For a long time now, I’ve wanted to hack into a boombox, find the audio input on the circuit board and solder an input jack to it.  There are so many totally functional boomboxes out there that are useless for those who keep music on an MP3 player.  I tried this experiment a few years ago with no success.  Now I’m ready to design and build a dedicated recording studio in a spare room of the house, and part of that is coming up with a home-built power amp project.  Having only dealt with battery-powered voltages before, I thought I’d give the boombox hack another try–for practice.

My victim was an Emerson FM radio/CD player, bought for $35 at Target in 2004. Once I got it taken apart, I had to isolate the amplifier, which was combined with the FM radio on the same circuit board. After studying the layout I took a shot at analyzing where the division between the radio and amp was. I drew a line, scored it with a blade, and snapped it in half!

Finding the audio input to the amp was pretty easy because the CD player was a separate board and I could just use the points marked “R” and “L” that were wired to the second board. With some alligator clips and an MP3 player I could test if the broken-in-half-board still functioned as an amplifier–and it did.

I’m mounting everything inside of a cookie tin almost as if it’s a high-end standalone power amp. It’s not. It operates on 9 volts and outputs 1 watt judging by the specs stamped on the little 3″ speakers. It’ll end up being a funny little desk radio–probably about as loud as your average computer speakers. But I like rehousing things and I really need practice doing chassis work. Despite my attempts at precision, the tin got scuffed up because I was trying to use a dremel and a diamond bit to make the rectangular AC power input. It turned out horribly irregular so I made a plastic one to go over it.

The pictures below show all the components mounted into the tin. It still needs to be wired, painted (since I scuffed it up) and I need to make a lid and speaker enclosures.

Front panel: input jack, volume control, power LED and power switch

Top view: the large circuit board is the amplifier. Mounted on the right is a 9v battery, the power supply circuit and transformer.

Back panel: AC power receptacle and two banana jacks for each of the right and left speaker outputs.

Bottom view: I mounted the circuit boards using metal standoffs and then I used small nuts and bolts for the transformer.

I just set up this workshop in my basement. If you think the cat pictured here might be yours, sorry but he really likes it here.

My vacation from music is over, I’m happy to say.

A long time ago, I started a YouTube channel where I was posting song sketches. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it–or with the songs–but I wanted to try something different. I wanted to publish the groundwork rather than waiting until a proper record came out for people to hear the songs. I really love recording and don’t consider myself much of a live performer, so that keeps my songs boxed up until a CD release. I kind of envy bands who can test out an early version of a song in front of an audience before going into the studio. I’ve always been a little protective of my work–I’m afraid that if you hear a track that hasn’t been obsessively worked over for six months, you’ll think I’m sloppy and not very good.

But now I think that if you have that kind of attitude you probably wouldn’t even pay attention to my blog or listen to the unfinished tracks anyways. What’s the harm in letting people in on the process, letting them witness the changes, and letting them see not only the work that I put past the gate, but also the stuff that I edit out? I really like rawness, mistakes, sketches, and happy accidents. An unfinished piece usually has a lot of character that can’t be recreated in the final product.

I was initially going to start from scratch and gradually write new songs. When I had a bunch, I would record them. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking–that’s not how I work. The songwriting process doesn’t drive me. I have no interest in writing songs unless I’m recording (or unless I have the right combination of depression and privacy). Writing bass lines, tweaking echo effects, fucking with synth plugins and micing amps are as much part of the songwriting process as playing chords and coming up with words.

So I decided to pick up where I left off and rework the songs from YouTube and record a new EP. Some of them are getting a near-total rewrite. I’m trying to take the folksy edge off of all of them and work them into a layered, echoey, loud, electric landscape. It’s a lot of fun to take something that started on an acoustic guitar and rebuild it from the drum machine up.

I’m also mixing down sketches that I have sitting on my fourtrack, which will probably turn into new songs for some future project. I’m documenting everything I can online: videos to YouTube, audio to SoundCloud, and updates to my recording to-do lists get automatically Tweeted.

