Category: Music

Art

Projecting

I went out yesterday and indulged myself. New clothes. I needed a new belt. Pants. Socks. I haven’t been to a mall in over a year. I used to enjoy them quite a bit. They sprouted like mushrooms for a time, though, and like the gas station wars (which, yes, I remember) they undercut each other until there was an inevitable collapse. The few that have survived, well.

I was amused a couple weeks ago when I had occasion to drive past one of the first in the greater St. Louis area, Crestwood Plaza. In my childhood, we used to run out there. I don’t think they called them strip malls then, but that’s what it was. Then, beginning in the early 70s, it grew and was covered over. The outdoor strip was joined to a roofed-over extension and then later the original strip was enclosed until the whole vast thing was a small town with lots of cool stuff. It was one of the first ones to fall on hard times. Efforts were made to preserve it and for a short while it became an enclave of independent artists. Alas, it wasn’t really close to the wealthier parts of the area to sustain that and it was shut down. Then torn down. Plans for redevelopment followed, many quite grandiose. I hadn’t seen it in a long while. As I drove by I saw that there was a new line of stores…a strip mall. What goes around…

Anyway, I spent too much money on too few things but for a brief moment I felt good. Last week I stopped by an art supply store and bought pencils, pens, and a small sketch pad. I keep intending to start drawing again, maybe even get back into painting (though I was never huge into that). All that stuff is sitting there, waiting. Between my music, photography, and writing, along with the other things I try to keep up on, I honestly don’t know where I’m going fit one more project.

See, it took years to acquire all the skills I have, such as they are. I don’t want to walk away from any of them. But the fact is, I was never really good at most of them, just good enough to show off, as it were, but not good enough to satisfy my own estimates of what that means. And that was fine since for many of those years I hadn’t settled on what I wanted to do. When the writing turned out to be the primary project, all the rest receded and time was reallocated.

You don’t realize how you lose things when you don’t pay due attention to them. It may be that I’m inwardly dreading trying to draw anything anymore, because it’s been so long that I’m sure I’ll suck at it.

And I really can’t stand being bad at the things I like to do.

Now, you might think, reading that, that I had gotten very good at those things at one time. And as far as it goes, I think I was. Drawing and painting, back in my youth, yeah, if I took my time, I was fairly good. But it came “naturally” so I didn’t consider how practice might be necessary. The music? That was….different. And I have over the last several years developed an improvisational method which serves to impress even as it isn’t exactly “good.” I’ve recently set myself to learning actual pieces, but the discipline of practice is a hard one to recover once abandoned. Photography I did for so long that it just seems innate now, and I don’t walk away from it for very long, so while I could certainly be better, I’m not bad,

Writing is the only thing I do with serious intent, and it seems to take up the largest chunk of time.

I don’t seem to be organizing my time very well, especially if I want to start up a new project. I don’t know where I’m going to fit all the things I want to do. That did not used to be an issue. I just did whatever appealed to me that day. It was all so organic.

Subsequently, questions of goals emerge. And I am brought up against a fact about myself that has always been an issue. I do very little just for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Almost nothing. All that I do I have certain intentions, even if only wishes. I started drawing again many years ago when it was pointed out to me that I needed an outlet that had nothing to do with career paths. I pursued it for a while until I found myself looking at the work and thinking, I could sell some of this… At which point it ceased being an outlet and became one more thing with a goal.

I suppose I write these blog posts as outlets. I don’t sell them.  They’re like a shopping trip. Wander through the mall, see what’s new, maybe buy something just for the hell of it.

Anyway, these are some of things occupying my thoughts of late.

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Swift Impressions

Let me state up front that I do not listen to Taylor Swift. Until this past year or so I have been barely aware of her. It is the osmotic dynamic in which we live that I know anything about her at all. So when she became the Time Magazine Person Of The Year, I was amused but frankly unstartled.

I say “unstartled” intentionally, as in I was not blind-sided, shocked, or negatively put off balance. Mildly surprised, maybe, but hell, given the record of Time’s Person of the Year, anything is possible. (Hell, Kissinger was one, on the same cover with Nixon. Then there’s Rudy Giuliani…) All it represents is an assessment of impact on the culture. Taylor Swift is a pop star. She’s the first one to be so honored, but a cursory look at her impact suggests many reasons. The fact that she inspired record numbers of young people to register to vote alone says she’s more substantial than her detractors like.

Those detractors, now. I’ve been seeing, out of the corner of my awareness, for quite some time the nonsense heaped upon her. She is a single woman, who apparently, in the unfortunate phrase, “can’t keep a man.” As if that describes anything noteworthy, other than how some people clearly can miss the point. This seems to be the biggest thing, an insult somewhat disguised as pity. Really, though, it’s the kind of thing said of people who make the sayers uncomfortable.  She’s single. So what? She runs her own business. Hm. She’s very successful. “But she’s—”

What? Unapologetically herself?

