it's been that kind of day

One of the best things about embracing the randomness of life is that it saves one a lot of trouble and heartache. If, for instance, one has the kind of afternoon as have I, it's easier to believe that there's no order...because if there was, I'd feel way too persecuted to be able to function. It's hard to be paranoid if you know that life is just a bunch of random, heartless crap.

time to be scared iv

Our country is so obsessed with terrorists that we put up with the TSA's security theater and the NSA's massive domestic spying operation in spite of the dubious success rate of these agencies's invasions of privacy. Yet who's the biggest enemy? As it turns out, police are more likely to kill you than a terrorist.

Feel safe?

career planning

My 3.75 year old (who should really be sleeping) informed me she was getting ready for "super hero unicorn school." The school apparently provided her with her Hello Kitty backpack. The cape (a bra, with her head through one of the arm holes) is her own.

stupid fingers, dead skin, and pain

Dead skin. My fingers are coated with it, calluses like I've never had before. Tender, sore fingertips.

I've been playing guitar about thirty years. Before that, I played classical violin for a few years. I played bass in the high school jazz band for a year (the band teacher really hated me). I briefly dabbled on the dulcimer. A while back, I bought a 6 string banjo which is strung like a guitar (some people call this a banjitar; these people should suffer great pain and agony for their sins). So I have a varied background on many stringed instruments.

None of these has confounded me like does the mandolin. It's tuned way differently than the guitar, so not only does no knowledge translate, my knowledge of the guitar fretboard actually interferes with my mandolin attempts. The frets are very close together, so my fingers have to bend in new ways...so I don't even have muscle memory from which to pull. It has thin double strings under high tension, and these dig into my fingers.

I bought it over a year ago, but after playing it for a few weeks and a brief appearance on my album (just buy it already), I got busy and set it down. When I realized it had been months and months since I put it away, I vowed to make a concerted effort to become competent on the thing. For the last couple of weeks, I've been spending at least a couple of hours a day practicing. Today, I had stupid fingers that didn't want to cooperate with my brain (which itself had trouble switching into mando mode), but that's just part of it.

I don't expect to become bluegrass good on the thing...just competent enough to add different textures to my solo act and my next album. It's going slow, and it can be unbelievably frustrating, particularly with nights like tonight, where I was having trouble finishing a single song without stops and starts...but overall, I am (very) slowly getting better.

It's good, though, to challenge one's self, to push one's boundaries. Plus now, I can brag about my suddenly awesome calluses! Yeah....maybe that will make them ignore my whining about finger pain...

joy and chaos

When I was younger, I used to believe in such things as order, fate, justice, and the like. I used to believe that hard work would inevitably lead to success. I used to think that there was such a thing as right and wrong. Karma, just desserts, whatever you want to call it...while I didn't think of it on the level of dogma, I did believe there was some kind of general structure at work in the universe.

Over the years, this certainty burnt away, and I realized that there was no structure to speak of, that the world was essentially random. I knew this on some deep level, but it took a while for this awareness to reach my consciousness...and when it did (the great mental breakdown of 2011), it leveled it to me. Typical existential depression, yes, but one never expects it when it happens.

It took ages to find my way through the worst of the depression. I never found the structure again or the certainty...and I'm certain it never existed in the first place. Dealing with it was never about reconnecting with the order, though. What I instead had to do was just come to terms with the chaos, embrace it.

So how does one embrace chaos? I used to think the drinking helped, but I found out when I quit , my ability to cope only increased. The music helps. The best thing, though, is finding and latching onto any burst of joy, particularly those outside of any expectations.

Luckily, I have a secret weapon: my child. She constantly exceeds any expectations I might have...it seems she's constantly coming at the world from an odd angle. This would make me wonder, if she didn't have such joy...and if she didn't spread that joy so easily. She's the perfect embrace of joy and chaos.

Case in point? Earlier this week, she was running through the house, and she tripped. I asked her if she was okay, and she said, "yeah,...I tripped when my unicorn tail got tangled up in bubble wrap." She then got up, smiled, and went back to running.

