Keith Handy 1.999

Un-buying

Slowly but surely the climate is becoming more humane and less jungle-like. Either that or the heat has burned all the feeling out of my skin.

The theme du jour is “returning things”. I feel like scum, but it has to be done. First I bought the new DVD documentary about Bob Moog and the history of the synthesizer (you can easily google for it), but it lacks that special elusive quality known as “non-defective”. So that has to be sent back for a replacement. Then, I took the metal pipes and flanges back to the hardware store. The girl behind the counter acted really annoyed, but I think she was too young to be worried about her employer’s profits (hell, I don’t worry about my employer’s profits) and was probably more annoyed at the process involved. And thirdly, I took this stupid alarm clock back to Radio Shack, otherwise known as “the land of overzealous salesboys”. I dreaded that, but I didn’t need the stupid clock, and the cash was better spent on a tankful of gasoline.

It’s really against my nature to return things, though. It feels like going back on a deal, as if purchasing something equates to a vow of finality, and if you don’t like what you bought you should chalk it up as a learning experience. It’s like cheating or something. You could be a real asshole and make a lifestyle of “free renting” things in this manner, jumping from one store to the next and using their stuff while never paying a dime.

The studio is still amorphous. It is a room with things in odd piles, and a spot carved out to sleep in. But in small bits, related objects are finding their way to one another. And the rest of what’s still in my car is low-priority stuff, so my only rule with that is to bring one little thing in every time I come back here. Today, for example, it was a box of cassettes.

In other news, I keep getting e-mail from people about some old rock band getting back together.

The little table that couldn’t

Not sure where to begin.

Suffice to say, I cannot let this table, or this thing that is not really a table, put my whole life on hold. And yet it is doing just that. There is no one to blame. I’ve just never made a table before, is all, and it shows. It’s humbling. Very humbling.

The most significant defect in this table is that it simply does not stand up. It is Bambi on the ice. I’ve got it very precariously balanced in an upright position right now, but if I walk over to it and set so much as a piece of paper on it, it will probably collapse. The legs themselves are strong because they are steel pipe, but they are screwed into wood that isn’t solid, so the wood gives and thus the legs wobble.

Looking at it from here, it really is 4″ to 6″ too high anyway. I was hoping for a quick answer, but I’m apparently kind of fucked on this. I don’t know. I’ll keep thinking. We’ll see.

-

In the broader picture, I have in fact moved all my worldy crap back into the Village Gate, which, for those not in the know, is a large building with a permanent identity crisis. There are independent shops and restaurants here. Bands rehearse here. Concerts, shows, exhibitions and other events happen here. People live here. It’s sort of chaotic, but it’s a haven for freaks, where no one ever says “that’s weird” or “why would you want to do that?”.

I opted for the first room available, which is about 250 square feet and has no window facing the outside. On the upside, it’s dirt cheap. Hopefully in a month or so I’ll be taking over someone else’s room across the hall for the same amount of money, and it will have a window. I want to live cheaply for a while so I can pay off some debt and buy a few nice things — but if I keep blowing money on things that don’t work, like this table, it will defeat that purpose.

Self rev… er, psychoanalysis (let’s call a spade a spade here) part II

So the ’80s were the enemy, the ’90s were supposed to be your revenge, and now the ’00s are you feeling like you’ve lost a ton of time somewhere and are scrambling to catch up. Let’s start chipping away at this, shall we?

Ready whenever you are.

Okay, first of all, wrong, wrong, and wrong. But that’s not my job as a psychoanalyst. I’m supposed to ask questions that gently lead you to that conclusion.

Well that’s why you’re a hack and not a pro. And why I’m not paying you.

How would you know you’re not? We both have the same bank account. So anyway… now remember, it’s okay to say irrational things here, so speak from your feelings on this instead of thinking it out too much. I understand you feel that somehow the 80’s ripped you off by turning music into sterile, plastic-sounding Hallmark cards (with gargantuan snare drums).

Okay, part of that is definitely the world’s growing pains as it adapted to the availability of digital technology for use in music. But what bothered me was that hardly anyone was speaking out against the inertia of fashion. If you thought you wanted to bring something organic and warm back in, you were outcast. It was very clear that anything other than the “now sound” of the 80s was not okay. Maybe it’s because I was a teenager, and was mainly interacting with other teenagers, who generally aren’t looking for anything with a history to it. But teens play a very important role in the direction of popular music. They’re the gatekeepers. (And the major labels are the keymasters.)

What I don’t get is, when I ask you to open up, throw dignity to the wind, and just tell me how you feel, you become funny and entertaining. But if I had asked you to be reasonable and realistic, you would have responded with anger and paranoia. Why do you always have to give people the opposite of what they ask you for?

I don’t know.