My finished recordings are now up on Bandcamp for listening and purchasing. I made a compilation of all my best old songs (entitled Questions Unexplained) which you can get for free as individual tracks, or at a price of your choosing if you download the whole thing. There’s also my last two “studio” records, “Open” and “Exits + Obstacles.” I consider “Open” to be a major artistic success. Erase the 10 years of stress and anxiety preceding it and maybe it wouldn’t have been such a complete marketing failure. Maybe. Anyways, I’m very proud of that disc. Listen to it. Buy it.

As for “Exits + Obstacles,” I think it’s funny how right as I was releasing it, the economy was collapsing. It’s a loose concept record that I wrote as if I was living in a post-apocalyptic, mid-western dystopia. It was pretty easy since I already felt like I was. After listening to both of these records with fresh ears, I realized that there’s this subtle, angry political undertone in my songwriting that wasn’t there before. The royal “we” left my songs back in 2004, and when it came back, it came back darker and more damaged.

Please help me distribute this zine to the Occupy movement.

PDF link for digital viewing. Download this to read it on your computer.

PDF link for printing a distributable booklet. Download, print and run through a copier to double-sided copies. Fold in half and staple. The blank page is there on purpose so the pages collate with automatic feeders. I just realized it will be cheaper to run the cover separately and then collate it in. FYI.

Please let me know if there are problems.

Today I pulled together some loosely connected thoughts I’ve been sorting out.  I’m working on a print publication–for now things will get posted here.  I’m writing a lot, but mostly I do my editing on People’s Plaza, in the cold, on limited battery power, etc., behind the Teach-In booth.  It’s an experiment.

I’m acutely aware of right-wing polemics, so I always feel like it’s dangerous to mention Marx today. The fact is that Marx theorized extensively about what is going on right now, but at the same time, merely mentioning his name leads us to an ideological trap. In the popular consciousness, Marx is synonymous with authoritarianism and the Communist State (which is not the same as the theoretical socio-political organization of communism—a distinction most people don’t seem to make). The following is simply a list of points I want to make. Apologies for how they might read or flow together:

Marxism is not an ideology—in fact Marx critiques ideology itself. Marx analyzed the concept of capital, reflecting on its history and future. Part of his importance is that he saw political economy and our social relations as interdependent. Ideology is the system of ideas that mediates how we all work in society as social subjects. To reject Marx completely is to say that political economy is autonomous and that we are free to act as social subjects independently of it. Who can seriously argue that this is true?

Marx’s ideas as a whole are imperfect. To paraphrase Peter Singer, author of Marx: A Very Short Introduction: Marx created a painting of capitalism, not a photograph. There are many aspects to Marxist thought, only one of which is a call for revolution. By no means does that sum up his agenda, nor does the historical outcome of this one facet invalidate everything else he said.

Marx’s thought is centered on the Hegelian concept of humanity’s liberation as the goal of history. He saw that capitalism did not accomplish this, but would in fact lead to more oppression. Thus, communism is not theorized by Marx as a system of oppression, but rather as one holding the potential for freedom.

Our awareness of the mechanics of capitalism is extremely sophisticated today, in part due to Marx’s influence. That is, even those in power think in Marxist terms in order to be better capitalists. Right-wing rhetoric claims that socialized medicine, welfare and other extensions of public funding push us dangerously towards communism. Marx’s claim was that capitalism would gradually lead to class warfare, where the masses would overpower a rich ruling class. The presence of social programs in a capitalist economy makes more sense as a band-aid for the failures of capitalism. It’s absurd that the ruling class would be building towards communism. The essence of communism is common ownership of wealth and the means of production. These things are not given up by the ruling class. What the ruling class can do, however, is create a charitable element within the system to give the illusion of security. To me, the socialist element of our society is a concession to do just this.