Her music is not what I choose to listen to anymore, but I will say, speaking as an an amateur musician, that she has chops and her compositional skills are far more sophisticated than people give her credit for.

But I suspect for a lot of her detractors it is her politics that disturb them. Combined with the nonsense about there being no man, it borders on an insistence that she’s an uppity woman with opinions who needs to be brought to heel by a man.

If Dolly Parton were 26 years old today, we might be hearing exactly the same things about her from the same quarters.

Here’s one of the things about a woman like Taylor Swift which I think bears a bit of examination, because I think it is what makes her both popular and derided, depending on who’s talking at the moment. Taylor Swift is unpossessable. The assessments by those disturbed by her would seem to swirl around this central characteristic. (She’s even re-recording early music to stick it to the record companies that tried to diddle her on ownership and royalties. She will own herself and her art, thank you very much.) If this is, indeed, one of the “issues” in play, then by all means, she deserves the accolades, and good on her. I think it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway to make it clear, that if this were a man, none of this would be an issue at all. In fact, it would be regarded as “normal.” Whatever that means.

The fact that I, who care almost nothing about her, know these things is a direct consequence of the impact she’s had, and that’s the point of the Person of the Year designation.

I’m going to go back to listening to what I usually do now.

Art

New Keys

I’ve been playing music since I was about 11. Sometime that year my parents bought an organ. A Thomas, with a built-in Leslie speaker. An amazing instrument, and for that time an amazing expenditure. Quite promptly, it was decided I should receive lessons. For convenience (and he no doubt came cheap) they hired the organist at my church (who was also my 5th grade teacher) Mr. Lange. What followed was a period of fraught intentions on all parts and a near-calamitous ruin of my musical ambitions.

But the organ itself was the gateway to further explorations, especially after Mr. Lange departed (and no teacher was hired to replace him) and I discovered rock music and fell into company with a cadre of musical rebels. The organ itself, while we never took it out of the house, served for many years until the house I once lived in was sold and I opted not to bring it with me.

 

It was a badly used machine, though I have fond memories of it. My friends and I put it through some things trying to tease sounds out of it never intended by the designers.

The last time I played it was about 1978. I then moved out in 1981. We bought our house in 1991, my parents bought their new one a few years later, and the Thomas disappeared.

In 1989, though, a year after Clarion, we were in a music store, and were given a demo of a new Yamaha Clavinova. A CP-8, which meant is would only produce 8 tones simultaneously. Not fully polyphonic, but what a sound! Superb grand piano and a passable Hammond B-3. Donna made the call, intuiting that this might end up being very good for me psychologically. We bought it. About three grand back then, which was a lot.

I loved that piano. It was delivered and I sat there wondering if I still remembered anything. I set my hands to the keys…

Christmas caroles. Seriously? That’s what my hindbrain retained?

Oh, well. I bought a couple of new books, including a finger exercise (which I loathe, but recognize the need for) and I set about playing.

And between the writing, the day-job, and all the rest, I never did recover what I could once do. Instead, I acquired a manner of improvisation that, if you weren’t paying attention, sounded like I knew how to play.

Oh, from time to time something bubbled up or I would set my mind to learning something, but then there would be long periods during which I didn’t touch it. I have never been willing to submit to the total discipline of the serious keyboardist.

But I had fun, and for a few years I was playing with a group at a coffeehouse and I was good enough to follow a chord chart and slip into a groove. Donna was right, psychologically it had been very good for me.

Alas, things electronic have lifespans, and this past summer the poor thing died on me. No power. I tried to find someone who would come to the house to see about repairing it, but no joy. I would have to replace it.

The thing about that Clavinova, among other virtues, was the “feel” of the keyboard. Nicely weighted, very much the sense of playing a Steinway or something. A replacement would not be cheap.

 

But also I had no idea what an equivalent might be. So I did what I almost never do. I went on social media and asked opinions. I didn’t get any. What I did get was a friend reaching out to say she still had her late husband’s piano and would I be interested.

Well, yeah. Lloyd was a superb player and on our many evenings at their house I was allowed to play his much superior piano. He had sprung for a top of the line Yamaha—still a Clavinova, but a starship compared to my shuttle—and something I likely would never have been able justify brand new.

So, last week, it arrived.

 

I have an orchestra now.

Lloyd Kropp was a good friend, a gentle person, and a fine writer. It was a frustration that he was unable to get his more recent work published, the industry being the fickle beast it is, but I recommend whole-heartedly his novel Greencastle. One of the best coming-of-age novels I’ve ever read, especially for those of us long-steeped in science fiction and fantasy and all things mysterious and macabre. As I say, he was a fine musician, mostly jazz and American Songbook. But he was a composer as well and we heard some of his pieces. It’s a privilege to now have this instrument in my house. I will endeavor to live up to its potential.

