Dec
That Sadam assassination was pretty abrupt wasn’t it? First it’s “Trial and due process.” “There will be an appeal.” “This could take months.” ... Then low and behold it’s suddenly “It could come any day.” “Within the next 48 hours.” “Imminent.” Wonder what changed? In no doubt unrelated news... President Ford apparently left all sorts of criticisms of the current administration and of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in particular to be read just after his death. I saw a commentator on the news this morning saying it was telling that these comments, made during seperate interviews with Bob Woodward and Michael Beschloss, weren’t having more of an impact. Then he shifted gears and started talking about Sadam’s lurid last moment on the gallows.
That Sadam assassination was pretty abrupt wasn’t it? First it’s “Trial and due process.” "There will be an appeal." “This could take months.” ... Then low and behold it’s suddenly “It could come any day.” "Within the next 48 hours." “Imminent.” Wonder what changed? In no doubt unrelated news... President Ford apparently left all sorts of criticisms of the current administration and of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in particular to be read just after his death. I saw a commentator on the news this morning commenting that it was telling that these comments weren’t having more of an impact. Then he shifted gears and started talking about Sadam’s lurid last moment on the gallows.
Dec
They’ve assigned a major general to “assist” Betty Ford to the end of her days. That’s going to make for an interesting movie someday.
Been working on music. Some good things have come up. Just parts and ideas. Next ‘album’ is eons away. Wanted to write a quick post to acknowledge something I’ve been listenning to compulsively for the last few days while taking walks and getting air. “Window in the skies” is the latest U2 single. It’s a bit heavy on the string synths, but I’ve been listenning to it a lot lately. I think it’s the best thing they’ve done since Unforgetable fire. Not that it actually sounds like anything from that album. I think there are two sort of “arcs” that pop music careers seem to follow. One is the Rolling Stones “arc” where they just slowly melt and disapate, and go from weakness to weakness. That’s kind of how I’ve had U2 pegged as, to my mind, they’ve been on a downward spiral since Zooropa. The other pop music career arc is the Neil Young arc... An amazing early period, followed by years of flailing around, before genuinely reconnecting with an initial source of inspiration. This latest u2 song has a quality of unabashed enthusiasm, and “Who cares what anyone thinks?” religiousity that was rappent in their early work. I feel as though I should hate it, but I’ve really been enjoying it. I kind of like rock stars when they have the balls to be themselves. A line like “The rule has been disproved / The stone it has been moved” is reeking of Christian imagery (Tomb of Lazarus / Resurection). This is the sort of line the Bush administration slips into speeches in ways that cause some pundits to sound alarms about his communicating with a Christian base in “code”. It’s easy not to notice it’s religious register if that’s not one’s cup of tea, but for bible thumpers this kind of stuff has a clear meaning. Following it up with a chorus of “Oh can’t you see what love has done” is kind of ballsy. Adding to it: “Can’t you see what love has done, what it’s doing to me?” resonates interestingly with Bono’s latent messianism. My friend Kevin refers to Bono as “A Jim Jones of the 21st Century just waiting to happen.” Well, with this song all I can say is the soundtrack for the eventual TV movie on the subject just got a whole lot better.
Dec
Kept a Blog in 2006. Here are some bits of it. Might blog again sometime soon. This site is like an ecosystem. There’s a lot of content beneath shifting currents of self consciousness and would be aspirations towards good taste. Sometimes different parts will get sumerged while others reappear. Welcome back blog at least for now.
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Dec
I’ve written it before, I’ll write it again, part of the purpose of this site is to give people, friends, acquaintances, or not so familiar folks, a place to kill some time ... well probably from work.
Sometimes the web can help folks make it through a dull day on the job, and with the passage of time one never knows what old accquaintance or friend of a friendship one may choose to revisit.
With that in mind I tend to gravitate towards the idea of peppering a site with updates so that there is always the promise of something new. At the same time, as I’ve alluded to earlier in this blog, finding time to make music can be difficult, esspecially while ensonced within ‘The Cube of Osonics’ (http://www.osonics.com/ocubie.html).
