'Nother great open mic (and sundry other things)

We had another open mic right here at my place. It was really snazzy, and it made me feel awesomely about the human race. Or at least, the humans I know personally who play music up in this here part of the world. It's not really an open mic... it's a gathering of friends and friendly people who just wanna play music and support other people playing music. The balance can be tricky since I think we had somewhere from 8-10 people who wanted to play, and I want everyone to be able to play as many songs as they want, but it never works out that way. I'm convinced we need to just take a camping trip in the wilderness and play music all weekend.

Honestly, though. I've never been a huge fan of TV and it actually kind of irritates me. Groucho Marx has a quote that resonates deeply with me: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." I have been convinced for a long time that when people hang out together by watching television, they're actually not. Their consciousnesses are suspended inside the television or some other realm entirely. Time spent watching television, generally, is time... lost. In my own humble opinion. I just felt like people desiring to spend time together should actually spend time together, like playing games, talking, eating, or musicking. And last night was a really rich time of hanging out and connecting.

Oh, anyway. Other things that are going on...worship, and writing. I think I'm about to embark on a tune-writing voyage. Last Sunday, someone prayed for me and they said I'd be hearing a lot from God and pushing it out in song form. I already hear from God a lot (I actually have a book that I write down stuff I hear, which this person had no clue) so it's just a matter of opening myself up to obey. And honestly, I think that means fasting from... music in the car, music on youtube, etc. Because I'm always listening too loud or just getting absorbed (my consciousness is in the music, so to speak), and really, when you think about it - driving in the car is the perfect time to just sing whatever. Write songs out loud. So... I'll try it. I'll try it. That's all I can do.

(It's not bad to listen to music, obviously - there are times to absorb and times to release music, and I think I need to focus on releasing instead of absorbing, if that makes sense.)

I might sign up for 50/90, an offshoot of FAWM, just so I can see how much I'll write in this time. I do not anticipate actually writing 50 songs in 90 days, but why not see how far I can go? That's how I started with FAWM...

Been doing some worship with Wilmington church, and that's awesome. I also went to a sweet worship kinship that they set up at church, and had a blast 'cause it's a safe place to try out using the banjo with worship tunes (I know, banjo in CHURCH?!) I'm looking forward to seeing what God's gonna do with that.

Lessons are starting up again in a week... looking forward to that, too.

I need to be getting my butt in gear about recording, but Shane gave me some good advice and I'm still meditating on it. He said, write too many songs and then choose from those. Problem is I don't think I have "too many songs" yet. And then, I don't know if I need to record just nature songs, just folk songs, or some odd amalgamation of the two. It could be nice to focus them that way. Blargh, I dunno.

I'm gonna go hang some laundry and go to sleep. Got church in the morning ^^

"You're My Home," by Billy Joel, on Youtube.

I guess I forgot to blog about Gillian and myself recording a cover of Billy Joel's "You're My Home."

Well, we did!

The story behind it: Gil wanted to surprise my brother with a song at their wedding. It had to be Billy Joel. So, as I started to learn this song, I realized... that I hated all the arrangements that I could find. Good thing I can do my own arrangements. ^^



I was convinced we needed to record this puppy and get it on youtube, and their apartment recently exploded which means that they're stuck at my parents' house for a little while. So it alllllllll worked out. ^^

There's also a little bonus at the end where we just got... wacky. ^^

I feel less than awesome. Usually I exist somewhere between optimism and skyrocket determination, but I fell. It happens, and I'll get back there. By God's grace, which is wholly undeserved by me.

I bounce back and forth from this place, and the intervals between my visits here get longer as time goes on. I don't accept it as any kind of normal. I reject it in Jesus' name, actually. Because periodically, my joy gets snatched from me. I stop believing I'm actually doing anything constructive or meaningful.

Cynicism is a dangerous, dangerous place. Cynicism is a place of numbness that I find terribly repulsive. I can't live there, simply and purely because there is nothing nourishing in that place.

But nothing, so far, has managed to snatch God's goodness from me. When the fire goes out, I still have a spark. I guess sometimes I just sit in the dark for a minute and remember that this is how it was, all the time. There was no spark and nothing, nothing, but the dark.

Sorry this is so cryptic. Here, instead of me writing anymore, just go listen to this piece from Final Fantasy X. To Zanarkand

What am I doing, anyway?

I didn't feel like tacking this onto the other blog post.

