Granted, we may not answer if it is too personal.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Staley dreams of death and ressurection
I had a dream that someone asked me to circuit bend a cadaver and install a keyboard in it's chest. I thought,"Yeah, I can do that, but it's going to make a mess." I could visualize where to connect the keyboard to the arteries, the tips of the veins were like piezo transducers lined up in a horizontal line in the chest cavity, radiating light. I woke before I could do it.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Narrator: III.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Sincerity.
Malik and I have a different approach to music. Although a musician, he is very much from a business perspective. First and foremost, he would like is ventures to be profitable. By now you must know me. Although it would be nice to make a living from music, I don't like to make compromises. Not to be all cliche "I'll die for my art . . .blah, blah, blah" but in actuality it is very close to the truth. It is a part of me. Indivisible from me. It is me. I cannot be dishonest. There is just no room for insincerity when the narrator has a story.
I'll do all I can to market what I do as I do it, I have no interest in cashing in on fads. I believe if you believe in your product with your everything, others will believe in it too. In fact, that is how I've convinced every creative collaborator on any project up to this point, including Malik. No one knows what they are getting into when I have an idea. Sometimes I don't exactly know either.
Sometimes it surprises me because I think I ask for a lot from my co-conspirators. Complete trust and a healthy dose of blind faith. But no one has said "no" yet. And I would never lead anyone astray.
Whenever something happens in pop culture or the world at large I often wonder what Bill Hicks or Howard Zinn would say (the latter more for current events.) As for music, it can be one of two things-- completely sincere or completely insincere and manufactured. There really is no in between. You can't cash in on a craze and honestly say you are giving it your heart. Your intentions wouldn't be sincere.
I think Malik and I will be a good partnership. He'll remind me that I need to find some way to survive by what I do and I'll remind him that he is not just a business man. Before we sat down yesterday and had a talk, he was really focused on creating a phenomenon based on what was already popular. Likewise, I was floating with minimal direction besides a loose "marketing" plan based on documenting EVERYTHING. I convinced him that being true to your soul can be profitable and he convinced me that we don't have the time or assets to create art that doesn't at least pay for itself. Basically, we balance each other out.
His deadline to get his project up and running is May. My goal is to have all the pieces for my project recorded by the time I turn 28 (8/15.) Although I do not put a lot of stock in astrology, my Saturn return has started. By 30 I would like my life to change for the better artistically.
Before this, I was terrible slump musically. It probably lasted for about three years. I had no focus or direction. I wrote poetry/pros(e), circuit bent toys and performed harsh noise shows; but that was about all I did. Then about February or March I figured out what I needed to do. And it has been clear ever since. What it comes down to is trust. Primarily trusting others-- and trusting myself to do what is best for every one.
I leave you with this:
Play with your fucking heart, indeed.
(Little did I realize at the early 2am-ish I posted this Bill Hicks video--amongst others--on Malik's facebook, it was Hicks' birthday. He would have been 48.)
I'll do all I can to market what I do as I do it, I have no interest in cashing in on fads. I believe if you believe in your product with your everything, others will believe in it too. In fact, that is how I've convinced every creative collaborator on any project up to this point, including Malik. No one knows what they are getting into when I have an idea. Sometimes I don't exactly know either.
Sometimes it surprises me because I think I ask for a lot from my co-conspirators. Complete trust and a healthy dose of blind faith. But no one has said "no" yet. And I would never lead anyone astray.
Whenever something happens in pop culture or the world at large I often wonder what Bill Hicks or Howard Zinn would say (the latter more for current events.) As for music, it can be one of two things-- completely sincere or completely insincere and manufactured. There really is no in between. You can't cash in on a craze and honestly say you are giving it your heart. Your intentions wouldn't be sincere.
I think Malik and I will be a good partnership. He'll remind me that I need to find some way to survive by what I do and I'll remind him that he is not just a business man. Before we sat down yesterday and had a talk, he was really focused on creating a phenomenon based on what was already popular. Likewise, I was floating with minimal direction besides a loose "marketing" plan based on documenting EVERYTHING. I convinced him that being true to your soul can be profitable and he convinced me that we don't have the time or assets to create art that doesn't at least pay for itself. Basically, we balance each other out.
His deadline to get his project up and running is May. My goal is to have all the pieces for my project recorded by the time I turn 28 (8/15.) Although I do not put a lot of stock in astrology, my Saturn return has started. By 30 I would like my life to change for the better artistically.
