Confusing Desire For Discipline - Life Unlived

I've been saying, literally forever almost, that I need to get in a band.   "Another Band".  The last band I played in was almost 25 years ago; when I say that, I can practically hear the "Twilight Zone" theme start up in my head.  25 years.  Now, I play and - even though I am pretty self-critical, in my head anyway, I play pretty wicked guitar.  Oh - I will see somebody on T.V. that makes me re-think that, but I usually realize that, while so-and-so is probably a far better player than I - it is usually that he/she is far more well-rounded and displays a fearless abandon with a cascade of killer chops.  When I get honest and try to imagine that player playing some of the stuff I hear myself play, well - oftentimes I can't see it.  It's like, yeah, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and while I may have more weaknesses than many of these pros (jazz comping maybe, uh... diverse vocabulary of licks in multiple genres, whatever), the truth is, some of my strengths are, frankly, pretty damn strong.  I have some serious speed with many of my tricks and licks, and scales - and I think my vibrato compares favorably to almost anyone's outside of perhaps Jeff Beck.  I have, it seems like, a unique voice or "phrasing", that I began recognizing a few years back - a certain way I combine licks, runs and bends in runs or  sequences, that sound pretty damn cool and I believe sound unique -  like I don't recall hearing similar phrasing from other players.  I think it just might be that I have one or two "trademark" techniques that, were I in the public eye, would be identifiable, as in "wait a sec, that must be Stephen Francis -- I recognize that style" or whatever.  Point is --- I really gotta get out there and play with some others, maybe get in a band.  Classic or retro rock, blues rock...  I have some Trower-type techniques, as far as interesting bends into and out-of trills and vibrato (wiggle the hell out of the note in a musical fashion) - and, quite frankly, my "speed riffing" is noticeably faster and cleaner than Robin's - which is not unusual these days - the speed-thing is just more emphasized all around compared to Robin's time.   And  I am not saying I am "better" than Robin Trower.  In fact - he is among my top 1 or 2 favorite players, and I will never be as good as he is, as a masterful artist of sounds and textures and all that.  He is God.  I mean, I like Eric C a lot - but I would say he'd be an archangel to Robin's God.  That's just my opinion and personal taste.  Of course, just a listen to the "Beano" album and I find myself worshipping at the altar of Clapton once again ;-)


I'm starting to have waking dreams, so I will cut this off now (too late to cut it short, after all)


More on the "I need to get in a band" topic, as well as why I think I'm someone who other folks really should hook-up with, collaborate with.  ADD and all, I know I have a deep well of creative energy and material blasting in to my head all the time.  With the right people, I think it could get interesting, and in a good way.  ;-)  Ciao.

Who does the dishes?

 

 

Seems like folks just decided they don't like doing dishes anymore around here.  Oh, there's the occasional glass or spoon that's put in the dishwasher (and I do  mean occasional), but overall - I've become the dishwasher here at "home".  Been used to doing the frying pan every  morning, and bowls, glasses and spoons left by the busy, employed, folks, but past month or two it seems that Betty Crocker, or her lesser-known sister, Caroline (rhymes with turpentine) have moved in.  Baking stuff that's sweet and fatty for the health? of the family.  Seems like she loses focus right around the time when the dishes and bowls and mixers and spatulas have all piled up, and her task is done.  No problem, for I, Cinderfella, am here to tackle those kitchen messes.  And, amazingly, like some super-hero who stops a crime and disappears in to the night, there is never a word spoken as to how all these messes just vanish.  No word.  (like, "hey, thanks").  

After a couple months, when this Cinder-guy is chewing threw his lip cuz his leg is on fire, while hopping on one foot to scrub those criminal dirty dishes - well, I think it might be getting a bit old to always be invisibly completing these deeds.  Trying to just avoid the bitter, angry blow-ups that happen with regularity.  Better to be invisible.  This day, after washing these continually re-occurring dirty dishes and utensils, he has made himself a cup of coffee; maybe two.   The evil stepmother appears in the room, just after the counters have magically become spic-n-span, and the dish-rack is chock-full of spotless pots and pans, cups and flour sifters.    

The words seem to spatter out of her mouth, like the hot drops of grease that burn you when you're too close to the frypan, 

"I smelled something burning.  Like there was coffee on the coffeemaker burner before you made your coffee.  Just some stinky burning smell".      

Ahhh --- the silence is broken.  Hers anyway.  It's rare, a few seconds of silence.. when someone else is in the room with me.  And the acid-tone and vitriol aren't. so rare now.  Just another day.  My silence is severed briefly, "I'm sure it was something I did here..". 

