bleh

Last night was the final night of Tuning the Air at CHAC. We had a large audience, the largest of the entire run, and BR counted 83 occupied seats.

After tearing down, packing up, and saying goodbye to CHAC, I rode with Igor A. to the after-party celebration.

Merlot wine, pizza, salmon, salsa, beer, chocolate-covered pretzels, champagne, toasts, and good cheer abounded.

Later, while Igor A. and Travis cleaned up, Igor K. told the tale of how the KGB interrogated him when he was a young man in the old Soviet Union. Igor K. was a long-haired rocker dude, clearly an enemy of the Revolution. They led him down long, enormous hallways with endless doorways on each side, all designed to make a person feel as tiny as an ant. They sat him down at a table and stuck a bright light in his face. They asked him about his reading habits (specifically, a book by Ouspensky that apparently contained a passage describing the Bolsheviks in disparaging terms). They confronted Igor with extracts from his own personal diary.

Igor is still with us, so the story ultimately ended well.

He dropped me off, and I stayed up for a little while reading the latest Thomas Covenant book. I've been a Stephen Donaldson fan for many years, but sometimes I must either take a break from his writing or only read it in small chunks; his characters and situations are always so in extremis that it wears me out.

Today, I eventually rolled out of bed around 1:45 PM, hungover, grumpy, and feeling like a zombie.

I stopped by UW Bookstore and found a small gift for my parents. I had it gift-wrapped, and the gift-wrapping lady virtually threw it at me when she was done.

One of those days.

don't trouble your beautiful self

Following the House Team Circle meeting with CG, I looked at the stuff I wrote about the Birdman. I didn't like it. I didn't like how it upset my self-image as a Beautiful, Lovely Person(tm).

So, I took it out.

But just now I put it back in. Why should I lie to myself?

And if anybody else out there imagines I am some kind of Beautiful, Lovely Person(tm)--a stretch, to put it mildly--then let them be properly disillusioned (don't worry...it builds character). Life is too short for that nonsense.

Besides, I have to admit that I greatly enjoyed it this afternoon when I once again pulled out Captain Beefheart's troutmaskreplica as a treat for the Birdman and his boyfriend. Their third sex session of the day was stretching out toward the 60 minute mark, and I suddenly hankered to hear some Captain Beefheart. Loud. Really loud.

A little later, I went to brush my teeth, and as I passed his room, it seemed to me the Birdman had fled the building.

Did I mention that I'm a Beautiful, Lovely Person(tm)?

Anyway, yesterday during the morning sitting, I had a kind of breakthrough. My thoughts would not sit still. I kept drifting away into clouds of fantasy. I wrestled with my thoughts, trying to still the troubled waters.

And then all at once, I realized I could just walk away from it. Don't bother trying to tame the beast. Don't even bother to judge it. Just walk away.

So, I did.

And there I was back in the room with the texture of the carpet in front of me, the space around me, the light streaming in through the windows, the sound of cars passing in the distance and reverberating in the hard acoustics of the space.

Then I drifted away again into some nasty snarl of thought.

Once again, I just walked away from it. And there I was back in the room.

So, maybe I had an insight of some kind. And I will inevitably forget about it and get lost once again. I always forget. Then I remember. Then I forget again.

Then the House Team Circle met with guitars, and we spent 90 minutes grinding our way beat by beat through "Eye of the Needle."

Then it was the afternoon meeting with CG. We sat down with our guitars. CG asked how he could help us. We talked. We sat around and stared at each other. We talked some more. Then we played "Asturias." CG asked us to pick a note and then play. So we did. Then he asked us to adjust until we were all playing the same note at the same time. Eventually, we coalesced onto the F at the 13th fret, 2nd string.

Then he got out the metronome.

He led us through the bass notes of "Asturias," and had us working on nailing the metronome click.

I asked a question about working with the metronome: when trying to nail a metronome click, the click sometimes disappears--does this mean I've nailed it? He seemed to agree this was possible.

