Cerebral Flotsam And Jetsam - My Mental Maelstrom

23
Mar
2020
13:05

Dream Theatre 53

I had a dream where someone reached to shake my hand and I was like “Hey, sorry, can’t do that right now.” Sign of the times.

I also had a dream that John Herndon was producing a western and I was one of the leads. He also then asked me to direct it. I was thrilled to do so but as we were setting up a shot, the gaffer seemed very stand-offish and resistant to me and had an attitude so I took him aside and introduced myself and was very kindly like “So what’s the issue here?”

He said he had worked with me on a few shorts and just didn’t like me or think I should be directing. I told him I was sorry he felt that way and hoped I could change his mind.

As we tried to get the next shot, we were very quickly losing the light and then very suddenly it was gone so I started looking for alternatives.

Later, I was trying to wrangle everyone to get another shot and everyone was kind of scattered. I asked what was going on and they said John and some others were part of a Q&A panel going on. That’s when I noticed that this ghost town we were shooting in was having some kind of festival and so there was a lot of people and music and stuff going on. We couldn’t do anything until the panel was over and even then with all the people and noise there was no way we could get a shot.

Someone asked if this meant we would be working super late and I said no, I didn’t believe in that. I was going to hold to reasonable days because pushing people gets diminishing returns so we’d figure it out later and try to move quickly and find ways to make up time and maybe shots we could cut.

Then I woke up. That imaginary gaffer is probably gloating.

09
Feb
2020
18:08

“Follow You Follow Me” by Genesis, Bass Tablature

Learning bass parts for an upcoming project, I decided to try actually notating the bass part to “Follow You Follow Me” by Genesis in tablature just to see if maybe that would be helpful to have in the future (usually I just learn by ear and memorize). Things I learned:1. It’s probably not worth the time it took (many hours), at least not for a complex bass part that has a lot of changes and variations. 2. I’m an amateur as far as writing notation so I may not have done it “optimally,” but I feel like things that are easy to “feel” and play look far more complicated on paper. Like, this bass part isn’t easy, but I don’t think it’s nearly as hard as it ends up looking when written.

“Follow You Follow Me” by Genesis, Bass Tabalture.

06
Feb
2020
1:57

My Rebellious Streak

I’ve posted before about this strange rebellious streak I have in me that I don’t really understand and sometimes find annoying. I found a perfect example tonight.

Learning some bass parts, I was thinking about how I really prefer playing bass with a pick. Now there are certain songs or reasons that I sometimes prefer using my fingers but in general, I like the feel and sound of a pick better and feel like everything is much easier for me. Now, there are some schools of thought (that I do not agree with) that think using a pick is “inferior” to using fingers. I can play great with my fingers too, but vastly prefer a pick. With a pick, everything is just so much more effortless for me, while using my fingers makes me have to “fight” a little bit more.

And yet, I play 90%+ using my fingers. I think partially for fear of not being taken seriously by bass snobs if I don’t but also because it’s harder and less intuitive for me and so a part of me thinks “Well then you should develop that muscle and strengthen it instead of just doing what’s easier and more effortless for you.” I researched different right hand techniques and even with that, instead of using the right hand technique that comes most naturally, I find myself trying to train myself to use other ones that I’ve never used before.

I am ambivalent about this streak in me. On the one hand, it’s great to always push yourself and try to strengthen weaknesses, but on the other, it’s kind of silly to throw needless roadblocks and obstacles in your own path for no good reason other than to “up the difficulty” or to please opinionated snobs. My mind is a fascinating place.

01
Feb
2020
20:53

My Abandoned Corner

I feel like when Twitter and Facebook took over the internet, it mostly killed blogs. People don’t want to leave their walled gardens for content. My blog never had a lot of traffic but these days, I figure there’s next to none. And of course, that isn’t helped by the fact that I never post here because I’m always posting on Facebook. But I also post more there because that’s where the people are so it’s a bit a snake eating its tail, chicken or the egg kind of scenario.

Sometimes though, I find this a bit comforting. Like there was a thought I had and kind of wanted to express but didn’t necessarily want a lot of attention on it, and I thought this blog seemed like a perfect place. It scratches that itch of expressing the thought and yet probably no one (or very few people) will see it. A strange middle ground I know. I’m not even sure why it feels good to express stuff like this if you aren’t looking for reactions, sympathy, or comfort or something, but it does.

