Status Report: Where I'm at on 09/14/2022 -- for future interest

I am currently focused on completing the music for the audio reading of “Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet, and Watch” from “The Grifter’s Bible”, specifically the drum track. This includes the tom, the bell, and the can. Everything is recorded and guide-mixed. I have some arrangement work to do with the bell and probably some splotch-work here and there before I export and master. Then, I will import it into the overall arrangement for the chapter.

Funny note— I have de-listed “The Grifter’s Bible” on Amazon. So it is currently out of print. The world is in mourning (for Queen Elizabeth II, but nevertheless). There are some things I want to change based upon the work I’m doing on the audiobook. But I also have not had any level of success in that particular marketplace so I’m not necessarily giving much up. Over the past couple of months, I’ve started cancelling my various Amazon memberships over the expense and my creeping dread that something not right is going on with this company. I canceled Audible, Amazon Music, and Kindle Unlimited. Unpublishing the book is just another turd getting pulled in with the flush of all the other shit. I’m hemming and hawing over when I’m going to cancel my Prime membership, mostly based on whether or not I want to watch the third or fourth episode of the horrendous Rings of Power, but that is next on the chopping block and the cutting is certain. I don’t want to support big, dumb money any more than I have to.

I'm wildly confused by the existence of two Halle Berrys.

09/14/2023 Edit: Thank God. I’m a noodnik. The younger actor is Halle Bailey not Berry. So, I’m maybe a third less confused than I was yesterday.

Reading reviews of the new “The Little Mermaid” film and junk news about the older Halle Berry interacting with fans/ haters of the younger Halle Berry is like tracking audio signals with a low-latency interface. Every time I think I’m reading about the younger actor, I blink and the story seems to shift and I’m reading about her Oscar or her daughter or Catwoman. And Google’s hardly any help—most of the top results are the older actor, unless it’s a news search.

Alice Coltrane Has Did It Again

Man, the Algorithm threw up a good one this week. I am grateful to have finally been introduced to Kirtan: Turiya Sings one of Alice Coltrane’s recordings from the 80s that were only available through her ashram in Agoura Hills. Kirtan is a sanskrit word with multiple meanings. Aside from praise, the definition that I think is most appropriate to the music contained here is “to cut through,” as in: to cut through the things that separate us from the All. This music is so simple but so monumental that it cuts through the clutter and mind-numbing noise that bombards the soul on a daily basis.

Turiya is the spiritual name that Alice Coltrane took for herself and these recordings are her first vocal performances on record. And what a voice it is. She was older at this point and who knows how much badness had crossed her path by then. Her voice is not the sound of a woman trudging up a hill with a great burden on her back. It is the sound of the wind that pushes her forward through all of her struggles. It is the sound that eases the burden. It seems a shame that her singing isn’t commented on more. These are all chants and the fact that I understand none of the lyrics only seems to make the effect more raw. I do not know what these words mean, but they speak to me all the same. Language

Charanam is my first favorite track from my listening so far. The entire album is just Alice and her Wurlitzer, both heaving and pumping away as though a full orchestra, complete with dual choirs, were behind them. There is nothing complicated here. It is just two voices, calling and responding to one another, and the spaces between each phrase are vast and rife with emotion. I can’t describe what you will hear but you will hear it when you hear it. I hear lines—bass lines, drum riffs, skanky guitar, from Motown to Mumbai, every mode of every culture is represented and all of them fit into this setting without being verbalized. Whatever your life experiences are that lead you to this music will be reflected back at you from out of the blank spaces Alice and her organ.

Rules of Writing- How I Process "How-To"s from Professional Writers- 01.) Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens remarked that to be a good writer you need to be a good speaker. He was a great speaker that wrote some great stuff that I hold in high regard. I, however, am a social retard (and I use that word specifically for its accuracy in this instance). Nevertheless, as the anti-Bon Vivant, as a narcotized monk in public, I wholeheartedly agree with his statement. Good writing hits the brain the way good speaking does. It falls on the ears “as it should”.

I’m currently recording the audio book for “The Grifter’s Bible” and it is, honestly, an eye-opener. Speaking some of the sentences I wrote was painful. You have to know when to breathe and you have to know that you will need to breathe…constantly…for the length of what you’re writing. A 30-word sentence that works grammatically is still a huge pain in the ass to speak. And I have to admit: it drags the reading down.

And I think most of this is just first-book syndrome. I’m still figuring out how to do the things I want to do and how to do them best. I will be re-writing whatever portions of the book fall into this trap. At some point I expect to remove the book from print for a short-editing phase while the audiobook is posting. But it shouldn’t be too long.

I may never learn to be a good speaker but I can take the things I know to be true and apply them to my writing so that I may become a better writer. That’s about all I can hope for at this point.

The Star Wars universe is comprised of two good/ great/ classic films only.

Everyone knows which two films I mean when I say there are only two good movies in the entire Star Wars canon. I don’t need to name them because everyone knows which ones I’m talking about. Everything that followed is fan service and filling in the blanks in one of the greatest fictional universes ever created. Two films introduced concepts and characters that were so intriguing, that scratched that human itch, that fans have clamored for more and more information about what was introduced in these two epics. And they have clamored for so long and so loudly that they will accept absolute garbage dressed up to look like the things they love. Whatever that spark was that lit Star Wars from within is long gone by now. Honestly, it’s been gone since 1983. Everything since has just been repackaging. Like taking the heads off of action figures and putting them onto different bodies, nothing new has been added even though it looks like there’s a new character to occupy your imagination.