After finishing Walking music earlier this year I posted a quote from a ridiculously famous main stream guitarist I thought it would be helpful to steal to outline where I was after finishing off that ‘album’:
“We haven’t really got to the point where we’re thinking seriously about the next record. We’re at that wonderful place where we’re just experimenting, and trying things, just really letting our imaginations go. It’s my favorite phase of making an album because there are no constraints, you just write and explore possibilities. That’s where I am now: loads of possibilities, but nothing concrete”
Well that’s where I am ... again with the two “Lullaby” discs done. Well, as I noted in the (unforgivably rambling) post before this one, I think I’ll still be working on two of the songs on Great buys on Lullabies... but the electric guitars have been pulled out of the closet, and the dust has been blown off my drum machine. Also I have nearly a week off from my job coming up surrounding the holidays... so new things are in the works, though I still have no idea what I’ll be working on.
As I wrote back in feb, I (still) have a few old songs kicking around on my hard drives that I’d like to finish from earlier working sessions. A couple of them are among the best things I’ve ever done. They strike me as being so good in fact that part of the reason they aren’t done is because I have to respect them and put them aside until I have the time and energy to finish them appropriately.
There is a wide range of material for me to draw from that I feel obligated to complete, but at the same time there is always an interest in just shoving all the pieces and game board back in the box to go outside and just amble around in search of something new.
I’m not quite sure what I’ll be up to next, and it could take me a while to get something else done... or I might suddenly decide that I’ve been done with something all along. All I can write is I’m fairly confident there will be another music update to the site before the end of next year.
So although I’m “between albums” right now... a bit like being in the off season in sports, there will still be more additions to the site to keep things interesting, so please continue to check back now and again.
Sometimes the web can help folks make it through a dull day on the job, and with the passage of time one never knows what old accquaintance or friend of a friendship one may choose to revisit.
With that in mind I tend to gravitate towards the idea of peppering a site with updates so that there is always the promise of something new. At the same time, as I’ve alluded to earlier in this blog, finding time to make music can be difficult, esspecially while ensonced within ‘The Cube of Osonics’ (http://www.osonics.com/ocubie.html).
After finishing Walking music earlier this year I posted a quote from a ridiculously famous main stream guitarist I thought it would be helpful to steal to outline where I was after finishing off that ‘album’:
“We haven’t really got to the point where we’re thinking seriously about the next record. We’re at that wonderful place where we’re just experimenting, and trying things, just really letting our imaginations go. It’s my favorite phase of making an album because there are no constraints, you just write and explore possibilities. That’s where I am now: loads of possibilities, but nothing concrete”
Well that’s where I am ... again with the two “Lullaby” discs done. Well, as I noted in the (unforgivably rambling) post before this one, I think I’ll still be working on two of the songs on Great buys on Lullabies... but the electric guitars have been pulled out of the closet, and the dust has been blown off my drum machine. Also I have nearly a week off from my job coming up surrounding the holidays... so new things are in the works, though I still have no idea what I’ll be working on.
As I wrote back in feb, I (still) have a few old songs kicking around on my hard drives that I’d like to finish from earlier working sessions. A couple of them are among the best things I’ve ever done. They strike me as being so good in fact that part of the reason they aren’t done is because I have to respect them and put them aside until I have the time and energy to finish them appropriately.
There is a wide range of material for me to draw from that I feel obligated to complete, but at the same time there is always an interest in just shoving all the pieces and game board back in the box to go outside and just amble around in search of something new.
I’m not quite sure what I’ll be up to next, and it could take me a while to get something else done... or I might suddenly decide that I’ve been done with something all along. All I can write is I’m fairly confident there will be another music update to the site before the end of next year.
So although I’m “between albums” right now... a bit like being in the off season in sports, there will still be more additions to the site to keep things interesting, so please continue to check back now and again.
Dec
A friend sent me this earlier today. In an age where there “commercial news source” involves a fundamental contradiction in terms, I believe Net Neutrality is a staggeringly critical issue. Click below to watch the internet equivalent of a PSA spot on the subject. Hopefully you will recognize some of the net celebs from links friends and loved one’s have sent you over the past five or six years.