I then retire to my little room.  Smiling in the knowledge that, while I don't know where I will be in a few months, I am rather hopeful that it will not be here.

 

 

 

 

Cry For Help

My Friends. Friend? Heh.. The internet has come so far since it's "humble" beginnings. I had a static IP address and my own website (complete with domain) in 1996. As a successful and young(?) software engineer, a rising star with a very well-known database company (not 'O', the other one - Microsoft purchased a (windows) code branch from us, and not too originally, called it SQL Server), I wrote the code for my, at the time quite flashy, "WebSeer" domain and my "Stephen's Page", bunch of java to activate eye-candy from mouse movements, clicks, etc.. Anyway - I mention this because, well, honestly - no one else will. No, seriously - my accomplishments of late are not anything much to write about, but the point is that the internet is now an appliance in (virtually) everyone's home, everyone's life. They bring it in their cars, in their pockets even. My nephew and I are talking about a T.V. show the other day, and trying to remember some actor's first series or something... 20 seconds later he has the answer, browsed and retrieved using his Blackberry (Raspberry? Strawberry?). Conversations in 2010 need not suffer any unanswered questions, no matter how trivial. Of course, when opinions are eloquently stated as facts, then the casual seeker of answers may have some problems, but forget that for now. This is amazing stuff, and few of us would have believed we'd have such power in these tiny, little, toy-like packages, if we were told it would be so, even 20 years ago. At least I would not have guessed we'd be that far along. And the uses, the myriad of ways to communicate, are still being discovered even today. Never mind the constant text chatting ALL OVER the place. Today's twits are "tweeting" and "dweeting" (tweeting while drunk) right and left. And, IMFAO, "twit" still means what our british buddies say it means - it's not a verb, and it's not a compliment. Still, the everyday people who think themselves nerds are stealing well-established slang, American and British, every day - and "twit" has been at least temporarily absconded, and is now synonymous with "tweet", by virtue of a million twits-a-twitting, tapping away cheerfully with those nifty opposing thumbs that evolution kindly provided. I apologize for trying to sound like a clever, blogger type. Most of us, now and then and here and there, say things to amuse and hope that we don't sound too derivative or forced (fat chance ;). Anyway, I digress, but 'tis my blog after all. And it'll be weeks, perhaps eons (never), before anyone even reads what I put down here. It's just too much. If everyone is blogging .. - well, the numbers do not support the contention that we're reaching millions, even hundreds. Most of us are not even reaching tens of people. Of course, the challenge being to do something to get noticed. And that's a shameful, albeit often entertaining, segment of this medium (YouTube, etc..) as well. The neat thing about only reaching a couple of people, or perhaps just one and maybe no one? Well - let's say you reveal something, perhaps to "the world" (doesn't care), or maybe to loved ones, or ex-loved ones, or just family - siblings perhaps. And you never know if they'll get your message, let alone when. What the hell am I talking about? Well - what if I were to write up a "goodbye" of sorts. Maybe getting personal, or maybe remaining at a distance, but saying "I am going away, and... hell - thanks for all the fish" ^[1], or something. Then, maybe they get the goodbye right as you leave - maybe they get it a week, a month, maybe a year later. It's fun, for some reason, to think about the uncertainty of this communication. Perhaps a stranger, or an old friend from a distant-past, reads it and tries to contact someone, to pass on the message. Adds some excitement, and randomness, to the typical, mundane way of communicating. Like a note-in-a-bottle, tossed in to a virtual sea. Ah... still total nonsense? Heh. Don't worry. I know it sounds a little "out there", but think about if you were typing up a "stream of consciousness" and just posting it haphazardly. Not an editorial or an article or a story. Just a stream. They tend to sound a little more bizarre, so cut me some slack. It's a message in a bottle about messages in bottles.
Don't get me started on my slim little eReader (electronic book) - super thin, paper-back sized, holds thousands of books, magazines, newspapers or whatever, and I can browse and purchase more of same from anywhere, and download a new title to read. This makes the "datapad" from Star Trek's 90's efforts (DS9, Voyager) look like a big ol' encyclopedia. And I can listen to music, and like I said, download whatever I want to read, from anywhere that a cell phone would work. Darn.. I really should have ended with the "message in a bottle" line above. Oh well.   Of late I've been hearing "There's a Better Life", a song from the Vietnam era, going through my head. It is a valid ballad baby, right now - aside from the clearly implied couple ("...for me and you") in the song's story. It's just me now. It doesn't sound as good ("... for meeeeeeeeee"). ;) Anyway, do not worry yourself(ves) over me - I'm not done yet, and while hope's not in great supply, the well's not quite totally dry. I'll keep ya posted, meanwhile - do good things, every day. For you and for your others. Ciao baby.