I cannot imagine life without music, either to listen to or to play. I play for my own pleasure, mostly meandering improvisations that occasionally seem to go somewhere. But this past year, since retirement, I’ve set to learning some material so as not to bore others or embarrass myself at parties should I be called upon to “play something.”

 

 

Art

Simpler Complexities

There are times I wonder why I do what I do. I mean, the thought occurs that there are simpler things in life. How did I ever convince myself that I could be a writer?

I cannot retrace the steps, not at this point. Somewhere back in the restructured haze of youth I had this idea that it would be cool to tell stories and get paid for it. I can do that, I can make things up, I do it all the time, all I have to do is write it down and send it in.

Well, I will not retrace the learning that showed me how wrong I was about my abilities. Death by a thousand rejection slips.

I’ll admit, I was baffled. I don’t know about others, but for a time I honestly could not see a difference between what I read in the magazines and what I was putting down on paper. You just tell what happens next. What does logic have to do with it? Life doesn’t follow rules like that, why should fiction? And this is science fiction, so rules should apply even less. I mean, what does it mean, it doesn’t make sense?

Because I did not know any of the rules, not even the rules of submission, I received no feedback in those early attempts, and drifted away into something else. Something I thought would be simpler. As much as I appreciate complexity as such, I was not good at creating it or dealing with it. How I managed to reach adulthood with any capabilities at all is one of those mysteries never to be fully—or even partially—answered. It was never that I thought the rules didn’t apply to me, it was that I never recognized the rules.

And still I managed.

It’s remarkable that I’m even alive.

But there were guardrails. My parents, other adults in my life, the rough outlines of general rules, a certain unexamined caution in my approach to daily life. And limited opportunities to get in over my head. In many ways, I had a sheltered upbringing.

That and I read. (One of my favorite films is Three Days of the Condor and one of my favorite scenes is the one where all these CIA operatives are discussing Robert Redford and how dangerous can he be. He has no field experience, why are we worried. “He reads,” Cliff Robertson tells them. Clearly most of them don’t get it. I loved that. He reads.

I read. A lot.

Not as much as I once did, but I retain more now, so it balances out. While I can’t point to a specific example (other than in a debate or argument) where having read something made a difference in a given situation, the cumulative effect has been like a form of experience.

I grew up at a time in a place soaked in the kind of received nonsense that requires outgrowing. At one time or another I have believed a great many false narratives, especially about the relative value of different people, different kinds of people, and like most of the people around I would let proof of my beliefs dribble from my mouth from time to time.  Some of my contemporaries, no doubt, never grew out of that. For whatever reason, I was fortunate in a disposition that made it impossible for me to categorize anyone I personally knew according to prevailing stereotypes, and by extension whatever group they supposedly represented. Little by little, over time, I left a great many prejudices behind. Can I take any kind of credit for that? I’m not sure. The simplistic veneer of easy discrimination always gives way to the complexness underneath, and I have always preferred to embrace the complex—even when I didn’t understand it. And what I eventually understood is that prejudices, especially towards people, are products of simplistic thinking. The defense of such thinking, when pursued far enough, results in complicated structures that ultimately will not even support themselves. That genuine understanding results in simpler structures that allow us to see clearly.

Because I have learned (eventually) that complex is not the same thing as complicated and that often, perhaps usually, complexity manifests in simple forms. When we examine the properties of a nautilus shell, we see something quite simple in presentation. We can take it in at a glance and appreciate what it is fairly easily. It is a simple thing. But the layers of complexity is contains and offers up with investigation amaze us and lead to a trove of questions which, pursued diligently, offer up a glimpse into the underpinnings of the universe. A simple tune, easy on the ears and elegantly comprehensible in its performance, yields up myriad mathematical, harmonic, and even cultural aspects, an onion in its layers, beautiful complexity that manifests in simple melody and harmony. As noted by Samuel R. Delany, a simple declarative sentence—The door dilated—unpacks in ways that suggest an entire civilization beyond the threshold, all the assumptions necessary to result in the logic of that sentence and what it tells us.

Learning to see the two in collaboration can give us a more satisfying experience of life itself.

As a youth, I was dazzled and delighted by the complexities. Sometimes I mistook complications for complexities. Detail can fascinate, even when it might not add up to anything coherent. A consequence of age and continual observation is that I learned to see the whole where before I might only have seen the components. The art of recognizing and assembling complex ideas and details to create a comprehensible something is the art of recognizing that elegance, truth, and understanding should not confuse. We strive for clarity, which usually presents as simplicity.

But like the misidentification of complexity with complication, we have to learn to tell the difference between simplicity and the simplistic.

Thank you for your attention while I did some sorting.