Ideology essentially consists of a system of messages we receive and act on. Marx theorized that these messages work so that we keep ourselves working within the system’s parameters, even to the point of unknowingly helping to build the system so that it remains oppressive. Slavoj Zizek argues that much of the time, we do know what our actions are supporting, but we do it anyways. This means that even though the system is the root problem, it makes us part of the problem. We then grow aware of our role as citizens, and that awareness then needs to incorporate itself back into us-as-part of the problem. Once we understand this, we will take no bullshit from anyone.

Ideology’s project is to keep us functioning within a social system. Therefore, the problems arise not in that we are ideological, but in how. Ideology becomes oppressive insofar as our social relations are mediated by power. That is, the systems of power in which we function work to keep us oppressing ourselves. It is the project of ideology to keep us thinking of things such as the economy and the political process as natural and unchangeable. The phrase “you can’t fight city hall” is one such example of an ideological message.

As we grow up, we are socialized to function in a human community. That is a natural and timeless process. What is not natural for us, I think, is incorporating such a large number of abstractions into our systems of thought. If not for civilization, maybe we would not have anything to call ideology—it would be very simply referred to as culture.

Things are organized in such a way that anyone trying to meet their needs by making an honest living must first pay into a process that abuses the common good. Both in the work that we do and the dollars we spend, power drifts away from us, only to be applied against us. This, I believe, is the real essence behind those currently occupying Wall Street in New York City, and now in cities throughout the country—of which Minneapolis is one. On October 15th, other countries are joining in.

There are very few for whom this process works in their favor. There are a lot more for whom it necessarily must work against. This is nothing new—it goes back to the days of feudalism. The promise of capitalism was the “middle class,” where one can dream big and work hard to make a meaningful life for themselves. The middle class was always an illusion, though. Capitalism is not feudalism, but only insofar as sharecropping was not technically slavery. While it seems we’re earning our keep, what’s harder to see is that the most powerful, most wealthy link in the chain has the power to take their cut off the top. It’s always been that way. What’s different now is that in 2008, those wealthy and powerful segments of our society lost at their own game. And the way this game is designed, when they lose, everyone does. Only, they lose a percentage of their bottom line and others lose everything.

This is not necessarily about greed. We are all part of the same ideological framework and we all, more or less, believe in the same fantasies. It’s easy to justify your place or demonize someone else’s, as we’re all given an ideological bag of tricks with which to do just that. We all learn that and it keeps us comfortable, apart—and functioning in the system as such. Profit, money, abstract value—however you refer to it—is an illusion. It’s something we made up in order to make life function in a large community. Tribes of such unmanageable size cannot do business on trust alone. But what we see now is that the illusion has become more important than trust. We cannot have that. Trust cannot be replaced.

What this is really about is respect. We are not trying to protect property, wealth or other illusions. We are trying to protect the common good. The so-called 1% are part of that common good. In fact, they need us to set things straight. This is about respecting the inherent logic of nature and the real wisdom of humanity. We need to get the message across to everyone that humanity should be trusted before fantasies.

We have the danger of falling into a moralistic, us vs. them mentality, ready to fight and spin our wheels endlessly. But the real enemy is not a “them” but an “it.” It’s made up of all the hard, dark, crystallized parts of human nature. Our society is one big pathological defense-mechanism-turned-machine and as a result our herd mentality operates on all of our most desperate instincts such as fear, greed and envy. The so-called greedy don’t create the greed, they’re just really good at the greed game, and thus they get rewarded for playing. And we’re taking in a backwards, mixed-up message whenever we feel guilty or small for not being “successful” enough. We need to learn, as a society, that such success is a disease; a society fueled by it needs to heal.

I’m looking forward to this thing growing and really taking shape. While I am not reproducing the means of producing my existence, I will be helping to occupy Minneapolis. I will try to get over my cultural programming and do as much as I am capable of. It’s not a battle; it must be a way of life. Let’s keep the conversation going. I’m sick of talking to myself about stuff like this!