He asked us each to rate how close we were to being dead on to the click. I estimated I was maybe 50% dead on and 50% ahead. He told me I was actually behind, that my pick was taking a while to get through the string, and the note was consistently beginning behind the beat.

Hmmm...

I found myself drawn into explaining that I had been deliberately practicing this way as an effort to get away from swatting at the string. He suggested I could also "just play the note."

I have to admit I was indeed sitting there in the circle self-consciously practicing my picking. I was thinking about it, in detail, while doing it. Maybe I should forget about all of that when I enter the circle and just play the note.

Then we tried to circulate C Major up and down through an octave. Then we did it with a metronome. We made mistakes. One mistake led to the group circulating on a slow triplet against the click, which I thought was pretty cool, even if it was uninentional.

In the end, he suggested that to get better playing together, we needed to spend time playing together.

Then Igor K. dropped me off on NW Market street. I got lunch and fell in love with a skater girl.

Then I went home, ate some chocolate and fell asleep without brushing my teeth.

Then I woke up with this awful taste in my mouth. I brushed my teeth.

The clock was blinking "12:00 AM." What time was it?

I still had time to catch Electrochakra at Mr. Spot's.

The 44 bus to Ballard was on time. There was an aggressive drunk at the bus stop, a young man who looked like he had passed out in a puddle earlier in the evening. He left me alone and harassed the skate punks sittin on the bunch, instead.

He left me alone.

Electrochakra was good. They had "hook." I drank a beer.

Then I went home.

around and around and around

I've decided to post again for today. Otherwise, I wind up with epic-length posts.

Last night, I went to see I'm Not There, the fractured new Dylan biopic. The movie was another of those Todd Haynes surrealistic journeys where I feel like I'm inside a dream; I find his movies unfold with a very dream-like sort of logic, not as extreme as a David Lynch movie, but I feel like he's creating his art from a similar place.

I expected I would like the Cate Blanchett portrayal of the mid-'60s electric Dylan, but I found the Christian Bayle portrayal of the early folk Dylan and the Born-Again Dylan convincing beyond my expectation. In the Born-Again guise, Bayle perfectly recreated that peculiar worry line Dylan developed between his eyebrows during that period.

The "Jude Quinn"/Cate Blanchett renditions of "Maggie's Farm" and "Ballad of the Thin Man" were clumsy and disappointed me; then I saw in the credits that Stephen Malkmus of Pavement was the vocalist for those tracks, and it made sense. Malkmus has sometimes had a slight Dylanish thing in his vocal performance on his own material, so it baffles me that he apparently has no idea how to interpret actual Dylan material. He's also not a particularly skilled vocalist in terms of tone or pitch, but I'm baffled they didn't do at least a little bit of pitch correction on his voice in these tracks; beside being a clumsy interpretation, Mallkmus' vocal track was also a lot more out of tune than I'm used to hearing from him.

Whatever.

Following up on a reference to "Beatwear" in the closing credits, I today find myself surfing through pages of Beatle boots and Shea Stadium Nehru jackets.

Yeah!

I love that stuff. Maybe when I get some money, I'll play dress-up.

In the early '90s (pre-Internet), I went in search of Beatle boots and never could find what I was looking for. One shoe salesman at the mall in Bloomington, Indiana, was actually rude to me for inquiring and appeared to resent me personally; I have no idea why.

This morning, the paramedics came to check on S, who is dying from a brain tumor; he wouldn't open his door and sent them away. Soon after, a Seattle cop showed up and got the door open. Then the paramedics came back and took S to the hospital for severe dehydration.

I also heard the paramedics and the cop make note of the powerful stink emanating from the Birdman's room; the paramedics seemed at first to believe it was a dead body odor. I'm pretty sure it comes from the Birdman's numerous bird cages and fish tanks.

