This Must Be The Place

the quiet months

2008-01-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

its 2008, the first third of january is through, and everything has been quiet. imagination, creativity, the beach... all chilly chilly and covered in snow. what i need right now is a 30 foot gazebo on a stretch of grass about fifty feet from a beach, with my laptop, guitars, amp, keyboard, etc. and an endless summer to use to get things done. maybe it is time to move to the bahamas.

meh. it is time to buckle down and refresh the inspiration, map things out a little better, and utilize time away from work. being creative in your parents house is not an easy feat. living at home makes you feel somewhat stunted, like you are having a nice dream so you decide to go back to sleep for a while, and end up sleeping in for way more than you had anticipated. your day gets fucked, things get moved around.. plans are compressed. then again, time is an illusion of restriction.

work has turned to monotony. a person can only deal out so many genuine smiles and hellos in a single day, let a lone a month or several months. and whats worse is when, after a few hours of shuffling through crusty old impatient wayland people, someone comes in that you actually want to and you cant because you are in Work Mode. it just stays with you until you leave, and lots of opportunities to talk to nice girls go by. woe is me.

i re-arranged the recording setup in my bedroom. next: one or two new microphones, once my beautiful Axiom 61 arrives in the mail.

ooo baby. i cant wait for the craziness that that thing will inspire. first off, i will spend lots of time learning to play keyboard with better agility and skill. also, i want to start Ear Training once again. gotta dust off the old books and use the piano for interval and scale exercises. and last, its just going to be so much fun using Reasons soundbank with that thing. oh man.

i could use another snow storm. a big one, with like 30 inches over a day and a half, cutting off the power to starbucks and forcing me to have a three day weekend locked in my room watching The Wire and playing, and walking bella to the beach through the fresh snow.

i love that picture of pazu so much. i miss that kitty.

more things to come. oh yeah, links.

scotch mist
current obsession

amazing interview. thanks to mammon

Process

2007-12-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

i was on my own
bed made out of snow
a mansion by the water
dusty and empty inside
flakes fall right through the roof
music and books the only proof
that you were ever there

they come and they go and they come and they...
youreaface youreafriend youreaface youreaface
youreaface youreaface youreafriend youreaface

lights from the towers reflect on the lake
builders gather stones for a bridge
hide in the snow til they are asleep
cross alone once my legs are awake

snow has arrived, and is on the way again.

miracle long weekend+snowstorms=shit getting done.
posts soon to come.

hi clint

2007-11-11T23:48:00.001-08:00

hey again,
indeed, kid a had a lot to do with me growing to love electronic music. i had never really experienced songs like Kid A or Idioteque, and then i think bjorks album Vespertine really solidified my want to add those kinds of elements into the music i am making.

and, happily, yesterday mike gave me Reason, and i have already begun rediscovering how to use it. the cool thing that i liked the most about reason was the Rewire function, which lets you use reason in conjunction with another program so that you can easily graph out a song and combine live and electronic music very easily. i made a lot of songs that way, and then i stopped. i guess i started to focus on a less linear way of making a song, and now it is time to add the simple cutting and pasting of a section or a beat or a whatever to really complete a song, and realize it more fully than i can with just an acoustic guitar. it will be a fun balancing act.

but also, i am having such trouble figuring out what music needs to say these days. it is the biggest tie-up for me... i can make a song, and realize a nice melody that vocals would work for, but i have no idea what words to put in. i need to figure out what is important in life these days, and what the future holds, and what of the past may be repeated, and what identity, technology and nature will play in all this, and what all of this progress will do to family. its so much stuff to think about. at least, those are the ideas i have been mulling over, somewhat aimlessly.

i had never heard of jab mica och el or nathan michel, but i checked out jab mica and they remind me of the soundtrack for Ravenous. you should see that movie if you havent already. the soundtrack is especially wonderful, and adds a really strange and unique twist to the movie. i found a couple clips of it on youtube, but they didnt really do the soundtrack justice.

it is totally time for me to go to sleep now. but before i forget, while i was at work i used "high-falootin'" in a sentence. it was awesome.