Okay, back to the 80s. How did these trends in popular music “rip you off”? What should have happened in the 80s? Should the industry have been laying some kind of fertile ground for the kind of music you made, so that your own songwriting would have been embraced with open arms, and you would have gotten the girl, ridden off into the sunset, and lived happily ever after?

A better question would have been, why do I try to fit in by being superior in some way? Why did I believe that if I had no social skills, no muscles, no tan, no athletic ability, I could make up for it by being discovered by a major label at 16 or 17 to put out songs like Insomnic Hallucinations, A Moment Before Cosmic Death and Qualified For Suicide in a nice yellow-toned 12″x12″ shrinkwrapped package that would shock the bullies into dumbfounded impotence, win the respect of my friends, and get me the whole package with the girl and the sunset?

I think, being you, I can speak for you when I say you didn’t really think that.

Maybe to some degree I did. After all, I did temporarily relenquish geekdom — or try to — which I regret. I had contact lenses (i.e. not glasses). I said things like “hey man”. I said things like “I used to be good at math before I started smoking pot”. I denied my inner geek to the extent that I could.

But that geek you hid was totally you. Sure, you were embarrassed about the 8th grade days with the plaid button-up shirt (always with a white t-shirt visible underneath), the corduroy pants and the “bowl” haircut. But that was the you that started listening to records. That was the you that set up multiple tape recorders in your bedroom so you could overdub yourself on yourself, and rigged the capstan so you could experiment with tape speed, and took cassettes apart to wind the tape inside-out so you could hear them backwards. That was the you that programmed the Commodore 64 to function as a synthesizer and sequencer. (Oh, and by the way, this all took place in THE EIGHTIES.) These don’t sound like activities motivated by fame, fortune, or pussy.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe my lack of the usual motivations is a hindrance to my work’s success on those levels.

Maybe so. The flip side is that a lack of fame and fortune won’t stop you from pressing on with the creativity itself. Your arena is not Van Halen’s arena. You can infer from this either that Van Halen are more successful than you (and why not, since most people would conclude this), that you’re more successful than them (in that your music shows a lot more personal courage, while theirs is more superficial, “pre-sanctioned”, and just-for-fun), or that you’re on two entirely different planes, to be measured on two entirely different scales.

Okay, so if I didn’t start off thinking I wanted to “be that guy” …?

You already were that guy. You fancied yourself a celebrity because you were accustomed to people fawning over your talent. And as long as you live, every so often you get a “fix” of this.

So I don’t get it. What exactly did I fail at?

“Failure”, I think, is a meaningless concept. There are three things you can do — you can try, and get it right — try, and get it wrong — or not try at all. The first one is great, the second is even better because it makes the first one all the better when you do nail it. Concept beaten into ground by many wise people long before us. And of course, all of this needs a frame to be defined by, known as the “goal”. You have a tendency to avoid defining these. The closest you came to setting a goal for the 1990s was that you would somehow emerge as a successful songwriter. This was too vague. You did successfully write songs, so you can’t say you failed at that goal. But did you establish a real goal for what you were going to do with all that music? Okay, so now it’s another decade. You’re 35, and some of your musician friends seem to have bought into the idea that if you’ve hit your mid thirties and haven’t gotten anywhere, that your future is pretty much unchangeable by this point. Are you buying this idea too?

Probably, a bit. Emotionally.

Yes, that’s what I mean. How are you letting those kinds of ideas fester in your subconscious? How are you letting them impact your conscious choices? Did your musical and creative heroes succeed on the basis of being young? And even if they did, so what?

I just don’t want it to even be about age. I don’t want that to even come up. It’s irrelevant. I shouldn’t have to use affirmations to empower myself. It should be a non-issue. I never thought about age before, and I thought it was stupid when people in their 30s brought it up as a reason to give up. There’s a huge difference in the landscape now than in the late sixties when record companies were just glorified distributors. And the internet adds another layer of complication to it; you can’t just be out there playing music and being neutral, you have to actually take sides, because it is a war. The role of the majors makes less and less practical sense. As their legitimate purpose becomes obsolete, all that’s left is the illegitimate — and the legacy artists, who probably never wanted to be on the anti-indie side, but have too much to lose by defecting.

Okay, suppose there were no internet, no CD burners, and so on. You would need a record label, and there would be no practical or ethical gray areas about pursuing one. Would you be knocking their doors down in that case? Did you knock down their doors back in the early 1990s? What was your goal?