In any case, I later found out that JX, the landlord, is now compelled by law to warn the Birdman in official writing to clean things up in his room. It turns out the police and paramedics are compelled to document these things when they come across them.

Good!

The stink has been seeping into my room, and I'm getting really sick of it.

Last night, I also finally had enough of the squealing-pig sex sounds produced by the Birdman and his boyfriend.

If I am in fact hearing what I think I'm hearing--the alternative theory, given how often I hear these noises, is that the Birdman has multiple personalities and extremely strange personal habits. Otherwise, it means the Birdman and his boyfriend are having sex five to six times per day.

The first time I overheard this stuff, I thought some guy was beating up his girlfriend in the next room. I really thought I was overhearing domestic violence, and I almost called the cops. It sounded like bloody murder.

Also, one of the two talks a lot during sex. It doesn't sound like the ongoing rhythmic grunts and moans you might expect; instead, I usually hear a series of high-pitched squeals, followed by a bunch of demented mumbling muffled by the wall between our rooms: "...you little bitch...you thought you were the big man...ha ha hah...now look at you... bitch..." [Compiled and extrapolated from a hearing a lot of this shit--dude, why don't you shut up and get on with it already? We don't have all goddamn day...]

I have never heard anyone talk that much during sex. I never talk that much during sex. No heterosexual couple I ever overheard in entire life talks that much, if at all, during sex; instead, you mostly get a lot of moaning, usually rhythmic and slowly speeding up until the "Big O" is finally achieved. In one apartment building, the couple upstairs made the closet doors shake. None of this blah blah blah I keep hearing from the Birdman's room.

In fact, now that I think about it, I have never heard anything that sounds like they've reached a climax...so maybe it's just some bizarre, multiple-personality weirdness. Who really knows?

In any case, last night I decided it was time to crank up the stereo and pull out the most irritating, arrhythmic, and unsexy music I could find in my collection.

First up was Edgar Varese's "Arcana," followed by "Ionisation."

Then I burned an iTunes compilation featuring as much troutmaskreplica Captain Beefheart music as I could fit onto the CD. I defy any man, gay or straight, to keep his erection in the face of Beefheart's "Frownland."

Sure enough, the Birdman had enough and left for the entire night, maybe to his boyfriend's place.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, dude...

that pesky pinky

Again, I remind myself: every single person around me has their own life, and their own experience of their life is as complete and immersive as my own.

Guitar practice last night was mostly slow, slow, slow work on the left hand pinky stretch between F major at the 13th fret (2nd string) and B diminished at the 14th fret (3rd string). This is a move from the Tony Geballe exercise in C Major triads that Curt showed me in calisthenics a while back. I can do it easily if I use and index finger stretch, but I want to widen my capabilities a little bit here.

I've been using my little mirror to watch my left hand, and I'm having to work really hard at releasing tension as I reach into my hand, find the muscle I need, and move the pinky. The index finger wants to react, and my entire body tenses; all of this has to be released as I proceed.

I get a little advantage from the fact that I'm stretching the pinky out while I have the ring finger firm and planted on its note; but, the shift to the B diminished arpeggio is still beyond my neuromuscular abilities. For the very next move, I keep the pinky planted and drag the ring finger over to its new position, but this is a whole other ball of wax. So far, it's impossible.

I'm generally debating the problem of pinky stretch when the pinky is the first finger down--think a 4321 First Primary where you are descending, fingers up, 4 goes down first, then you need a stretch between 4 and 3.

Do you begin with the left hand in a "pre-stretched" position with the thumb already set in its center of gravity for that position? So far that seems like the best answer.

on the in-betweens

My first quarter of classes is complete, but my second has yet to begin.

I already feel like I've been in Seattle a long time, but it's only been about three months. My sleep cycle is skewed, and day is night; I feel like I'm in a time warp.

The house is now so wonderfully quiet.

