Holidays

I don’t know about you, but this is hibernation season for me. All I do right now is work and sleep. Well, I guess I do get a little time in doing some other stuff, but naps have been plentiful to the exclusion of other stuff, like holiday shopping, parties and whatever else. I sort of like it, as I don’t really do the commercial thing for Christmas, so the season is one when I can sort of pay off a sleep debt and not care. There are more dark and cold hours, I’m inside more, and it's just right for a nap.

So, I don’t have a lot to report for the last month. I sort of slept it away. I didn’t really do any studio work despite intentions to do so. I didn’t bike much at all because I first got some stomach demon that spoiled a weekend and a couple days after that. Getting past that, a week later, I got a cold. I don’t think it was THE flu, but it spoiled my fun nonetheless. At least all I really had to do was go to work and finish off my schooling for the semester, which was really just one class, and I do believe I aced that, which deserves some self-praise. My last speech was the best I did, and I have reason to think the course as a whole grade is going to be just fine, and a good thing to reintroduce me to school after ten years away from that world.

As for the holidays, Christmas turned out to be quite nice for Kelli and me. She was down to begin with because it was not going to be spent with any family. I have been on a mission last year and this to make holidays something more than a time to grunt through. Holidays have been disposable in my small family for years and years. Little by little, any sense of joy or tradition has been sort of left to die over the last 15-20 years or so. It started with my step mom’s departure from the family just before I turned ten (last Christmas together was in 1982), and in the decade to follow, my grandparents sort of winding down in old age which changed the way we celebrated Xmas, and in the years since, the both of them dying, leaving my dad and I to our own devices since we sort of grew apart in those years. I just became a holiday orphan for about a decade from 1990 until a couple years ago. And in 1999, both Thanksgiving AND Christmas hit rock bottom for me. I felt so empty that year, so alone and forgotten. I needed to do something about that. So, with Kelli on the scene in the last couple of years, I have tried to make the holidays something, no matter how modest. I put out some things that belonged to my grandmother, and have been put up at the house for untold numbers of years—a wreath, creche, and some assorted other things that collect as the years go by. I still haven’t gotten a tree, but I religiously bring out my 12" tall ceramic light-up tree to deputize for a live one, same as grandmother used to do. Then I we sure to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and some others if I catch them, and this year was keen on seeing A Christmas Carol in its 1951 film form. This year I managed to miss A Christmas Story, but will remedy that next year. Kelli and I also got seasonal with some assorted tunes I downloaded last year, with a whole collection of Bing Crosby faves that sort of remind me of Christmases past (my grandmother had an 8-track of Bing Christmas faves I hated at the time, but now it makes me all warm and fuzzy hearing those songs done in his deep soothing voice. I could hardly imagine the season without those songs now.) Kelli and I also made some cookies from scratch for the first time, and enjoyed the hell out of them. We went to church and a party after that on Christmas Eve, a newer tradition of ours, this being the third year doing this together, even though we went separately for years before.

But then, on Christmas day, we had a whole day to fill. I called my step mom and offered to pick her up early in the afternoon, and had already offered to have my dad over. He doesn’t think much of Christmas anymore. For him, the fun went out of it years ago, and certain attempts he made at er, um, making it a brighter time (with company of the opposite sex, I think) have left him sort of alienated. I can understand the idea easily enough. The holidays are a make-or-break time for people’s emotional states. Both of us sort of “did” (not particularly “celebrated”) Christmas in our own ways for some time now, and to me, after losing both my grandparents and feeling pretty alone in the world, I wanted to make something more. So, the holidays have been the time to try to put things back in place, start something that may be the traditions that carry us for the next several years. I don’t have a lot of money to play the usual commercial Christmas, but I have been secure in my conclusion that that is a good thing. So, for the last few seasons, I have been trying to make the holidays a time of togetherness more than a time of trading gifts and stuff. It's sort of old fashioned, isn’t it? But that’s the idea. I think if people lower their expectations of what the holiday season should be, they may be pleasantly surprised in what it can be. It's funny. I work as a delivery driver, delivering to about 30 people. Just in the week or so before Christmas, I got a few things that just made my holidays. I was given a few boxes of See’s Candy, a wreath made from real trees, some other little bits of chow, a number of cards from my people, and about $50 which I spent on some dinner with Kelli and a gift or two. It was a very modest but pleasant thing. Then, on Christmas day, I managed to have both my dad and step mom in the same room for the first time in probably years, and for the first Christmas since 1982! The best part was that no one actually knew it was going to happen, though it was not an accident that it happened that way—I had tried to arrange this last year, but something didn’t pan right. Of course, this was the most pleasing part of the whole season. We all went out to dinner later on, after Kelli and I made cookies, kept a fire going all day, and shot a bunch of pictures with as many cameras that were on hand. Both of my roommates were around at different times, and John, the newest, came to dinner with us, and later on Gus was home, and had some wine with Kelli and I, bringing the night to a nice close after a really fine Christmas, and one that none of us had planned to happen the way it happened. Even the old man liked the experience and thanked me for having him over. Couple that with some yummy oatmeal & chocolate chip cookies, and I got me a good holiday!

Thanksgiving

IT’S TIME for the Hog Heaven Holiday Theme Music. Click on over to my other site to get the skinny (or fatty, since its really Hog Heaven we’re talking about here) on my Holiday Music. If you buy a copy of RECEIVING [link to downloadable tracks as of 2010] this holiday season, I’ll throw in a copy of the Hog Heaven Holiday Theme Music CD. Collect 'em all!

Things to be thankful for this year:

For one, despite an erstwhile desire to be otherwise, I am alive. I guess that a change of plans isn’t so bad. I think my dad and I got to some new realizations about our relationship that weren’t coming to us otherwise. He’s the only family I really have so it would certainly be good to work together more than against each other.

Then there is my angel Kelli who just keeps staying by my side no matter what. I get to miss her this T-givin' because she flew out to her dad’s family’s place in South Carolina. But I am spending the holiday with some friends of ours so it will be okay.

For the first time ever, just a month ago, I was scared for my house and home, due to the fires. The fire did come within about five or six miles at its closest, but on the day, that was actually frightening because there have never been any fires anywhere near here that would even remotely be threatening. The fire was marching relentlessly across the outlands in the county, but when it came into Scripps Ranch and then toward Miramar and was leaping ten lane freeways, I actually knew a bit of fear. Kelli was evacuated from her place, with the fire apparently coming within a mile of her apartment in Poway. As she evacuated, the news was that the roads were closing between her place and mine, so it took her a couple of hours and a 60 mile drive to make a 30 minute, 20 mile drive. With the whole town caught up in this mess, those were some long hours. Staying inside for three days straight with the windows and doors closed was certainly a concern. Even today, the ash from the burned out area has been taken up by the wind and is still raining down, despite a few weeks of really nice clear autumnal weather since the fire. So the tension is gone now, but in the moment it was pretty uncertain, in a way I never knew before.

