New Song From Left Field

Those who know my brand of angst may be aware that I've experienced the mother of all creative blocks on the songwriting front. It's been 15 years since I've come up with anything. In fact, I just stopped playing the guitar for a bunch of years and tried ramping up on the piano. Still no dice.

Then, about a month ago, I started to play the guitar again and before long I stumbled over the start of something. Two tortured weeks later (it used to be so easy) I wrestled it into the can. Check out Those Days Are Gone.

Note to Self

I found this note I wrote to myself buried in some papers on the piano

Note to Self:
Admire what you're trying to do with no map, no guide, no mentor in the wings.
Be mindful of a few reminders...
There are thousands of phrases that launch off the tongue. They can be taught synchronized swimming. Forget the end result. Go somewhere where moonlight lathers the path. Gather your wits. Don't give up. Don't contemplate for a minute that it is not attainable. Because the cost is much more than your creativity- it really is your belief system. The atom is the solar system. We are at our best when life passes through us.

Beyond Coincidence

I was was watching a movie, Kloya, on the indie channel yesterday, about a Czech man in his fifties who, through a serious of events, ends up caring for a 5-year old Russian boy. This is the second charming movie I've seen in a recent weeks that center's around a Russian boy (The other is The Italian which I also recommend). One of best things about Kolya is the music most of which, it turns out, was Dvorak. There was a gorgeous orchestral piece at the end of the film so I made sure I found it in the credits. It was Smetana's Ma Vlosk (My Country).

An hour later I was at my in-laws and I sat in the piano room listening to Joe play. Next to me there were 2 crates filled with CDs. I pulled out one from the back. .... Smetana, My Vlosk.

What are the chances? I'd say very close to zero. I'd say so minute that it begs another explanation. Just when you get comfortable in your virtual atheistic paradigm....

I immediately went to tell Terry of this bizarre experience. As I told the story a funny expression arrived on her face. She walked over to a pile of papers she had be straightening up and pulled out a medical bill....from Dr. Smetana.

What's it mean?

It's like Nature/Nurture, Chicken/Egg, Great Taste/Less Filling

For a couple of decades or so I have ruminated over the mystery of inspiration and the creative process. At the center of this conundrum is a fork in the road with one sign pointing toward the sky that says "Wait, it will come". The other sign is pointed at your head and says "Get to work". I've always taken the first path since I have had the experience of creating things that seem to have fallen from the heavens. But now that I haven't seen much celestial light for many years I'm inclined to whistle a new tune.

Some of my recent reading makes the case for finding a creative path by combining loose rules and hard work. This kind wacky purposefulness is probably exactly what I need but it would be a very new trick for this old dog. I would like to belive that bringing the artist's view to the forefront could create new habits and pathways. Imagine if you had an ongoing project of building a book of quirky observations, rhymes, metaphors, and catch phrases - not for any particular purpose, it's just what artist's do.

When I was in high school I figured out how to make multi-rack recording by bouncing tracks on a stereo reel-to-reel tape recorder. I'd play something into the left channel, then the left speaker and I would play a duet into the right channel and so on. I remember having a blast doing this. Some years ago I learned enough computer-based audio recording to put together some decent arrangements of songs that I play. The results are OK but I noticed that the mental process involved in this work tends to kill any creative inclinations. It would be like trying to write a song while calibrating a gas spectrometer. But it's not just a right/left brain phenomenon. The fact that you have ALL THIS POTENTIAL keeps you from entering through the proper doorway. Instead of building a song from a rhythm pattern or catch phrase or harmonic idea you tend to waste time experimenting with tuba sounds becuase you can. This is a shame since the potential of a home studio is so great. So the question is can there a way to touch the potential but not the 440 volt buzz kill? There has to be a method that works.

Sigmund Freud on the Irish

Ya gotta love this..\

"This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."