I exchanged emails with old rock band pal DSM yesterday, and it turns out he's now married, with a two year old son and a two-hour commute to his job.

I enjoyed the House Team Circle meeting last Wednesday. One big positive point for me was that I went to my "alone place" during the meeting, that internal place where I play the guitar because I enjoy playing the guitar. And I now recognize this is the state of mind I need to bring with me onstage if I ever intend to put stage fright into its proper place as a source of energy.

The House Team Circle meeting with CG on Saturday was also eye-opening, and I feel like I now am at the beginning of knowing how to break down a piece of repertoire and learn to play it in solid time.

Saturday was also the day when I realized that other musicians universally perceive the metronome as speeding up and slowing down while practicing to a click. I've noticed it before now and then in my personal practice, and it's been a regular feature of House Team Circle meetings, but I somehow never made the connection in my own consciousness that this is a common perception and that it might be important.

Always before, I thought of it as the musicians speeding up and slowing down, or the music speeding up and slowing down. "Are we speeding up in this passage?"

During the TTA rehearsal, CG told the team to pay special attention to moments when the metronome seemed to speed up or slow down while rehearsing a particular piece. He didn't ask them to look for moments when the music sped up.

For me, this points toward something about the subjectivity of musicians' time sense, especially in a group.

After all, a metronome doesn't really speed up or slow down (within the statistical limits of quartz oscillation, of course). It's in our consciousness.

Although, I should point out that the music unequivocally sped up when the Chicago group played "Eye of the Needle." I can't remember if we rehearsed it with a metronome or not. Maybe my internal clock was reasonably well-calibrated after 15 or more years of practicing with a metronome, enough that the music was an external reality that was speeding ahead of my internal time sense.

Here's the funny thing about listening to the TTA team after CG's statement: in order to hear any slight variation in the perceived metronome tempo (and there were a few here and there) I had to enter the time flow of the music as a musician by tapping a finger and listening as if I were performing the music. If I had been casually listening, I would not have noticed anything, at least not with this group.

I've also been pondering how my ongoing experiment the "touch-pressure" picking paradigm has changed my relationship to time.

If you're swatting at the string with a stiff arm and picking hand, the pick contacts the string somewhere along a curved arc, and it's hard to control exactly where (and therefore when) you strike the note. Unless every swing is exactly the same, you could be a little early, you could be a little late. You might even miss the string.

If you are already touching the string, it's then just a matter of applying pressure and getting to know where the "break point" is where the pick and the string slip past each other. If you want to, and you've learned control, you can push the break point a bit earlier, or hold off until later. Or you can be dead on to a metronome click.

The touch-pressure paradigm definitely makes things easier when you're working at ultra-slow metronome speeds, say 40 bpm with four clicks per notes. Your ability to swat and control the point of contact breaks down.

From another point of view, it's also occurred to me that very fast picking may also lead to the same thing. I sometimes see guitar magazines advising players to "make their movements smaller" as they speed up. In our first meeting, one very good guitarist advised me to make my pick strokes "narrower," no more than the width of the string.

So, if you progressively make your movements "smaller" and "narrower," won't you logically at some point cross over into touching the string with each pick rather than swatting at it? Your pick stroke can't get much smaller or narrower than that, can it?

Time to go eat, and then practice...

finally

Crazy lady L got the heave-ho yesterday. It was everything I expected, and more.

I woke up around 10:30 AM to the sound of the Eviction Sheriff and house manager D taking L's door off its hinges. L wasn't there, so they got out the power drill. I just sat under the covers for a while and listened; by the time I grabbed my shower tote and headed for the bathroom, the door was leaning against the wall in the hallway, the Eviction Sheriff was gone, and D was busy bagging up L's stuff. The door had two eviction notices posted.

I peeked into the room as I flip-flopped past, and D said, "I have never seen someone tear up a room that fast."