As I said before (October 24, 2003), I am really happy with my job right now. It's not a big earner, but the way it makes me feel offsets that. I just keep thinking of how it gives my life meaning. I’ve done a lot of things for work that don’t give me meaning, and some that don’t even give me money. So that I have what I need to get by and some meaning, while still being allowed to be myself, is just fine by me. Sometimes I think we just make things too complicated.

I’m glad that the muse seems to be visiting me again. The relatively little time I’ve had the studio back together has been good to me. It was something that was a yardstick by which my depression was measured. Now, it seems to be working in reverse. The ideas are flowing more than I have been accustomed to. Paul Horn and I have been jamming and he has been really supportive of the stuff I do.

Then I might also nod to the Douglas Triumvirate: Robinson, Duhon, and Booth, each of whom play about four or five instruments—at least! Each has been supportive in the darker days, and those afterward. Each made me feel a lot better about the challenge ahead and listened to me and gave me things to think about.

I guess there is a lot to be thankful for.

Return of the Swine

Well, all good things come to an end. And good for me, so does at least one bad thing. After a few months of depression, distance and deliberation, I did in fact decide to put my studio back together again, albeit in a more modest configuration than I have used in years. At the time of writing, it is built up around my modest 8-track VS 880 that I used for a long time starting in summer of '97 and sort of retired in mid 2001 when I went to a larger VS 2480 and then to ProTools. I’d be using Pro Tools still if it were not for the need to keep my computer in the house. However, there is an interesting challenge to me as an artist to use only eight tracks. My whole CD was done on that little VS-880, track by track, spanning a year. So I know there is a lot of potential.

As it has been much reported, the depression drove me to close up the bigger two room studio configuration that I used for nearly a year and a half. That setup was great for me to behave as engineer, recording things from the control room. It was the most evolved my studio ever got. But the thing was, it was utterly impossible to record the way I wanted to as a solo recording artist. I mean, the space and instruments were really spread out so that I couldn’t use the place much myself, though the idea worked great for recording anything up to 18 tracks at once. Well, now I return to a modest four inputs at once, and eight tracks at mixdown, and the old room that I used to work in. It's pretty small, doesn’t have ventilation except when the door is open, has a mess of gear in it (all carefully arranged) and now that I have been “off” in a creative sense for months or even years, I am looking forward to using the space again and doing something, at least in the name of some self expression. I don’t feel like trying to be engineer for hire now, or even tracking bands (I play in) live at once. No, it seems as if it's time to go in and keep the place to myself.

Already, I’ve had a far more productive time in the last week and a half or so since I got things wired up again. I’ve had some pent up ideas and lots of time to dream of playing again, or at all, and finally I had the drive to get it all together into one room, the way it makes sense for me to work. I can play any part and jump to another instrument and lay down a track in short order. I can do this at least so I can get ideas out. I work pretty sloppily, but I get the ideas out fast. The gear itself is simpler than it has been in some time. With the help of a patchbay, for the “front end” I have eight channels of Digimax and one channel of VXP (both from Presonus) and just today I bought a Sans Amp Bass preamp rack unit and have had a hard on for it all day. I am not even using a mixer or effects but for those on the 880 itself. So the front end is really simple and the monitors are better. The room is still an acoustical disaster, but hey. I mixed my CD in there so it won’t stop me. My mic set is very different than the old days of recording my CD (the last significant stuff I did in the studio before it went changing gear, purpose and players in the 2001-2003 period).

Well, whatever it is, I just feel like I got my groove back. The few times I’ve been in to work in there, it has been fun, and spontaneous like the old days, and in at least one case, the music is giving me the willies. It's like getting an old friend back. One drawback is that it may be a bit of work to get mixes up for listening. I sort of haven’t worried about how to do that. The Roland mixing and CD burning options are a pain in the ass to deal with so I may mix directly to ProTools, but I still don’t know how I will pull that off. But the thing is, it's not time to mix. It's time to record stuff, and keep doing it till I have my ideas out and shaped some so that I can do something with them. I tell you, there is an album in my head just waiting to go. Surely something has to happen. The last three years since my CD was finished has had enough of life and a lot of new music in it to make things different than before.

Old People

Today I got news that one of my clients from the Poway Senior Center died. I had delivered food to him for over a year. Wednesday the 22nd was my last day at the Poway center. Oscar died on the 23rd, making me one of the last people to see him alive. I believe he had just turned 89 or 90 in the last month or so. I always liked to see him, and we always made some jokes to each other. He was sort of a surrogate grandfather to me, and as often as I could, I would have him tell me some stories about the old days. He was a Hungarian that grew up on a farm in Louisiana. May he rest in peace. May his flowers get the water they need.

I just got a new job doing the same thing as my old job. The gig at Poway came to an end and even before that completely expired, I had a new job lined up in a similar center right here in my own neighborhood of Clairemont. I’d been at Poway for over a year, driving meals to about 10-18 seniors on my rather lengthy route. Oscar was one of the most steady, week after week for the whole time. I got to know a lot of my people pretty well. I don’t even like to call them clients. They really got to be friends in the time I spent with them. Funny, the job itself is one I neither sought nor was particularly interested in when I started. It came to me as a hand-me-down from my girlfriend Kelli who worked there (now working at another senior center herself, as director of activities). Last summer, when funds were tight, she told me about the spot to do another driving job at Poway, and I jumped on it because it was some quick money for two weeks. But then that segued into the home delivered meals job when another old timer at the center wanted to retire. So I got into this by some really odd fluke. I never really applied or was drafted in by the usual path, but I did it for a year and I absolutely kid you not, it changed my life initially because I used to GO TO bed at 6 AM, but this gig had me GETTING UP at 7:45! Needless to say, that changed things for me. I also was doing a straggler’s amount of work in the audio world, which seems so far away from where I am now. I haven’t done any of that for almost half a year now, and it is nice.

Somewhere in the last year, I began to discover that I could live on the pittance I did—only about $90 a week most of the time, with some music and freelance work thrown in, and some nice people helping out now and then, as well as getting some food from the center for lunch, etc. Anyhow, it was a real lean and modest year there. There was some change going on inside me. The work itself was nothing to speak of, and a far cry from the heavy duty industrial grade sound equipment I was accustomed to working with. The thing that took me over was the sense I had that I was doing something important, which I pretty much never felt at any other job. The music work and its surroundings were always bad for me, and made me really bitter for years. But this very modest job I didn’t even apply for or even want just took me over and made me feel like for once I was doing something right. Really, the pay was less than any other job I’d had in years, but for the most part, I have a lot of really fond memories from doing it and that just really eclipsed the matter of money. There were some little things I didn’t dig, the 20 mile commute being central in that regard. I drove 20 miles one way to do a 35 mile route and then return, and this at such a weak paycheck. Sort of odd. A rational mind would think I was a fool. Even I have to wonder about it. But some things just make sense in odd ways.