-dave

********

same old road, same questions, same hang-ups. next will be a productive post. the goal: match a emotion/thought/question/motive/style with el musico.

myspace will be updated soon... by next post for sure. thats goal #2. el musico is just gibberish to refer to a song by, but by the time ive figured out the thought/question/whatever, i will have audio examples for consumption/digestion/reflection. 5 small meals a day are better than 3 large meals. practice moderation.

the state of reality

2007-11-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

identity. nature. technology.
change. evolution. movement.

self conscience vs. judgement
passive lies vs. aggressive lies
subconscious hope vs. death and decay
wisdom vs. knowledge
the state of individual reality vs. delusion
progress vs. family
character vs. self vs. social vs. class

where do we go from here

its always sunny in philadelphia

tired of fun

2007-10-28T18:10:00.001-07:00

i remembered your face in the midst of the crowd

being at a party in amherst was unexpected and fun. i dont go out very often, and when i do something like drive two hours to a costume party, it is usually because clayton has something to do with it. i am not tempted to go out drinking with a large group of mostly unfamiliar people, but when clayton is involved things always seem, and end up being, more fun than how i imagined them to be. im quiet, and in large groups i feel like i lose any sense of being able to explain myself properly. i tried talking to new people but my attention would fall short, and then conversation would falter and die. i guess it does not help that i am constantly looking for girls. i like new girls, but i am horrible at talking to them. it is the worst of curses, that i am terrible in large crowds, and that is where most girls like to be. but after a few hours, the party cleared and a small group of people remained, and the night was wonderful. its just those crowds.

for some unexplained reason, my morale for music seemed to have taken a blow while i was in amherst. i guess i wish i had been able to share music with more people, or talk about music, or feel like the people at the party would like what i want to do. mm, thats it. i was on the fringes of the party when it was in full swing, just observing the group and not committing to it, and in that i feel like i was not at all a part of the social reasons that everyone was at the party for. a party full of people like me would not be a "party". i have no need for feeling like a large, solid group of like-minded young people having fun. im not certain if it is the drinking, the strange pressure and trials of trying to make meaningful conversation in a crowded and loud place, or the overall goals and dreams of people my age, but i really do not care to have a blurry recollection of interactions that, for the most part, are heavily influenced by alcohol. maybe these hazy people i met have great things planned. but all i remember is that some guy said something weird, a drunk guy spilled water all over the floor, some kid threw up... etc.

once everything died down though, the night was nice. the evening really started once the crowd was gone. too bad all the girls also left with that crowd.. hmph. i wanted to get thoughts out for a song about last night. ill have to think some more.

watercourse cont.

2007-10-20T21:43:00.002-07:00

nothing at all. lifes meaning, and the pursuit of life that my peers have gone their separate ways on feels alien and surreal. family has always been priority. being home has never felt strange, except when in transitory emotional stages based on the building and burning of bridges. friends have felt strange. new skin cant rewrite history. in that sense, i do like to run into people i havent seen in years, because it feels like change has been constant with me, and is finally pushing me towards something solid.

i should reread Kingdom of Fear. i should go for a run tomorrow. i should practice drums, guitar, and singing for that song of mine. i should clean up my room. i should play with bella outside. i should call jason. i should play my guitar again. i should contemplate Watercourse lyrics.

watercourse.. i like the idea of the first definition, that it is a bed of a stream that only flows seasonally. that is something. i think it is about frozen parts of a flowing substance that only move when the weather is right. hmm.