How can one be depressed when in the presence of that?

two quick observations

First: Danger 5 is the best television show ever.

Second: One of the most entertaining tasks one can do is go to Etsy, do a search for Cthulhu, and browse the results.

shaking in 3...2...

Ever had a "guess I had too much coffee at brunch" moment? That's me right now.

pills and aching joints

I never got to know my grandmother all that well, but the pain is making me think of her.

My dad was in the Air Force, and although I was born in America, my first memories are of Germany, where we lived until I was seven. My grandmother only came over to visit once, and she was not a good traveler. She was exactly the kind of person who would complain that the food wasn't the same as back home, that they didn't put ice in the sodas...you get the idea. When we moved to South Carolina, we spent a few weeks down in Florida at her house. I know this would've been a good time to try and know her better, but I was a shy kid and was still a bit shaken up by the move to do much of anything.

When my dad retired, we moved down to Florida...to live in her old house, actually. She was close by, but I still never really got to know her that well. My parents tell me it was because she wasn't easy to know, but I suspect the truth is more that I was still a shy and painfully awkward kid...and becoming a teenager didn't help at all. Still, I did try, but I suspect there was some basic incompatibility at work. 

What I do remember most vividly is staying over at her house and watching her in the morning. After she got me cereal (which, after I put some sugar on my corn flakes, she made me stir it into the milk for some reason), she started to massage her swollen knuckles for a minute before taking some pills from her industrial-size bottle of Tylenol. When I asked her about it, she told me that arthritis was just something that happened to us when we got older. But I was in my teens, and the entire concept of getting older seemed somewhere between remote and implausable.

A few years ago, after one of my old band's first shows, my shoulder started hurting. I told my singer it was because I carried her heavy amplifier, but I suspected that wasn't the truth...and she even refused to accept the guilt trip. The shoulder pain persisted, though, and after a few runs to the doctor and through physical therapy, I had a diagnosis: a compressed spinal disk along with arthritis in my shoulder.

This wasn't all that much of a shock to me. I went to the college in the "sling your backpack only over one shoulder" era, and I had played music for (I was shocked to realize) decades at that point...so wear and tear was only to be expected. It was only when getting a suit for a wedding when this was really driven home, when the seamstress informed me that one of my shoulders (the aching one in question) was actually measurably taller than the other. One of my first thoughts was that if I found any more physical deformities, I could change careers and enter a circus freak show...but another early thought was of my grandmother's swollen knuckles.

I soon found I could crack my shoulder joint at will when the arthritis was (to use my grandmother's phrase) flaring up. In some ways, I could look on this as a war wound, a physical manifestation of my suffering for my art and my scholarship. When I told this to my parents, they informed me that being a martyr was also something I probably got from my grandmother. But then one day a few years ago, I started to feel the same twang in one of my fingers. Pretty soon, I could pop it on command. Not every day hurts, but enough days hurt to make me have my own industrial size bottle of pills in my own medicine cabinet, which, with every pain and prescription, starts to resemble that of my grandmother even more.

The last few days, I've started to feel that pain in one of my thumbs...which is undoubtedly proof the arthritis's sphere of influence is surely expanding. The pain usually is pretty ignorable, though. On its most intense days, it's simply annoying yet usually easily treatable. Compared to my recent kidney stone pain, it's quite laughable.Yet it's still troubling. So far, it has stayed out of the hand which fingers notes on my guitars. But I'm beginning to realize that it will eventually grow, spread, start to disrupt, and maybe even take away my music...which is sobering and more than a little scary.

This morning, on the drive to work, the pain started to flair. After pulling into the lot, I sat in my parked car and broke into my car's emergency supply of pain pills. After swallowing, I rubbed my sore hand for a minute. It was only then when I realized that I now am beginning to know my grandmother a bit better.

a random thought while grading

I like the letter x. You hardly see the letter x anywhere. I'd like to humbly suggest we, as a society, start using the x to pluralize words. This would lead to several advantages. First, this would solve the whole issue of whether to use just an apostrophe or an apostrophe-s when making a plural word possessive. Secondly, it would lead to more x in our writing, which is good, because x is the coolest looking of all the letters.

omens?