I began my new job in Clairemont yesterday, on the strength of the prior experience, and the line on my resume about really liking to serve these people. It's the first job I ever used a resume for (made on a printer I bought a week before after a disastrous relationship with printers in the past). On the first day, I was welcomed just about with open arms. It was odd, let’s say, considering my past work history that I am less and less proud of as time passes. Also, the driver that I was going with was a delight to work with, showing me all the ropes and generally making it a hell of a first few days on the job. It's too bad I am replacing her! I have a route that on paper is about two or three times the service load as the Poway center, but it's all more tightly packed, and damn, I go within two blocks of my house in one instance! I get over twice as many hours, better pay and a whole lot shorter commute. I’ll certainly miss my Poway folks, and Oscar’s passing sort of put that square in front of me in a very real way.

I worked pretty damned hard on a speech for class this last few weeks. It was about volunteerism as a social and ethical necessity. I spoke about Meredith (my fellow staff driver at Poway who left a career in law to do this same job as I on opposite days). The importance of volunteer work can’t be underestimated. Nor can its power to make people do things that the rational mind wouldn’t do. I struggled along for my year, and Meredith left a really good line of work to serve people. While we weren’t technically volunteers, we certainly weren’t getting rich off the work. But volunteer or no, we were doing the same work as our volunteers were doing, and more of it, day in and day out. I guess it's a matter of nuance. The thing I just was not prepared for was how the act of serving people I barely knew would change my life. It went hand in hand with some other parts of life, like going to church after a 10 year self imposed layoff, and trying to distance myself from a world in music that left me alienated more and more. I just was needing something profoundly different from life, and I think I found it, at least in the present. I had my terrible spell there for a while when I lost any sense of meaning and was counting down to 30 with the idea that it would all come to an end for me. Somehow it didn’t and somehow I awoke to realize that maybe it's my time to serve people, and keep doing it. Getting the Clairemont job was easy, I suppose maybe because I had already decided to be committed to it before I even got it.

Another thing I can’t really deny is that I didn’t really have the relationships I wish I had had with my grandparents, even though they really did a lot for me. They’re all gone now and there is no going back to talk to them and see that their needs are met, so this is one of the ways to sort of satisfy that latent urge of mine. Delivering in my own community now where I grew up, and within a few blocks of my own place now is something that is just seeming to make immense amounts of sense and is so appealing to me now. The people here live differently than in Poway. It's not so much a matter of overall need, but in some cases, it's frighteningly apparent how important it is to do this work. A line in my speech for class mentioned that we must make our seniors feel valued all the way out to the end of life, and not just put them out to pasture arbitrarily, and sad as it is to say, I see that happening, and it reminds me of some bad decisions I made in the relationships with my grandparents as a younger and more foolish person. Now I have that on my conscience and the desire to put some of that to rest burning in me, and the urge to be a worthy member of the community and not just be one who lives off of it.

I Guess This Doesn't Suck After All

Last week was spent stripping my kitchen of its cupboard doors and refinishing them and repainting the entire kitchen itself. It was something I had on the work sheet for over two years since my grandmother died in early 2001. The cabinets had been in her favorite color: yellow. Two tones of the stuff. Everyone who has lived here since (I’m on roommates six and seven now) has not liked the yellow but was too unmotivated for whatever reason to help me do anything about it. Now with the Gus and Sara, it's been a breeze getting stuff done because all three of us feel like making something of the place. I have my first female roommate in over five years now, and she is really motivated to see the place become home like and livable. After two and a half years of guys who don’t give a shit, that is a blast of fresh air. Hey, imagine always having to make decisions and do all the work yourself then imagine coming home from work one day to find some work is getting done on its own. It is nice to see some interest in the place come from someone other than myself, for a change. Gus the Greek is a hard worker and a great guy who wants to see this place take on the role of “home” too. I want to make the distinction between home and house. All the other people here but for one (the one that later tried to steal from me in the end) have been pretty much the garden variety young male roommates who don’t attach themselves to the place beyond a living space in exchange for some money. But this place is some place I grew up in, and in more recent years, have put a lot of work into. It's hard to keep it up, mostly as far as energy goes, and it's harder when no one helps. I really had to get people in here who would be more respectful and motivated to make it a place to really enjoy. So far, I have been totally jazzed on the fact that some strangers have come in and wanted to make it their own as much as I have. It means a lot to me after some years of the opposite. I’m not into all that feng shui stuff. I just think I’m done with the gross imbalance that has been my domestic life in the last few years.

I was going to say something about how it was 20 years ago that I first started to learn to play drums (with a hiatus for about four or five years in the late 80s). That may or may not be important. What I would like to say is that, now, 20 years after I was beginning to learn my first rock beats, it comes full circle. I played drums on Come and Get It for a Badfinger tribute CD arising out of an online Roland VS recorder group I used to haunt. My buddy and mentor figure Doug Robinson had me over to do studio work several times in the summer before and after I quit music in July. One day, he suggested we play some Badfinger tune, and that I play guitar on it. Well, two things happened: First I felt way inadequate to play guitar, then we found the song actually didn’t have guitar on it at all! So I went to the old standby, suggesting I play drums on it. We cut it in about three rehearsals with Doug on piano and me on his funky and vibey old sounding jazz kit that just got the Ringo feel happening in me. We recorded drums and piano in one room and in one take, with some seemingly random fixes punched in to put some more specific drum fills in (clearly audible if you listen for it, but mostly masked even to me who thought we should do it all over, but Doug persisted in leaving it sort of a hasty job with such human flaws so readily apparent). Then we did the percussion in one pass and he did bass. He sent that recording to a buddy who did the huge multitracked vocals. Doug got the tracks back to his place and mixed them (with a little contribution from me in the form of the warbly effect on his grand piano to simulate the Lennonesque detuned honky tonk piano tone on the original. Paul Horn, drummer in the TAPKAE band for about eight months, gave me props for hitting the feel right on. It's funny, after all the prog rock I have been so keen on, the stuff I still do best is the simple stuff, sort of like the stuff I learned at the very beginning. I don’t have to read it off a page anymore though.

Man, I just want to say how much I love Jethro Tull. I got the Heavy Horses remaster and it just shimmers like a jewel. It took me a long time to really like that album but more and more I find it one of the finest Tull releases ever. I like most all of the ‘77-’87 period best, ironically some of that is least liked by hardcore fans, but I say, hey! Tull is just the beacon for me in music. They are so unlike any other band, as far as I care. Sometimes I feel a little guilty for fallng back on Tull so much, but what can I say? They just come up with the goods for me. Ian Anderson finally made the really cool acoustic solo album he was always expected to make. Rupi’s Dance is really nice music overall. So far there is no tune that turned me off musically. The only bummer is that he can’t sing like he used to up till 1984. He can’t just go for it nearly as much as he used to. His instrumentals are as good as anything he ever did though. Ian is, to me, brilliant. This CD has him doing a lot of instrumental parts from the expected guitar and flute to accordion, bass, piccolo, mandolin and percussion. He has long been an inspiration for me.