Watercourse

2007-10-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

-the bed of a stream that flows only seasonally;
-a natural body of running water that flows on or under the earth.

the distrait honesty

2007-10-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

the young people i have been working with have shown unrestrained honesty in all musical senses. some are more restrained than others, but when placed in an out-of-classroom setting and engaging in conversation instead of lecture, with the openness that artistic discussion must be allowed, they have been the most honest of critics. now it is my job to take their musical tastes and blow the doors wide open on the world outside of youtube, middle school, and parents.

also: negative energies have been detected, as far as the students trying to find where they belong and being frustrated in the journey. positive influences must be shown to them in a digestible and natural progression. must find their strongest bonds to current styles, bands, lyrics, and feelings, and amplify, distort, evolve. we will provide snacks and jokes. becoming an adult is a bitch.

friends kick ass. things are moving. i need that mackie onyx or the alesis, as well as acquiring Reason, because i need to start having solid recordings to show and twist. i have about three new songs on the rise, plus a few choice old songs i would like to rethink. content is the only true issue, as well as sound.

the big question: what do we have to say?

the economy sucks. our leaders are not aware that we are, as eddie izzard pointed out, the new Roman Empire. our Nero is in office. so there are politics.

theres more, but im tired.

the state of music

2007-10-16T22:31:00.001-07:00

to obtain a close sense of pop music, and an appreciation of it, as well as having a close eye on what is bubbling up underneath it is the key to the musical evolution of pop. the truth of powerful, lasting music is to find the underlying alienated minorities and know what they are writing music about, and know which minority has the momentum of breaking through into the majority and synthesizing. to become a catalyst of multiple, distinctly different entities by uniting them through their similarities.

you cant buy the necessities of life with cookies.

Radiohead
Natsumen
Grizzly Bear

Never Wear Out Your Summer

2007-10-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

for me, i have never seen money as anything more than a means for acquiring inspirational equipment. i suppose that having resources is the tricky part, where you need to be doing something that is hopefully inspirational to fund your future inspirations, and finding a comfortable middle ground is inevitably hard. is it the people that surround you, the actual things you are putting energy into, or the end result that keeps your mind on track, healthy, creative and dreamy?

im not sure if its the caffeine intake or the environment that has changed.

waking up to a cat sleeping next to me doesnt hurt, either. having a drumset in my life again is also wonderful. the next step in the process is to purchase that firewire device for home recordings. the question is, do i need 2 mic inputs or 8? boy do i want 8, but it may be overkill for the time being.

1.think globally, write locally.
-world=country=government=politician=community=family=individual

-war=country=government+conflict=nationalism+fanaticism= xenophobia=community=individual

2.sonic alchemy. acoustic=reality, electronic=dreams.
3.thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthink
moretocome.

Don't Get Big Ideas

2007-10-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

Well. It's mid-October now. Not much had come to mind to talk about in the last few weeks. Some small things happened, such as meeting Kevin Youkilis the day after the Sox clinched the AL east, the start of the Intramural Arts program at the middleschool, working maniacally at starbucks... things draining, things filling. I've got a full plate, but I have some ideas for future days.

First thing is first. I need something like this.

Don't know why, but it doesn't matter. It must be mine. Though I think mine will be more of a blue/cream colored one. Maybe the color of dissipating rainclouds.

Next. I need to acquire Reason, a Korg Triton, a Mackie Onyx Satellite Firewire audio interface, a schector bass, a Line 6 bass amp, some sweet microphones, and the know how to isolate multiple instruments (most importantly drumset) for high quality recordings. All of that will probably put me back around, oh, say $4000 to be nice. I'm sure theres other shit that will distract me along the way.

And finally, I need to focus. I need to figure out a way to sonically combine the aspects of these:

Kid A
Talking Heads
Talk Talk

Then, the subject of content must be brainstormed. I'm not far enough along with that to share yet. More things on the way.

ps: inrainbows

2007-09-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

I was looking around on Facebook tonight, and it put me into a strange mood. I was just wasting time with the Red Sox on in the background, mindlessly flipping through "friends" profiles, looking at pictures of them enjoying summertimes gone by with people I know, or used to know, or have never seen before... familiar faces I have not seen in who knows how long, personalities I miss, experiences I remember fondly...