We Are The Web
2 min 38 sec - Aug 2, 2006
We Are The Web
2 min 38 sec - Aug 2, 2006
Been an interesting night. Sunday. Working on music. Yesterday I went to great lengths to set up my electric rig. I got a nifty sound from my recently acquired first solid body Humbucker guitar. I’m eager to rip raucous and roll, now that I’ve been in touch with my acoustical soul. I figure “hey... now it’s time to shift the other way. I have friends who have been trying to get me into Tool and I want to get back into sequencing...”
As I was tweaking my effects chain it occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn’t move on so quickly from Great buys on lullabies... because... well... let’s be honest... some of it is just nice.
And I believe, and I believe... and I believe there is something to the idea that niceness is the enemy of great art. So... What to do? What to do?
Well, I guess I just put up the music too soon is all. I wanted to prove ... me me me that I could do straight acoustic takes and do it all me me me me me me (to be read as the sound of a singer warming up. What were you thinking?).
Anyway... um... where was I. Oh yes. Perhaps this coming year I’ll let it all hang out a little bit more here in the blog.
This is going to be a “stream of consciousness” post. I’ll be hopping around from one topic to another, but all in a steady drive forward, pushing towards some sort of articulation of where my head is at now with regards to music, and everything else.
If you prefer slightly more focused and cogent writing, why not slip on down the line of this page where you can read some absolutely fascinating posts about ... gray. Gray cubes. Gray days.
I once saw a political commentator who said of the former California governor, Gray Davis, that he was... in a word... “Gray.”
Well the folks out there is Kalifornia sure took care of that didn’t they?
Because Arnold Schwarzenegger may be many things, but he certainly is not gray.
In fact he might just be the savior of the earth... After all, he is the one man holding together the Kennedy clan and the Right Wing President killing elite as it exists only in Oliver Stone’s mind.
As the reader may recall, Oliver Stone once had Larry Hagman play a shady oil kingpin who fairly fit the above description in his movie version of the Anthony Hopkins musical drama Nixon. I can just see the sequel staring Arnold in full action hero mode, the one action hero tough enough to hold two warring families and their factions together in some 21st century remake of “Conan the Barbarian” where neck ties and blackberries have replaced codpieces and broadswords. I can see him taking Anthony Hopkins' place in the scene from the original Nixon sitting where tricky dick did across from Larry holding an arid sun orange topaz glass of scotch. Only in our sequel Larry’s oil baron will lean forward and coo menacingly “Now you ride that Shriver girl into submission...” JR will then laugh and reach for a cigar. “You show that Philly how a man runs his business.”
But anyway I digress into free form montage. But perhaps montages aren’t such bad things. With politicians of supposedly liberal states out there like “Gray” Gray Davis... if the best liberalism can produce these days are efficient men in suits whose principle claim to fame is they aren’t colorful enough to be corrupt, well gosh darn it then maybe what we need... What we need ... is a MONTAGE... And gosh darn it maybe Trey Parker and Matt Stone should be called upon to dream up the campaign theme song and video support for a presidential ticket featuring Steven Colbert and John Stewart.
I mean heck... Maureen Dowd even suggested Stewart and Colbert run in Rolling Stone Magazine. And she writes for the New York Times and is even on Charlie Rose!
Er... anyway... where was I? Oh yes. Trying to spruce up and make things a little bit more interesting to read here in the blog. And in order to do that, I need to take chances. I need to stop being afraid to follow flights of fancy.
So sometimes these blog posts will crash and burn horribly. Sometimes they will seem like the demented ravings of... a not especially interesting shut-in who spends all of his time making music.
But... as John Lennon once sang “I’m not the only one.”
I think there are a lot of people out there trying to get by and so... I guess at the very least that probably means I shouldn’t have that much to be embarrassed about if things get a little noodley strudely here in the blog.
This is, after all... potentially at any rate... a completely new art form.
I have a hunch mine will be only about as interesting as one of the many thousands of forgotten novels no one has ever heard of from the 19th century. You know... not the ones that get taught in college, or even written about by someone leaving college, keeping the gig alive by teaching in academia.
Sly devils.
Even so my anonymity may add to the proceedings. I guess the only reason I’ve been a bit cautious here in the blog thus far is for fear that someone from work, from Cubelandia, could stumble across it and figure out who is writing.