Upswing

So far, things are looking up. For you astute readers of TAPKAE.com who are in the know, things got pretty bad around here for most of the summer, and desperate in early September. Y'all can read about that on the 2003 page above if this is coming as news to you. The meds seem to be taking some effect now with a couple solid weeks of being on them. But more importantly, I think, is that there are some things that I am doing directly to not let the depression take another foothold.

Last week I went and bought a bike and each day have been riding a couple miles. So far it has all been in the neighborhood, just zigzagging all over the streets and hills that make up my area here in Clairemont. I found a trail a few days ago that I absolutely didn’t know existed, and it was in the canyon directly down the hill from my street! I rode the mile and a half or so that was extremely bikeable, then it turned to adventure as the trail gave way to a washed out river bed that was very wooded and rocky, causing me to have to carry or drag the bike all the way. This went on for about a quarter mile at the end, opening up into the back side of a small townhome development at Balboa and Moraga area. Considering I never knew the trail existed, this was great fun for me. It reminded me of when my childhood and adolescence was spent doing precisely this discovery and adventure in the canyons in my neighborhood. So that was certainly a good thing. I did the ride in the afternoon just before dusk, a nice clear Saturday that gave way to the evening clouds and fog we get here every night. It was just as I remembered it. Instead of having mom back home with dinner ready, it was my Kelli taking a nap for the time I was gone (she was surprised to find it was two hours), then having to make the dinner myself, for us. That isn’t quite how I remember it, but it is great nonetheless to come home to.

Domestic life is also looking better around here. I have two new roommates who are more interested in taking care of the house as their own than any other roommates I have had, but for one (the one who eventually tried to steal from me, go figure). Anyway, we have Gus the Greek who is a chef and baker. He is about 18 years older than me, and works like mad to get whatever he sets his mind to. I don’t think he worries too much about material possessions much. I think he has this old world view that I find refreshing. He and I are making a little garden in the back yard now, with some potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and herbs (plural, no “herb”–sorry Brandon). We are also going to try to revive my backyard, a place that has been let to die to some extent, which is a shame because I have known it to be beautiful. Gus has been inspiring to listen to, and a great addition to the place.

Sara, the other roommate, and first girl to move in here, has brought something of flair to the place. She has the plants, brighter colors, snappier furniture, and in general some life and enthusiasm for making the place feel nice and vivid. She has only been here a little over a week, but she loves to keep house. She and Gus are a far cry from the lazy bachelors that have been here before, that I am so glad to have gone. The place just seems more alive and able to become more livable and stimulating. I need that. The lazy roommate thing just drove me to depression. With all the time I spend at home, more and more I find that I need to have some order. There are some projects of the painting sort I plan on doing to further this new trend, so that will tie up some free time and keep that ball rolling. Other domestic things have been just trying to keep a neater place and doing the little stuff like putting clothes and materials away, and making my bed and opening blinds full wide.

I set up the drums and have done some casual playing for nothing but fun and as a little investigation to see if it is still viable. I plan on getting the guitar and bass rigs ready to use for my birthday which might have some jamming happening. My drum technique has never been too refined, and not having played for a couple months doesn’t help except to make me just want to cut loose and not even think. So I bashed along with some old Badfinger and Ben Folds Five—stuff that doesn’t require much more than a feel for a song. I will have to tread lightly on this return to music. I might like to play, but not really put anything of a project in front of me.

In school, I have only one class, and that is Oral Communications, with the same instructor as I had in 1987 in 9th grade and in 12th for US history. He is a great teacher, and I wanted to take his class again. Tonight I did my first full speech. It was about depression. I was pretty nervous but didn’t clam too hard and believe I came in pretty well. I did include that I was writing from the perspective of a suicidal person who only recently got past that episode, but my voice was shaking some like it was happening now.

With the exception of some new challenges for my father and I trying to live in the knowledge that I am not made of leather and steel, things have been good. I have made some amends to some people I have wronged, reignited a friendship or two, cut down computer time (mostly off the newsgroups and boards that I spent so much time on) and have been trying to live a little better. Some exercise, some routines like journalling and some counseling have been making things better for the last two weeks or so. My 30th birthday, a day I often thought I wouldn’t see if I had my way, is in less than two weeks, and I am actually looking forward to the chance to hook up with people and celebrate life. It may sound corny, but at the moment, the cloud is gone and I want to enjoy that.

Crisis = Opportunity

Now playing: Pat Metheney’s Imaginary Day. Good music, but what do I know?
Weather: Classic late summer in southern California. Beautiful of course.
Best part of the day: Taking a glorious nap after work and catching up on some other things left undone.
Things to do in near future: Begin work on a speech for class, write long and emotionally naked letters to people, remap my life a good deal, get a bike and ride (like the wind, I guess). Plan for my 30th birthday event.
Deep thought: Crisis = Opportunity.
What I did on my summer vacation: Suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts.

Yep, you read right. It was the “Endless Bummer” for me. I don’t mean to dwell. Most of what you need to help envision this is in some earlier entries here. It’s a cloud I have lived with for about 13 years now, this depression. Sometimes it’s in remission and things go well enough that it doesn’t seem to haunt me. But since about early 2000 or so I have been plagued by it rather consistently. It comes from a whole host of things. Sometimes I wish that I only had a pet die, or a bad semester at school. That at least could be cried out. But my soul hurts for some reason. The optimist in me (that I clearly don’t give equal time to, it seems) wants to declare that it’s that hurt and pain, that friction in life that drives a person to overcome all that live a fuller, richer life ultimately, like a grain of sand becomes the basis for a pearl.

“Life is the toughest teacher, because it gives the test first and the lesson later.”

Those words of Oscar Wilde were passed on to me by a counselor named “BB” at a residential crisis center I spent a week and a half at in the first half of September. BB was amazing. He was about my age, had a mastery of relevant quotes from across the ages and disciplines of literature, philosophy, art, psychology, religion and some entirely applicable folk tales to illustrate his points. He utterly lived and breathed his craft. I was at the center for about 11 days and one of the best parts of the stay was hearing what he would have to say and meeting with him. He even played guitar.