I’m not sure why I hesitate expressing personal, vulnerable things sometimes. My best guess is that it’s because part of me thinks “Why? What’s the point in posting that? I don’t want sympathy or comfort and people probably don’t want to hear it any way,” or maybe it’s some fear in me about being judged or exposing myself like that (though I tend to be a pretty open book), or some combination of these and other factors. My mind does love analyzing these things though. I knew from a young age that if music and acting weren’t my calling, then psychologist or psychiatrist would have been a career path for me.

Any way, the thought that inspired all these other thoughts was simply this: it has now been just over a year since my last electronic communication with her (about 2 years since our last non-electronic communication). I never in all eternity thought we would end up here. Completely disconnected as if we didn’t know each other and had never met. Not even polite holiday greetings. I thought at the very least, we would always be friends and in each other’s lives. Then again, I thought we would always be together, so what did I know. I was wrong about a whole plethora of things.

12
Jan
2020
3:22

Life’s Strange And Beautiful Road

In 1999, I lived in Dallas for a year. My roommate Esteban and I went to see the Arcangels at a club in Fort Worth. The opening band was a band called Cadillac Voodoo Choir and we were both blown away by them. We were also both particularly blown away by the keyboard player, a guy named Danny Smith. He was a great musician, singer and just had a great stage presence. I got their CD. Later on, just for fun, I learned all the guitar parts on their CD, and thought, “Hey if they ever need a guitarist, I know it all now!.
Fast forward several years (I can’t remember the exact time). I have no recollection of exactly how this meeting came to be, but I was living back in College Station again (my home town), and I drove to Austin to meet the drummer of Cadillac Voodoo Choir (which I think may have been defunct at this point) to talk about a new project he was getting together. We met at Star Seeds, had a conversation and I gave him a demo CD with some of my originals. Nothing ever came of it.
Then tonight, I had a gig with Scottish Thunder. Through a series of random coincidences and chains of events, Danny Smith ended up sitting in with us tonight on keys, guitar and vocals. Super talented, and more than that just a phenomenally nice guy. The more we talked the more we seemed to have in common and I felt that “kindred spirit” vibe. The “brother from another mother” thing.
And as coincidence icing on the coincidence cake, I happened to mentioned one of my all time favorite artists and influences, Butch Walker, and while most people have no idea who he is, it turned out that Danny is friends with him. Now in my world this is kind of like if someone was like “Paul McCartney? Oh yeah, we’re buds!”
Anyway it was a phenomenally fun gig with 4 other super talented friends and I felt like we were pretty solid, put on a good show and at the very least had a blast doing it with good people. Life is strange and beautiful.

04
Dec
2019
1:37

“Pride And Joy” Bass Tablature

I love that you can find many original isolated tracks on youtube which are great for really hearing details when learning songs. I found the isolated bass track to “Pride and Joy” by SRV so I could really work on the nuances. If anyone else would like to benefit from my painstaking work, here’s a PDF of the tablature. This should be almost note perfect. The only exceptions are that there are times when he is sort of muting the upbeats and such, as opposed to playing a really audible open string on the upbeat (which is a lot of the song) but all the important and audible notes should be there.

Pride-And-JoyDownload
01
Oct
2019
18:49

Dream Theatre 52

In this dream I was snuggled up on a couch with Jane Wiedlin, guitarist for The Go-Gos. We were both lying down on the couch (a tight fit for two people, but possible). I was reading and she was watching something on TV, I think. Something on the TV kind of bummed her out and she turned to me a little distraught with the state of the world, so I put the book down, put both arms around her and hugged her tight. In that moment, the world was a little better.

13
Sep
2019
16:31

Dream Theatre 51

A trio of strange dreams last night. The first two seem to share a theme of fear of lending stuff to people. At least on the surface.

In part 1, I was working (not sure in what capacity) in a big space in a strip mall. My friend Kyle (who I once worked with at a video game company) had borrowed my car, which in the dream was the red Mazda 323 that was my mom’s car and the first car I learned to drive and shared with her in the subsequent years. He had supposedly returned from his errand and parked it back at the strip mall (where he worked with me, I believe). It was a late night of work and as I was leaving to go home around 7pm or so, I saw some people walking out in a group. There was something strange about their look and demeanor, and I think I overheard something indicating that there was about to a news story about them, and how they had been caught up in some scandal.

I walked out to parking lot to go home, but I couldn’t find my car. I looked all around the parking lot but it was nowhere. I looked several more times, thinking surely I had just missed it, but it was not there. I called Kyle to confirm that he had returned it and to ask if he had maybe parked it somewhere else. I was starting to freak out a little as I was sure it had been stolen.