 

 

 

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Revisiting

Nostalgia can be a narcotic. Lately I’ve been going through the accumulated evidence of 50 + years and wondering why I kept it even as each bit triggers memories I’m glad to have. Do I really need this gew-gaw? This piece of paper? This book or album? Part of me can’t bear to part with any  of it, but the practical side of me is starting to sort and allocate in anticipation of the time I just have no more room, no more interest, and no further use. I’m already cutting back on acquiring more. I have enough music on my shelves to last another couple of decades, by which time I could start all over. I don’t need any more. I’m trying to figure out how to arrange my days so I can hear more of it. As for books, well, good lord…

But getting rid of it?

I go through periods of expunging my belongings, making the hard decision that I will probably never read that book (again or even once), that I haven’t listened to that album in 30 years, so why do I still have it. I’m starting to be worried about my photographic archives, which are sizeable and I haven’t made much of a dent in digitizing them (too many other things to do getting in the way, time is finite, and so forth). Recently some opportunities have presented themselves that have taken a little pressure off.

The thing is, I’ve never been able to ignore the practicalities for any length of time and pretend everything will simply go on as it is now. I’ve always known I had to prepare for the time when I won’t be here.

Does that sound depressing? It’s not, I assure you. Better, I think, to know where everything’s going to be and manage to have less of it to deal with than leave a godawful mess behind for somebody else to clean up.

There are two writing projects I have on backburners for which I have a lot of research material to hand. One of them is actually written, but I haven’t found a publisher yet. The other I have to find some time to start. I have very practical reasons therefore for keeping all those books. Believe me, I would like to get them off my shelves, many of them are not the kinds of books I would bother to reread for pleasure.

But I have other sets of books about subjects that I have vague notions about using for future projects, and I’m wondering if I’m ever going to get to them. (As I sit here, I can look up at a row of biographies of American presidents. I had a notion once of reading through them chronologically, but I haven’t read a one of them yet, and I stopped collecting them. It’s not that I don’t know anything about these people, but what I have learned I gleaned from histories of the periods, not specific biographies. Am I ever going to get to them?) Part of my conundrum is that I do not read particularly fast. I have the Oxford Histories of the United States on another shelf, each volume covering a specific period and each one a brick. Reading one can take up to a month of my time. (Fortunately I’m usually able to keep four books going simultaneously, but even so…)

And then of course there’s the music and the movies and tv series…

I have a hunger to absorb as much as I can. I never thought about this for years, because there was always more time, but.

Nostalgia combined with dissatisfaction can be genuinely painful.

There was a time I thought—carelessly—that I could do anything. You can go through life thinking that as long as the things you do do are successful. If you never turn your attention to the rest, you’re never confronted with your actual limitations.

But once you are, you have some choices to make. Howl at the injustice, turn inward, resent the short span of life and the confines of your imagination, or—

Or take inventory, acknowledge reality, and embrace what you can. You might be surprised at just how fortunate you have been to do, be, and experience what you have. And that taking life as it comes without worrying about what won’t come leaves you with an open field for the next wonderful thing.

Clearing one’s inventory can make the coming experiences fresher. That whole Zen notion of letting go (more or less) and letting the past remain the past. There is one central question I’ve found useful to ask and answer, providing we don’t take it as some kind of final judgment.

Have we done what we’ve done as well as we could?

Certainly we’ve all left some things twisting in the wind. All kinds of reasons to walk away or, often, we are prevented from seeing something through to some ideal conclusion. But in the moment, did we do the best we could, honestly, and with care? All those things you wonder if you should keep—none of it has an answer other than to remind us of the question.

I’m not advising complete divestment. I love my books, my music, my home, my things. But certain of them I love more and maybe would appreciate better with less competition around them. Many of us use our possessions as markers, extensions of identity, augments to personality. That’s why getting rid of some things is so hard. But it’s not an accurate way to see things. They do not make us more, we make them important. It behooves us to choose carefully what we invest with that kind of authority.

Anyway, it is not my intention to be maudlin. I’m just ruminating n the midst of the archaeological dig of my life to date, and thought I’d share some observations. I’m going to go work on some fiction now.

Oh, and—yes, I think I’ve done what I’ve done as well as I could. To paraphrase Arthur Miller, I’m going with the idea that the goal is end up with the right regrets, the worthwhile second thoughts. Those would be those that add to the achievements not bury you in pointless nostalgia.

Anyway, be well.

Absurdity

Random Bits

No plan here, just thoughts. It’s Sunday as I begin writing this, second day for me of a four-day weekend. Timing.

Lack of attention bedevils me. I have things to do, a wide variety, and I get befuddled by which I should pay most attention. It matters because I end up scattering my attention widely and so get little done in each endeavor. Some of my friends understand this, but not all.

