At-A-Distance
Course Diary 1999 back |
 |
Week1 | Week2 | Week3 | Week4 | Week5 | Week6 Sunday November 14th I woke up buzzing slightly this morning -- the energy and karma from the music of the night before was still circling in the air. I get a very specific feeling in my body when I do 'good work.' It is a sort of warmth and calm that permeates my skin and buzzes through my bones. It's not a really feeling of celebration or a euphoria; it's more like a feeling of strength, of being 'able' -- it's a form of satisfaction or inner security that comes from feeling like my work has had value and made a difference in someone else's life. I don't really know directly what it is like to be a parent, but delivering a successful show feels somewhat like sending healthy children (music) go out into the world. This 'good' inner feeling was tempered by a small anal frustration at the constant growth in the expansive pile of bills, papers, file folders and boxes that surround my current home office work space. That, and the laundry that needs to be done kept my feet well planted on the ground this morning. As usual, I woke up with a full agenda for this alleged day 'off' but, I'm not going to waste more time here blabbing endlessly about being busy. This is simply the way my life is, day in day out. And what is so interesting about this? Very little, so I'm going to shut up about it. * * * My state during my sittings have had a quality of gentle 'asking' over the past three days: asking for help to keep going, asking for help to complete these projects which I have undertaken, asking for health and guidance. To quote my own smarty-pants lyrics: "help requires an invitation" -- I need help. My daily schedule has been both intensive and extensive since the beginning of this AAD course. The extra hour+ that my AAD commitments require from my day have come largely at the expense of sleep. Can I sustain this pace for 6 more days? Is there a cold waiting for me at the end of this process when I let my guard down again? * * * Another productive afternoon with David Singleton and Steve Enstad. The BTV vision and plan is really coming clear. It is resonating with it's own rightness; we had what feels like another major shift and breakthrough today in defining a viable path for this potentially huge throbbing entity. The breakthrough today is perhaps captured by my favorite David Byrne quote from my favorite Talking Heads song, 'the good thing':
Note to self: perhaps it's time to bring this song back to life in the SB Roadshow? The chemistry between this core team feels remarkable. But we are still doing in the easy part: blueprints. The hard part is just around the corner. Bring in the girders and concrete. After a long afternoon of clarification, followed by a delicious Indian feast, Steve and David headed 'home' and I headed back to the borg to practice in the stairwell, and prepare for a 10am MS meeting. I exchanged a few emails and phone calls with Jaxie late this evening -- she too still seems to be buzzing from the show last night. It seems the SGC has recently turned an important corner.
* * * Monday November 15th Today is my sister's birthday: happy birthday Katie! Actually, technically, it was yesterday, as it is now 1:04am on the 16th. At 9pm this evening, I was exhausted. What does that make me now...? I'm not quite in 'great accumulator' mode, but right now I feel on the edge of collapse. When I get this tired, everything slows down, the world get surreal, and I lose sight of consequences. Autopilot kicks in. And yet, for some reason, I feel compelled to complete the day with this writing process, even though it feels like the value will be nil. Where do I draw the line between what I said I would do and what is practical? If I honor the letter of my commitment but the spirit of the process is hollow and braindead, what have I gained? Yes, I can keep my commitments. It's obvious that the value in keeping a commitment is not in simply keeping a hollow promise to do mechanical tasks every day. * * * So how about a run down of the day's highlights: I began tired. I was sleepy in the middle. Lots of bogus politics to manage today at the borg. Bleeekch. I caught a slight second wind before and during dinner (with Dewey Reid and David Singleton) and lost it before a completely sleepy rehearsal with the SGC at 9pm. Dean's rehearsal notes may perhaps go into more detail about the rehearsal tonight -- actually, I doubt it -- now that I think about it, his notes are usually pretty sparse. Unlike this sleepy idiot, perhaps Dean diplomatically avoids articulating what he really experiences so that he does not make waves, annoy, or piss off those who may be reading? So what did I feel about tonight's rehearsal? Should I say what I really think? Nah... but I'll get to the point: rehearsing when we are tired seems like a waste of time. The good news: the lighting was excellent tonight. 8 ^)
* * * Tuesday November 16th nearing completion * * * - visited game developer
