Archive for December, 2009

I have the roots already done for my next album, and I really like where it’s going, but I have hit a fairly significant brick wall and can’t seem to progress. I have always been scared that slowing down and destroying momentum will cause me to regress to my fat 2005 form, but I don’t think that is the case because I will have to let that happen. But currently, I need to refocus on other aspects of life that I have neglected the last year and a half. I can’t even seem to intelligently blog right now.

I need experience to spawn creativity, and my stores of creativity seem to be exhausted. That is not surprising considering my life has consisted of working, working out, and writing music while half-heartidly attempting a social life, that frankly due to having excellent friends, can continue without trying. However, when I do hang out with my friends, I get this guilt that I am not working on music because I feel I have a finite time because at 27, I am already over the hill and need to get my stuff out now. I seem to forget that I don’t do pop music, so that doesn’t really matter.

Therefore, I am going musically AWOL for a little while. The goals I laid out for this year are going to be modified. I am not going to finish another album by summer.

I am going to have fun and enjoy the next few months. I am going to start dating again, and I am going to not be so work oriented for a while. I know that once I get into this, my ideas will begin to spring up again, and I will become a human being again. I am looking forward to the next couple of months.

It is odd how living life with blinders on seems to make you forget why you set off on the journey in the first place. The blinders are coming off, and it’s time to start looking around again. Inspiration will return when I remember that I am alive and have feelings. My last album was full of feeling because I was processing the last three years of life. I am going to live life now, and I will tell you about it not only is subsequent blogs, but in future music. Life will cure my burnout, and break the block.

I write this right now because I am laying on the floor with a laptop on my belly typing this as I stare up at an open session in ProTools trying to come up with lyrics. The song, as in the music bed for vocals is pretty much done, and frankly, I love the song and I have a hope for the song. I already have the female vocalist in mind who I will track with, but the lyrics are killing me.

It is a dance track, but it has acoustic drums playing a house four on the floor beat. One of my goals for my next album is to incorporate more of a rock sound because both rock and dance are fairly stagnant right now, so I am going for kind of a hybrid that both sides will probably reject–but that is beside the point. The acoustic kit sounds massive and with the electronic elements I think I have something going here. One of my friends jokes that all of my tracks makes him want to climb a mountain or go jogging, and I take that as a compliment, and this one is no different, it’s over the top. It’s joyful, it’s a fun song, but my lyrics right now sound as if someone just put my junk in a grinder.

I am not depressed, I am happy, but everything I have written suggests otherwise. When I wrote this song, my inspiration was a Giorgio Moroder penned Donna Summers song called ‘I Feel Love.’ I love the soaring vocals over the sequenced ARP and while the song really doesn’t sound like ‘I Feel Love’ it does have a very busy music bed that I want the vocals to float over. However, I am going syllable crazy. I am jamming depressing existential lyrics that are way too busy.

I will explain something right now. I am scared of writing pure dance songs because they are cheesy. Trance murdered itself with the level of cheese it packed into songs (What is a castle in the sky anyway?) much the way disco did. I firmly believe a dance song can have meaning. William Orbit accomplished this with Madonna’s Ray of Light album, and Moby has from time to time as well. I am trying to write a song that goes beyond a floating ethereal vocal.

However, I can’t even seem to write cheese, it is all or nothing with the depression here. Maybe it’s because I can’t seem to write songs about nothing even if they aren’t cheesy, and when I write a song about how I feel, it comes out complicated and confused. Maybe it’s because I am trying to write a relational tune, and I haven’t had a relationship in like 3 years. Frankly, I have never written a relational song that didn’t have some horrible ironic twist, which is pretty indicative of every relationship I have ever been in.

Maybe I just need a girlfriend.

NO! ::banging head against floor::

Heterosexuality can be a drag….

The fact that American’s are fat is not up for debate. The fact that American’s are stupider may illicit somewhat of an argument, but most people can see that is the case. We are also lazier, there seems to be a pattern here.

Western civilization was not only founded on thought, but the Greeks considered the body and its upkeep an integral part of the equation. Contrary to the BMI that your average church may suggest, taking care of ones body (and that doesn’t mean abstaining from stuff, except maybe that doughnut on Sunday morning) is also an important part of the Christian faith. The same with many other world religions. Is it any wonder that the seeming decline of our society can be tied to our bloating waistlines?

At the end of 2005 I was overweight and frankly miserable. I had a decent job, a nice car, a bright future, but I was far from happy, then I made a decision, I was going to work out again. The subsequent events of that decision made 2006 an incredible year, and I firmly believe 2006 would not have been the same had it not been for getting in shape. Before Third Stage would not exist had I not gotten in shape.