Oh... by the way, my Laundromat sign was torn down. Did I mention that yet? No? I guess I was saving it up for more gung ho laughter value.
But if you look at the pictures of my cube, you’ll see I posted a Laundromat sign there. It got taken down. One morning PG Six and I looked up, and it just wasn’t there.
Oh my.
The subtle indignities we suffer while we are mulling around in gray pens before deciding to throw our bodies on to the heap of the bonfire of blazing screens around the country burning up carbon and somehow contributing to pollution in the atmosphere by reading or writing rambling blogs.
Writing of PG Six reminds me, Thursday PG, Amit lissack and I went out to get sushi after work. You may have noticed I keep mentioning their names a lot. Well, in the world of anonymity and people not having frames wrapped around them to provide “added significance”... that is... in the real world where people can be tremendously talented and still not get anywhere, in this world which delights itself only with the fading celluloid memories of a time where capitalists looked for artists to exploit and profit from, as opposed to large breasted blondes, and reasonably harmless looking homunculuses who can be dressed up with microphones and pointed in any direction, looking into any camera to pacify and placate the masses with sexual mojo... in this world where no one is ever actually going to hear about the next John Lennon anyway, because after all, there are 60 guys just like him hanging out at the mall... I happen to think PG and Amit are pretty amazing musicians, and I don’t mind plugging them, because they are... I have to admit, making better music than I am (I’ll plead extenuating circumstances in a later post..."Society did it! It’s society what made me bad m'lud!")
On Thursday, at our self declared 21st century Algonquin round table of artists (that is claimed by me, myself, and not by either of the others present, nor for that matter, by me to their faces. In fact this is the first I’ve brought it up...), I was forced to contend with the fact that Amit has just finished a song which... Skewers the concept of Acoustic guitars.
The song is called “Acoustic Guitars” and the lyrics refer to girls whose favorite song is “The sad one about important things”. He mentions girls don’t like electric guitars “or sharks”, revealing some of that latent Mania which makes me a genuine Amit Lissack fan.
Having just completed Great buys on lullabies with it’s simple folksy paeans, I was eager to take Amit to task, and felt emboldened knowing that my other colleague at the round (sushi) table was a fellow traveling troubadour who made a great deal of music by acoustic guitar.
So I turned to PG Six... who said to Amit... “You know the only reason it hurts so bad is because it’s true.”
So... there you have it... I have it on authority from two of the greatest musicians on earth who shall some day be heralded when this blog is required reading in the “Early 21st Century Blogs” class at Dartmouth... where Baker Library will one day be one of the largest server clusters on the North Eastern seaboard, and thoroughly medicated aspiring middle level bank managers will continue to regularly meet with school psychologists monitoring their behavior to make certain they don’t engage in any rowdy sort of intercourse that could expose the college to a liable suit.
“You went up to talk to her while you were drunk in the basement of a fraternity for people who are of a higher economic class? Well... we’ll just have to up your medication then.”
Yes, someday, in such a hall for achievement and learning, people will study this blog, and write papers comparing it to that dude Socrates for an easy A with a professor who learned long ago you don’t give low grades to children from those upper class fraternities.
So... anyway... now that you’ve read all about me, and the historic exploits of PG Six and Amit Lissack, be advised, I now know that, in fact Acoustic guitars are for girls.
So... I’m thinking I need to “man up” Great Buys a little bit more.
Now... I don’t know if that means I should take what I’ve finished down or not.
Oh my... see... you’re reading all about this in College ... wondering how George Lucas could have predicted what Dartmouth in the year 2050 would look like so accurately when he made his film THX 1138.
But me, I’m sitting here with a laptop in a tenement apartment building in 2006 trying to imagine, and therefore, along with millions of contemporaries, invent, blogging etiquette.
Don’t worry; it will be your turn some day. In 2060 or so you’ll contend with some new art from. There’s one every generation or so. Then you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway... for now, let me share the adventure.
I think I need to redo ‘Shine’ and I’m not sure I’m 100% with the current version of “Air & Space museum”. I think these are great songs. That’s why I’ve already gotten them copywritten... but no one is ever going to know they are great songs if I leave them as is with their “Acoustic guitars are for girls” level of performance.