I miss composing. I miss it a lot. There's nothing stopping me doing it, but I'm just remembering how much I miss it... we can forget sometimes about our original dreams and stuff, and become numb to them without knowing, but I have been messing with some of my old MIDI compositions and that reminds me. And then I heard this guy, John, play at the Palk basement show last night. He played a little on guitar and a little on piano, and it was all good, but his piano stuff was so influenced and inspired by harmonies and tonalities that you don't find in conventional music anymore, stuff from the music degree I worked so hard to earn, and it was like, man. WHAT THE CRAP AM I DOING ANYWAY!??!?!?!

My friend Alex has a shirt. He wore it sometimes back when we were both in North Carolina studying music and trying to beat Stephen at games of Pounce. It it black with huge white letters. It says "QUIT WORK MAKE MUSIC." He has been a self-employed music instructor and film composer for years now. Those big white letters haunt me sometimes.

As I was looking up his website just now, I noticed he has this collab up and it's in some kind of competition and frankly, it rocks, so give it a listen...

Anyway, give John's stuff a listen (especially "Paraphrase of a Dream"), and I'll link you to a couple of my refurbished MIDIs which I've been reminiscing over: Mystery and RAVE. I have literally hundreds of little thoughts like these two and they've never been out in the real world before. Jed's videogame was the first thing to ever do that, to get this stuff of mine out.

I need a better sequencing program - Garageband doesn't freaking cut it, like, at all - and I need to seriously go back and practice my classical stuff...

New things, new old things.

I've played an open mic nearly every week so far this year.

I don't know if that's what I'm supposed to be doing, but that's what I've done.

We went out Wednesday to Aqua * Sol's open mic. Aqua * Sol is a sweet venue - it's right on the C&D canal, next to the Summit North Marina. Perhaps an odd location and a little bit tucked away, but that just makes it something of a hidden treasure. The open mic was well-run and we made some new acquaintances... the guy who runs it also will make a recording of your performance and if it turns out, you can buy it from him. That's kinda snazzy. Since there were four of us, we asked if he could just do one CD of all of us. Haven't heard back from him about it yet but I got my fingers crossed. Stefan did a really sweet improv and the thing about improv is, if there's no recording, it exists one time and one time only, generally....

It's nice to try something new every once in awhile. Stranger, though, to have people with me when I'm trying something new. I guess most folks don't even like to do new things unless they can drag someone along with them... I like getting out of my comfort zone, though, and I find that if I try something new and I don't like it, at least I didn't make anyone else suffer through it with me. If I do like it, I can drag people back the second time.

But nooooooooooo, turns out I have friends who also like trying new things and stuff like that. Weird!

I like this story, so I'm going to tell it: we split from Aqua * Sol, but we didn't get far before we found somebody broken down at the 896/71 intersection, which is a pretty major intersection and not a good one to be broken down at... so we pulled over, Shane and I jumped out, and asked if we could help. Turns out we couldn't, but the guy was really appreciative of our offering. As we stood there, Stefan and Kayley drove up and asked if we needed help. At this point, the guy was overwhelmed and said loudly, "You people are awful young to be so nice!" (or something to that effect, of course) We were instructed to notify our parents that they had done well.

Anyways, that was that. Last night was an awesome basement show at the Palk house and I didn't play and I enjoyed the snot out of myself. Some really fantastic musicians came from pretty far away just to have a chance to play a few songs. I think that's what music does to people. It drives you to strange places to play for complete strangers and usually it works out pretty good, or if it doesn't, it's somethin' to tell the grandkids.

What music's doing to me... I feel new songs welling up. I haven't been obedient to that and sat down and wrote them out, but maybe that is what I'll do this weekend. Sequester myself and write music. If somebody could bring me a meal at some point that would be great since I'm pretty sure I'll forget to eat.

Here come the pretzels

In case you aren't a Simpsons fan, let me give you a little window into my madness... the quality's a bit off, but this clip illustrates where I get the phrase "here come the pretzels..."

Essentially, it means... life about to get crazy.

I just got back from three days of training at Camp Arrowhead in Lewes, DE. Work training. Camp training. We have one more week before camps start, and then it's two months of camps. I've got a very positive outlook on those two months, but it will be a non-stop barrage of pretzels, much like in the Simpsons clip to which I linked you.

But I did get a chance to play a few nature tunes for the other interpreters (that's heritage interpretation to you), and that was good. I managed to get a copy of my demo into the hands of an AWESOME guest speaker from Arkansas State Parks, who just saw a horseshoe crab for the first time this week. (It's a good memento for someone who's just seen a horseshoe crab for the first time.)

I don't know when I'll update again. June's going to be a month of refocusing. And/or slow insanity and lots of Mike's Hard Lemonade. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.