This morning I got out of bed (I hesitate to say “awoke” because I wouldn’t classify my condition that way) and stumbled through my morning routines. Making coffee is so embedded in my brain that I think if I sleep-walked that is one of the things I would do. Donna was already up, tending to the dog. To be honest, I felt like going back to bed, but I intuited that it would only waste time. Another hour or two would not improve my ability to feel whole, just delay it. Further honesty requires me to admit that mornings like this frighten me a little, because I feel so “off” that I think something must be wrong.

I’m just tired, really. An hour or two after getting out of bed I feel pretty much as I’ve always felt. Slow but present.

I’ve had a number of conversations of late about intelligence. Genius, even. I think a genius would be internally unaware of it. My father, I sometimes feel, was a genius. Is. (Yes, he’s still alive, but now so impaired by deafness and poor sight that interaction is virtually impossible.) He never believed so. He railed about how other people seemed so stupid, how they overlooked, missed, or never figured out things which seemed so obvious to him, and he blamed laziness or prejudice or ambivalence. How could they not see? When I pointed out to him that he himself was far from ordinary, he bridled. No, that couldn’t be it. He did not see himself as a particularly smart man. But he was dogged, possessed of a degree of focus and ability to concentrate I found unachievable. His own opinion would never allow recognition of his “gifts,” if gifts they were.

I’ve been accused—recently—of being “superior.” Not a compliment.

We live in a culture that prizes knowledge only when it’s somewhere else. It’s cool when it’s on tv or in a lecture hall or, most importantly, when it makes someone a lot of money. But when it lives next door to us we resent it. When we have to talk to it every day we hate it, because it feels like someone is showing off, trying to be better than everyone else, getting off on making others feel stupid. I’ve never understood that. It’s not like all the information isn’t there for everyone to access.

It’s a choice of what we find important. As far as I’m concerned, too many people are too invested in things that don’t matter. (Is that me being judgmental? Why, yes, it is. Unapologetically. You have to choose, you have to decide. Others, I realize, level their judgment at me to the same or greater degrees. What good is that novel you just read? Isn’t that a waste of time? Well, the same could said about the goal that player just made that you reacted to orgasmically. If you’re going to judge me for having no interest in your passion, I’m going to judge you for having none in mine. Let’s lay it out and compare worth some day and see how what stacks up.)

(I have noticed that this phenomenon is not limited to intellectual pursuits. I’ve been insulted in the past for being in good physical condition. I lift weights, it shows. I’ve been treated as somehow weird by people who…well, any deviation from an assumed norm will intimidate people who just can’t seem to bring themselves to do the work to achieve something they might actually want to do. It’s as if they think they should have been born with these characteristics and when it turns out they have to do some actual work, instead of embracing the opportunities, they turn to resentment of those who do.)

I didn’t intend to complain this morning. But I have some things on my mind. This is a free-flowing post. Read at your own peril.

I made myself go to the gym this morning. I halfway expected to be unable to finish a workout. Instead, as often happens, about half to two-thirds through, I felt better. Blood flowing, I came awake.

And on the drive home I started having conversations in my head.

Yes, I talk to myself. I always have. My interactions with my fellow creatures have often been frustrating to me. Things I miss, don’t get, say wrong, hear wrong, respond inappropriately. A good deal of what people see today is a carefully constructed façade designed to offer an interface that works in group settings. Not fake, no, but selective and practiced. At one time I did try putting a fake front up and it never worked. It took a long time for me to realize that, though, because part of the front was a very selective filter that kept useful interaction out.

(That annoying piece of advice, so often given, to just “be yourself” used to infuriate me. Firstly, how the hell does one do that? I mean, really. First it assumes you know who you are. Second it assumes that you have a choice about how you come across to other people. You do, as it turns out, but it rarely comes automatically. And thirdly, it fails to take into account whether or not you like who you may be as “yourself.” Don’t people realize that “being yourself” may well be the last thing you want to be because you find whatever that is to be…wanting? Of course they do, they’ve been having the same struggle, but probably don’t realize it. All those “popular” people, do we really believe that’s who they really are? If you could look inside to see, would it be what you see on the outside? No. So, stupid advice, well-meant, but as often as not self-defensive.)

I’m sitting here in my office, trying to rework a short story that has resisted conclusion for months. Like most of my short stories in the last several years, it seemed promising because I had a very cool idea. The idea remains cool. Getting it across as a compelling story is another matter. And, as usual, I am procrastinating by working on this post instead.

I’m listening to Walter Piston. He was an American composer, mid-20th Century. I stumbled on him during one of my periods of exploring obscure classical music. You can listen to him and hear a bit less experimental version of Barber and Copland and maybe Hanson. (Again, who? Yeah.) I’ve got a few CDs of his symphonies. They make excellent background for writing, but when you really listen to them you hear a familiar strain of anxiety that seems a part of most American neoclassical. You listen to Copland and the others and you can hear a boldness, a brashness that seems distinctly American. But along the way, especially in the symphonies, comes a stretch of uncertainty. I call it anxiety. The anxiety of not being so sure of yourself, perhaps, or the anxiety of knowing you have a lot of responsibility and can’t really carry it. (I sometimes think Ives, whom I cannot really stand, was about nothing but that uncertainty.)