Anyways. I got into another nostalgic mood, but not a warm, fuzzy one. It does not constitute a very expressive conscience for me. I do not remember what I wanted to write about when I started this, so instead I suppose I will just take the easy way out and share some pictures.

Strange Days

2007-09-16T18:06:00.001-07:00

I just finished working a 13 hour shift at Starbucks, and I came home to my mother calling 911 because my brother Brian needed to go to the hospital. It was a pretty standard thing, as far as Brian needing to be in a hospital, but when he needs immediate oxygen and it is nighttime, it gets a little more tense, and not for reasons most people would think. It is more of a distress for my family to clean up our house for all of the firemen and paramedics that will soon be barging through our door than it is to deal with Brians STAT levels being low. Brian is always teetering on the brink of needing to be hospitalized, which my mother and family are all quite accustomed to. But our house is always teetering on the brink of being unfit for my moms standards of what a clean house should look like when expecting guests. So when that phone call must be made, a preliminary mini-whirlwind of cleaning is immediately thrown into action.

I always know when this cleaning is going to happen, because my mom comes from Brian's room, where she has been for the last 15 or 20 minutes trying all she can to equalized Brian's heart rate and oxygen levels, and she sighs loudly as she briskly walks past the living room and right up the stairs to her bedroom where she changes from her pajamas into something more presentable to emergency response personnel. Its kind of silly how I can gauge Brian's condition by the amount of time my mom allows us to clean up before the call to 911 is placed.

So far, the times I have experienced feel like those five rushed minutes before the first house guests of a large party are expected to be arriving, where all the basics are reexamined: There are parking spaces available in the driveway, the path between the door and the Man of the Hour are clear, and the place looks organized. My mom usually does not allow any more time for frivolous deeds, such as preparing a pot of coffee for those hard working EMTs, or going through the fridge to find some finger snacks for them to sample while they redirect Brian's oxygen supply from the house tank to the sheik new ultra-slim mobile model.

The first thing I always notice when the ambulance and multiple firetrucks arrive and the emergency crew make their way into Brian's room is how serious they are. They sure do prepare themselves for some tense moments ahead. Tonight, officer Smitty, a policeman I have known decently well for most of my life, was the first to come in the door, looking out of breath and concerned. I did not expect him, and my surprise and delight at seeing him surprised and confused him in turn.

"Oh, hey! How are you, Smitty?"
"... Uh... ok, how are you? Huh? Is there an emergency?!"
"Oh, yeah. First door on your left down that hallway."

Fortunately for the rest of the firemen, paramedics and police officers, I did not know any of them. Instead, it was my crazily popular father. There wasn't one man who entered our house that my dad didn't know by their first name.

"Johnny, how are ya? Bill, lookin' good. Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, you rascal. Uh oh, here comes trouble..."

It was a hilarious procession of people changing polarized emotions much faster than they had expected, going from concerned people trained to deal quickly with a wide variety of different medical situations, to old friends and neighbors who haven't caught up with the happenings of each others lives in a while. It was silly, and it was weird, and it was normal. My mom handles every situation like the one tonight with grace and authority, my dad was some grounded comic relief, and I just had to keep up. Another night with the McDonald family. This must be the place.

Waking up is Hard to Do

2007-09-12T18:27:00.001-07:00

When my alarm went off this morning, I knew that its familiar, annoying sound meant I needed to get out of those 8-hour-warm blankets surrounding my body and make myself a tasty fruit smoothie to start the day. I knew that I should get up with a start, with plenty of time to stretch out, take a shower, eat, read some of the news, and then make my way proudly to work.

