"Who says I can't piss in a thimble?"

© 2002-2005 T Spae

11/28/05


It's easy to get totally outta hand about all of life's crappy little happenstances, isn't it? What with war and crime and heartbreak and bad breath, with the threat -- oops, that'd be the certainty -- of Franklin Delano Death hanging over it all like smog over a Hollywood backlot, it's not all that difficult to be permanently deformed, bent as one of Uri Geller's spoons.

But think about it -- why go to all that trouble and sweat over trouble and sweat? It's not gonna change anything. It only makes it worse. Well, there's a perversely reasonable reason why, o'course -- why else would we do it? We're all laboring under the belief that our outrage has mystic powers, powers to right wrongs and straighten out messes. We've seen it tv and in the movies, we've read it in books, we've heard it in church on Sunday and in school on Monday. Forget Christianity -- the happy ending is our favorite religion. How can we doubt?

So we go on blundering about, pounding our perfectly good heads against obdurate brick walls without once speculating as to the nature of all those knots that keep inexplicably forming on our foreheads.

Isn't it time to wise up a little? To give it a rest? To put an icebag on that swollen, enflamed self-righteousness and get a little perspective? Sure it is! And I'm here to bring you exactly what you need to help you do it, too. I call it mental jujitsu.

Like this. You're driving down the highway, blasting along at the speed limit or even a little over you gay dog you, life without care, a smile on your lips, your favorite song blasting outta your Blaupunkt 5.1 Gigawatt CD/DVD/Sat Radio player, not a care in the world, woohoo! But now suddenly you notice the traffic piling up, the road's getting crowded, everyone's slowing down, hey c'mon people get outta my way this is my highway you morons, it's crawling, it's stalling, it's a parking lot, it's a clusterfuck, who dealt this mess, what am I doing here, my life is over, I want my mommy! At a blistering two and half miles per you creep closer, ever closer, to where ominous red flashers are marking the scene of another adventure in poor judgement and large amounts of kinetic energy, and everyone's stopping, everyone's gotta pull out the ol' handycam and get a good long look at the carnage, ooh, it's like CSI! only Real!, and you can't believe it, you can't imagine why anyone would be so cold, so reptillianly fascinated by the informal dissection of their fellow citizens on the public roads. Your choler rises like the Goodyear blimp in full ascent mode, like a Minuteman rocket en route to Moscow with a little greeting card for that fatso Nikita, man!

Okay, you can stop now. I said stop. Go-o-o-od. Now think this through with me. Here's a scene of unmitigated tragedy. Someone is undoubtedly in anguish here, probably several someones. And here are the guardians of the peace, the custodians of justice and mercy alike, arrived to judge the injustice and bind the wounds of the victims. And all these people, rubbernecking or no, aren't they doing exactly the right thing to slow down? We don't need any more accidents, now do we? Now just take a moment and bask in the knowledge of how completely honorable all those thrill-seekers are, going nice and slow through the crash zone and -- oh, look, it's just somebody changing a flat.

See? Mental jujitsu. Wasn't that easy?

Again. Welcome to the local gas station convenience store. Stand in line behind four cartons of cigarettes and three bottles of fortified wine because the cash machine outside is broken and you need five bucks worth to make it into town to the cheap station. There at the register: the Poor Immigrant Minimum Wage Drone, aimlessly banging away on the register and insulting the Queen's English with a truly terrifying alternative vocabulary and pronunciation. It's taking twice forever to get anywhere between winos with zero cognition and a counter worker with Bizarro World language skills, what is it with these people, didn't they tell them they'd have to learn the language to live here, think they can get a free ride, streets paved with gold, sorry charlie no speaka da gibberish, go back home and get some ESL before you crap on our economic efficiency!

Deep breath. In. Out. Oka-a-a-ay. Y'know, there's some special reasons behind English being the 800 pound gorilla of languages, and it's not just that it's spoken by the richest people on earth. Our own native tongue is a marvel of assimilation. It can absorb exotic vocabulary like a sponge. More, its grammatical structures include such a plethora of variance that it offers untold nuance and option in expressing ideas, so much so that even a non-native speaker can come up with unique and creative new ways to describe the infinite cornucopia of human experience. All those nice immigrants bringing their talents and ambitions and third-world work ethics to our country are also bringing their own personal maps of the universe to share with us in the form of neologisms and borrow-words, a treasure of perceptual novelty far more precious than any five-second advantage in the carpool lane speeding towards the Grungymart with the budget petrol.