The best science fiction carries that anxiety in its guts. We’re boldly going where we don’t belong and nervous about it, but eager. so eager to see the next neat thing.

So I get home, muscles still humming from a decent workout, brain filled with a silent conversation about an unresolved issue, and Donna is still doing landscaping in the back yard.  I help by moving some heavy stones, then retreat inside, eventually migrate down to the office, and start riffing on these stray thoughts.

Most days, lately, I write a few sentences, correct some errors, tweak. Then I scoot to the other computer and cruise. Yesterday I listened to a report on “downgrading” humans, which talked about how the information explosion has been coopted by the so-called Attention Economy to the detriment of actual intellection.

Downgrading Humans. According to the report, our brains are not equipped to deal with the information deluge constantly poured through them. We get overwhelmed, the tools we have to sort wheat from chaff are inadequate, we can’t tell noise from signal after a while, and soon we’re just clicking through from one bit to the next in a parody of research. The limitation offends, I’m sure. I’m resentful of my inabilities, especially when it comes to knowledge. But it’s an academic kind of resentment now that rarely obtrudes into the kind of seething animosity a teenager might feel when being told no. It’s more frustration now when I run against my own lack of information and ignorance when I’m in the middle of a project or a conversation.

The problem I imagine with what is being described as “downgrading” is that indulging the immersion in click-throughs can come to feel like genuine learning.

Plus, there’s something addictive about. The dazzle of bright, shiny objects.

There’s a big market for self-help books. A lot of them are practical, how to do things, but a lot of them are about changing your life, becoming a new or different or better person. Many border on genuine psychology, but most seem to be manuals for self-improvement that only glance off the deeper aspects of who we are. Years ago, groping toward some kind of self-knowledge, I read a lot of them. Fritz Perls, Leo Buscaglia, Eric Fromm, others. I gleaned useful things from them all, but it seemed as I grew older, less and less of what I read in these books offered anything truly useful. Reality never conforms to neat paragraphs of “if this, then do that.” But occasionally there was genuine insight. I stopped reading them after I shifted into philosophy. But there’s a huge market. You would think we live in a world of remarkably healthy self-actualized people. I have no idea, but I have come to believe that most of these books sell to people who believe that all they have to do is read them and that is sufficient. Acting on the advice? Well.

I’ve taken a hard look at my own habits. I’ve become craggier in some ways. The state of the world has a bit to do with this, but in general I’ve been dissatisfied with my own progress along various fronts. I wondered, after hearing about this phenomenon, if I were a victim of this. Turning to the very thing that is largely the source of the problem is an irony past stating, but it is true that even though an overwhelming amount of dross permeates the internet, there is much that is worthwhile. A degree of ordinary scepticism is required and some robust filters, but you can find out useful things. So I did a bit of research on internet trends and realized quickly that I am a weekend tourist at worst. This thing distracts me, but I spend far more time reading books than ever I spend online.

But the distraction is enough to derail my concentration. It’s worse when I’m not working on a specific project. The discipline of the project keeps me focused.

Of course, then there are the days when my hindbrain cries out for relaxation. For what Donna calls “vegging.” One of the things my parents, worrying all through my upbringing that they would fail to implant it, managed to instill is an ethic that demands I waste no time. So even the things I do for “relaxation” seem to require a practical reason, a purpose. I’ve invented a number of excuses to fool my subconscious so it will leave me alone when I’m indulging the “frivolous.” I wish I could just…

I listen to music to put me in moods. Moods to write, to read sometimes, to work out. Music is a deep pool of inspiration and replenishment for my soul. We live in an age where the available sounds are greater than at any time. The possibilities are amazing. I hear better performances, more intriguing compositions, wilder explorations today than ever before, in just about any genre of music you care to name. You would think we could find a common soundtrack with all this to choose from, but the click-through ethic renders too many too impatient to sit and truly listen.

Or does it? That same volume of data may just serve to lend cover to large groups of people who do exactly that—sit and listen. They don’t answer surveys, they don’t buy in predictable manners, they don’t feed the pop machinery. It may be that we’re about to hear from them in a Big Way. I have noticed a lot of young people buying more books, books you might not predict they would buy. And of course the books being published…I can’t say that they are “downgraded.” No more than they ever were. And the best is better than ever before.

I take my optimism where I can find it.