Before this, I was terrible slump musically. It probably lasted for about three years. I had no focus or direction. I wrote poetry/pros(e), circuit bent toys and performed harsh noise shows; but that was about all I did. Then about February or March I figured out what I needed to do. And it has been clear ever since. What it comes down to is trust. Primarily trusting others-- and trusting myself to do what is best for every one.
I leave you with this:
Play with your fucking heart, indeed.
(Little did I realize at the early 2am-ish I posted this Bill Hicks video--amongst others--on Malik's facebook, it was Hicks' birthday. He would have been 48.)
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Narrator: II.
The Narrator says, "I am telling my story, but it is yours as well."
The Narrator studies culture as if it were a Rubik's Cube. The impossible problem no one can solve. S/he looks for answers to the cultural code in pop radio and 4/4 time. S/he finds them in the stories of first and second generations of American born immigrants. S/he says, "The answers are programmed into your helix and curves. Deoxyribonucleic acid. A message from your ancestors in a language of chemicals."
The Narrator is stuck and can't leave. More accurately, The Narrator refuses to leave. It is the same song, played in infinitum. S/he says, "I wrote this message to you, but it was written for me from the very beginning. I just didn't know at the time. . ."
The Narrator is secretly and hopelessly wistful, although the common observer would never know.
The Narrator studies culture as if it were a Rubik's Cube. The impossible problem no one can solve. S/he looks for answers to the cultural code in pop radio and 4/4 time. S/he finds them in the stories of first and second generations of American born immigrants. S/he says, "The answers are programmed into your helix and curves. Deoxyribonucleic acid. A message from your ancestors in a language of chemicals."
The Narrator is stuck and can't leave. More accurately, The Narrator refuses to leave. It is the same song, played in infinitum. S/he says, "I wrote this message to you, but it was written for me from the very beginning. I just didn't know at the time. . ."
The Narrator is secretly and hopelessly wistful, although the common observer would never know.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Funny story about finding what you didn't think you were looking for on the internet.
I hate facebook. I also dislike talking to strangers on the internet over just about any networking site but twitter. Oh, hell, who am I kidding-- sometimes I hate talking to my friends and family. There, I said it. Happy?
(Aside-- but just because I don't talk to you all doesn't mean I don't think fondly of you and hope you are doing well.)
Coincidentally, I met Malik, a stranger on the internet, on facebook. And somehow I didn't give him a polite brush-off when he contacted me (or maybe I did and he was just very good at working around it.) He also managed to get me out of the house to meet him-- impressive for being a non-work related stranger.
But I was motivated by music. I probably would have politely found a way to discontinue the conversation had he not disclosed that he played sitar and oud. And in all actuality, it was probably this picture in his facebook surrounded by instruments that prompted me to ask if I knew him initially:
I suppose I was slightly intrigued by someone who was silhouetted in front of two (possibly three?) keyboards holding a guitar with another guitar in the background.
(Coincidentally, I usually find out down the line that most people with whom I exchange dialogue are musicians. It is as if we stumble on each other because we vibrate at the same frequency. Some sort of unconscious magnetism, even over such a sterile form of interaction as the internet.)
And I am glad I met him and have plans to work with him soon. I did not know what to expect when I went to meet him; but he was more polite and had a deeper appreciation of aesthetics than I had anticipated. Our mutual admiration of Alexander the Great and seeing he had one of my favorite paintings in his livingroom, "The Storm" by Pierre-Auguste Cot, leads me to believe we may have much in common.
(Aside-- but just because I don't talk to you all doesn't mean I don't think fondly of you and hope you are doing well.)
Coincidentally, I met Malik, a stranger on the internet, on facebook. And somehow I didn't give him a polite brush-off when he contacted me (or maybe I did and he was just very good at working around it.) He also managed to get me out of the house to meet him-- impressive for being a non-work related stranger.
But I was motivated by music. I probably would have politely found a way to discontinue the conversation had he not disclosed that he played sitar and oud. And in all actuality, it was probably this picture in his facebook surrounded by instruments that prompted me to ask if I knew him initially:
I suppose I was slightly intrigued by someone who was silhouetted in front of two (possibly three?) keyboards holding a guitar with another guitar in the background.
(Coincidentally, I usually find out down the line that most people with whom I exchange dialogue are musicians. It is as if we stumble on each other because we vibrate at the same frequency. Some sort of unconscious magnetism, even over such a sterile form of interaction as the internet.)
And I am glad I met him and have plans to work with him soon. I did not know what to expect when I went to meet him; but he was more polite and had a deeper appreciation of aesthetics than I had anticipated. Our mutual admiration of Alexander the Great and seeing he had one of my favorite paintings in his livingroom, "The Storm" by Pierre-Auguste Cot, leads me to believe we may have much in common.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