I saw a bumper sticker, blue and white with the little Obama logo, that read: “I’ll keep my guns and freedom, and you can keep the change.” I despise what the Right has done with the word freedom. It almost seems a dirty word, yet the concept is close to my heart. So it was with Karl Marx. It sucks that the existential crisis I have been in for the last ten years was being theorized about since at least the mid-nineteenth century. And today, protesters are occupying Wall Street for security in a system that doesn’t work and has never worked:

Capitalism seems different [than feudalism] because people are in theory free to work for themselves or for others as they choose. Yet most workers have as little control over their lives as feudal serfs. This is not because they have chosen badly. Nor is it because of the physical limits of our resources and technology. It is because the cumulative effect of countless individual choices is a society that no one—not even the capitalists—has chosen. Where those who hold the liberal conception of freedom would say we are free because we are not subject to deliberate interference by other humans, Marx says we are not free because we do not control our own society.
…
Economic relations appear to us to be blind natural forces. We do not see them as restricting our freedom—and indeed on the liberal conception of freedom they do not restrict our freedom, since they are not the result of deliberate human interference. Marx himself is quite explicit that the capitalist is not individually responsible for the economic relations of his society, but is controlled by these relations as much as the workers are.

Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction, p. 91-92.

This “cumulative effect of countless individual choices” is the playground of ideology—a sort of organized societal schizophrenia. Ideology is full of contradictions, giving the media plenty of ground to call the protesters a bunch of idiots who don’t know what’s good for them, or at best don’t know exactly what they want. It’s obvious that things are not right; it’s too bad that it takes a crisis in the middle class to see it, because by the time it gets to that point, the problems all seem hopelessly obscured. Not to mention the fact that the lower classes have been struggling so long, they don’t even notice anything’s different.

When I moved into my friend’s house in April there were three couches, a console TV and a dining room table in my new room. I decided to keep one of the couches in there, and we moved the rest of that stuff downstairs.

My initial plan was just to sleep on the couch, but the springs were removed and replaced with a couple of motors from a massage chair to make the couch vibrate, as well as to scare any squirrels living in the roof or wake up anyone who may be sleeping anywhere in the house. When you sat down, you just sunk into the back of it, almost as if you were a quarter about to get lost in the cushions. So I built a loft bed with a foam mattress to sleep on. I’ll publish the design some day.

As I was reading and sinking into the cushions and getting irritated, I looked up at the slatted support structure I used for my bed, and I got an idea. I went into the basement where I knew there were some scrap 1×3 furring strips and I experimented with fitting them on top of the couch frame.

After sticking some temporary supports under a few cushions and feeling it out for about a week or so, I eyeballed what seemed to be a good placement interval for the 28″ slats.

To make it secure, I ran two 5′ 4″ furring strips underneath the slats and used 1 1/4″ gold screws. The corners each got two screws diagonal from one another to keep the boards at right angles.

It’s a much more stable couch now. It feels a lot firmer obviously, but it’s comfortable. And the supports slide out all in one piece with a little work. Still a junky looking couch, but who am I trying to impress?

I could’ve gone to a thrift store and bought a different couch with everything in tact. The estimated cost would be at least $40, plus the hassle of borrowing a truck and moving it, plus the hassle of throwing away the old one. (Also, I designed my bed so that the couch fits perfectly underneath it, with a long shelf running along the back.  I’d be losing design points.)

I also could’ve tried to figure out how to respring it. Uh-uh, no way.

Instead, I spent about $8 to rig up wooden supports — $4 on wood and $4 on screws. Nothing was wasted. When I get a spring mattress someday, I’m going to cut up the one I’m using now and use the foam to re-stuff the couch cushions.

My goal for August is to stick to a schedule, as I indicated in my last post.  I got started early, although I’m easing into it, allowing myself to wake up late and fulfilling prior commitments (I’m scheduled to work on one of my “study days.”)  When I first started designing a study plan back in December, I was trying things out, keeping note of my default habits and trying to see which strategies were forming organically and which needed to be pushed. Discipline and determination only go so far if they are not accompanied by a realistic plan that you can stick to.  For instance, I could tell myself that I’m going to get up at 5 a.m. everyday and read for 5 hours straight, but that would be setting myself up for a failure. Conversely, my strategy could be just to wing it, and read what I want, when I want. But then I find myself watching every single consecutive episode of the first season of Meerkat Manor or reading the entire list of fake employees on the Car Talk website, and I realize that’s not going to work either.

