you can’t say what’s in the air
you can’t take what isn’t there
and there’s a spark between what you see inside
and what somebody else is trying to hide
you break yourself on the passing time
I never wanted to set this light aside
but everything I wanted to say came too late
we stood at the cellar door
no backwards and no forwards
and then I thought about everything you said
from the table at the bar back to the apartment
and I broke myself where the moments bent
I never felt so close to anything I’d dreamt
when everything floated away
into spaces we couldn’t hide inside not even if we tried
Memento Mori means “remember death.” Take any cues from the natural world and extract the morbid symbolism from it. Feel small and human. Use that as the backdrop for your existance. In classical painting, this meant dark canvasses of skulls and candles. For me, I look at a musician on a stage, in the middle of a guitar solo, or singing, riding the poetic space between the mind and the body, and I think about how that person, someday, will rot in a box. I talk to a friend, watch as their eyes meet mine, note the facial expressions, muscles moving, sparked by ideas, passions, pain, joy, laughter, and I think about how our bodies can’t sustain our spirits. Eventually, our bodies give up, and leave our spirits to fend for themselves. This is not a depressing thought, because the reminders of death are staring me down in the form of life. I look around me and I’m filled up by the fact that I’m sharing this moment with other living people, and at the same time I’m disgusted by how people cheapen existance. There’s no shortage of ugliness. Take your pick. War. Rape. Manipulation. Consumerism. I walk down the street, lonely as hell, knowing I’d be better off if I was a part of the problem, but I put those thoughts away because I know it’s not right. And I go on because death is automatic. If you have to work, and push, and struggle, then it’s a sign of life.
I wasn’t doing very well a year ago. I still feel like I’m not. I still live with myself, use myself as a springboard, scapegoat and punching bag. But there are people who are a part of this post, who might remember me mentioning this stuff, and those are the people who make me feel like I’m connected to my own existance. My friends make alienation tolerable.
More video. I made a few more of these since the last post, but inevitably they will stay in the dark closet of a hard drive. Here’s the second video-documented song on my YouTube channel.
The saddest days come
around the corner from
a dream you thought came true
and as the rain falls
you’re stuck in a humid room
where you watch it wash away
and I won’t ask too much
you can say what you want
and I’ll try as I can to listen
but if you come close
I could meet you
somewhere in between
I won’t look down
if you won’t look down
just keep your eyes on me
we’ll return all the things
that they gave us for free
and not owe anyone anything
If I fall down
leave me alone for a while,
so I know where I’m coming from
and don’t be surprised
if you open your eyes
to see that I’ve made my home down there
There’s something pure and infinite in you, that wants to come out of you, and can come out of no other person on the planet. That’s what you’ve got to share, and that’s as real and important as the fact that you’re alive… The world at large, careerism, money, magazines, your parents, the people at the rock club in your town, other kids, nothing is going to give you that message, necessarily. In fact most things are going to lead you away from it, sadly, because humanity is really confused at the moment. But you wouldn’t exist if the universe didn’t need you. And anytime I encounter something beautiful that came out of a human somewhere, that’s them, that’s their own soul. That’s just pure, whatever its physicality is, if the person can play a piano, if they’re tone deaf, whatever it is, if it’s pure, it hits you like a sledgehammer. It fills up your own soul, it makes you want to cry, it makes you glad you’re alive, it lets you come out of you. And that’s what we need: we desperately need you.
- Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel, quoted at the closing of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper
I’ve always felt like I’m being distracted from what could be my own life. The past few days I’ve been picturing myself as being in a cloud, where I can see myself but everything else is obscured, and I’m obscured to everyone around me. I’ve always imagined the soul as being these lines that you cast out from yourself, to attach yourself to things. I make music, keep up a few relationships with people, write a blog, etc. There are things that pull at me that threaten those connections. The demands of my job and my small role in this unnatural capitalist machine we live in, for example. I think in your 20s you’re discovering yourself, and when you hit 30, it’s time to stop trying so hard and just be yourself. I’m going on this solo road trip in September, and it’s by no means a way of finding myself. It’s an attempt at being myself, without the distractions. I think I’m dedicated to the idea whether or not I save up my ideal amount of money to make it happen.
I just finished the book that I quoted above, and it reminded me of what I’ve always thought life was about. As soon as Careerism was mentioned it hit home why I spent 10 years recording fourtrack records that no one ever heard and unsuccessfully jumping from part-time job to part-time job, trying to get out what I needed to get out. John Frusciante said that he believes most music is made for the wrong reasons, and I agree. Sometimes I try really hard to make something sound a certain way, even though my heart’s not in it. Then the songs I like the most are the ones where something just clicked and took off. I hear about bands getting all this hype and going on these huge tours and it just seems like too much of an industry, and I’m still trying to reconcile that attitude with the fact that I need to make money to fucking survive and I really don’t see myself delivering pizza much past the first frost.