Surreal (maker of Draken) * * * Wednesday November 17th Total failure in many AAD realms today. Shall we begin with my non-existent sitting this morning? Or shall we begin with my non-existent practice this evening? Today: payday. Ouch. It's 1:30am, and even with 130+ unread emails and a ton of others un-answered, I've just put out all the raging fires within my-so-called-micro-life. I also totally missed (read 'blew off' the SGC rehearsal this evening (sorry again guys) to complete an ongoing meeting with Diane, David, and Steve Enstad about the rapidly accelerating BTV practicalities. Diane arrived in Seattle today, fresh from the Webnoize conference in LA. She joined Curt Golden, SteveE, David, and I for dinner tonight and for the first official BTV core team meeting. Curt peeled off just before 9 to join the SGC rehearsal, and I kept going with Diane and David until just before 11pm. Diane and David are going to tour Seattle with Curt in the morning -- looking for real estate... Curt and I (and Bob and Jax and Dean) are off to Vancouver tomorrow (Curt in the afternoon, and me probably later in the evening after continued meetings...) The stakes are high right now, and efficient use of every minute of every hour seems to hold the key to the future. Tomorrow, there will be a huge gear shift as I morph into musician mode and the SGC premieres on Vancouver morning television. * * * Other notable moments today: Lunch with Tobin Buttram and Guy Whitmore, two of the world's best DirectMusic composers and arrangers. Some interesting synergy growing here too. Tobin and I showed Guy some of our work from three years ago on the MSN Rifff project (Philip Glass and Jane Siberry episodes...) It was great to see these 'shows' again -- early pioneering work in the field of interactive music. The music and even the graphics still seem years ahead of their time... perhaps someday, there will be a way for others to see this work -- for now, the only way is to come to my office and see these 18 episodes on my secret "Rifff museum" machine -- the last ancient Win95 machine at MS with IE3.01 and the original episodes installed. An exciting meeting with the Venture Law group and a major VC this afternoon... no haiku, tonight, but last night's poetics stand intact and accurate. * * * The bad news: While I am on the road, this diary will remain static and silent until late Sunday evening. The AAD course will complete before then, but I will fill in the missing days and give a full report on our Vancouver adventures in TV and recording when I return home. For those reading and completing the AAD course this weekend, you have my best wishes and thanks for your invisible but vital support during these past six weeks.
Thursday November 18th This is being written three days after the fact -- I am just back in Seattle after three days in Vancouver. I drove to Vancouver after a long day of preparation and BTV wrap up meetings as David Singleton and Diane Aldahl prepared to leave Seattle for England. Seems we are all leaving the country within 24 hours with some extremely exciting BTV growth under our belts. After a completely hectic MS day of reviews, politics, therapies, charities, and general project management, I met David and Diane for dinner at Diane's favorite fish restaurant down town. Diane arrived from Webnoize in LA yesterday afternoon and has since plowed through a series of meetings that would leave most people dazed and panting. Both David and Diane are in denial about the reality of jetlag. After dinner, we met up with Bill Rieflin, Steven Rhodes, and Hector Zazou at the 'cloud room' downtown for a drink. I chatted briefly before flying out the door at 9:45 for a three hour drive to Vancouver. I drank a soft drink while the rest of the party indulged in better quality drinks. The Vancouver border patrol hassled me slightly for coming across the border with guitars, gear, and CDs, but they let me through anyway -- they must have sensed that the only tangible thing I was going to bring into the country and leave behind was my hard earned microsoft money. Unless you count the notes I play. Apparently, they were not counting those when I went through at 12:30am. I arrived at the guest house where I was to be staying at 1:30am -- Curt Golden was already there and sleeping lightly. He woke up just enough to tell me that we needed to get up and go soon. Three hours later we were up and out the door for our Seattle Guitar Circle show on Vancouver Television (VTV.) * * * Friday November 19th As foretold, Curt's alarm kicked in at 4:15 and we were out the door by 4:35. We arrived at the TV studio at 5:00am and waited outside in the cold, finally to be let in by a security guard at around 5:25. Being early on three hours of sleep was painful, but crafty. Finally, we loaded in the gear and set up across from the giant French Toast and dripping egg sculpture which serves as the VTV morning 'breakfast' show set. Our stage area was right next to a huge 12 foot high coffee cup. What a coincidence -- I needed a 12 foot cup of coffee to wake up. By 6:30am we were set up and ready to sound check for our 7am 'show' which was to consist of seven 1-minute pieces to be played as the VTV breakfast show cut to commercials. We also had one 4 minute slot during which we were to play a complete piece. The flavor of this event was quite surreal, and I will revisit this diary later this next week to capture some of the aromas and colors of our first major television appearance as the SGC. I'll also make sure some of the photos from this event end up in the sb photo archive after they are developed later this week. For now, let me just say that our performance was honorable and invigorating for both the performers and the audience. We delivered the goods musically while blasting the cover of our new CD across the Canadian airwaves at least three times during this two hour show.