I’m finding that instead of having a “plan” and then relying on your will power and determination to carry out the plan, it’s more reasonable to have a strategy that’s integrated into your life so you don’t have to think about it all the time.  This is a key point from The Power of Less on building habits. My strategy now is that instead of a plan, I have a number of “tools,” and instead of raw determination, I can make the use of those tools habitual.

That’s what I’ve arrived at through the last eight months of trial and error. My last post listed the schedule I’m committing to. That’s the habit part. Listed below are the tools that I’m using.

• Reading journal - I keep a small notebook, no bigger than a standard paperback, with me every time I’m reading. If I’m transporting any book anywhere, it comes with me. The reading journal is a chronological record of what I’m reading. Each time I sit down with a book, I open it to the next blank page and write the title of the book down, usually abbreviated. Below that I write down notes with page numbers next to them. The inside cover has a list of all the books that are connected to that journal. This is basically the same thing as underlining and writing in the margins, except you can do it with books that you don’t own, such as library books.
• Notes document - I keep a typewritten document on my laptop called “Awkward Writings on Finished Books,” which started as an attempt to snapshot books I checked out from the library. Sometimes I summarize books, write opinions or just type out interesting excerpts. It’s all pretty rough, but it’s only for my reference. I don’t document every book I check out. If I skip one and regret it, I can always check it out again, reference my reading journal and throw an entry together.
• Thesis Workbooks - This is a new idea I’m giving a try. I used to design “courses” to study, like Economics or Comparative Religion. Now I just zero in on about four books at a time out of the mess of books I have laying around either from the library or my bookshelf. I have a hard time deciding what to read, and so I try to just let that decision make itself. I find there is usually some logic to what I’m reading at any given time — some way that books tie together. With the Thesis Workbook idea, I start with recent line of thought, an idea or a question. Ideally it would be something that spans multiple things I’m reading or have read, or something that keeps popping into my brain. I’ll create a document with that as a springboard and gradually write and see what I come up with. It doesn’t have to be a polished essay. It’s more about the writing practice. I don’t want to just study books — I need to do something with ideas that books (or DVDs, podcasts, radio shows, video clips, anything) get me thinking about. Also, practicing my writing is important to me, even if it doesn’t lead to a finished product.
• Personal Journal - I also keep a personal journal on my laptop, and I try to write something in it every day. This is where all my confusion goes. By looking back I can see if something is or isn’t working, what I’m getting upset about or what I think is a waste of time and why. I can also work out thoughts to rediscover later, and I often make footnotes commenting on old posts. I’ve had some very productive journal sessions, and not just when I’m writing in it. I keep a physical notebook as well in case I don’t have my laptop with me, but I consider them part of the same thing.
• Goodreads Website - Goodreads is both a huge, user-managed book database (to rival library websites and commercial dealers like Amazon) and a social networking site. You can post books you’ve read, are going to read, and are currently reading. You can update your reading progress, see your friends’ book shelves, create custom categories and post book reviews. I use it mostly to plan my future reading and to publish updates. I have a considerations shelf, and anytime I hear about a book and look it up, if don’t decide flat out to not read it, I’ll add it to considerations. It helps me not forget about books. There’s also a bookswap service where you can trade books with other members for almost-free.