When I am sedentary and not active, my music sucks, I am borderline depressed (not the creative kind), generally feel dumber, but am hyper at the same time. Essentially (and this has been proven), when one works out their cardiovascular system, the hormones released into your body are essentially equivalent hormones that equal small doses of Ecstasy, Ritalin and Prozac. That sounds like a very interesting high. Also it has been proven that your brain also reconnects neurons. You get all of this, plus the added blood flow gives your body more oxygen and an oxygen high.

I am not naive enough to say that working out is all peachy because it is often painful and an annoyance, but what if instead of drugging themselves people just hopped on a treadmill? You get the same hormones as drugs, get smarter, and the only real side effect is looking better. That sounds like a good prescription and who knows, maybe we’ll figure some things out with our new toned minds.

Reasonable capitalists, Republicans, Christians, Democrats and Pagans can all agree that we need petroleum, transportation, inexpensive goods, good health and a sustainable economy. I am not redefining the wheel here or stating anything that requires a Harvard education. But for some reason when the term ‘climate change’ is introduced into the equation, all sides lose their minds.

Crazy Evangelical Christians begin to fight over the right to rape the planet because the term ‘global warming’ comes from dirt worshiping liberals who are inherently evil and didn’t read the part in the Bible about dominion over the animals (While neglecting to read the part in the Bible about taking care of the place themselves.).

Democrats and the enlightened proud pagans think we can go cold turkey because the ones who need our current dirty energy are just backward simpleton morons (Then they hop in their Prius on the way to their private jet.).

Right Wing Republicans default to defending the status-quo because they are getting rich and of course they know the default position of the intellectual hippies is to have their alarmist heads up their behinds crying wolf in a fit of financial jealousy (While they ignore their current mode of wealth is absolutely unsustainable).

To reiterate, climate change should not be the issue, it should be laid out pragmatically. It does not matter if climate change exists, here is reality–we cannot change overnight because destroying our economy would be a rather large calamity. However, we cannot do nothing because our current way of life is unsustainable whether or not it destroys the environment, our economy will collapse and everyone will be screwed. Humans, all ‘sane’ humans regardless of where they lie on the spectrum wants a comfortable and safe life for their families. Finding middle ground and trying to clean up our act is the only way to accomplish this and who cares if Al Gore is full of shit.

Rewarding Al Gore’s powerpoint with an Oscar does nothing but further alienate middle America from the debate just as rewarding the Dixie Chicks will do nothing to help them sell albums to their former fans in Texas. If anything, it will discourage them from doing so. There is a disconnect between the right and the left that stems from a pride in the way of life and a lack in trying to understand the other’s side. Californians need to admit that someone in Texas may actually have a brain that has been through a valid education and Texans need to admit that some Californians aren’t simply lazy over-educated hippies with no real world experience.

Perhaps we could have a therapy session wherein people like me, the west coast raised city dweller could admit to the middle American that I don’t know how to farm, but I enjoy eating and appreciate what they do (BTW, for the sake of semantics, I consider eastern Washington and the California central valley to part of middle America). Then the middle American could admit to us that computers and technology developed out here actually make their lives easier and they enjoy the money this economy makes that empowers them to feed us. Then we can collectively hug and agree to stop destroying the Earth. We can all dream can’t we?

I am a musician and therefore artist, however, I am cynical, and my dealing with fellow artists and their useless narcissism has left me somewhat jaded when it comes to creative process. I only say this because in coming weeks I most likely will come off like some kind of blunt asshole. Frankly, I am a blunt asshole. I hate art for arts sake and if someone is not good at their craft, they need to practice and get better. Formless emotion is simply that, formless, and no amount of trying to understand where it comes from will change the fact that it’s a blob. These are basic tenets to how I think, however, I always have mad respect for someone if they are trying to improve and improving. I will also strive to look at the good in someone’s blob if they seem to truly be coming from a place of humility.

This first time around for this blog is somewhat of a free pass for me. It will be shorter and it’s not that deep. These were and probably will be hit and miss. I am somewhat disappointed that I made the first installment after about 3 years a simple explanation of what I think this has been (rants) and definition of what will be (rants) but I really couldn’t think of anything to write about.

The previous statement was an outright lie, I do want to write about something–specifically, that I wish I could load a certain woman into a canon and shoot her into Mexico. But that wouldn’t be the honorable thing to do, would it?

But seriously, it was not my fault we couldn’t hang out for three weeks, for various reasons that were both our faults it didn’t happen and frankly, I think my cousin having a kid and flying up to Seattle to meet him is way more important than getting a drink with a woman. But writing about that kind of thing wouldn’t be the honorable thing to do, would it? Especially since she is actually pretty cool, and even though nothing will happen, ultimately does not deserve to be shot out of a cannon.

Just a sign of things to come.