I've been disappointed

I’ve been disappointed to find out that Alice Coltrane was regarded as something of a hack musician that just happened to share the spirituality of one of 20th Century music’s undisputed geniuses. And they weren’t even married for all that long. Something like three years plus whatever time preceded the marriage and then he died and the world receded to a polite and uninterested distance. The only consolation I can gather from her story (aside from her music) is that her spirituality was true and blessed and dear. It did what spirituality is supposed to do—it sustained her through all of the years when she was ignored. That’s a good thing but, man, the world is missing out on something so crazily good. There is no justice, only chaos and a wing and a prayer.

What I am currently listening to as a 49 year old.

Spacemen 3 - from out of the drone continuum, I finally sink my teeth into one of those bands that I’ve heard about since their era but have never been able to crack. I always used to see their album covers at RPM, though not necessarily Bill’s Records and Tapes, but I just never made the leap. I’d heard about their drug habits and I was young and halfway Catholic enough that that scared me. Jane’s Addiction was like that, too but they had MTV on their side so I was exposed to them enough to have been a fan during their lifetime. I had even dipped a toe into Spiritualized and knew more about them than I did the Spacemen. But seeing Sonic Boom’s interview for the Delia Derbyshire documentary intrigued me so I gave it a whirl and things have been going swell for me and Spacemen 3 here in 2022.

The tracks I’m liking - “Walking with Jesus”, “Losing Touch With My Mind”, “Suicide”, “When Tomorrow Hits”.

Lamonte Young - from out of the drone continuum. I was able to locate some live Lamonte Young, oddly enough, pretty current to Spacemen 3’s death throes—1991. It’s one of the stepdown transformer drones. I get it.

Mudhoney - “When Tomorrow Hits” - Spacemen 3 fallout.

Tangerine Dream - All these years after digging on the soundtrack to ‘Risky Business’ I’m now into the early 70s classics like Zeit. Rubycon, etc

Dadgummit- Mark Lanegan has died.

I’m actually kind of bummed. I’m listening to the Bonfire from my birthday and they just opened the show with an off-hand announcement that Mark Lanegan has died. Internet says they haven’t announced the cause of death yet but he apparently had Covid bad last year. His autobiography, Sing Backwards and Weep, is one of the best books written by a musician that I have read and it is basically one long drug tale so who knows what could have contributed to his passing. I’m not getting younger.

What In the World Is Going On?

I don’t know what it is but every time that I travel, I suffer from pre- and post-trip depression and I’ve taken two recent trips in short succession and it’s got me down about the world. I wake up during or after dreams of smothering, being buried alive, mental vegetation. The inability to communicate stemming from some transgression. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older and more reflective or if the world is truly in the shittiest condition that I have seen it in so long if ever. Things have been bad before but this feels like something new. I was born after the 60s and I assumed that I would likely never see an epochal moment like that. I just came home from a stand-up comedy festival that I enjoyed attending but now that I’m home, the blues is sinking in.

Bahamat/ Life Pedal Clone artwork, versions 1 and 2

I will be attempting to apply my own custom graphics to the pedal enclosure for my next build— a clone of the EQD/ SunnO))) Life pedal. I’ve decided to name it “Bahamat” after watching a video on the Muslim influence on Irish folklore that drew a comparison between the Bible’s Behemoth and the Muslim Bahamat, a world-sized demon that may be benign solely due to its dwarfing anything in human reckoning. This is, of course, also a nod to SunnO)))’s “Flight of the Behemoth” and an implication of the sound of the pedal.

Version 1 is designed for ferric chloride etching. No color other than the LEDs. This one’s got the lesser room for F-ups.

Version 2 is definitely a busier design which will require screen-printing and likely clear-coating but more thought went into the graphic details of this one than V1.

It’s got the classic Black/ White/ Red palette, mild op-art elements, and a photo of the Pope’s audience hall with its highly inappropriate snake appearance (I’m not equating the Pope with the serpent. They did that. I’m just appropriating the image for my own corny metaphoring). The snake’s eyes align with the placement of the LEDs because they have to. Graphic ripples emanate from each knob.

This one would be the most fun to present as the final product. The I-did-that factor.

But there’s a lot of soldering between this post and whatever the final product ends up looking like.

The world has become so screwed up that I am this close [ ] to listening to what Russell Brand has to say.

edit: Today is also the 40th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of “Doctor Who” on the BBC. This means that today marks the 40th anniversary of the first time the wider world was exposed to the work of Delia Derbyshire via one of the most recognizable theme songs in television history. I’ve been reading David Stubbs’, “Mars by 1980” about the history of electronic music and, though I haven’t gotten to the Derbyshire section of the book, each new pioneer covered in the book makes me more excited to appreciate her contribution to the world. I find her story particularly touching as she did such great work and never got any credit until after she was gone (for the most part). It’s like George Orwell dying so soon after “1984” was published. It’s the ultimate injustice of art. We do not get to pick our time, only what we do with our time.

Keeping Track of What I'm Into

The Monks

Delia Darbyshire

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Julian Cope’s “A Krautrock Sampler”

“Mars By 1980”

“Monolithic Undertow, In Search of Sonic Oblivion”

The Master Musicians of Jajouka

Amon Duul

Ash Ra Tempel

Edgar Varese

Continuing on with Can, Cluster, and delving deeper into Neu!. Continuing on with Conny Plank and Eno’s other Krautrock collaborators as described in “Some Faraway Beach”. This may be the year I finally get into Tangerine Dream. A good book can open up so many worlds and the Eno book, A Krautrock Sampler, and Monolithic Undertow are directed bursts of concentrated energy. When I finish books like these, I look at my YouTube and Amazon histories and how much new culture and music I have been enriched by, I think something akin to Neo saying, “I know kung-fu”. It’s like I’ve cleared a hill and I can look down and see the world in a greater focus. So much good music is in these books.