Okay, extra credit: let's look at that surprisingly affordable octane, shall we? Here we are in throes of the Oil Wars, soldiers of all natures of all nations screaming as one as they advance on the beleaguered backwaters still in possession of proven reserves. Excuses of breathtaking stupidity ring out from the otherwise-sensible heads of state of power-hungry mega-economies, hoping against hope that they can squeeze a few more drops out of the empty pump before their populaces rise up and pummel them into jelly with the wet noodles of their petulant outrage.

Well. I leave the solution as an exercise for the reader.


11/21/05


Mom? Dad? Listen, this is kinda hard for me. See, I, uh, need to, uh, take like a, well, a week off.

Okay, alright, I know how it looks. Here I am, begging a week of respite from my nonexistent responsibilities as a web-writer out of my nonexistent audience. Why should I even care? Why don't I just call it Thanksgiving holiday or something?

I admit it, I'm just not ready to continue last week's limb-hanger -- I may never be, considering what a Flying Spaghetti Monster the subject turned out to be. Between war, technology, fashion, fad and the increasing economic clout of minorities, I have at present no fucking clue why the popular music of America goes through recurrent spasms of change.

I can't even be sure that it does. A friend of mine has a theory which I shall here christen the Sandoval Observation: There's no such thing as a mountain. A mountain is an outline of high ground perceived from a distance, an object so huge that it can only be perceived from fifty miles away. Upon approach, it becomes less and less distinct as its profile is obliterated by proximity. Stand on the mountain and it's invisible. There is no mountain, only its illusionary silhouette. Like a mirage in the desert, it cannot be reached.

So it goes with my Ever So Clever little barge-cemented hypothesis about pop music. What at a virginal glance resembles a pattern disintegrates upon closer inspection into chaos and Noodly Goodness. Just like everything else, if you think about it -- all the universe is really made of is quantum soup, at its heart pure statistical jello. Jiggle jiggle jiggle. Charlie's Angels of Light.

But that's not the only reason I'm yet again going AWOL on the tg. On Monday I had to pull double-shift caregiver duty on S when her designated pal went west on her, and I ended up spending the night with her getting her circadians candled at the delirious Sleep Study Hotel at the local hospital, which kinda put a simian spanner in my clever plan to take the theoretical alone-time to bullshit my way out of that rhetorical blind alley I previously romped down so eagerly. Not to mention leaving me a touch sleep-deprived myself, dozing fitfully on a rollaway cot listening to S snork through her electrodes.

It's galling, though. Just Sunday night, we were out at shindig thrown (with the grace of an Olympic shot-putter, might I add) by some musical pals as a recording concert for their first CD. Since I was likely to get the job of reproducing the thing once they hack it into shape, I was okay about throwing twenty bucks in their engineering kitty. Call a business investment. Besides, S and I don't get out much. At the gala affair, I encountered a collegue in the writing for no hire dodge, a heavily-embedded local folkie who writes a monthly gossip column for the local folkie magazine. She complimented me on my endurance with the Gazette, allowing that it was hard enough for her to get something out once a month.

And now this. Galling, I tell you.

Enough already -- I'm taking another break, mkay?. Sure, Thanksgiving holididdyday, fine. I'm not a turkey, but I play one on the internet. See y'all in a week.


11/14/05


It was another Jewish gig for the Klez Katz the other weekend, a Bar Mitzvah at the Faculty Club on the UW campus. I arrived after the long recitations in Hebrew from the Torah, after the laudatory speeches in praise of the young Today I Am A man stretching beyond the farthest horizon, after the arduous PA setup and just right for dinner. The kind of timing only gigging musicians can develop.

We shared stage with a familiar co-act, a DJ possessed of a skullsplintering sound system and a comfortable, jolly manner with white middle-class Jewish 12 and 13 year olds that has won him any number of lucrative jobs in the same community where the Katz dip their net. His record collection stretched from big band to crunk with stops at every major trend in between -- the ultimate cover act, with pitch-perfect renditions of every tune indistinguishable from the original records, mainly because they were the original records. This wasn't selling out, this was buying in.