But I pressed that snooze button again and again, and stayed in that lovely, warm bed of mine until all of my pre-work activities were thrown into a jumbled, fast forwarded rush to get to Starbucks on time. I made the smoothie first, and enjoyed that in the shower, after which I brushed the delightful taste of it away with baking powder toothpaste, threw on my clothes, grabbed a gallon of water and headed out the door. It was just how I remembered.

Is procrastination something I could define as my lifestyle?

Well, I'm exaggerating. I wasn't that bad this morning, and I've been a lot better lately. Wanting to keep up my running schedule should help me become even better at getting to bed earlier so I can wake up and run before work... but thats all futuretalk.

Today was a big, caffeine-fueled blur. I met so many new people, had to read hundreds of pages of information about cleaning protocol, how to treat and converse with customers to make them not only like their experience in Starbucks, but like it so much that they will be returning as regular customers for "up to nine years", had yet another round of coffee tasting, and then... the dreaded Technology Based Tutorial on using a register. Man, that is going to be the bane of the first few weeks of my Starbucks experience. There are way too many different names for drinks in this store. By the end of the tutorial, I had to run a five person gauntlet of orders, with hardly any assistance whatsoever... It was a complete failure. I failed one because I forgot to offer to bring the drinks to the picture of the lady in the wheelchair (which was only on the screen for about 10 seconds), I failed the next because hazelnut is the default flavor of a latte and does not have to be added on as an additional flavor, the third because I left the bathroom unchecked for 10 minutes, resulting in crackheads converting it into a meth lab, and the last because I referred to the customer with an ethnic slur. You win some, you lose some.

I'm tired, and I want tomorrow to be the first attempt at waking up extra early for an hour long run before work. Yawn. Goodnight.

First Impressions of Nostalgia

2007-09-11T17:12:00.001-07:00

At noon today, I reported for an unofficial first day of duty at my local Starbucks, where I will be employed for the next bit of my life. But I suppose that is getting ahead of myself.

A few months ago, with my head hung slightly low, feeling defeated and confused, I packed up all of my most necessary items from my bedroom in the house in Brookline, NH I had been living in for the last two years and headed back to my one consistent home in Wayland. The deterioration of the New Hampshire house was slow and steady, but when I arrived there after work one day and there was no longer anything resembling a kitchen where one used to be, I knew something was seriously wrong. The demolition up to the destruction of the kitchen was a process of gutting rooms and removing walls, which was fine because it made the acoustics of the rooms very nice for playing music in, and did not affect my standards of living. Without a kitchen, and also without a job that afforded me the luxury of being served all my meals in nice restaurants, I had a big problem. I could no longer physically survive there, and with the previous two years' house projects as evidence of how slowly things were moving, I had little hope of a quick reassembling of a functioning kitchen. Enough was enough.

That is the basics of the last two years of my life culminating in being back home, out of ideas and creativity, and feeling like a rat who has abandoned a sinking ship. I hoped that a great job would fall into my lap, and it did not, so Starbucks it is. Anything for some money. I have plans. I have health. I have youth. I just need to find confidence and direction.

No more summer, no more lovely vacation on Cape Cod... Nope, not for me. Back to working.

And that brings me back to the beginning. I arrived at Starbucks at noon for a meet-and-greet style introduction to the store and the employees who happened to be there, and to taste the first of a long line of different coffees I must accustom myself with in the next few months. I have the hang of most corporate, retail-styled stores and their inner workings, but reading the Safety At Starbucks booklet was pretty informative. For instance, if a civil disorder were to break out in the glossy suburb of Wayland, I should "remove exterior tables, chairs and trash cans as these can be used to damage the store or gain entrance into it". Excellent thinking, but I would rather enjoy watching some irate, rioting 40-something soccer moms throw chairs at the windows of their favorite coffee spot after being refused entrance during their tear across downtown Cochituate.

So, back to Corporate America, back to smiling incessantly, back to schedules... but also, back to money in the bank (without a ridiculous rent to pay), back to enjoying freedom, back to an open canvas. This must be the place.