1. Douglas Adams, the author of "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", first used the "..thanks for all the fish" line in that book, referring to the dolphins of planet earth and their farewell note to humankind as they were whisked away by their alien buddies. Douglas wrote another book in the series with that very line as the title, iirc. Very clever man, was Douglas; may he rest in peace. ↩

Universal Truths #1 - Left Brain and the Fickle Mistress

Writing.  This is what came to mind, first and foremost, when I created this blog last week.  It is still in mind, but I want to make it clear that what I refer to is writing in general, or more precisely, writing in many forms: Writing songs, i.e. music & lyrics; writing creatively, fiction & non-fiction, i.e. short stories and novels; even writing product reviews, music reviews, book reviews.  Just writing, to cultivate and convey one's thoughts and ideas and share them through the written word.

    These days, blogs aside, I am trying, once more, to write songs. I've been a musician for over thirty years now, and I've been trying to write, off and on, pretty much since day one, in bands and on my own. Typically, I have let myself become distracted or disinterested, and most writing sessions devolved in to "jam" sessions. The muse would lose interest, as the critic whispered in my ear, and all too soon. Meanwhile, I like to think, the songs kept right on brewing and churning, waiting for their moment. I won't go in to the detail of my renewed enthusiasm right now.  Just suffice it to say that I have several in the works right now.  I am trying to dig deep to conquer my ever-present "left brain" tendencies when they surface far, far too early in the process. ^[*]   Anyway, even Lennon and McCartney would have finished nary a single if they had not learned to tune out their critical sense during the initial, "roughing it out" stages.  Let that happen too soon and you kill a song (or a story, or a novel, etc..) before it ever had a chance.  Paul McCartney's "Yesterday" started out as a song about scrambled eggs.  Note the syllabic equivalence.  He needed a vocal melody to fit with the beautiful guitar parts his muse had inspired, and what a great melody he arrived at.  Try it:  "Yesterday, all my troubles...", only instead sing "Scrambled eggs, in the skillet seem so...".  Yep, true story, no lies.  The point: these legends-to-be knew (probably instinctively) that in order to let creativity really flow, you have to totally shut off the inner critic until you have a bunch of material (lyric, melodies, a strong framework).  If you whittle material during the building phase, you are almost certain to wind up with nothing, and with just a memory of that beautiful muse which sparked the idea to begin with.  It is very difficult to turn off the inner critic, especially early on in one's life as a writer, when confidence is usually fleeting, and shaky at best.  It is also imperative, in my humble opinion.  Leave the critic outside and hidden away, until you've really entertained, wined, and dined that beautiful muse for as long as she'll endure your company.  If you must, remind yourself that you'll hack and slash at the bad stuff later on, that you need to get it all out right now, no matter how ridiculous (I know for a fact that many of the greatest lyrics ever written had some embarrassingly bad lines within them early on).  Get that song, that paragraph, written, while she's still with you. When on a roll, ideally, you don't want to slow down even to contemplate; that's almost certainly the critic trying to sneak in and "fix", way too soon, and he'll mess you up if you let him. 

    You may have noticed that I envision my muse as a feminine, probably sexy, "angelic" sort-of presence. Yours may vary ;-) I guess I imagine the inner critic in the form of a grade-school teacher who criticized quickly, discouraged often, and forbade original thought.

While I believe I was mostly able to keep my left brain at a distance during the above discourse, it occurs to me that my right brain may well have joined him there.

As Homer says, "Doh!".

^[*] "Left" and "Right" brain, it turns out, aren't nearly as simple as we once thought, but we still often use the terms to represent two different ways of thinking, of being - critical, logical, analytical from the left, and creative, symbolic, "unbridled" from the right. So, no neuroscience corrections needed, thank you :)

And so it begins..

    At what point do we decide we're going to join the blogging community?  It is a community of course.  When do we make the leap to thinking that we, too, have something to say; something worth another person's precious time?  Is it a leap of faith?  Confidence?  There are so many excellent bloggers out here, people who really have something to say and know how to say it.  It's rather intimidating.  Well, I am going to make a go of it, and I just hope that, rather than rambling, I will end up with at least some contribution, some worthwhile sharing out here.