- Sigmund Freud on the Irish

And here's an interesting comment (and coincidence, for me) that I found on Sheila O'Malley's Blog

From the introduction to a book of Irish short stories - intro written by Anthony Burgess (this is where I originally came upon this quote from Freud - which I had never heard before) -

"One of [Freud's] followers split up human psychology into two categories - Irish and non-Irish. The Irish, like the Neopolitans, are not sure what truth is, and they have a system of logic which defies logic. They have something in common with Chekhov's Russians, and it is no accident that many of the stories here will seem Chekhovian. I was taking a bath in a Leningrad hotel when the floor concierge yelled that she had a cable for me. 'Put it under the door,' I cried. 'I can't,' she shouted. 'It's on a tray.' There is a deep logic, or epistemology, there which is far from absurd. The Irish and the Russians have one way of looking at entities (the entity in this instance was a cable-on-a-tray) and the rest of the world another."

There is a sense that Freud had, too, that the Irish, when in psychic trouble, go to poetry, go to storytelling, go to escapism - they have no interest in picking apart their own brains.

Peering into Macworld

The idea of buying a Mac for my next laptop has been buzzing in my head for a while now. As an entirely practical matter the concept is viable since you can now run Windows on the thing through BootCamp or Parallels. What's even more intriguing is not having to run Windows. It's not really about the computer, is it. Definitely a life thing. It's all that such a change represents...

1. Apple has Buzz!. People camped out to get the iPhone. The only line in the Microsoft world is the Vista return line
2. Macs are the tools of artists and musicians so its only logical that owning one puts you in that group
3. It's beautiful, shiny and new. No Windows laptop is going to give you that little rush
   
4. It says I'm not from around here! Well, it would in the my world
5. It also says The change has begun and nothing sounds sweeter than that right now

This flirtation is just an act in a larger play that stages a battle between two forces.
In this corner, wearing black trunks, and weighing, like alot - is Responsible Man. Business owner, father, serious homeowner and all-round model citizen
And in that corner wearing, actually, no trucks. is California Dreamer, the blogging artiste.

Nasha Semya

Take the elevator down from a Moscow Hotel room. Walk gently through the lobby (remember you're holding a five year old). On the street take the car down the road for four years and here you are.

I know where we can get a large Mission Accomplished banner that nobody's using and we could certainly hang it in the upstairs of our house. Aly and Jack are safe and sound and sleep like angels. We left the orphanage four years ago today and two frightened people began a whole new world (come to think of it so did the kids). But now they thrive.

But that positive light filters through a gauze of exhaustion. We have never been so stressed out. Too much business, family, life. Too many notes. My whole focus lately to to find the creative solution to THAT problem. I just need to do one more clever thing.

Could Microsoft Become Irrelavent*?

I'm a a bit slow on the uptake so I may be a late arrival to this realization but I suddenly see how the use of computers could change in the very near future. The standard for many years has been to load up with Microsoft products in order ensure compatibility. Now there may be an appealing set of alternatives thanks to the convergence of 4 trends

• Web 2.0. The maturity of Web 2.0 means that there will be no down side to running applications inside a browser. We already see context-sensitive menus, drag-and-drop, and a host of other features once the exclusive domain of locally installed apps.
• VMWare. You no longer have to select your operating system based on the applications you run. Now you can run Windows in a Parallels session on a Mac or use VMWare on a Linux machine.
• Connectivity. I think we can now presume that Internet connectivty is always available so why do we need to save data locally? If fact, maybe the standard should be to save on the network and backup locally.
• Terminal Services. Looks to me like every OS sports a Windows-friendly remote desktop client. So if you were totally sold on running, say, Ubuntu Linux on your laptop but balked on your reilance on Quickbooks, a painless work-around could be to set up a terminal server that runs Quickbooks (and any other Windows-only program you fancy).

There is something very appealing about this model where the configuration of your computer is incidental to the data. The browser rules and connectivity trumps format.

*Can someone explain why the vowel between the l and v in relevent is not the same as in irrelavent. In fact the definition is \Ir*rel"a*vant\, a. Not relevant;

Day in the life

• Remote session to check new client's server. Not lookin' too good... 5 year old server- bonjour?
  