Among the things I want to do before I’m gone: publish a dozen more books, record and release an album of original music, mount a couple of exhibits and possibly publish a monograph of my photographs, and maybe start drawing and painting again. State like that it would seem I need another lifetime. One thing I’ve come to appreciate (though perhaps not experienced yet) is that a lifetime doesn’t have a specific time limit and you can have more than one, overlapping or contiguously.

We’ll see what can be done with that.

Thank you for indulging me.

Absurdity

A Note On Personal Taste

I had a conversation yesterday with a coworker about music that ended up going into some places I didn’t like. We have these faux clashes from time to time, they’re always–always–done with great good humor and the self-awareness that we’re just, you know, funnin’.  But this time I actually found myself getting a bit worked up.

It was about music. He took exception to my categorical dismissal of punk as essentially garbage. Fair enough. Superlatives are always wrong. Do I hate punk? Hate is a strong word. I loathe it. I find its self-justifications back in the day one with all anti-intellectual movements.  The amount of punk I’ve listened to, while small, has yet to offer anything that might suggest there’s any actual ability on display. The whole point of it back then was to loudly and hideously repudiate progressive rock and the associated slickly produced pop that borrowed many of the aesthetic trappings of prog even while it very decidedly was not prog.  Along comes little Johnny Rotten to make a counter-statement and reduce the caliber of rock back to some basement level from-the-gut roar that’s supposed to be what rock is all about in the first place, but hell, even in its infancy rock’n’roll could boast better musicians on their worst day than what styles itself as punk on its best.

That is my opinion.  I’m an Old Fart, so deal with it.  I listen to music for the delightful things it does among my synapses and my synapses are 62 years old and impatient with three chords, a bridge, and a lot of disingenuous screeching. I long since moved over to jazz because I want good playing, nuance, sophistication, and tonal qualities that surprise in a delightful way.

Had punk come out of the adolescent desires of a bunch of wankers who couldn’t play well but still wanted to be ROCK STARS, I probably wouldn’t feel quite to strongly about it.  But it didn’t.  (Maybe some of them came out of this, but they were swept under the tent of…)  It came with a manifesto and set about trying to wreck a cultural aesthetic that was pushing toward some kind of transcendence.

Pompous?  You bet.  And a lot of progressive rock was over-the-top, arpeggios and glissandos for the sake of showing off.  Partly, this was a consequence of the way such industries work, always demanding the next new thing that sounds pretty much just like the last thing that sold a gillion records and sold out stadiums for umpteen months.  The money machine driving variety for its own sake and to hell with any kind of genuine artistic sense.  Hell, I would have cut loose with something completely Other under those pressures.

But while that is understandable, what I object to is the abandonment of skill and attention to the actual musicality that came with punk.  I dislike punk because, basically, it sounds terrible.

To me.

Now, my friend started offering examples of “good” punk and it was interesting.  Because the examples offered were of bands that had a sense of that musicality and, aside from poor vocals, had moved away from the primal hammering of early punk toward something more…nuanced?  They…progressed.  They got tired, I suppose, of just channeling dissatisfaction and rage and realize that their instruments could actually be used to make…you know…music.

I loathe country and western as well, but I would never say that those artists have no ability or talent.  They can play!  It seems a shame that so often they use their considerable ability to pretend that they can’t, but I respect them as musicians, I just don’t care for their product.

I suppose I am unfair about it, but I can’t help it.  I really despise punk rock.  Not for the impulses that drove it but for the categorical rejection of musicality aimed at bringing down genuine musicality.  I get rage.  But we did that in the Sixties and it sounded good!

Except for some of the singing.  I have to admit, the whole aesthetic of the singer-songwriter who’s gonna do his or her stuff whether they can carry a tune or not never impressed me.  It seemed for a while we were getting over that nonsense, but here comes punk bringing it all back with a vengeance.  “I don’t wanna practice!  I don’t wanna take voice lessons!  I don’t wanna have to be good!  I just wanna be a STAR!”  Or, so they claimed, anti-stars.  Which still required an audience, and the larger the better, which means a following, which means popularity of some sort, which makes you, if you get enough of it, let’s see…a Star.

I just wanted to get some of that off my chest.  Thank you for your indulgence.

Absurdity

A Message From Florida

For anyone who can spot it and decipher it.  (Yes, this is frivolous, yes, it was fun, yes, sometimes I have no deep thoughts.)

I put up a new gallery of images from our trip.

One of the things we did since returning was go see Santana at the Fox.  Stunning show.  Carlos has always been one of my favorite musicians.  His sound…well, I can’t get enough of his guitar sometimes.  But this night.  My ghod, what a performance!   I’ve seen Santana more than a couple of times and they have never been better.  If I never see another major show like this, I would, I think, be content.  The emotions wrung out of me during the show…

Anyway, we noted that Hamilton is going to be there next year.  Donna expressed interest, so while we waited for the doors to open I pulled up tickets on my phone.