The new record is entitled OPEN and will be out September 3rd, my 31st birthday and the night before I leave for the road. I decided tonight its underlying theme of authenticity. I’m looking for something real in myself, and others, and in the world around me, and I’m struggling to find it. The idea is that you’re more likely to find it by leaving your door open than by knocking on closed ones.
Digitizing vinyl and mixing my next album has inspired me to build the CMoy headphone amplifier. I’ve been taking regular walks to the bar with a set of headphones and a cheap MP3 player loaded with in-progress mixes. Since these are unmastered tracks, and thus uncompressed audio signals, the little USB-charged MP3 player doesn’t have the juice to bring the tracks up to normal listening level. The more complex the track, the greater the build-up of transient peaks and the quieter the mix. Vinyl tracks are also uncompressed, which means there’s more difference between the loud parts and the quiet parts. The CMoy amp adds an extra 18v of power, which means I can plug in the MP3 player and leave it at its default volume, using the amp to drive the headphones.
I’m almost done. The tutorial I was using suggested a dual pot with a built-in power switch, which I had to order separately from the other parts. This particular pot works so that when you turn the volume all the way down, the power clicks off. It’s a wise feature considering that you can seriously damage your hearing with this amp. This way, it’s always turned all the way down when you power it up. I tested it out before I housed it (in the standard Altoids tin) and it got pretty loud with one 9v battery.
I took another look at the looper project I’ve had put off to the side for about a year: three toy sound samplers with pitch shifting that you can hack into and add to a simple mixer circuit to create a lo-fi, multi-channel looping effect. I drew up a wiring diagram, planning on using a chunk of steel stud to house it:
I still have the power supply, mixer and one channel hooked up to a breadboard. Last I checked, it worked, and I haven’t touched it since:
I decided instead on an enclosure from an old whatever-the-hell-it-was from ax-man. You can buy old machines for $5-$10, take the guts out and use the case for new stuff, which is cool because electronics enclosures are really expensive. The drawback is that it’s harder to get a space efficient design since the housing was meant for something else, but I’m starting to realize that I like things to be life size, sturdy and clunky with plenty of soldering room. The last looper circuit I built, I think I fried the chips because everything was crammed too tight on the board and I couldn’t troubleshoot it.
All the knobs are where the pots will go. The nuts represent toggle switches, the plastic grommets (LED holders) represent LEDs, the washers represent momentary switches, and the pots represent foot-switches.
A little over a year ago, I was ready to up and quit Minneapolis, feeling that I couldn’t sustain a career for myself here. It’s hard to do well here if you don’t fit somewhere on a corporate ladder. Not that I have high ideals of success for myself, but I want different things than most people, which means I have to try a little harder just to stay afloat. In short, Minneapolis doesn’t know what to do with me. I stayed because it’s an easy place to call home, and because I was broke and couldn’t afford to move. Then I decided that if I could afford to move, I would just travel instead.
I’ve never been on a road trip by myself besides weekend trips to Madison, etc. This year it’s a possibility because I actually have a job and my life’s expenses are small. So I’m going on a trip in September. Best case scenario, it’ll be a tour and I can play a string of shows around the southwest and the midwest. Worst case scenario, I hang out on the road, stay in campsites and record music on a portable fourtrack. Most likely it’ll be a little bit of both, and no matter what, I’ll have at least two weeks off of work and away from home.
I have to stay on budget, which includes getting my car fixed up and getting all my bills paid up to and through October. And putting the next record out as a small CDR edition. My collection of synths, keyboards and effects boxes are going to have to wait, as are my in-progress guitar building projects.
These are the only records I’ve bought since my last post in this category:
Skoal Kodiak - Three People Are Keep Having Grape Emergencys (I bought it from them after their show at the entry in… February? March?)
Solid Gold - Get Over It 7″. A limited edition single with handpainted covers and a bonus “mix tape” (CD)
John Frusciante - The Empyrean. Fuck yeah! See below. I’ve been falling asleep listening to this a lot lately. It’s been inspiring. Read John’s description of it (below.)
It is a concept record which tells a single story both musically and lyrically. The story takes place within one person, and there are two characters. It contains a version of Tim Buckleys, ‘Song To The Siren’ and the rest of the songs are written by me. My friend Josh plays on it, as does Flea. It also features Sonus Quartet, Johnny Marr and The New Dimension Singers. I’m really happy with it and I’ve listened to it a lot for the psychedelic experience it provides. It should be played as loud as possible and it is suited to dark living rooms late at night.
I made a small amount of these today and they’re ready to ship for only $5. Enormous Problems has eight tracks, five instrumental and three vocal. There’s lots of noisy keyboards, there’s an auto-tune effect, transistor overdrive and lots of bass and drum machine. They’re packaged in plastic sleeves with photocopied art, an inkjet-labeled CDR, a short fictional text and a Prokiev binder clip logo sticker.