• Keep trying to set up Google AdWords. They make it hard to take your money
• Finishing up the head count for Terry's birthday party
• Piano tuner is showing up today. Kirk's a great guy but I won't be able to chat about our common ground
• Snuck in a bike ride mid-morning. 13.4 miles. My average is 14.1 mph - slower than shit but a lot better than it used to be
• FedEx delivered the 2 switches I ordered but where the H-E-Double hockey sticks are the 2 UPSs?
• Buying 5 servers from a video game company. Awesome deal and I've probably got 3 or 4 resold at a profile. Lovin' email
• Finally got the new client set up on Postini with his whopping one mailbox
• Speaking of Postini - it used to be so easy - set it up and people go wow/thanks. Now they're all. like, wait/problem!

no wonder i'm losing it....

Bachelor Fodder

Terry picked a heck of a week to go to Texas. It's one thing to be left with the basic care and feeding of The Units but this is the week when the schools cram in all the special events. Yesterday was Crazy Hair Day for Jack. Today was Aly's State Fair at 8:30 this morning. Tomorrow is Pajama Day and the next day is a birthday party. Underneath my grumbling, I suppose this increases my appreciated for the insanity of Terry's parental life. It'll be good to have you back, Terr. You are coming back, right? Terry? Honey? Hello?

It's been fun connecting with the video call each night. It's funny that such high technology yields such crappy results. Looks like the video from Apollo 7. The audio is scratchy and way out of synch. I guess today's video call is like cranking up the Victrola 100 years ago.

This is Day Three of my solo parenting gig and, surprisingly no one has perished, the kids have made it to school fully clothed, and I haven't had to call in supplemental support. On the other hand, it's a long way to Friday Night.

Russia Suspends Foreign Adoptions

I heard the story on NPR going to work the other morning. Russia has effectively halted adoption of children by foreigners by implementing a new registration policy for adoption agencies. We were already familiar with the real reason which is a growing nationalism that breeds resentment in this area. Though I'm beginning to understand what it's like to be ashamed of your country, it's impossible to imagine what the Russians have been through. But this is a bad sign because it places political and cultural idealism over compassion for human beings in need.

We got a little taste of this during the last trip in 2003 when our facilitator, Tatiana, got into an altercation with one of the caretakers at the orphanage. I remember the caretaker said, "You're taking away all our best children". Tatiana was very upset about this attitude because she knew that foreign adoption was the best (possibly only) option for these kids - especially the older ones.

According to the story the situation is now even worse with nearly 800,000 orphans overloading the system. They brought home the point that these children are not orphaned in the classic sense. Most of their birth parents are still alive. It's often the deadly embrace of poverty and alcohol that eventually puts them there as it did for Alyona and Serozha (Jack).

The thought of so many kids suddenly having far fewer options is heart breaking. To this day I think about the kids standing despondently in the doorway while we dressed our children for their trip to the US. What will happen to them?

It dawned on me the other day that our domicile possesses enough character and standing to warrant a name, if we wanted to go that route. This is dicey territory, putting a little sign in your driveway that announces to passersby that these are no ordinary digs - this joint's got a name, a proud name - Bumblebee Farm !
I used to live on a gentleman's farm with the unfortunate name The Snuggery. Please.
There are patterns that are generally used for naming a property. Combining an appealing word with a terrain word is popular - Hobbit Cove, Shepard's Glen, Windswept Farm, Sandy Cove. If you're lucky enough to have a name like Snow or Green you're pretty much all set with SnowScape or Green Acres. If you're a Rabinowitz, you'll have your work cut out for you.
We could always go with a suggestion made years ago for a farm I lived on - Sugrue-La, but at the moment we're down to two choices. Terry's inclined to go with Wise Acres while my heart is set on Rope's End.

Gym Nauseum

I've been going to the gym for about 12 years because I am enormously dedicated to losing 10 pounds. I think of myself as a sort of Love Handle's Messiah.