I mean... I think they should stay acoustic... because after all, girls are people too, but what I guess I’m trying to head back to is that nice is the enemy of great in Art. When I revved up to play electric again, I realized that I haven’t completed this “phase” yet... and there is still something more for me to learn from these songs, and more awareness for me to acquire from the making of them.
So in order for me to get anywhere with them, I need to change my rules, and allow these songs to take me to where they want me to be.
So... I’m shaking things up, and writing the sort of blog post that it would kill me to learn my colleagues in Cubelandia might discover.
Maybe that’s where the songs want me to go, to some place where I’m a little bit more opened up... just enough for whatever additional light they have to shed on my life, to get in.
So I suppose Great buys on Lullabies is still in progress, at least for those two songs.
For now be advised that Great buys on lullabies is a work in progress. For so long as it’s posted, and no later blog entry has contradicted what I’m writing now... it is a work in progress.
Lullaby Raga on the other hand is done. It’s something that will only make sense someday when the mood is right. Remember that if you’re reading this. I think it might be a really comforting and cool thing after an evening spent lighting candles, drinking mushroom tea, or listening to oldies like ‘Lucy in the sky with Diamonds’ on a day you happen to have off from a hard job.
No, Lullaby Raga is not professional! Nor is it a complex composition that will make me a lot of money. But it’s a nice 30 minute sort of free form dirge to have on during those mellower moods when one’s attention span and focus on music are elastic.
In fact, I think it’s precisely because it’s so shambolic and lacking in commercial ambition or pretense that it might be fun to hear in those states. I once saw a guitar player at an open mic at a place downtown in New York. Maybe it was Tonic on Ludlow? Anyway, he had a song, “What are you going to do now that all your guitar playing friends are gone?”
I hated it at the time, which is probably an indication of how good it was, because back then I hated everyone who dared to be good when I knew I had so many songs still stuck within me.
Anyway, I guess that tune was a sort of interesting alternative to Amit’s “Acoustic guitars are for girls” approach. The song was about growing up, past the age of college, and into the age of work, isolation, power bills, and shut offs. I think Lullaby Raga is worthwhile along these lines. That is it’s a bit like having recourse to an impromptu college dorm jam in one’s own home.
So to sum up, Lullaby Raga is done. Great buys is a sketch in progress.
You may now return to your world.
-Beep!-
As I was tweaking my effects chain it occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn’t move on so quickly from Great buys on lullabies... because... well... let’s be honest... some of it is just nice.
And I believe, and I believe... and I believe there is something to the idea that niceness is the enemy of great art. So... What to do? What to do?
Well, I guess I just put up the music too soon is all. I wanted to prove ... me me me that I could do straight acoustic takes and do it all me me me me me me (to be read as the sound of a singer warming up. What were you thinking?).
Anyway... um... where was I. Oh yes. Perhaps this coming year I’ll let it all hang out a little bit more here in the blog.
This is going to be a “stream of consciousness” post. I’ll be hopping around from one topic to another, but all in a steady drive forward, pushing towards some sort of articulation of where my head is at now with regards to music, and everything else.
If you prefer slightly more focused and cogent writing, why not slip on down the line of this page where you can read some absolutely fascinating posts about ... gray. Gray cubes. Gray days.
I once saw a political commentator who said of the former California governor, Gray Davis, that he was... in a word... “Gray.”
Well the folks out there is Kalifornia sure took care of that didn’t they?
Because Arnold Schwarzenegger may be many things, but he certainly is not gray.
In fact he might just be the savior of the earth... After all, he is the one man holding together the Kennedy clan and the Right Wing President killing elite as it exists only in Oliver Stone’s mind.
As the reader may recall, Oliver Stone once had Larry Hagman play a shady oil kingpin who fairly fit the above description in his movie version of the Anthony Hopkins musical drama Nixon. I can just see the sequel staring Arnold in full action hero mode, the one action hero tough enough to hold two warring families and their factions together in some 21st century remake of “Conan the Barbarian” where neck ties and blackberries have replaced codpieces and broadswords. I can see him taking Anthony Hopkins' place in the scene from the original Nixon sitting where tricky dick did across from Larry holding an arid sun orange topaz glass of scotch. Only in our sequel Larry’s oil baron will lean forward and coo menacingly “Now you ride that Shriver girl into submission...” JR will then laugh and reach for a cigar. “You show that Philly how a man runs his business.”
