You can find me on Bluesky here: TheSheepman.
Feb. 10
Things are definitely weird and I find myself, like many others, glued to the traffic accident of government that we have. I don't want to sound like a resistance grifter, though, as ultimately I don't know the answer to how you actually make such differences in opinion among citizens somehow come to agreement. Force vs. force will never actually destroy either side, and it will solidify oppositions even further.
But what if things went the opposite way? I'm thinking of how the Democratic party keeps having the biggest celebrities as endorsers, but somehow that just makes one seem more elitist. What if political parties were to go smaller? Like an inverted arms race? Try to highlight normal people who have their lives upended by the changes of modern society. Definitely stop paying celebrities to show up to the Democratic convention - that has to stop. Be proud of the fact that you don't have people from Harvard or Princeton in your coalition - highlight people from smaller schools, smaller backgrounds, who achieve relatable success and failure. Because getting the smallest sliver of the population to scold people obviously isn't it.
Feb. 4
I recently set my head toward the learning of open tunings in guitar - I got a great video by Daniel Bachman explaining how it works and it demystified the whole process for me while simulateously opening up an infinite number of possibilities and realities in the musical world. Part of what interests me about open tunings is how drone seems to be an integral part of whatever you do with them. Not just for your psychedelic-warrior, John Fahey types, but also for a lot of older blues people. The drone paired with the repetition of the tuning turn just about anything into an exploration. It seems to flatten time (in my mind) and stretch it out into some kimnd of long unfurling road that has no real end nor any final destination to reach. It feels as close to the idea that a song "never stops playing" like Pink Lady Lemonade or Dark Star.
Feb. 3
One thing that I realized I would have to find here in Chicago is a music community/scene that I would be able to connect with like the one I found in Japan. Living in Asheville, NC for the last 18 years was a real blessing for this - it was a small enough place that I was able to see lots of wonderful artists in small venues without the kind of barrier between artist and audience that exists in a large city like Chicago. No shade, honestly - I was in the right place at the right time. Maybe the place in Japan I went to has changed drastically in the intervening years. Who knows? But I managed to find artists I was extremely interested in and in whom I had unfailing trust in their creative instincts. I went to the lovely Chicago Theater last night and it was a gorgeous place, but the music was such that it was popular and kind of bland - all of the edges planed off in service of making it more easily deliverable in a larger setting. Again, none of this is saying anything bad about these people or the audience. It simply isn't what I look for. Maybe I can see these elements and I know that I don't need that - it is the kind of music and scene that are there so that you can listen to it and check your email at the same time (which I admit sounds like an insult, but I know that people don't look for the same things in art and music that I do, that's 100% fine, God love 'em). I prefer to see something I haven't seen before, something that surprises me.
The four artists below were three of the people that I saw in Asheville all the time and found a kind of community in. I saw them around and chatted with them and found myself trusting in them completely as artists - David Foster Wallace once mentioned in an interview something about how people like writers when they develop a feeling that they trust their vision, and I think that's pretty accurate. I'm sure they have no idea the kind of impact they had on me (even though I make a habit of buttonholing people and telling them as much), but I also hope that other people find them just as wonderful.
Jan. 29
"God is going to come into your radio." One thing that changed the course of my life was living in Japan and finding Boredoms. I went to a small, cramped live house called Bears in Osaka to see live music, and it was owned by Yamamoto Seiichi, the guitarist for the band. Because it was such a weird scene, I imersed myself in Boredoms music and made any opportunity I could to see any of the members if they played in town. I went to a Boredoms Flea Market at Bears, where the band members sold their random stuff. I bought a Pigman brooch from Yoshimi and a t-shirt that EYE made (that I subsequently gifted to my cousin who liked weird music and kind of regretted because I really wish I still had it). I routnely saw Yamamoto-san at the club, either just hanging out or playing in a band. He was dating the girl drummer from another band I loved called Music Start Against Young Assault (and who went on to join DMBQ and was killed in an auto accident), so he hung out a lot but I never really spoke with him. Anyway, the band immediately broadened my ideas of what music was or could be - they weren't as visual as a lot of the bands I was seeing in Osaka, but their music itself was visual. It had a way of appearing, like a tapestry, waving and changing and expanding and contracting. I had always been interested in improvisation in music, but it took the Boredoms to make me understand what improvisation could be. These 2 videos are from a radio performance in the US, and they were revelatory to me because they seem to be just making noise, but I know that they are playing distinct songs here and it is terribly exciting to actually "understand" that.
Jan. 27
I'm back living in Chicago, in the same room I grew up in, for the first time since I was in High School really. And I'm attempting to approach this city like I am a foreigner - learing the lingo and customs, reading about the political system and the history of the place to formulate an accurate assessment of what it's all about. This is more of a method to avoid falling into traps of nostalgia or depression or even anger. Having lived in different places and traveled around teh world, I feel that I have the ability to approach the city objectively, which is how I would like to approach everything. This isn't 100% accurate of course - there is always bias, always a kind of tendency to lean in one direction or another - but keeping that approach in mind, at all times, is what will keep me from falling into traps. And the older you get, honestly, the more tempting it is to just say fuck it and start hating on everything.
Jan. 25
There are times when I question how often knowledge bests exploration.The paralyzing thought is often something that focuses on gathering more information, understanding something better than we do and having complete control over how it is presented. But at some point we have to stop reading and researching and move in with our hands and bodies to make sure that these things do become real. Otherwise, we risk leaving them in the ether, unmade, unrealized.
Jan. 24
Signs continuously point me toward some kind of general understanding of how things could be, andthe trick is to be able to 1) see those signs and 2) be able to act on them instead of sneering at the idea of predestination or "magic" or whatever derogatory thing you can think to name it. Usually it is merely paying attention to what you truly want but are too afraid to embrace because it is childish or uncool or seemingly impossible. Or else it will expose you to some imagined criticism of your faults. But as one gets older, one decides that those kinds of viewpoints can hem you in - shackle you to unhappiness because we are intended to believe (somewhere deep down in the subconscious well) that we are not really worthy of it. Yet we are - everyone is. That's the real secret - everyone is entitled to happiness full stop - and the bad stuff comes in when people start making assertions about who is worthy of such an entitlement.
Jan. 22
The world often feels as if it's on the edge of exploding in an orgy of violence. It always has. Yet we wake up, take our vitamins, have a leisurely poop, and do it all again. Which is sort of the key to the whole thing. I remember David Foster Wallace talking about the "myriad of petty, unsexy ways" we go through the motions of our lives, and how doing those things actually keep us grounded, keep us from floating away into an atmosphere of egocentrism. The "myriad of petty, unsexy ways" are what actually connects us to other people. At least in the US, the prevailing mindset is that we have to be sexy and individual and grinding all hours of the day, or else we are dying (think about the analogy of the shark who dies when it stops moving - I'm sure you've heard it and there's a reason for that). The "myriad of petty, unsexy ways," in that mindset, holds us back from happiness and fulfillment. But that happiness and fulfillment is simply a way of getting people to always be unsatisfied. Never loved enough. Never successful enough. In essence, never happy. So happiness, following this, is unsexy. Boring. Petty. This website is boring and unsexy - hardly any bells and whistles and all. It personally brings to mind the drone - not the technological thing, but the audiological phenomenon. Something so simple - a reverberation that settles down into constance - and yet something that has the ability to produce extreme happiness. "But it's boring!" Exactly.