If you’ve followed this blog in the past, you’ve probably noticed that I just can’t get my shit together. I’m always complaining about whatever job I have, how I can’t find my place in whatever scene I’m working within and that I can’t find the time or the resources to do the things that are important to me. I’ve stumbled my way through two independent, entrepreneurial “careers,” (visual art and music) even going so far as to set up a DBA for myself as a business. I’ve persisted and juggled and micromanaged and scrounged and saved and researched and multi-tasked my way to a cluttered mind, body and soul. For years, I held at least one art exhibit per year. For years before, throughout and after that, I recorded and released at least one album per year. My health, social relationships and peace of mind plummeted the more I worked at my seemingly illegitimate pursuits. The last gasp of that phase of my life was a show that my band and I played at the Kitty Cat Klub in January of 2010. Since then I’ve written one song and recorded no albums.

I can’t say that it should be any other way. I’m not going to bitch about how my “career” fell apart, because it had to. I don’t regret all the time and energy I’ve put into it, and there’s nothing to say that some part of it won’t re-emerge in the future. I can’t complain that I’m 32 and delivering pizza. I can’t complain that I’m living in a rented room. I can’t complain that the contents of what was once a live-in recording studio are now boxed into a south Minneapolis storage locker. My energy, identity and creativity are not contained in my career, belongings or any particular location. They don’t go away at a certain age and they don’t demand any particular activity. The events that make up my life all happened for a reason, and there can be no “should’s” about it.  After all I’ve gained and lost, I have to move on.

I have work to do, and what I’m publicly declaring here is that I’m putting myself through school — in my own way. I’m not applying for grad school or getting an online degree – I’m setting out on my own self-directed program. It won’t cost anything and I won’t be graduating in the traditional sense. What I’m committing to right now is taking my education as a priority. After my basic needs – making money, eating, and my physical and mental health – my education is the most important thing: studying, learning, developing my thinking and exercising my mind.  I’m starting small, and I’ll focus on it for at least a year and then reassess myself. Somewhere in between the stacks of books out there and the synapses in my brain, there are ways that I can connect with the world and maintain my existence in a positive way. There’s something pulling at me — which I haven’t really felt since I was like 22 — and I know this is the way to find it.

I started this in a different way this last January. I designed a very systematic structure, and I had two pretty ambitious “courses” I designed. It was an experiment. I kept at it, but I veered off course quite a bit. Then in the spring, life happened and I decided to “drop my classes.”

I’m starting small this time. My unwritten goal for July was just to get back into the habit of reading every day. Now my goal for August is to stick to a schedule, no matter what. Tired or hungry, happy or sad, inspired or not, I’m going to make sure I build the habit of keeping to a study schedule:

• Everyday: write in my journal for an hour, uninterrupted. This is the first thing I have planned every morning after I get my routine out of the way.
• Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday: study from Noon to 2pm. This means reading, writing, taking notes, working on problems, doing exercises – it depends on what the subject is. The point is to make a habit out of dedicating time and focus to the task of learning, beyond just sitting somewhere and reading.
• I’m keeping my habit of reading every day as well. For now, I’m not focusing on any particular topics. I’ll do that as the need arises.

The last book I finished was The Power of Less, by Leo Babauta, author of the Zen Habits blog. He’s one of a number of sources I’ve been mining for inspiration on the philosophy of living a simple, minimalist lifestyle. In The Power of Less, Babauta stresses starting small, taking one goal at a time and making your intentions public, both as a means of motivation and accountability, and also as a way of sharing and connecting. I already know what pushing yourself to the limits can do, so now I’m taking something that’s important to me and I’m building it carefully from the ground up. Self-education and minimalism will likely be frequent post topics here on Quelquechose, and I’d like to spend some time tweaking the blog to better track what I’m doing as time goes on.

You can follow me on Goodreads where I post books I’m reading, wanting to read, abandoning, and just considering.

first I can ahead
I’m at all my humid lately
pay off debts
or either get on one put in sold
the soy
and my bike
milk is curdled in my
cold press spinach
and I would love to
sweat before august
and been hot
seat is soaked from the shop
storm being stuck in a pizza
money in I need and
It’s a three
farmers market of the month
second savings, or
any mixture to get some moon
do some writing
of time money cycle today
I was thinking of awesome pears
but I don’t think hitting plants are alive
makes me starting

For more about this poetry format, look here, where it started.