But anyway I digress into free form montage. But perhaps montages aren’t such bad things. With politicians of supposedly liberal states out there like “Gray” Gray Davis... if the best liberalism can produce these days are efficient men in suits whose principle claim to fame is they aren’t colorful enough to be corrupt, well gosh darn it then maybe what we need... What we need ... is a MONTAGE... And gosh darn it maybe Trey Parker and Matt Stone should be called upon to dream up the campaign theme song and video support for a presidential ticket featuring Steven Colbert and John Stewart.
I mean heck... Maureen Dowd even suggested Stewart and Colbert run in Rolling Stone Magazine. And she writes for the New York Times and is even on Charlie Rose!
Er... anyway... where was I? Oh yes. Trying to spruce up and make things a little bit more interesting to read here in the blog. And in order to do that, I need to take chances. I need to stop being afraid to follow flights of fancy.
So sometimes these blog posts will crash and burn horribly. Sometimes they will seem like the demented ravings of... a not especially interesting shut-in who spends all of his time making music.
But... as John Lennon once sang “I’m not the only one.”
I think there are a lot of people out there trying to get by and so... I guess at the very least that probably means I shouldn’t have that much to be embarrassed about if things get a little noodley strudely here in the blog.
This is, after all... potentially at any rate... a completely new art form.
I have a hunch mine will be only about as interesting as one of the many thousands of forgotten novels no one has ever heard of from the 19th century. You know... not the ones that get taught in college, or even written about by someone leaving college, keeping the gig alive by teaching in academia.
Sly devils.
Even so my anonymity may add to the proceedings. I guess the only reason I’ve been a bit cautious here in the blog thus far is for fear that someone from work, from Cubelandia, could stumble across it and figure out who is writing.
Oh... by the way, my Laundromat sign was torn down. Did I mention that yet? No? I guess I was saving it up for more gung ho laughter value.
But if you look at the pictures of my cube, you’ll see I posted a Laundromat sign there. It got taken down. One morning PG Six and I looked up, and it just wasn’t there.
Oh my.
The subtle indignities we suffer while we are mulling around in gray pens before deciding to throw our bodies on to the heap of the bonfire of blazing screens around the country burning up carbon and somehow contributing to pollution in the atmosphere by reading or writing rambling blogs.
Writing of PG Six reminds me, Thursday PG, Amit lissack and I went out to get sushi after work. You may have noticed I keep mentioning their names a lot. Well, in the world of anonymity and people not having frames wrapped around them to provide “added significance”... that is... in the real world where people can be tremendously talented and still not get anywhere, in this world which delights itself only with the fading celluloid memories of a time where capitalists looked for artists to exploit and profit from, as opposed to large breasted blondes, and reasonably harmless looking homunculuses who can be dressed up with microphones and pointed in any direction, looking into any camera to pacify and placate the masses with sexual mojo... in this world where no one is ever actually going to hear about the next John Lennon anyway, because after all, there are 60 guys just like him hanging out at the mall... I happen to think PG and Amit are pretty amazing musicians, and I don’t mind plugging them, because they are... I have to admit, making better music than I am (I’ll plead extenuating circumstances in a later post..."Society did it! It’s society what made me bad m'lud!")
On Thursday, at our self declared 21st century Algonquin round table of artists (that is claimed by me, myself, and not by either of the others present, nor for that matter, by me to their faces. In fact this is the first I’ve brought it up...), I was forced to contend with the fact that Amit has just finished a song which... Skewers the concept of Acoustic guitars.
The song is called “Acoustic Guitars” and the lyrics refer to girls whose favorite song is “The sad one about important things”. He mentions girls don’t like electric guitars “or sharks”, revealing some of that latent Mania which makes me a genuine Amit Lissack fan.
Having just completed Great buys on lullabies with it’s simple folksy paeans, I was eager to take Amit to task, and felt emboldened knowing that my other colleague at the round (sushi) table was a fellow traveling troubadour who made a great deal of music by acoustic guitar.
So I turned to PG Six... who said to Amit... “You know the only reason it hurts so bad is because it’s true.”