We shan’t be going to see Hamilton.  Not at those prices.  We’ll wait for the dvd.  (Though it would be very cool to see it live.)

Being now in the midst of our annual sauna, I have plenty to do indoors.  So I’ll leave you with another photo just for grins.  Stay cool.

blog

A Few Moves

A bit rough in the beginning…that’s what happens when you aren’t quite sure where it’s going…but then, maybe, it picks up.

Just fooling around a bit.

Art

Concerts!

So there’s a meme going around on FaceBook about concerts.  Basically, list 10 concerts, 9 of which you have actually been to and 1 you have not.  Your friends are supposed to guess which one is the false claim.

I love music.  I mean, if I could I would have a soundtrack backing my daily movements. I’ve been playing an instrument, either keyboard or guitar, since I was nine, and I have been buying albums (as opposed to 45 rpm singles) since I was fourteen. I went to my first honest-to-gosh-wow concert when I was thirteen (I’ve written about that before and will not repeat it here, because it was an anomaly) and started regularly attending at fifteen.

I have not seen a lot of live acts.  Compared to some, I am woefully deprived of live concert experience.  But I treasure the memory of all the ones I did see, which, mulling over my list for this silly/fun meme, turns out to be not too shabby.

I have seen Yes—my standard, musically—about eight or nine times. The first time was their Close To The Edge tour back in 1972. Poco opened for them.

Opening acts are very important.  I mean, we usually go to see the headliner, but those opening acts are sometimes more significant.  I only saw Gentle Giant because they opened for Rick Wakeman on his first solo tour, for Journey To The Center of the Earth.

I have seen Emerson, Lake & Palmer at least five times.  My other standard in terms of music.

Jethro Tull five times. And here opening acts matter.  I have seen, opening for JT—Brewer & Shipley, Journey (pre-Steve Perry), and The Band.

I saw a more or less forgotten British prog group that was AMAZING opening for Yes—Gryphon.

I saw Livingston Taylor, who opened for ELP (and a sadder pairing I have never seen since—no one gave a dove’s fart about Livingston Taylor at that show).

I have seen Kansas three times, Styx once, Starcastle once, and REO Speedwagon once.  Of course.  I live in St. Louis and am over forty.

Cat Stevens.  John Denver (thank you, Vickie).

The Eagles, once, before their whole Hotel California period, but more importantly Dan Fogelberg opened for them.  He was all by himself, no band, with a single guitar and a piano and he blew the Eagles away.

Joni Mitchell.  Crosby, Stills, Nash (never Young). The Grateful Dead, twice.  Santana (three times?)  Deep Purple.

Phish twice.

Uriah Heep, Fleetwood Mac (twice), Jeff Beck (twice), Jefferson Starship (twice), Jan Hammer, Ted Nugent (before he decided he was more than just a good guitar player)…

Earth, Wind, & Fire.

Asia.

Mark-Almond. Focus. Billy Joel (twice).  Renaissance. America.  Wishbone Ash.  Hot Tuna.

The Moody Blues (thrice).  The Beach Boys.

Harry Chapin (twice).

Genesis (thrice).  Robert Palmer (opening for Jeff Beck).

Led Zeppelin.  And then, many years later, the Page & Plant tour. David Bowie (once, early, the Ziggy Stardust tour).

Todd Rundgren’s Utopia.

Sting.

The Who (twice).

Unfortunately, opening for the Who was Lynard Skynnard.  That is one of the downsides of opening acts, from time to time you will see (and suffer through) a real disappointment.  Opening for Uriah Heep I saw an outfit called Tucky Buzzard, which was the only time I preferred a Stones version to the cover.  (Sorry, folks, I know the Rolling Stones are up on Olympus for a lot of people, but I can’t stand them.  Love their songs—done by other people, except this time.)

Then there were a whole roster of Other Acts that may surprise.  I saw Neil Diamond, who is a consummate showman.  I saw Liza Minnelli.  Ferrante and Teicher.  Arlo Guthrie.

Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, and Count Basie, all in the same night.  Branford Marsalis.

Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis (you can Google them and then acquaint yourselves—superb jazz guitarists).

At this point I would have to go unbury all my saved ticket stubs.  I have missed a few, I know.  More than a few, maybe.  So I’ll probably have to do this again.

But it sent me down into the archives and I came back with some terrific memories. We stopped going because the scene grew progressively less tolerable.  First when the drug of choice changes from pot to beer.  I’m sorry, it’s true—sitting in a crowd of several thousand beer-swilling people can be a bit dangerous.  Whatever else you might say about it, marijuana makes for a much more pleasant audience.  Then the security situation got ridiculous.  I don’t care to be patted down just to see a concert.  And to be fair, I don’t care for big crowds to begin with.

But occasionally, you just have to go see a performer you love.  So this summer we’re going to see Santana.  Again.

So thanks for the meme—er, memory.