Now the next part, in true dream non-logic style, I’m not sure if it actually “happened” in the dream or if it was just one of the branches my mind was contemplating as a possible explanation, but when I got Kyle on the phone, he was very apologetic and realized that he had just absent-mindedly drove it home when he left.

In part 2 of this dream trio, I was in a particular neighborhood of my home town near where my friend Esteban used to live. A woman (in the dream, I knew her, but I don’t remember her having a specific real world identity), asked if she could borrow my phone, so I handed it to her thinking that she just needed to look something up or make a quick call. She pulled up the navigation software and started walking away, and kept walking. Far too late, I realized that she was going to use my phone to navigate all the way to her destination, and I had no idea where that was or when I would get my phone back. At some point, I either got a hold of her or saw her again (I can’t remember which) and she said my phone was still at the destination and that I could come get it if I wanted to, which was highly inconvenient for me.

And in the last dream, I was being put up in a (purely fictional) apartment as part of a movie shoot. This apartment was right next to the (also purely fictional) apartment that my ex had lived in. The shoot had ended and I was now leaving the apartment when my phone rang and it was, coincidentally, my ex calling me for the first time in years. I remember the tone of the conversation being happy, sweet, close and immediately there was an intimate connection again. I told her how crazy it was that she happened to be calling at this moment as I was leaving the place I’d been staying which was right next to her old place. It was really nice.

Then I woke up.

24
Aug
2019
23:25

Choo! Choo! All Aboard The Train Of Thought!

I’m simultaneously ambitious and lazy. Ambazy? Lazitious? Choo! Choo! All aboard the Train Of Thought. You don’t even need a ticket.

As I was taking a walk tonight (one of my very favorite activities), I found myself a bit irritated at how the night had misled me. I had stepped out and thought “Oh, it actually doesn’t seem too hot out right now! Let’s take advantage of that!” A little over a mile later, feeling sweaty and muggy it was obvious that I had been deceived. However, I had also been considering whether to take up French again. I had 3 years of French back in high school and I always find myself surprised at how much of it has stuck over the passing eons. I tested myself, seeing if I could translate my random thoughts and phrases into French and usually I could at least rudimentally get there. Or “Un peu” as they say.

Maybe I should pick it back up via Duolingo or something similar! And that’s when the plunge down the rabbit hole began. Look out the window of the car and enjoy the ride on my Train Of Thought:

“Ah, but Spanish would be much more practical and actually useful quite often. But I also wanted to learn Japanese to honor the Japanese line in my family. But that’s way harder. A whole different alphabet. Oh yeah, I also want to learn violin, and now I have one. But I already don’t do any of the things I “should” or “could” do and just waste away a LOT of free time. I mean I have many script ideas, short films I need to get going, songs and other random ideas. I should already spend more time on the skills I’ve been honing for 35+ years. Maintain and improve. Acting, guitar playing. Drumming, bass playing. I could be a way better keyboard player than I am. I pretty much never touch mandolin, ukulele, or harmonica unless specifically needed for something I’m doing. I really need to get more exercise and workouts into my life as well. And good god do I need to find a way to get my diet under control and stop being such a completely unattractive tub o’ lard. Oh yeah, and just generally figure out my life and where I want to go and what I want to do. Do I really want to pursue being an actor at the Disney Star Wars park and just give everything else up to have a cool, steady job doing something at least related to what I love doing and not have to deal with “The Hustle” of freelancing and pursuing my dreams? I mean is that even an option? That seems like it’s likely a difficult path as well. Wait, how did I get here? Oh yeah, maybe I should pick French back up. Man, I need a nap now.”

20
Aug
2019
17:32

Army Of The Dead

“Army Of The Dead” IS HERE!
Do you like huge, epic, cinematic, theatrical songs about necromancers, undead armies, and lost love? Then boy howdy, is this the song for you.

Andrew Hunter, who wrote the song, has been one of my best friends since 4th grade. We used to spend the night on weekends, play D&D, eat lots of junk food, play video games, and make up silly songs. Back then we called ourselves “AH-HA” (our initials). We were pissed when A-Ha stole our thunder and got famous with “Take On Me.” He is a talented artist and author as well (you can find his books on Amazon, and his audiobooks are narrated by yours truly).

I thought it might be fun for anyone interested to hear the original file he sent me as a guide to see how it started and then how it ended (my song). I kept all his synth parts in the final song. Eventually, the song will be on youtube accompanied by his original artwork accompanying it. We are both thrilled with how it came out and I love that we are still collaborating after almost 40 years.

You can also find it on all the streaming stores and services soon.

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