His portion of the show, a seamless string of bubblegum pop interlaced with hula-hoop contests and ice cream certificate giveaways (everything old is new again, especially if you're 12 or 13) that kept the Young Americans squealing and girating while their parents hit the buffet and socialized, clearly demonstrated how thoroughly he deserved his gargantuan fee. Here was a true master of his craft, a total professional at the fine art of selecting and playing recorded music.

My fellow Katz and I were rather less prepared, all of us underrehersed and one sporting a recently acquired emergency root canal and portable morphine drip (the flute player noted that it wouldn't be the first time a musician hit the stage on opiates). Still, we were there and eager to play, and when the DJ announced us we launched into our patented Endless Freilach Medley, one uptempo tune in D after another (to you, it's a key -- to us, a profession) while the parents, drawn back to memories of their own youths, circle-danced and carted the lucky bar-mitzvoid around in the traditional chair.

And the kids dug it! They immediately tuned in to the energy and joyfulness of the Jewish folk dancing, circling and cossack-kicking right along with the adults. We played until they begged us to stop, not from annoyance, just exhaustion. Another successful klezmer gig. "You guys rock!" proclaimed one girl. Higher praise you couldn't get.

The DJ got back to work, churning out a combination of 70's and 80's dance music, some 60's novelties and only a few current hits. His piper's tune lured young and old alike out onto the floor. The flute player put down his instrument and took a turn with his smiling wife. Grandmothers, mothers and daughters worked it in various fashions. It was time travel on the dancefloor -- Past and Future woven into one undulating Now.

Back in my day, there's a good possibility that such a scene couldn't have happened with any comfort. The mind's theater conjures a vision of the high school sock hop, Principal Poop and his sour-faced wife interrupting the semi-freestyle rock n roll festivities to sternly and woodenly pace out a foxtrot with a clutch of parents and teacher's assistants, while the Beatle-haired band grinds away ineffectually at Satin Doll, tediously mastered for just such an occasion, and a dozen or so suckups do their best to reproduce the ballroom moves they learned to so little effect in the seventh grade. After which all the kids go back to the Twist and the grownups retreat to their Dr. Pepper.

Boomer kids grew to adolescence utterly different from their elders. Some termed it liberation, others narcissism. Tom Wolfe somewhat facetiously suggested they'd read too many comic books, that they believed they were superheros. Whatever it was, it set parents and offspring at odds like dogs and cats or landlords and tenants, a clash of cultures that still plays out today between the parental/authoritarian Reds and the neotenous/liberal Blues.

But time, in its own utterly indifferent self-absorbed manner, has soldiered on, and with Gen X going on grandparent status, there's a new ecumenicism in the dining room. Funny haircuts and peculiar costumes don't raise the hackles they used to -- chances are, Mom and Mom have them too. And while the Pop Tarts Of The Future may have a high plastic content, anyone raised on Aretha or Madonna can decode them just fine.

There's a great parallel richere, an echo of the First Age of Pop, AKA the Jazz Era. In its fin de siecle infancy jazz, riding the brave new technology of sound recording, was the devouring monster that threatened to destroy Western Civilization with its lewd pulsing jungle rhythms. It was seen as part and parcel with the scary, rupturing historical and social events that birthed the 20th century.

Soon enough, however, Jes Grew became not only acceptable but even respected. As Century Two Zero progressed, jazz and its numerous derivatives were absorbed (some say subverted) into the mainstream of American culture, with multiple generations digging it together through the Great Depression and two world wars.

When King Jazz got its nards kicked off the throne by the pretender Rock n Roll, it happened again: a period of chaos and condemnation was followed by extended equanimity. Rock replaced jazz in the social stickum department, and social upheaval mellowed out into hair bands and endless Carole Bayer Sager ballads.

It appears that there is a principle of punctuated equilibrium at work here, both in popular music and in the culture at large. Just like in the fossil record, long periods of stability with only gradual variance are rudely interrupted by shorter periods of wack anarchy which settle back into more long boring coasts.

Now that's inneresting -- is there some underlying control process at work here? And the real test of a theory is prediction. What will the next stage of audiosocial evolution be?

Glad you asked.

TO BE CONTINUED....


11/7/05


I probably shouldn't have gotten baked. I was on day one of a weekend's recovery from a week of heavy industry, bench-pressing 4x8 sheets of half-inch sheetrock and screwing it tight, my only helper a T bar deadman, the kind of work my guidance counselor in high school recommended college as a defense against. My body ached with that ancient laborer's pain that the guys who built the pyramids for the Pharaoh probably felt, the dull grind of taxed muscles struggling to rid themselves of excess lactic acid.