Every couple of years I decide to change gyms for one reason or another - too expensive, too inconvenient, or the weights are just too heavy (my friend Eric once wanted to piggy-back on an emerging trend with a product called Lite Weights). I made such a transition a few months back and did some quick research to find the facility that was the least expensive and closest to my house. I headed over there, took a nickel tour and signed up for the three month special. After I started going, I began to notice that I seemed to be the youngest member .... by a lot! There was a certain ego boost to moving the pin on each Nautilus machine from, like, 10 to 90 lbs but, on balance, it was a little creepy. I guess no one had bothered to inform me that the gym was associated with a cardiac care unit. That explains the No Towel Snapping sign in the locker room.

When that stint ran out I decided to move on and found an excellent fitness center nearby for a very reasonable $45 per month. Endless machines, flat-panels up the proverbial wazoo, and helpful staff. While I was filling out the paperwork to join, the proprietor noticed my age and said, 'Oh, your 56. You can have the senior rate of $25 a month"

So somehow I've gone from young buck to old geezer. The fact that I'm more jazzed about the discount than depressed about the age category speaks volumes. So I guess I'll see you at Denny's.

Banging Head on Wall Repeatedly Creates Interesting Rhythm Patterns

My need for musical validatation must be reaching Code Orange because I found myself heading out to Open Mike last night. Returning to these events is a bit like second marriages - the triumph of Hope over Experience.

I had heard of The Natick Center for The Arts but had never been there. I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful theater, big stage, and professional lighting. Future surprises would be less pleasant.

It's as if these organizers look for new ways to insult musicians while talking up their supportive environment. After paying the obligatory sawbuck I find out that this a one-song open mike. Say what? So my drive time each way will actually exceed my opportunity to entertain? Another galling thing: Though there is a staff of three, do you think anyone gets up to offer help in adjusting mikes or getting set up. Meanwhile the clueless sound guy obsesses over miking a 6 foot grand piano that clearly needs no amplification. And finally - no coffee or refreshment of any kind.

But there's another side: the performers. Not bad. Very bad! God inflicts 2 curses upon those who cannot sing.
No 1: No vocal talent
No 2: The inability to recognize No 1

So maybe one can forgive the event handlers if this is what they must endure each week.

It would have been OK if Terry had been there. It really helps to be able to give the tell-me-it's-not-just-me look. Alas, my only consolation was the rhythmic pattern of loose guitar case latches in time to my shaking head as I shuffled back to the car.

Starbucks - Newtonville 0907
It's an upscale Methadone clinic
Walk into it's mayhem and snake lines
The orderlies -
some fresh from their paramilitary Barista training
Dispense attitude along with their Venti Mochiatas
The elderly nurse seems more bemused
Beats sitting home alone
The doctor mans the Serious Equipment
Whipping up frothy amphetimines in her sleep
We, the addicts, queue up for our concoctions
Late for work already
But certain to make up for Lost TIme
After this impending infusion

Getting Out
The phrase just entered my mind the other day and the next thing you know it came out my mouth. "I'm getting out of IT". There was an immediate positive effect, just like when you make the first call to the therapist and feel better before your first appointment. It is suddenly much clearer that I've been oppressed by this line of work. When I started, 18 years ago, the world hadn't fully embraced technology. The ubiquity of PCs was still ahead. Networks were in there infancy. There was a sense of awe when a person converted part of her work to a computer.

Until a few days ago, my work mindset has been static and I've been trying to make it operate in a very different world. But these days computers are glorified staplers. There's no real buzz left anymore. People just want the damn thing to work like it did yesterday so they can get things done and go home. PC techies are now like Xerox repairmen or plumbers.
...
Another post-paradigm-shift phenomenon: coincidental encounters that resonate your new outlook. A day after my mindshift, I was talking to one of my clients in his office when, in the middle of my sentence, her blurted 'How old are you?'. I think I had just complained over the state of Windows PCs. After I responded, Michael told be about an acquantance who, after two successful business ventures, was writing about about a common need for meaning among men 45-55 years old. This conversation may result in a reading group. Just the kind of new experience I need because my new mantra goes something like this

Do things you wouldn't normally do
Read things you wouldn't normally read
Meet people you wouldn't normally meet.