None of which says much about my depression, I know. I suppose I could say it’s a chemical imbalance, or rooted in events from the past, with a twice-broken home life, or that I am frustrated as an artist, or that the kids were mean to me at school as a kid, or that I have had a troubled work history, or that I have had some peculiar woman troubles over the years. All of that would be true, and all of it has made me stay awake at night. Yeah, it’s all that and a bag of chips too. I could even throw in some post-9/11 sentiments. Really, the causes of depression are numerous and don’t just turn up at the surface too easily. I can say that I have felt emotionally gagged in some ways. It’s an odd thing to say, but from not really writing much like I used to or making music that gets recorded, or that doesn’t include lyrics, I feel that I have been missing a certain degree of self expression for a long time. It has certainly been three years to the month since my CD was mastered, and only trace elements of music have been done since. But it has also been over two years since I wrote journals, something I did for 10 years since I got out of high school. It’s something that I had mixed feelings about. I stopped because the year 2001 was so heavy on the drama and change that I couldn’t even really keep up. Then, once I got past an SI (suicidal ideation) period early in the year and squelched some further depressive episodes, I went into a long period of trying to block, I guess. I remember it all, but I didn’t archive or give voice to much of anything. It was also at the same time I got on the computer and really changed my life a huge amount with online groups and the web. And, again, within a month of that, 9/11 did indeed happen. The year 2001 was just a madly shifting time. Then, after a few years of being alone, on the first of the year in 2002, I got into a relationship with Kelli that is pretty much my anchor now. So, you can see, nothing is familiar to me, except maybe me.

Of course it’s easy to pin the blame on external forces and people. Anyone can do that. That’s the easy way out. And I have certainly done that for a long time. I guess what its hurting me to do now is to move into a mindset that will actually be more effective: that of making the realization that I have a lot to do with things too. Some things I can safely let the blame fall to external forces, and some I can’t. For those that can be attributed safely to external causes, I should lighten my load and not worry. But for those that are the result of my too-often corrupted thinking, I need to step up and take credit accordingly. Part of my experience at the crisis house was reading the Alcoholics Anonymous book, but really coming to the 12 step process was one that made a believer out of me. I don’t drink or do drugs, but the same as an alchoholic or a user has an addiction to something that kills them a little at a time, I have an addiction to a thought process that does the same. It loses me friends, jobs, women, fame, money and a host of other things. In some instances (too many, to be really precise) it loses me even the chance at those things. Frankly, it’s a case of me being my worst enemy. I have this uncanny ability to set a roadblock up in my mind why things won’t work, thus saving me the challenge of finding that it just might work out, and maybe even well. I don’t know. Maybe I need to start a chapter of Mental Roadblocks Anonymous. (If there is already such a group, please don’t laugh, I haven’t researched it yet!) Don’t get me wrong. I do set some goals and reach them, but too often (particularly in the last two years) it has done a whole lot of nothing for me. I can talk my way out of lots of things, even before I start with anything at all.

It truly is a struggle to try to think differently than 30 years of conditioning has allowed me to think. It has only been a few days since my immersion in the crisis house where all sorts of personal stories and interpersonal and existential lessons were taken in by participation or osmosis. I just about need to reacquaint myself with me now, as with people around me (some of whom I have to admit I feel I have taken for granted). Some days, it feels like a poisoned mass inhabits my body, and it needs to be purged, and when it is, I certainly feel better. I don’t do the things that some other depressed people do, like cutting or any of that. I fear that I supress it, and with the lack of an artistic expression, it’s that much worse. I don’t really know. That is what a year of counseling is aiming to find out, starting this month. There are some things that I can get started on to feel better. I just had this idea: I will write to anyone who sees this that feels I have wronged them some way and seek to make that right in the best way I can. So send an email or call and start a dialog.

Wow, even that felt better.

The Popcorn and the Prozac

I have been on a movie watching binge lately. For some that may not be a big deal, but for me it is. See, I actively stayed away from movies for a long time. Well, I should qualify that; I never bought any or paid admission to a theater, and had no membership with rental shops. This went on for years, mostly. I only own one movie now. It's hard to say what led me to avoid movies. I do know that I didn’t have much faith in the movie industry. I don’t really like the scene. It just rubs me the wrong way in too many cases. I get too much hype and not enough substance. I also don’t watch TV very much. In short, I rejected the visual medium for years. I liked music and listened intently to music but imposed a long time limit on the quanity or quality of movies or TV watching I would experience. I did see movies, but it would likely be a rental or when Kelli worked at a theater and got free admission. I just felt that the movie market had been too obsessed with the first week ratings and not the long term durability of a movie as a piece of art. Granted, I have been wrong in enough cases, but really, movies are part of American consumer culture, and that is something I try to limit my exposure to. I resent that movies are in theaters for such short times, and by the time the reputation is honestly established for a movie, it may be off the big screen. And at $8 a shot, it's too much of a gamble for me, so I wait it out and don’t get in any hurry. I can catch it later if it is worth it at all. Some people mock me for this self-imposed regulation. It saves me money, and I get to watch when it seems its actually worth doing, after a reputation is earned.

Anyhow, as music started to fade for me and I could not seem to stay interested in that world, I was sort of looking for ways to fill the time. I was talking with my online buddy Doug and over the course of time, I realized there were some movies I really was itching to see. One day he sent me a list of 90 movies that he thought were critical viewing, and little by little, with my crappy VCR that was donated to me and my crappy TV that I inherited, Kelli and I started making more regular stops to the movie store and I began to work my way through some of Doug’s flicks, and a few that I had been wanting to see. Fortunately, there was some overlap.

I never was much one for literature and film. Those are foreign worlds to me. My ears served me more than my eyes. Each medium has its own vocabulary and conventions. Film just hardly registered with me. I suppose it's almost a recent discovery for me to realize the literary appeal of a film. I know it's not a new thing; my college English teacher taught film-as-lit among his courses, but I paid it no heed. I was way too sheltered, and even last night, Doug told me to take the stick out of my ass. (There is actually no stick in my ass, for those who might be tempted to run with this morsel of gossip.) I embraced music at the expense of other things. I was waiting to be ripe for certain things. A person has to be ready to do something. So here I am. I have been reading more, and life has been leading me to different understandings of the real trials that constitute the human condition. I guess the bubble has burst. In recent times, I have read Brave New World (Huxley), Ghost Rider (Neil Peart’s road-to-recovery journal in the wake of the closely spaced deaths of his daughter and wife less than a year later), Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, and maybe some other bits. I also am a mad internet hound, and Google gets well traveled, as does Wikipedia.com, the internet encyclopedia. I have been reading a lot more than in years past. That may not be saying a lot, but even reading (literature and bios and stuff) is sort of held back for me. Again, in too many cases, it was just foreign to me, but that is beginning to change. And it will in the future, as I will be starting back on my college path next week, after a solid decade away from the academic world.

The movies on my plate in recent times are pretty intense. In fact it almost scares me to think that I saw all these in a few weeks' time. Many are about suffering of various sorts. But not just suffering. Some are hopeful in the end. Still there are a few that are as dismal as they come. Most of them are about gross injustice and mistreatment of humanity. Sure, there is plenty of that in the news, and I hear about it often enough, but sometimes you need to have it framed into a span of time that can be digested. Trust me, the news doesn’t leave me with hope for humanity. A three hour movie with a decent ending might though.