Every so often, I teach movies. Today, we're watching The Matrix. Just as we got to the scene where Morpheus introduces Neo to the matrix, one of the lights in our classroom starts going on and off on its own.

It's hard not to read something into this...

playing season has begun

I played my second show with my band The Antidepressants on Friday. It was quite fun. Only one major screw-up, but we recovered quickly enough. Everything else sounded really good, and we got a few complements on our songs. We even made money, which is a rarity for a bar show!

I thought about doing a good recap of the night, but then I saw a friend mention grading and remembered everything I have to do...so work won out. But, as I was plowing through my own grading, I got a call from one of the people from the Old West End Festival in Toledo...and he quickly booked us for the 2015 festival. We'll be playing at the Art Fair stage on Sunday, June 7th, at 11am.

I hope to follow this up with more festival shows. The band's first gig was at a festival, which was nice as it gives the band immediate exposure to people who don't just know someone in the group. My drummer specifically asked to do more festivals, as they let him get to bed on time. Last year, I played at the Tiffin Music & Art Festival and A Dam Good Time, and I hope to do both again. I've also got feelers out to a whole bunch of other festivals and bars, so if all goes well, I'll be filling up the ole booking calendar. This is nice, as I go crazy if I don't play out regularly.

I was at a friend's birthday party last night, and I ran into a guitarist from another local band. He gave me several leads on music venues in Findlay, OH. I have a listing of clubs in Ann Arbor MI which I plan on hitting soon. And I'm open to play anywhere else anyone suggests.

So go out there and find me places to play! I'm not proud! I'll even do bot-mitzvahs!

my musical self

Most musician friends think of me as an equipment junkie. I am particularly known/mocked for my love of effects pedals; when, for instance, I told an old bassist that I was paring down my pedalboard, she asked me if I was sick. All I really want, though, is a decent tone...if I can get something I like by plugging straight in, I'm happy.

Most musicians with whom I've played think I'm a solo-crazy freak. A former singer used to say, when showing us a new song, would say, "...and here's where Mike can wank." And, to be honest, it was kinda fun to be told to solo endlessly. But that's what the songs called for, and that's really my main concern. In my solo band, I only have leads in a third of the songs.

To the extent that anyone thinks anything of me as a musician, I would suspect there's a certain amount of misconceptions. I'm not addicted to effects, guitar solos, heavy distortion, a few simple chord structures, kazoos, or anything else. I try to fit in with whatever musical environment in which I find myself...which is what I think any musician should do.

This doesn't mean I don't have a distinct musical personality; I certainly do. I did not really notice it, however, until I made my album (which you should buy immediately). I didn't hear it when I started to do solo shows, because I was locked into the singer/songwriter model (which is admittedly limiting, but in a fun way). But, with my very own awesome band, I can create worlds that are my own...and it's glorious.

Tonight, I have the first in-town performance of my band TheMikeDuBose and the Antidepressants. Our only other gig so far has been a music festival, but that was out of town, and we were the first act (so our set was short and subsequently sparsely attended). Tonight, we have the full set on a Friday night, at my favorite bar, with other awesome bands. And we even have a cool gig flyer!

I hope people make it to the show, because I am fiercely proud of our songs. I have a great drummer and bassist who have both intensity and swagger. I have an awesome horn player. The sound has the perfect mix of swing, catchiness, humor, and grit. This is the closest I've been to letting out the sound that's inside my head.

"It should be fun" doesn't begin to describe it.

the importance of environment

So this semester, I have two Comp II classes. One talks. The other doesn't. Talking class is generally lively and intrigued. Quiet class is generally catatonic. I'm doing the exact same thing in each class and getting radically different results. I have to keep remembering that's just how it is.

