Zen
Envy is human
Have faith in the universe
Your path is unique
29
Dec
2023
15:21
Author: Heath
05
Dec
2023
23:04
Cover Songs
Mysteries of Heath, #127:
I cannot stand doing a cover song and not doing it “right.” Now this is a complex and possibly volatile subject among musicians so let me be clear that I do not think that my personal preference is “right” and other opinions are wrong. The mystery here is really why it bothers me SO MUCH. Like it actually sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of a song for me. It’s painful.
I LOVE getting the details right. It’s fun. Will most listeners even notice? No. Hell, most listeners are content with half-assed, butchered, mediocre covers, but it matters to me. Now I’m not talking about purposefully doing your own spin on things. I’ve released many covers, some of which were painstaking recreations which are fun and educational in their own way, and some were very different takes, such as my all guitar versions of “Eleanor Rigby,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” or the theme from “Downton Abbey.” Or my rock version of “Kiss The Girl” from “The Little Mermaid.”
The most egregious version of the “incorrect cover” to me is the “lazy” cover. People just can’t be bothered to put the work in to getting it right, so they get “close enough.” Luckily, this doesn’t apply very often to the awesome folks I get to play with. There’s lots of other reasons it happens, but it almost always really bothers me. Every time I play an altered version it’s like a little stone in my shoe.
Now of course, this often works in my favor when people are impressed with how prepared I was, or how accurately I got some cool details right, but it can also be a PITA both to me and those around me. I usually try very hard to be diplomatic and polite and bring it up in a way such as “So, I just wanted to check if this was an oversight, or a purposeful deviation…” I try my best to hopefully be easy and fun to work with and to feel out the tenor of every individual situation and be a collaborative team player. And believe me, I very much WISH that it didn’t bother me as much as it does, because that’s not fun for me. But it does. And I guess for better or worse, it’s part of what makes me who I am as an individual.
05
Dec
2023
23:01
11
Nov
2023
13:17
Dream Theatre 78
I fell in love last night (in my dreams). There was some woman name Meagan (a fictional dream person) and we had absolutely magic chemistry. Like we’d just known each other forever. She was one of those people everyone falls in love with. My friend Esteban who was with me had fallen for her too but he could see that she and I had magic. We were all parting ways and Meagan and her friend were walking off one way while Esteban and I walked another. I looked back at her longingly, pondering if I should just let her walk away. Esteban smiled and waved her direction like “Go get her!” She and her friend disappeared around the corner of a building and so I ran after them shouting her name.
As I rounded the corner they were just…gone. Impossibly gone. It was a big open area and there was nowhere they could go I was baffled and crushed and confused. Had it all been a dream? Was she some mystical muse or something. I screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” In frustration. It was too late. Then my tears woke me up.
11
Nov
2023
13:16
11
Nov
2023
13:13
Dream Theatre 77
I was at a large table having a meeting with a bunch of folks including Paul McCartney who was seated directly to my right. The person to his right made a joke and mimed punching Paul, then Paul as a joke mimed passing it on and punching me.
I said “Oh you don’t want to do that. I’m from Texas and you our reputation,” and I pulled out my phone and opened up a gun app that had a gun on the screen that you could swipe to pull the slide then tap to shoot. I tapped it a few times. Paul laughed and then asked if I had the cool lightsaber app. I did and Paul and I both fired up the lightsaber apps on our phone and waved them around in mock battle making lightsaber noises with our mouths even though the app made its own noises.
11
Nov
2023
13:12
07
Nov
2023
16:54
Office Space Filming Locations
Many years ago I put together photos of many of the locations that I knew of where “Office Space” filmed around Austin. Much has changed over the years and I updated some of the photos again years later to reflect that. They’re probably out of date again by now but they should still be identifiable. Click on each photo for a timestamp and information about the location.
07
Nov
2023
16:51
30
Oct
2023
13:56
Dream Theatre 76
In last night’s dream theatre, I was doing a play with my friend Sharan. There was a lot of improvising and at one point there was a guest performer who showed up about halfway through the performance, and was going to do their act as intermission entertainment. Their act was pretending like they were deaf and so they didn’t know why they were there or what they were supposed to be doing. I went to greet them but the play was going on so I was trying to be quiet and was also confused as to whether or not the guest performer was actually deaf (they were not). Eventually it all got sorted. I feel like there were a lot more details about the play and my role in it and other stuff going on that I can’t recall now.
Cut to after the show, Sharan was driving a semi truck (just the front part without any big trailer attached) and I was in the passenger seat. We were chatting and as we drove up a big flyover ramp, we noticed some people up ahead waving and trying to get our attention. That’s when we noticed too late that there was a huge missing section of road. There was nothing we could do at this point. The truck plunged down nose first into a huge fall to the ground below. I closed my eyes and prayed to either be okay or for a quick and painless death. Even though I’m not religious (though I am spiritual) it still came out as “PLEASE GO PLEASE GOD PLEASE GOD!”
After the crash, miraculously, Sharan and I were both perfectly fine. At first I wondered how long it would take for rescuers to clear the rubble and get to us as we appeared to be buried. But then, in that illogical dream way, suddenly things were different and there was no rubble, but we were still waiting for rescuers as the truck was kind of mangled. Some people approached what used to be the windshield but was now just an open space and started asking Sharan for autographs as they were huge fans of her theatre career. We started searching around the truck for a pen but could not find one, though there were some dull pencils that weren’t really of any use. We were talking about how this was her husband’s truck (Her partner, Bryan wasn’t in the picture in this dream and her husband wasn’t a real person, just a dream entity). It also came up that her husband was real horrible POS. While searching for a pen we also found his porn magazine stash in a compartment on the driver’s side.
Then I woke up.