The one movie I actually own at the moment is Shawshank Redemption. I remember seeing that in 1995 on a crappy TV in a leaky and drafty garage/bedroom in the winter with my girlfriend Robin. The TV was utter crap, and the image was so bad it was like watching through a blizzard. But the movie captivated me. It was some time till I saw it again. Finally I did see it a year or two ago, and felt the same. One week back around Christmas last year I watched it two or three times in the same week. That movie is utterly amazing to me. It uses not one special effect but leaves me in tears at the end. I am an utter novice in reviewing lit and movies, so no revelations here. The thing just speaks to me. It gives me hope.

The more stark and demanding movies (emotionally for sure and physically because some are very long) have been Bowling For Columbine, The Deer Hunter, Schindler’s List, Threads and The Day After. The last two are rather odd, and I almost gave up hope on finding them, and I never thought I would have the chance to play them back to back in the same week. Both are nuclear holocaust movies made in the mid 80s.

The Day After was the American nuclear war movie from 1983—from the height of the Cold War nuclear scares of the Reagan era. TDA was a made for TV movie that was a huge media event on the week of showing. I have read that there were hotlines set up for scared viewers to use to decompress. I remember seeing it and a certain few images were etched upon my mind as a 10 year old. I don’t remember being particularly scared, but I was marked. I think the movie ends too early, just a day after the explosion, as a result, the long term consequences are not really brought to mind. That and it seems that there actually might be hope, which as the next movie shows, there might not be much of that left if suddenly civilization is reduced to anarchy and pure survival.

Threads was a British film from a year later. I think it is even more frightening. It spans a little over 13 years and is done with a docu-drama approach. Statistics turn up at the start of each scene, charting the progress of the events leading up to the attack and for months and years later. The premise of the movie is that the fabric of society will unravel into threads in the wake of a nuclear attack (in this movie, basically the entire world is the victim of a massive nuclear volley between the super powers, so there is no aid to be had because USA, UK and USSR and chunks of Asia are destroyed uniformly). First, all anyone can do is survive at all, for all the immediate damage that has been done to cities and agricultural areas. The civic infrastucture is rendered helpless and useless, and people must be let to die if they are too badly injured and doomed to death, so that food (the only currency that matters at all) can be made available for the remaining abled bodies that can do the work to be done, which, as time goes on in the movie, is again, anything to survive. The hospitals are all laid to waste, the doctors have nothing but hacksaws and torn clothing to aid their work. Really, it's a grim and terrible thing. As the movie goes on, it charts the “progress” —disease, radiation sickness, famine, genetic mutation in generations to follow, summary execution of criminals (those who steal food or cause unrest against the last shreds of the government), survival alone being placed above all else, at the cost of education (a last priority in a “society” that goes further and further backwards to a medieval way of life—every man for himself, subsistance, living off anything that can be killed for food, etc.) Anyhow, its a damn frightening film. I watched it twice in two days. If you ever want to watch a film without a happy ending, watch Threads.

Bowling For Columbine should be required viewing in this country. In fact, anything that shakes a stick at violence needs to be required viewing. The thing that pleased me to see was that Michael Moore was hoping to address an issue from within. The opening of the movie lays it out: he is a card carrying member of the NRA, has a long history with guns and the people who keep them. He’s not simply attacking the use of guns in America from an ivory tower, he’s in the thick of it, and for a few reasons close to him (the shooting deaths of some young people in his community, it seems), he seeks to take on some questions that don’t seem to be getting asked enough. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I watched it. The movie starts off with a bank that gives away guns for new account holders. Welcome to America. Land of the free, home of the armed. I could happily live in Canada after seeing that movie.

I had heard about The Deer Hunter some years back. I heard only that it was about a Vietnam vet who had a hard time returning to normalcy at home. I read up on this and a number of other movies. It's a three hour flick, but I watched it three times in the week I had it. I was just mowed down with that one too. Christopher Walken’s performance is still lodged in my mind. Again, I don’t have much reviewer prowess to flaunt. The movie just rocked my pathetic little world. And then, in some weird cosmic convergence of events, at the end of the week when I first saw the movie, one of the men I serve at the senior center turned out to be a Vietnam vet, having been the point man and dog handler for his infantry unit. He was the tip of the spear for his fellow men. He and his dog had the harrowing job of hunting mines, traps, pits, trip wires, and all that stuff, so that the other men could safely pass. He told me about his life since, and though it was nothing like Deer Hunter, but the movie primed me for hearing what he had to say, about raging fits of suicidal and homicidal anger, inability to keep a job, nightmares and flashbacks, and visits to the mental ward which continue to this day. At least the film didn’t have a happy ending to cheapen the experience. That would have been tragic. That week was quite a time for realizing how horrible that whole experience was.

Schindler’s List is one that was on the back burner for a long time. I had forgotten about Schindler as a real life figure till the end of the movie. Again, I have nothing to say but wow. Not just that 1100 people had an underground railroad to freedom and survival, but that it came in the form of an exploitive, greedy, self centered schemer that was as bad as any Nazi, but had a Christ-moment of purity and became a temporary angel to those he guarded, for whatever reason. I guess one never knows. I watched it twice this week.

The Last Temptation of Christ. I was invited to go on a field trip to watch this movie when it came out (I was 16). The brouhaha was enough that permission from my family was denied as the rest of my group was permitted to go. I of course am a big fan of the score, a masterful piece of music and recording by any measure, and so the movie was in the back of my mind for some years. And now I SOOOOOOOO wish I had seen this years ago. I assure you I would be a different person had I seen this before I did. I think it takes a jackass to not be moved profoundly by this movie. This movie stirred me deeply. And you know what? It was made by a crew passionate about making the movie and it was done for a (paltry) $7 million. I mean, a work of ART done for next to nothing, and released as a major movie? Wow. Can that be done now? Or is it all $200 million dollar budget CRAP that is only good for a few kicks on opening weekend, only to go to DVD and video after a month or less? Spare me the high budget, whiz-bang shootemup shit meant to just suck money out of the pockets. That’s what I ran from when I stayed away from movies. Unfortunately for me, I missed a few in the process, but I am ripe for these and more now.

August

It was 14 years ago this afternoon that I began my entry into being a musician. Or more specifically, out of the will to do so. I was summering during the days at my grandparent’s house (same as where I live now) that year. Earlier in the year, I got into listening to the local rock station, after some prodding from my older brother-like buddy Ross Shekelton. I got into listening to Def Leppard and Jethro Tull that year. Those are the two main reasons I began to play drums after about four or five years of not doing anything with the kit I had, that had just been stacked in a corner for that time. This time around, the difference was, I felt the music, and I wanted to play. My drum teacher back in the mid 80s was an older man, and he had me reading out of a book of popular rock and pop rhythms that I later discovered were Beatles tunes, and some other classic 2 & 4 backbeats we all know and love now. But he never did whatever it took to make music come to life. He never said I should listen to music, so to me it was always just a matter of reading some notes off a page. No feeling, no dynamics, nothing. He played a Rhodes piano to help give context to my drum playing, but I really didn’t get anything from it.

