the high throne and look out over the universe. But Odin turns into Woden, Wednesday, which is a whole day separated from Frigg's day. It's like they are forever separated by Thor. It reminds me of the sign they have at the Red Arrow Roadhouse: Free Beer Tomorrow. So close, yet so far.

I went there last night per my weekly tradition. The bartender recognized me from last week, making me feel almost like a regular. Already. I'm looking to become the mayor of it in Foursquare. [Which is a silly, silly urban game; I only "play" because it doesn't take any time and doesn't cause me to do things I wouldn't ordinarily do.] And I read Les Jeux Sont Faits - Sartre. It was getting really good - a romance was developing, plot twists, death, insurrection, and so on. I didn't think I was getting close to the end, but it turns out the last 70 pages (!) are glossary and study questions. So, last night in bed, I finished the last 30 pages or so. And then I wondered why I couldn't sleep. [It may also have been from the coffee yesterday; like an addict, once I taste that sweet bitterness, I'm back off the wagon.] I tried but couldn't and so read some music history. Which you would think would work, but I was in the middle of the section on Shostakovich and his dealings with Stalin. Everyone around him died or went missing, but somehow he made it through. What terror to live with - and to create under! The commies were talking about him like a true genius; maybe that's what it took. I sort of wish art were more life or death here; it's become so self-congratulating and redundant. But I am fairly certain that, most days, I would be in the "disposable" camp, and the Russkys would be throwing out the baby with the bath water.

I finished two things yesterday! Granted, they were a cover and a remix, but still. I'm really excited about the Arvo Part remix and what it portends. Maybe I will write that orchestra piece after all.

So I'm in the finishing, polishing mode. I'm off to work on a song. I've been dulling the perfectionist urge - which ultimately does a disservice to creativity - by thinking of these as demos. The Nine Inch Nails cover I made in like 5 or 6 hours; if I have to remake these (once I hear how they go, their structure) then so be it.

Focus.

mash-up

I put this up a couple of days ago, but it was 20 minutes long and thus bloated. I cleaned it up, adjusted some levels, cut out the fat, and voilà. The samples come from Nine Inch Nails' Closer, Nirvana's Something in the Way, Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa, and beats provided by Galactic.
Even Closer: Tabula Rasa by evankuchar

soundcloud

A quick addendum to the last post. It's important and so deserves its own post.

I signed up for soundcloud and posted Embody the Struggle. [I think it's all time we embrace that title, for that's going to stick.] I've been hesitant to post it because I would like to have an official unveiling when it's polished up and when it's available. Right now, though, if you haven't listened, you can listen. I'm less attached to it emotionally than I once was; the listening conditions don't have to be quite so pristine. That being said, don't bother listening unless you have actual speakers or headphones - something more than computer speakers. The bass is important.

Embody the Struggle by evankuchar

dscpln

I've gotten a little lax in the last two days, yesterday waking up late and doing a fair amount of working but ultimately playing more than working. It's always a mix, but the key concept I'm concentrating on today is "discernment". Per a suggestion from my conversation with the medical intuitive the other day, I am too open to whatever possibilities come my way, whether they be styles of music to write or people to meet. Be more discerning. I then told her about my concept of "say no to say yes," which seemed exactly like what she was talking about.

So I did have coffee today, but I used it as an incentive to get out of bed before 9 (Michigan time). [This should make Laura nostalgic; I'm sure she's missed the presence of coffee in our recent conversations.]

I'm realizing that I have a decent amount of ideas, but I should spend more time organizing them. I did that a little yesterday, going through my files that I've created up here and storing the fragments of ideas in one folder, the more completed, useable ideas in another. Keeping files organized is helpful for both computers and memories.

I need more songs to cover. I've already got the usual Radiohead, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Smiths, Daft Punk. It's funny, for as much as I liked Jethro Tull when I was in high school, they really weren't saying anything with their songs. Their songs are stories about other people, and they are simply the minstrels telling the story. No, not black face; like old, old minstrels. So while Aqualung is fun to play on the guitar, it's not saying anything I need to say. To be honest, though, the songs I am covering aren't necessarily expressing things I'm feeling now now, but I at least have emotional access to those sentiments through the past.

But the past is gone; this is now now. Whatever is happening now is happening now.


I'm relistening to my remix. I still kind of like it, so I'll make a radio-friendly edit so you can all hear it more easily without sifting through the garbage.

I may give up on the orchestra piece. I can't see it getting accepted to this program taking me to where I want to go. It may be one of those things that I either do later or not at all. I'm honing in on an album - or several - but I think that's where my passions are, probably, too, my "path".

I'm still listening to the remix - it's that long - and although it is not, itself, what I want to spend all my time doing, it certainly helps me to put together the pieces of a sound that I'm looking for. Then, maybe, with the sound in mind, it will be easier to write originals. Which is also, in a way, what I'm doing with the covers. I know a lot about music, but most of it comes from classes and theory; it's nice to learn about it through performance. Especially since I always struggle with the vocal parts of songs - meaning I either omit them or write shitty ones (see "Someone Else").