Uncle Bill
My Uncle Bill was my mother's older brother. He passed away last Monday at 87 years old. Since my mother left this earth 23 years ago at 61, I'm not sure what conclusions to draw regarding the gene pool. Even their parents, Roy and Ilene Burke, had vastly different longevities.

Uncle Bill was a straight shooter, a stalwart of consistency, a church-going man, a veteran, a retiree with a pension and 37 years under his belt. He was on the planning board in Farmington, Michigan for as long as they've anyone remembers planning. They don't make guys like this anymore.

My uncle was 6 -foot-2 and blessed with a radio voice which was in constant use. He came to Michigan when his father, a tunnel engineer, got a job with a new project near Detroit. Bill married Rita Marnon in 1943. They had four kids over the next 14 years. When he died, he was still living in that house where the family grew up.

When I got the news I knew I wanted to drive to Detroit rather than fly. I don't get a lot of quiet time these days and I thought this event required a good deal reflection. This was not a logical decision - if I flew the door-to-door time would be 6 hours. It takes 14 hours to drive the 800 miles from my house. But my instincts were right. I particularly enjoyed the drive out which I split over 2 days. I listened to a lot of music, worked on a few mental projects, and reveled in the exoctica of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toledo. Not much to look at out there. Among the few memorable moments was the billboard with America's favorite slut offering this.

I'm glad I went despite being struck on the head with spiritual angst. The people around me seem so confident about their beliefs. Bill was a giving and loving man who served his church for many years. He is now taking his rightful place in heaven. That's it. There is no doubt about it. I can't possibly accept this view but I'm jealous of those who can.

Princess Grand
With the help of the iconic Deathwish Movers, I have moved this overweight Lindeman upright piano from the back room in Fitchburg to the second floor in Arlington (through the window with a crane), then over to the the big living room in Waltham and finally to the Sudbury house. If you add it up, the moving costs are easily double the original cost of the piano. This has been a great piano with it's big bright sound and incredible resistance to going out of tune. It was a player piano in its former life but somewhere along the way I had to have the player guts removed in order to fix a stuck key. That operation dropped 25 of it's 750 pounds, and increased the volume to the point where I never take my foot of the soft pedal.
.
Alas, I am moving one more time and I think it is time to part company with this old lady and get something a bit grander. I put the ad on craigslist asking for $700, hoping to get my original $500 back.

I've been scouting the countryside for a grand for awhile. Uncle Frank generously offered to give me his 5' 5" Ivers & Pond but the news was not good from the technician who appraised it: current value: $500, cost to fully restore: $18,000. I had to tell Uncle Frank that this piano was like my kids - it will cost a fortune to bring it up to full potential.

I occasionally will stroll through a piano store that has used instruments in hopes of a find but you're talking about $10-$15K for a Mason & Hamblin or Chickering and 30 G's for a Steinway. I know don't have to pay this much because there are people with decent pianos that are just taking up space (the pianos, not the people). If I lock coordinates with a person who just wants it out of his house I'm all set.

And I found him. Tom lives in a sad cape. He's 80 if he's a day. As I rolled up to the house his son was trying to brighten the place up and moving what looked like 50 years worth of stuff out of the house. Tom had an appointment at an assisted living facility later in the week. Thought he'd be out of the house by September. We walked down the basement steps and turned. There in the dark, back corner was the Ivers & Pond Princess Grand. I was hard to access the case with so little light available. The sound was, at best, boxy. The bass strings were completely shot. I brought my father-in-law along for moral guidance. Joe banged out some Gershwin and Fight of the Bumblebee. The action was good. There's hope for this thing.