So, after about four or five years of not playing, and finally being a 15 year old discovering music in a visceral fashion, one Tuesday afternoon, I rode from my grandparent’s place back home to my dad’s and without actually announcing my plans, put together the drum kit and opened up the book I used years before and tried to read some of the stuff that had been so tediously worked over (but that never sank in). There was some shorthand numbering that we had written in over the notes, and I think that actually helped, but even more so was finally wanting to play, and wanting to play because music had spoken to me. Rick Allen of Def Leppard was my first musical hero, being the guy who let nothing get in his way, even losing his arm in a car accident wasn’t enough to make him stop playing the drums. And I, a little ashamed of my quitting long before, asked myself, ‘what is my excuse, if he can play with one arm?’ Realizing that I really had no excuse, I started spending some time with tapes of my extremely limited music “collection” started only a month before and featuring the four Def Leppard albums and various artists on tapes made from the radio!

My dad worked days, and I wasn’t really too good on drums, and really wanted no one to know that I was trying to get back into things, so I stopped shortly before he got home and made like nothing had happened. But after about two weeks of this clandestine work, I announced it at his birthday party, while my grandfolks were there. I thought they’d be happy to find that I was finally using the drums that they had paid for years before. (About as soon as I actually got them, I quit some short time later.)

That was 14 years ago. Among other August dates that sort of got lodged in memory include the 13th, specifically back in '94 when I got my green drums, and met a girl at a band party on a really humid summer night. The drums are still here, and the girl, well, after years of giving me an emotional rollercoaster ride both inside and outside of the relationship that started on that night, we are friends to a degree, but can’t really do much with that because our past is too troubling. That has certainly been an adventure. She is the only girl I got on account of being a rock star (ahem!). I can’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

August 13 did triple duty in the music gear buying department: in addition to the drumset in 1994, 1997 saw my getting the VS 880, which utterly changed my recording life, and started a real long creative streak that lasted for about 3 years. A couple years later, on the same date in 1999, I got my Mesa Dual Rectifier amp that was a game changer and led to the work that became Receiving.

August 26th, 1996 was the day I moved out of my dad’s place in two hours. Everything I had got moved in two hours. It was one of the worst days of my life. The matter isn't that I moved. I knew it was time to do so at the age of 22. But it was the father-induced circumstances that made it a horrible time.

August 10, 1993 saw the dissolution of my erstwhile drum-vocal duo Rhythmic Catharsis with my buddy Matt. He stiffed me when we were going to do a show together. Absolutely didn’t show up. I was pissed. Three days later, I told him I never wanted to see him again for that little antic. Eventually that passed and we got back in the saddle as friends, but still on an on-off basis for the time since.

August 10, 1997 saw me running into an old “friend” in the most unlikely of circumstances after over two and a half years of utter silence. At the time, I took it as a Godsend. But I have since considered it a grave misfortune.

August 10, 2001 is when I bought this computer I use. It was my first after years of avoiding computers for any number of reasons. On that same day, I went to my ten year high school class reunion.

And this year... There isn’t much going on of the musical kind. I have packed up my gear and left it out of sight for the most part. Only an acoustic guitar remains, with some things left out and ready, but not enough to carry on as I have for years. Somehow, it's just feeling wrong to me to have my musical activities curtailed like this. It's not something that came easily, but carrying on like I was was taking me nowhere. Time for some change. I have found some value in watching movies recently, and I have gathered a list of flicks to see after ignoring movies for many years. I also am interested in some more visual art, both as viewer and participant. I signed up for three classes at Mesa College, the ever popular junior college here in San Diego that I used to go to, but stopped—TEN YEARS AGO! I just needed time off then, from school, to sample the real world, to do different stuff, meet people, maybe do music more, etc. Well, that hiatus from school stretched on much longer than I thought it would, but now I feel that it's time I got back to some classes and back on the road to a degree. Life has been channeling me toward it, little by little for all that time. I really believe in the lessons of doors closing and opening. Maybe music needs to take a back seat to other things, the same as going to school did a decade ago. The time off from school did allow me to find things of interest and passion, something that was lacking back as a recent fresh face just out of high school. Matters of politics, religion, psychology, history, art, social fabrics are all congealing in some way within me, and maybe school will help some of that along, among other benefits, tangible and intangible. I just feel it's time to act on that, after a rather prolonged absence, but one that needed to happen, so as to deliver me to this point.

I just want to say hi to a few friends who make life better. When I listen to them, that is.

Doug Duhon: multiinstrumentalist, artist, home repairman, general renaissance man, and a buddy I have never talked to or met face to face, but feel I have known for ages, thanks to the web. So far Doug is the best success story from my countless hours on the web.

Jerry Lawritson: minister and friend of 16 years, and a man worth listening to.

Kelli Parrish: an angel.

And a certain feller who ran around with a bunch of freaks in the desert about 2000 years ago... We’re getting to be better buddies too.

Sad

It didn’t come easily but it came nonetheless. About a week and a half ago, I took my old studio room apart and put things in cases, bags, boxes or on hooks. The newer room that I had been using as control room and lounge also had part of the gear stripped out and put away, though there are some lingering things that really don’t have much of a place to go otherwise. But all that once was a relatively simple plug-and-play set up has been disabled. The only thing I intend to leave right in front of me is my old acoustic guitar. Funny, I never thought of myself as a guitar player, but if music is going to speak to me, I hope it can be done on six strings for a while.

Why did I do it?

Endless frustration on so many fronts relating to music, production, politics, family (real and imagined) and more. I had a fear of this as far back as the days in mid 2000 when I was working on Receiving. I knew that I was upping the ante a lot by commiting to a production pressing of CDs (500, but it's a real glass mastered deal, not some CDR run with an inkjet printer). I just felt that the CD was an end of an era for me. It took a year and more to record, and another year to see it done to the point where there were ten boxes of the thing on my doorstep in late October 2001. After finishing the music over a year earlier, I had some delays regarding the cover, money for pressing, and some life issues to clean up. With the exception of about 15 minutes of music I recorded for the holiday season in 2000, there have been no other real pieces of music that I call “done.” I have some tracks gleaned from about four different band combinations that have played since late 2000, but most are undone. Only one is multitracked to the point of being a pretty complete musical statement, listenable from start to finish. There have been endless hours of jams, short demos and other fragments, but nothing has panned out. I’ve had different players assemble into different bands, some with more promise than others. I’ve done some solo work but just couldn’t muster whatever it took to finish (or even start) recordings. I’ve spent thousands of dollars in search of gear that might make things easier, or better sounding, or more productive, etc. I’ve changed out studio rooms for a bigger more lively area in which to work. I’ve tried to get better on different instruments and in more situations. I’ve learned a lot and passed on a lot from any of a number of online forums about gear, techniques, trends, etc. I’ve also changed my main recording platform twice in the time since Receiving.