It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the high. Jah's Breath is an excellent anesthetic, much more entertaining than tylanol. S and I pulled out the instruments and jammed heartily, something we've been able to do less and less in recent years of infirmity and distraction. But then S reminded me of a gig the next day, a farmer's market shot I hadn't picked up on the first time she'd mentioned it. It meant an earlier rise than I'd anticipated when I first picked up the pipe. But by then it was too late.

Predictably, we ended up going to bed much too late and getting up much too early. I was slow and stupid and a little surly. S was subdued and sad. A bad "s" morning all around. But we managed, in true trooper style, to scrape our sorrowful selves up and deposit them down at the market more or less on time, instruments at present arms, ready to rock. Or something.

In truth, it wasn't a bad day. The previous afternoon's torrential downpour had backed off to a windy partial cloudiness, and as soon as we began playing the sun opened up like God's own spotlight. The vendors, inclined on some previous occasions to a dour stinginess, were all smiles and encouragement. They contributed their wares generously, and the tips weren't incredible but they were there. And there were enough children smiling and clapping and dancing to lighten anybody's mood.

But through the whole show, we felt like clever simulacrums, assiduous imitations of our actual performing selves doing our best impression of Amber Tide. All the notes were there, on time and in tune, but the spiritual labor behind them felt purely functional, a cold-blooded assessment of technique and execution with all the heartfelt engagement of a tooth extraction.

It wouldn't be the first time -- during virtually our entire career as lounge performers, we droned our way through one underpopulated night after another in high-priced hotel bars where the music was just another side-expense like the floral displays, hardly ever encountering an audience worthy or willing enough to entertain. It was par for the course and part of why we got the (semi) big bucks -- and why we wound up quitting the whole racket and going back to playing on street corners.

A certain amount of clone-for-hire is part and parcel of the musician's racket. A famous concert violinist famously noted that while his job description called for a unique display of soulful virtuosity and emotional expression, no mortal on earth could possibly achieve such heights of artistry every single night. The solution? Remember how you played when you were hitting the top end of your creative cycle, and replicate that as exactly as possible. The spirit to reach that level is certainly a necessary part of the profession, but so too is the ability on a bad day to mimic yourself on a good day.

Just exactly what, then, were we imitating to such positive effect? S and I have always been somewhat at a loss to explain the nature of our success as performers. Not in the sense of whether we're good musicians -- we certainly do our best to maximize that. But throughout our long and motley professional collaboration, we've been unable to put our collective fingers on just what part of what we're doing elicits the sometimes enormously asymmetric response our best audiences give. It's easy (though humiliating) to ponder what you're doing wrong, and much more difficult to figure out what you're doing that works -- especially when it doesn't always work.

During the recent Robot Theater session, people watching showed every indication of being in the presence of a good Amber Tide show, from smiles and applause to a healthy amount of green in the case. Even if it was the mock AT and not the real that they were getting, apparently our imitative powers were great enough to invoke that whateverthefrack in our style that hits them in the sweet spot. Thank goodness for small favors and not so small ones too.

It's a characteristic of complex systems that the more they evolve towards efficient operation, the less penetrable their internal processes become. A software application that starts out simple and straightforward, neatly top-down organized and compactly coded, can swell from repeated revision into a patched, repatched, annotated, subverted kitten-snarl that only a Flying Spaghetti Monster (pbuh) could love. The workings of genetic chemistry in the regulation and continuance of life are so scrambled that they may be impossible for mere human brains to completely comprehend.

That doesn't mean they can't be managed. That plate of noodles masquerading as an operating system (don't let's mention any names) (*cough* Windows *cough*) can still bring a handsome return for its engendering corporation, especially in exclusive help-line contracts, and the human genome may yet serve as a profit center for whatever innovative maniac is willing to jump on its bucking bronco and ride. Or as the Blessed Saint Heinlein once observed, engineers only have to understand a theoretical conglomeration enough to use it to build something.

So here we are, two crazy kids reaping the suspect rewards of our own superpersonal interactings without the slightest notion of what it is we're doing. And it doesn't even matter if we're in the mood or not -- this stuff sells itself, years of research and development paying off in the end.

But the question still remains: what are we doing right?