You hear different stuff, you read different stuff, even back then, even further back in the 80s. Books. Books about the dark secrets about the music industry, and how you should never want a contract with a major, and how the best thing to do is put out your own record on your own label. The internet didn’t create those gray areas. They were already there. So it was hard to say, “yes, getting this contract is my goal”. Half of me felt I should focus on circumventing the need for such a contract. Label lust is a powerful force, though. I was, not once, but twice taken in by those stupid “labels” that ask you to chip in a “small” amount of money for the “privelege” of being on their samplers that they would “promote”. Yes, twice. In the immortal words of George W. Bush, “fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice… uh… won’t get fooled again…”

So that conflict was a sufficient reason for you to not set a goal?

It caused me to teeter between two goals and commit to neither. I want to be involved in the making of the future, and this probably requires me to think past the obvious and well-worn paths. But I wouldn’t spit in the face of the CEO of EMI if he walked into my living room.

Self review

I like to think of myself as a particle, in a container of liquid, which after 35 years may have never risen to the top, but has never sunk to the bottom either. Or this could be insanity. Or some unresolved thing that I’m refusing to discuss with anyone because I’m unhealthily preoccupied with proving people wrong.

I have to examine my motives, I suppose. I meet up with old friends and they talk about how they’ve basically given up on becoming rock stars. I suppose that depends how narrow or wide your definition of “rock star” is. Some of the music I listen to is of course made by people who acquired too much wealth and recognition along the way for their own good. Other music I like equally well never really made any money at all, but at least has secured some kind of significant place in the grand scheme of things. Some of the “rock stars” in my eyes are people who don’t even play music at all, like Bob Moog or Steve Wozniak. (I have limits, though; a soccer mom clipping Wal Mart coupons can’t be a rock star.)

“Giving up” is alien to me. I may not outwardly show any enthusiasm or proactiveness at certain phases of my life, but I am always full of steam on the inside. My apparent retreat, or defeat, is more a form of self defense, like the possum who plays dead so no one will bother to kill it. Enthusiasm is too valuable to expose to those who, for whatever reason, are in the habit of draining other people’s spirit. Why do I think people are out to do that? That’s probably paranoid, but that’s how I feel — so how did I come to perceive things that way?

It is probably a simple fact of life that people without certain abilities are going to have some degree of hostility towards those with them. Conscious or otherwise. So it’s probably really stupid and immature of me to be hurt by their indifference towards my work. Another good question is, how did I come to be so spoiled? Is it because I was showered with praise and “OMG U R SO TALENTED” all the while I was growing up? Why is it absolutely imperative that every so often someone must tell me something I did was “amazing” or “beautiful” or “brilliant”? I do get this every once in a while, and I don’t think it’s bullshit. Is it arrogant for me to not think it’s bullshit?

My father’s biggest concern for me was always that I would develop too huge of an ego. But he’s a different kind of person in some ways. Neither of us want to be around other people a lot, but I enjoy getting some recognition where he would rather not get any attention at all. It’s not that I want me to be the center of that attention, but rather the better quality work that I do. Anonymous is fine. Even posthumous is fine. I just want to know that I’m contributing something to the pool, and not just building a little bubble that will die with me.

And why is that important at all? Most people say “I’m not going to be here after I die, so why should I care?”

Back to the friends who “gave up”. It’s kind of depressing to hear, but what did they have in the first place? This will sound really harsh, but they don’t have what I have. It’s like people accusing pop stars of “selling out” when they never had any principles in the first place. Same thing, opposite end of the continuum.

Okay, so I didn’t reach any life-changing insights in the course of writing this. I let the air out of the balloon and blew it right back up again. Fact is, I love my creative work. I want to have more time for it, or at the very least form better habits for devoting my free time to it — and I want to bring it to the audience it deserves. Is that too much to… I was going to say “hope for”, but you can’t sit around “hoping” for these things…

I think we decide for ourselves what our commitment to our work is, and everything else flows from that somewhere below it on the hierarchy. Those who “give up” on anything were never really sold on it in the first place. And capital-S Success is internal. The fact that such an idea could be put on an inspirational calendar in some kind of Hallmark-y cursive font against a dramatic landscape, for the coupon-clipping soccer mom to smile blandly at and say “oh that is SO TRUE”, is beside the point.

The fact is, “rock star” is a state of mind.

I digs me some Fender Rhodes

I actually plugged the thing in and noodled on it a little yesterday. Plus, I just transferred another Rhodes track into the computer for aligning and remixing. Two moments in particular on that tape gave me a wide smile of satisfaction, the way they hint at something more timeless and traditional — off the top of my head, Billy Preston’s stint with the Beatles, but obviously a lot more than that.

There’s just something neat about hearing an isolated electric piano track; because it can sit so unobtrusively in a mix and subtly fill out part of the spectrum (assuming you’re not Supertramp), it can go totally unnoticed. Then hearing it by itself, we’re all “ooh, neat, I never noticed that before”, even if it’s just some simple, clichéd little bluesy inflection.