So... there you have it... I have it on authority from two of the greatest musicians on earth who shall some day be heralded when this blog is required reading in the “Early 21st Century Blogs” class at Dartmouth... where Baker Library will one day be one of the largest server clusters on the North Eastern seaboard, and thoroughly medicated aspiring middle level bank managers will continue to regularly meet with school psychologists monitoring their behavior to make certain they don’t engage in any rowdy sort of intercourse that could expose the college to a liable suit.
“You went up to talk to her while you were drunk in the basement of a fraternity for people who are of a higher economic class? Well... we’ll just have to up your medication then.”
Yes, someday, in such a hall for achievement and learning, people will study this blog, and write papers comparing it to that dude Socrates for an easy A with a professor who learned long ago you don’t give low grades to children from those upper class fraternities.
So... anyway... now that you’ve read all about me, and the historic exploits of PG Six and Amit Lissack, be advised, I now know that, in fact Acoustic guitars are for girls.
So... I’m thinking I need to “man up” Great Buys a little bit more.
Now... I don’t know if that means I should take what I’ve finished down or not.
Oh my... see... you’re reading all about this in College ... wondering how George Lucas could have predicted what Dartmouth in the year 2050 would look like so accurately when he made his film THX 1138.
But me, I’m sitting here with a laptop in a tenement apartment building in 2006 trying to imagine, and therefore, along with millions of contemporaries, invent, blogging etiquette.
Don’t worry; it will be your turn some day. In 2060 or so you’ll contend with some new art from. There’s one every generation or so. Then you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway... for now, let me share the adventure.
I think I need to redo ‘Shine’ and I’m not sure I’m 100% with the current version of “Air & Space museum”. I think these are great songs. That’s why I’ve already gotten them copywritten... but no one is ever going to know they are great songs if I leave them as is with their “Acoustic guitars are for girls” level of performance.
I mean... I think they should stay acoustic... because after all, girls are people too, but what I guess I’m trying to head back to is that nice is the enemy of great in Art. When I revved up to play electric again, I realized that I haven’t completed this “phase” yet... and there is still something more for me to learn from these songs, and more awareness for me to acquire from the making of them.
So in order for me to get anywhere with them, I need to change my rules, and allow these songs to take me to where they want me to be.
So... I’m shaking things up, and writing the sort of blog post that it would kill me to learn my colleagues in Cubelandia might discover.
Maybe that’s where the songs want me to go, to some place where I’m a little bit more opened up... just enough for whatever additional light they have to shed on my life, to get in.
So I suppose Great buys on Lullabies is still in progress, at least for those two songs.
For now be advised that Great buys on lullabies is a work in progress. For so long as it’s posted, and no later blog entry has contradicted what I’m writing now... it is a work in progress.
Lullaby Raga on the other hand is done. It’s something that will only make sense someday when the mood is right. Remember that if you’re reading this. I think it might be a really comforting and cool thing after an evening spent lighting candles, drinking mushroom tea, or listening to oldies like ‘Lucy in the sky with Diamonds’ on a day you happen to have off from a hard job.
No, Lullaby Raga is not professional! Nor is it a complex composition that will make me a lot of money. But it’s a nice 30 minute sort of free form dirge to have on during those mellower moods when one’s attention span and focus on music are elastic.
In fact, I think it’s precisely because it’s so shambolic and lacking in commercial ambition or pretense that it might be fun to hear in those states. I once saw a guitar player at an open mic at a place downtown in New York. Maybe it was Tonic on Ludlow? Anyway, he had a song, “What are you going to do now that all your guitar playing friends are gone?”
I hated it at the time, which is probably an indication of how good it was, because back then I hated everyone who dared to be good when I knew I had so many songs still stuck within me.
Anyway, I guess that tune was a sort of interesting alternative to Amit’s “Acoustic guitars are for girls” approach. The song was about growing up, past the age of college, and into the age of work, isolation, power bills, and shut offs. I think Lullaby Raga is worthwhile along these lines. That is it’s a bit like having recourse to an impromptu college dorm jam in one’s own home.
So to sum up, Lullaby Raga is done. Great buys is a sketch in progress.
You may now return to your world.
-Beep!-