So a quick teaser of what I'm thinking for the album.
* Embody the Struggle (formerly known as Hypernova Requiem)
* Bike Salute (but completely redone)
* You are part of we (song for sister's baby, Lincoln)
* The electronic thing I did with the guitar solo
* Someone Else (which I apparently took off myspace)
* Some song called now called Suddenly
* A song I started writing about some German girl last year
* A cover. Right now leaning towards Needle in the Hay
* Maybe another cover like How Soon is Now

And probably a couple others. I'm making lots of lists these days.

Oh, an Ableton Live keeps crashing but only when I'm doing certain things. Doing the remix project, it didn't crash at all, but then in some projects it crashes every 5 minutes. Hopefully they get back to me soon.

jazzy bluesy nine inch nails

There was a time in high school that a friend derided a guy for describing some band - maybe God Lives Underwater - as "jazzy bluesy nine inch nails". I kind of like the aural image that gives me.

I've kept up with the yoga all week. Yesterday I even did a free 40-minute workout from "On Demand". And, I haven't mentioned it yet, but I've been off coffee during the last two weeks. Just tea - black in the morning and green in the afternoon. Then, on the weekends, which for me I consider starting on Friday, I can have my reward. Classical music is all about delayed gratification, which is why I'm not really one of them. Stuck in the middle.

I am, somehow, developing yet another variation on my daily routine. This week, I've been blogging in the morning and going to bed way too late. Last night, I actually worked on a mash-up type thing until 1 or so (CST). This morning, I got up late and am writing words before I go make music. I'm rediscovering the image that I had of what I am trying to do: some sort of mix-up, mash-up, covers, originals, electronics, live performers. Especially if its for performance, the more covers the better. And if they're "original covers" even better.

Let me try to be more specific: electronics providing bass lines, drums, and ephemerals; acoustic instruments providing rhythms and accompaniment through repetitive melodic motives; melodies growing out of this; maybe vocals; samples and remixing done on the computer. I like the idea of starting with a cover but fusing it into an original - or vice versa. Or starting with a mash-up and then morphing it into something else. Like I did yesterday. I'm putting it up on the web presently; just finished uploading. Turns out it's 20 minutes long! Oops. The first 5 or 8 are really good; I lose focus somewhere in the middle. (I created this on the spot, triggering loops and affecting them on the fly.) See if you can pick out any of the samples. Click to listen.

I didn't leave the house yesterday, so I should probably take a walk this afternoon. It snowed a bit more, but it seems like wet snow - the kind that slides off your car before the day is done.

I got some new plug-ins for my PhotoBooth app on my laptop. I'm seeing myself in all sorts of new ways.

the new now

Strange days. I was in Chicago for Saturday night. Spent the day writing a song that I'm debating whether or not to post. It's a rough sketch but really only needs some polishing. That's how I like to do things: 1 concentrated fury of activity. Once I figure out what I'm trying to say, I just want to get it out.

I didn't have much in the way of plans for the weekend, but I really wanted to have a break from last week. But no one was using the house, so I stuck around Friday night (being alone in the woods is inherently less lonely than being alone in a city full of people) and most of the day Saturday (writing the song, which I've decided to post and is uploading), driving back Saturday night to go to a concert - that I caught wind of in an email I got that morning. Sometimes plans just materialize. It was my former cellist Michelle's boyfriend's band, which also featured a friend of my dad's family who I barely knew. Small world.

Sunday was a more action-packed day: brunch with Amos to listen to his orchestra piece, for which I had a lot of really good criticisms; then straight to lunch with the parents at a Greek place in Greek town; then to Darick's for scones. I helped him carry 8 feet of plywood for a life-size portrait he's making of a famous, nearly 8-foot, wrestler. But I'll keep it a secret. Well, here's a hint. Actually, that's a terrible hint. But in looking for a more obvious image, I reconnected a lot of what I had forgotten about Shepard Fairey. Apparently, the Giant has a posse. But now it's Obama's posse. [Darick, by the way, is friends with the guy who made the "I'm with COCO" image, which resulted in nearly a million fans on Facebook, a trip to the show, tens of thousands of dollars in t-shirt and poster sales, protests at the NBC headquarters and whatever may come in the future. Crazy how that shit happens overnight.]

So then to Trader Joe's, which was a mess of a mess of a nightmare, trapped in a cage with rats. But I was pretty chill, despite the lines of 15 to 20 people; they said it was even worse than the holidays and passed out chocolate to people in line. No one knew why it was so busy; week before the super bowl maybe? I wisely avoided the parking lot altogether, parking on the street and walking in. Afterward, I spent the same amount as I did on groceries on a bottle of Macallan's. I had had some a couple weekends ago with my friend Nicole and really liked it. I had some last night after my phone conversation with the medical intuitive who told me I need to sit up straighter - to sit on my sits bones.

Here's the song I wrote on Saturday. It's part of my own personal zeitgeist: saying goodbye to the past, killing it with my song.

I did yoga both this morning and yesterday. It's my thing this week to try to do it every day. I wanted to pick something easy that I could commit to doing, starting with small goals and working up.

It's snowing up here, not hard but enough to recover the ground - which was looking almost bare in some parts.