The year 2001 was critical for me. It started off disastrous. Lots of family drama to start with, followed by the death of my grandmother (it's her house I live in, now owned by my dad). I began to go to school for all this multimedia stuff around the same time she died. I remained at the house but had to rent rooms out, an odd thing to be living around 20-somethings after three years with a 90-something, and more changes. I got an inheritance that I spent on a mess of gear, most of which I thought I wanted and would use, but half of which was returned, sold or traded after some time, finding it was not as I had thought. I also felt sort of put on the spot by roommates. Previously, my grandmother was mostly oblivious to my music making. I worked in a small windowless room and I could do whatever I wanted and was free to be as loud and obscene as I wanted to be. But young roommates could hear stuff and frankly, I self-censored things. I also didn’t work at all hours of the night. So my environment changed around me. I wanted to play bass in a band of my design, but little came my way then. School was getting me into other things, and I sort of allowed my creativity to be channeled that way, into visual arts. I also got the computer that summer. It changed everything.

I discovered newsgroups and bulletin boards. I wish I hadn’t now. I knew a decent amount about gear and audio before I joined in on that world. Now I recite that shit in my sleep. It's fun for a while, but it's a drag. Same shit, different day. I got the troll label on some groups, got kicked off three times so far on another, and on and on. I don’t know what to say, but the mind numbing repetition of most of that material has done something to spoil the fun. And it also took a lot of time away from doing the art that I should have been doing—recording. For a long time, I didn’t want to use my computer for audio, but I buckled and got into ProTools LE last year. That made me need to sit in front of the computer more than ever, so even if I wanted to escape the online groups, I barely could because I needed some real help, and the recording world and online world were both accessed from the same machine!

Another thing that has been at work is that I am simply trying to be a better player. I was focusing on bass for a long while, then in the last several months, a lot more time has been on guitar. I had always leaned on effects, multitracking and other gimmicks to make music. And, in the post-Receiving world, I simply felt compelled to not do that. My studio, as it would appear now, is very light on gimmicks. I could do a lot in ProTools if I want, but instrumentally, it's a place with guitars and amps, basses, drums and a Rhodes piano. I have done away with the synthesizer, electronic drums, sampler, and most of the effects that lingered. It's really pared down to instruments and recorder. There is just a lot of it, and it's able to do a whole band. My recording chains are streamlined, my mixes are cleaner, and all that. It's more naked. The thing is, I don’t want to work as a solo guy. The spark isn’t there to do all that work. And the band side of things has been a rollercoaster ride. So it's hard to expect to get any keepable tracks from band players because no one is in it long enough to make anything happen. I just got fed up with flaky players, and depressed even more because I reconfigured the studio environment in such a way that band work was easy and solo work was not. At least not the way I used to work. And now, the way I used to work doesn’t work for me. I got separation, I got channels, I got tracks, I got nice monitors, I got a tidy and spacious place to work, but I don't have what it takes to do what I used to do—lock myself into a studio and make noise, music like my life depended on it. To do it like I was the only one left to do it. To speak truth to hard drives, to battle demons, and all that. I find it not even a surprise that I did better art with 4- and 8- track recorders in a windowless box with a few mics, a lot of instruments (often borrowed) and nothing but fire in me to do what it took to prove the world wrong. To prove to my grandmother who, when watching me try to play some really basic tunes (even badly) as a young piano student, commented on my playing “maybe you aren’t meant to be a musician.” Or to prove to my dad that not all musicians are drug using losers that can’t get anything together for more than a few sleazy gigs. Or to prove to my friend Matt that Rhythmic Catharsis was just the beginning of a process, or to prove to Mike Thaxton that I could do something with the musical punch of all that art rock we love, and the emotional punch of Kevin Gilbert. For whatever reason, I just lost the fire for the solo work, and the next stage was the band thing. And that, as we all know, is not the shortest path to a sane life.

So, for a long time, I have been frustrated. All dressed up and ready to go. There was somewhere to go, even. But it was paralyzing. On one hand, a significant goal was achieved in finishing the CD. I knew that raised the bar. The next place to go was to prove myself as a musician. Sort of did that. I get more and more compliments, and that is nice, but I don’t want to just play. I want to record and see things get done. I went from hiding behind effects on most everything to playing the guitar in my own band, sans effects, in more cases than not. Me, the Strat, the Mesa and some gain pedals, and a fistful of volume. And some of the stuff that the most recent band was playing was really sounding good. Not tight, just good. I’m a sloppy player, but the stuff was exciting. So the fire is there.

So what now?

I don’t know. It's sort of like when Robert Fripp turned in when King Crimson just put out their best album to date, back in 1974. Sometimes, it all needs to be stripped down and rebuilt. Fripp allows himself time to let “the future present itself.” I have been interesed in visual artistic expression for a while, since early 2001. I do the digital stuff and photography, and in doing so, it reminds me of the earlier days of music recording, when I just did what I did, and didn’t really know better. I listen to my old stuff and it's messy and flawed as hell, but there was a creative spark in it that just is too elusive in my musical endeavors. Music became too rigid for me, too black and white. Visually, I have only instinct and some coaching, but not years of expectations behind me, so I can enjoy it. I might throw together a collage a day for half a week, just like I did with recordings in 1995 or later. Also, I am more interested in things that have nothing to do with being an artist. I have some sheltered youth side effects to chase away. I have some movies to see, books to read, people to meet and so forth that didn’t happen earlier and somehow are demanding to be given time now. I’m almost 30 and half my life has been chasing the muse with music. Not all bad, but not all I need. There has been lots of grief due to family and world events that just needs time to be reflected upon. Music used to keep me in a small world of my own, and its not working out now. Something about the post-2001 world: nothing seems to work the same as it did before then. I had been talking about selling all my gear and going to a monastery (another King Crimson reference) and just really reexamining things. A certain spiritual side is itching to be honored, and that might lead me to interesting things. (I promise I won’t join a cult or become a Taliban guy.) I guess I’ll keep my stuff locked up out of sight for a while. Music, musicians, gear, and all that (but the joy of playing on a good day) just took me down too much in the last year, so I have to park it for at least a while. I think I need a piano and guitar. If I can’t say what I need with that, I should hang it up. I have less and less interest in hearing other music, and when I do, I almost regret it. I have a lot more in me on the topic of how music permeates our lives, but I’ll spare you. The thing is, I need to turn it off to make it special, and I hope that doesn’t backfire. I don’t know what to expect, but it's a safe bet that there will be more art work to peruse here in the near future, as I indulge myself that way.