I went outside and called my piano tuner who was in a canoe at the time. He agree to take a look at it that afternoon. Kirk had a discouraging tome when he called that night. "Jeez there a lot of pianos out there. You could find one that doesn't need all this work". But he also told me the pinblock is in good shape. It has good bones.

That was four days ago. I'm tempted but indecisive at the moment. I'm taking an aside to just think about pianos for a minute. They are connected to families and houses and characters. Though they are substantial occupants in a home, they can sit unnoticed for years watching kids grow up, fathers get old, mothers go away. Occasionally, they will tempt a girl with it's possibilities and relationship will blossom. And so I'm not just upgrading pianos. I'm letting one go and getting to know another. If I buy this one, she'll be a lot older than me, but I like that idea.

Time and Time Again
After a careful reading of the May 28 piece in George's blog I'd like to put my own spin on this time thing.
The paradox at hand pits the growing evidence that time must not exist against the apparent sequence of time. My answer is it depends on where you put your stick in the ground. In other words: whats your frame of reference?
Ever since the my heady days of psychedlic contemplation I've had a strong sense that, from a more distant vantage point (closer to God or the Pleides or schizophrenia) time has no meaning. The moment is all there is. But it is difficult and perhaps undesirable to carry this frame of reference around with us becuase we have two properties of our operating system that bring us back to a time-based view. One: we have memory. Two: our penchant for hope and dread and planning requires that we gander into the future. One interesting twist on this is that I suspect we could not have a sense of future without a sense of past. I don't have any supporting evidence but I suspect without memory we would live in the moment.

So my theory is that time is a convenience necessary for memory to function. Without memory, there is no time. In a twist on the proverbial tree falling in the forest, time does not exist without a memory to capture it.

The time paradox is a subset of a larger conundrum that is The Big Picture. Reality is what it is. There may be some absolute view or perhaps it never escapes relativism. Along comes a life form with consciousness. It could not possibly survive by adopting the rules of the Universe (if you carried around a sense of timelessness, would you pay your electric bill?). So, as part of it's survival strategy, it's necessary to carve out a contrived reality that includes time, a sense of goodness, among other things. But part of our nature is to expand our consciousness (red states notwithstanding) and so we attempt to jump outside our framework for a better view. The result is inevitably paradox.

Discovery
This period of discovery is brought to you by Convergent Circumstances. I intentionally broke my routine by signing up for a 2-day course in intermediate PHP/MySQL in Manhattan. While I am generally interested in the subject, taking the course was entirely optional - somehow I think my life could have inched along without the information. But it was a treat. Not just the course but the accompanying benefits - talking to fellow trainees, being in New York, seeing my friends, taking the train, getting away. All of these stride-breaking elements are just what I needed. I returned to Boston a bit refreshed and pumped up about things that had bounced off my head.

My return coincided with a move to a new office and a slump in business. It is an unnerving combination. I've spent the last few days chasing ideas which lead to other ideas worth chasing. My brain works something like this.

I met a very interesting guy in New York whose is a serious Linux buff. He pointed me to a couple of distributions I hadn't heard of. I have since downloaded and installed Ubuntu on an old server which works fine. Once I solve the video resolution problem I need to figure out how to turn services on and off. Of course Linux always leads to the now what problem but there are a couple of technologies I picked up on that might fit well: Putty, SSH2 and RSS. I've already begun chasing RSS feeds and I'm trying to learn about RSS aggregators. Turns out that podcasting is based on RSS so I had to run down that path for a few hours. That leads to an interesting twist on Terry's Workplace Radio idea.

All of this gets mixed in with more stellar pursuits. I have a note to look up more on Meister Eckhard after my discussion with Carol the other night. I am still in the beginning stages of a new existential quest, a yen for zen. My last Amazon order includes 3 books: Hackers & Painters, Lighting the Way (Dalai Lama) and Stop-Time (Frank Conroy).

Let's hope these worlds don't collide. In the back of mind is the worry that this slippery slope is one banana peel away from a conviction that God is speaking to me through Perl scripts.