At the end, we schmoozed briefly with the already schmoozy hosts of the show, and were invited back to do this again for VTV at our convenience. * * * After the show, we went out for breakfast and then said goodbye to Dean who drove back to Seattle while we shifted gears and moved into the "greenhouse" recording studio to contribute guitars, bass, and vocals to Brock Pytel's upcoming solo record. But that is another long story to be told later this week. At the end of this 21-hour day, I practiced for 1/2 hour in the upstairs room of 'greenhouse' and then did my AAD sitting for the day as Brock, Curt, and Bob worked downstairs and completed recording multiple simultaneous ebow tracks on a piece called 'Seven Times If.' * * * Saturday November 20th Today is the final day of the AAD course, and the final day of this chapter in my ongoing diary. Curt and I sat together this morning from 9:30 to 10:00 in the basement. A nice and quiet completion. Forty-two days of consecutive sitting and practicing with a day off every six days or so made for an intense AAD course. I will analyze my 'missed days' (and the associated 'pay-to-not-play' damage) tomorrow evening after I rest and recover from my weekend road trip. I remember now why Ballistic Music is boldly advertised as local, immobile:
Curt put it succinctly in the car yesterday: the SGC Cle Elem gig was just without our reach (< two hour drive, and close enough to be 'local.') These Vancouver gigs are just beyond our reach (> three hour drive over an international border.) I feel brain dead, exhausted, and I can barely think. I have a heaping laundry mountain to pull out of the dryer and ascend. I am surrounded by piles of mundane paper which must be dealt-with this evening. Before going online for the first time in three days, I guessed there would be 228 unread emails... close: there were exactly 226 unread emails in my inbox. Psychic or psychotic? You decide. Despite my brain-death, my commitment to complete the skeleton of this diary proceeds. As I type this, my good friend and roommate, R. Chris Murphy, is also typing away in the other room at his trusty mac powerbook. Seems he has committed to writing an article on music production process for the Northwest NARAS newsletter. Maybe I can commission him to write the rest of my Vancouver diary after he has completed his article? At this point, I don't care if he just makes some random crap up. It will probably make more sense and be more entertaining and useful than this pathetic drivel. Guess not -- he seems to be struggling with his work as much as I am... In a momentary lapse of reason, he asked me if I could think of a word to describe the intersection of 'technical production' and 'artistic process' ( or something like that... ) "Overlapping" was my ultra-useless-sub-mediocre response. On hearing my brilliant suggestion, he resorted to his previous choice of words, and stopped asking me. Whooohoo -- my synapses are firing like a damp sparkler. And yet, for some senseless reason, my fingers keep typing. Permission to shut down and continue tomorrow: granted. Stay tuned for more juicy details about the Brocksongs recording sessions and our SGC Saturday evening show at Ms. T's where we performed three of the best circulations we have ever performed in our 14+ years of performing in guitar circles ---- but only after my brain cells have a chance to snuggle and settle back in under the quiet Medina trees. * * * More about Saturday: after a day in the studio recording some excellent Brocksongs, the SGC quartet (minus Dean) hit the road for our gig at Ms. T's, a supposedly "female-friendly" dive bar in a seedly neighborhood of east Vancouver.
* * * The Ms. T's gig was heavily promoted on Vancouver Television as part of our Friday morning breakfast show, however, the promotion seems to have failed miserably as only three people showed up at this unusual "venue" -- perhaps the fact that the venue was a complete unknown dive in town had something to do with the promo failure? -- despite the low audience turn out, the quartet ripped through two exhilarating sets which included three circulations that blew the longstockings off of everyone in the room. Curt remarked that he felt these were the "best circulations ever performed by any GC group, anywhere, ever..." I may be biased, but I would tend to agree. There was one show on the League of Crafty Guitarists infamous 'bogo' tour of 1989 - Madison Wisconsin - where our circulation before 'fireplace' seemed to be flying around the entire room like a giant musical soup being stirred directly by the hand of god. These three circulations at ms. t's had a similar quality -- something bigger than the four musicians on stage was at work between us... and yet, here we were, in this empty bar playing to three skeptical strangers (friends of the other band that was supposed to play but who got held up at the US/Canadian border... but that's another story for another day.) By the end of our set, we had won this small audience over, and had a great show. This weekend's events were another minor musical milestone for the SGC, and a fitting completion for the 42-day 1999 At-A-Distance course. Practice has a purpose: preparation for events like these. Wish you could have been there. Perhaps you were. * * * * * * * * * Footnote: even though this AAD course is completed, I have decided that I will keep my ongoing public musician's diary alive in the 'writing' section of sb.com at least until the end of the year. For the record, I owe a small pile of money for the days I missed my sitting and practice. The actual amount I owe is between me at my maker. I intend to donate this money I owe to a charitable cause -- one that will directly support the work of a musician who is in greater need than I. Please visit the seattle guitar circle site for more information about this project.
Week1 | Week2 | Week3 | Week4 | Week5 | Week6
|