Bits of broken glass, plaster, baking flour, cigarette ash, and other unidentifiable bits of detritus littered the floor. The wall shared with the hallway had been punched full of holes, and I'm guessing these were made three nights ago when it sounded like L was attacking the house with a hammer; I could hear the hammer pounding, and after a few swings, the crumbly sound of the drywall giving way beneath the blows drifted down the hallway.

After showering, I heard a commotion as I exited the bathroom.

L was back, and she was throwing a screaming fit in the downstairs hallway:

"I had until 5 PM! Where is my stuff! I want my stuff! Get it now! Now! NOW!!"

D told her she had to leave or he would call 911, and she screamed and pushed him. I was up in the kitchen where several residents had gathered to watch through the windows (including the window L had broken near the back stairs).

"I had a right to be here! Where is my paperwork! I had a right! I want my stuff! Call 911! Now! Call 911! NOW!! CALL IT NOW!!"

She ducked into the room:

"Fuck you! Where's my stuff! FUCK YOU, SCHINDLER!!"

[Note: I've before overheard her screaming at "Schindler" in the wee hours of the morning. I have no idea if this is a real person, one of her hallucinated menagerie of tormenters, or her nickname for the house manager.]

She found some of her possessions near the garbage can in the hallway:

"This is my stuff! My stuff isn't garbage!! Where's my stuff!! I want my stuff now! NOW!!"

I was wearing only a bath towel, and it was several long moments before she swept out into the alleyway and I could sneak down into my room without running into her.

After I changed, I went back up to the kitchen and rejoined the Peanut Gallery watching the proceedings.

The black kid from upstairs was busy heckling L from the rear door. L habitually banged on the door and harassed him whenever he tried to use the downstairs shower, and now he was repaying the courtesy.

"You think this is funny?!!" she shouted.

"I'm laughing my ass off!" he said.

Three cars with grim-faced Seattle cops arrived, and they stood surrounding L while she rifled through the bags of her possessions D brought up from storage. W from across the hall noted the cop who kept his hand in his right rear pocket, close to his gun.

L was running her mouth and gesturing as she sorted her stuff.

"Ah, she knows how to work the cops," said the kid. "She ain't crazy! She knows how to work it!"

Eventually, the cops left and things settled down. D came back in and told us to get him right away if she ever came back; if she entered the house again, it would officially be a charge of "criminal trespassing." By law, they would hold her possessions in storage for 45 days, but she would have to be accompanied by the cops when she eventually came around to pick up her stuff.

A from Texas arrived near the end of the row with bake sale brownies, and we speculated about who the Chocolate Milk Bandit in the house might be. He said he was a bake sale fanatic and couldn't understand people who put store-bought sweets into a bake sale; when he discovered such an offense, he said, he found himself wanting to run through the bake sale, kicking over tables like Jesus in the temple (kicking out the the False Brownie Prophets).

W gave us a quick run-down on tenant law in Seattle; he knew all about it from his previous rental experience. He moved in from another county, and the room he rented sight-unseen had a gas leak beneath the floor, urine-soaked carpets from the previous tenant, sewage leaking through the wall whenever someone flushed the toilet, and other horrors. He eventually documented all of it, sicced the city government on his landlord, and got all of his money back from several months of living in this hellhole.

But, back to L...

Last night, around 1:30 AM, I swear I woke up and heard her screaming "Whore!!" in her inimitable way, probably outside one of the sorority houses a block or two away. It had to be her. Nobody else screams that particular word in quite the same way, with quite the same vehemence.

I saw no sign of her today, but did find myself astounded by the incredible quiet in the house.

The only thing I heard this morning was cancer-stricken S growling "Bastards!" as he entered the basement bathroom. I later understood his anger when I walked past and smelled it. I'm not going in there again until it's clean.

It smelled similar to the bird/fish stink from the Birdman's room, so maybe he's responsible.

W's fuzzy pink slippers were lying outside L's room--marking his territory in triumph, perhaps?