The tone of the Fender Rhodes and similar instruments is perhaps a little overtly 70s-ish. (Perhaps?) An unusual timbral fingerprint, like it’s blatantly missing certain harmonics … kind of sounds like a doorbell, actually … and leaves a lot of space, so you can add a lot of extra notes to a chord without cluttering up the whole song. You can get away with playing jazz chords in a rock song. I think that’s it right there, how much you can get away with “overplaying” it without getting in the way. (It can even be a little out of tune and still sound good!)

Its character is distinctive too. To me it’s rain and concrete, pensively driving through downtown on a wet day. It doesn’t even matter what kind of song it is, that instrument alone makes it fit the setting.

It’s too bad our culture is so quick to relegate sounds like these to the “dated” file. I 10x{really} hated what they did to piano (both acoustic and electric) type sounds in the 80s, the decade where not only was 90% of all music output drum machines and synthesizers, but the same kinds of drum machines and synthesizers. Warmth of any kind was off limits.

Good thing Vic doesn’t have a LiveJournal. You won’t rat on me, moe_tha_katt, will you?

The almighty hour

I’m such an idiot. I keep telling myself I’m going to develop some time-management skills. But of course I never get around to this.

Think about it. Not enough time? Bullshit. What can I do in one hour?

I can do 15 complete takes of any instrumental part on a four-minute song. Okay, tack on another hour for hooking things up, adjusting the sound, and fiddling around with minor rewrites between takes. Maybe there’s a tricky bit that needs still another half hour to punch in correctly. Maybe all the takes are lame and I decide I’m going to sequence it instead, so what? Did I miss out on something during that time?

To follow that one up, I can whip up a rough sequence in Cakewalk. Or I can clean up an existing one. Or I can transfer a completed MIDI to audio and bring it into the rest of the song. Or I can edit and clean up tracks for one of the several dozen remixes sitting in limbo on my hard drive. I still have stuff on ADATs and even the quarter inch reels to transfer to the computer, for that matter.

Or I can start sampling a new instrument, maybe the guitar, or my voice, or various glass and metal objects around the apartment, to make new instruments on the computer. Or start searching for and collecting sound effects from the net.

I can get the bulk of one of my programming ideas into actual code. It probably won’t work the way I want it to right away, but it’s always a good learning experience. Tack on another hour (or seven) for tracking down that stupid elusive logistic error, or even a typo that magically makes total sense to the compiler and therefore none to me.

I can hack out a rough storyboard for my animation. It doesn’t have to be final; just something. I can scan in and clean up more of my drawings. I can do lip sync charts for any of my recorded songs.

My three-way relationship with creativity and time isn’t rocket surgery (ha ha, you thought I was going to say “science”). Basically, if I start, I keep going. So there’s that part of it; if I don’t start in the early part of whatever block of free time, I get lulled into wasting the rest of that block of time.

It’s very hard for me to shift gears.

And that’s important not just when I’m coming into free time, but when I’m coming into the diminishing-returns stage of actual creative work. If I manage to kick myself early on and get started on something, that will be the only thing I do that day. Which is why the whole “what can I do in an hour” question is so important. Most of these things that I could do in an hour, I start doing at the beginning of a free block of several hours, and keep pounding on for the entire block.

And of course I don’t want to short-change a task, especially if I’m in “the zone”. It’s key to differentiate between the zone and a rut. It’s not as glaring as you would think. Not for me, anyway.

I’d like to change my habits on this, though I don’t really know the best ways to make those changes last; maybe it’s just a matter of practicing a lot and getting into the habit. But I’d like to become a person who does maybe three things in those five or six hours, instead of just one thing. Certainly, exceptions can be made when I’m on a roll. But as it is now, doing more than one thing a day is the exception, and it shouldn’t be.

I’ll say one thing. Some people regard writing lists as a form of procrastination. This has not been my experience. I’m propelled by writing things down, even writing in this journal. It’s the first step to making something tangible. But so is any first step. What a list does for me is allows me to mentally “put away” the cloud of other ideas that are all clamoring for my attention. Seriously, I often feel weighted down by an overabundance of ideas. Sometimes I’ll have all these things I want to do, and each time I start to get serious about working on one, another will smoosh its face against the window and say “me me me”, and eventually the only way I can silence it all is to put them all off. Putting them all on paper, or erasable whiteboard, or a blog, lets me feel like they’re not being neglected when I focus in on just one.

Incidentally, this weekend and the few days prior, I have not done anything specifically for the Slab of Clay film. What I have been wasting many a good hour on is code for a graphic effect to create an animated reflection on a pair of mirror shades for my Tour Guide character, who doesn’t even appear in that song. And I’m still not happy with the effect I’m getting. This is why I should, at the very least, be multitasking. These are hours of my life passing by!