Today's example was that we're talking about technological literacy, the accelerating rate of technological change, and the impact of those on definitions of humanity. For the kicker, I show them Ray Kurtzweil's truly mind-bending TED talk:



We get to the part where he's talking about nanobot red blood cells which, if someone replaces 10% of their own red blood cells with the nanobots, that person would be able to sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath or sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for four hours.

The talking class's jaws drop. The quiet class? An honest 50% of them are checking their phones.

Sometimes that's just how it is.

scales of power

Ever wonder how to quantify things? There's fast...there's faster...and now, thanks to my daughter, I now know there's "rainbow jetpack poodle fast."

the value of children

I spend all day Monday and Wednesday with my daughter. Inevitably, this ends up teaching me many things. Today, I learned:

1. that I have the kind of kid whose first words of the day can be "If I were in the freezer, I would be very cold."
2. that advanced vocabulary can be funny coming from a not-yet four year old. We were doing some shopping today. As we were leaving the apartment complex, we had to go around a parked utilities truck. This prompted her to exclaim, "what in the world is going on???"
3. that she has a fun conception of family. I was getting her out of her car seat before going into a store, when she told me, "me, you, and mommy share one body but have three heads."

important information

Was just in my local coffee shop / used bookstore, and I overheard someone say "boys who poop their pants don't get frozen yogurt."

This seemed important enough to share. Now you know.

a modest suggestion that I might not suck

I was just walking through the parking lot on my way to my car, when I was flagged down by another guy in the lot. Turns out, he was a student of mine a couple years back. He told me that he's now a student teacher at a local school, and they are doing feminist readings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He then thanked me, and he told me that I was one of the few people he had the taught him how to do stuff, taught him the skills, taught him the theories.

Excuse me...I think I have something in my eye.

exterminate!

When the BBC finished the first episode of Doctor Who, they apparently donated two of the original Dalek props to the Dr. Barnardo's Homes for Children. There's all kinds of tales (some undoubtedly apocryphal) about various Doctor Who props turning up all around England. Now this is some cryptozoology I can get behind.

the future is here!

Screw the "where's my jetpack?" crowd of naysayers. Did you know that we now have the ability to turn on our computers or phones and see a sunset on Mars? How much more futuristic do you need?

on ego

You'd think I'd know ego when I saw it. 

Last week, I ran across the article Keith Richards Is Not a Second Banana: The Guitarist's Conundrum, and it got me thinking about the nature of ego. Normally, I picture ego as the "hey, look at how awesome I am. Look at me. LOOK!!!" thing. You know, the lead singer thing. And this is something which generally bugs the hell out of me. It's one of the things which has turned me towards Indy music and away from any music from the mainstream. And it's not regulated to music; the increased prevalence of this attitude in the NFL is one of the reasons I abandoned the sport. This tasks me.

I like to think of my approach to music as being more workmanlike than anything. I know many won't believe this, but I don't play guitar in bands for my ego. Honestly. If I did, I would have to be the most delusional person in the world. I have, after all, played for empty rooms, and while doing so, the biggest thought I had was just how funny was the whole situation.

Playing was never an ego thing for me. While most of my friends would admit to picking up instruments to look cool or to get girls, that was never in my thoughts. I just wanted to be able to build something, to create something out of nothing, to be in charge of something over which I had full power. If my playing sucks, it's because of me. If I do well, it's because of me. Take autotune and other such abominations out of the equation, and music becomes a sort of meritocracy. Yeah, some people might have an easier time picking up an instrument, but those who work at it will become better. Work tends to level the playing field...and I like this, particularly as I've found it not to be the case in so many other elements of life.

Not picking up an instrument for ego might be believable, but it gets a bit harder to swallow when you make the move to live performance. If it's not for ego, then why would someone climb up on a stage and do this for the public? Why else would I invest my time and money I will never recoup to record an album if it wasn't to make myself feel more important? Truth is, there's always an element of commerce and public relations when you make the move from bedroom to stage, and it would be dishonest not to admit it.

This, I am beginning to realize, is where one's definition of ego comes into play. If ego is just the lusty adoption of lead singer behavior, then I would be right there with the punks in voicing my disdain. But in my solo career, I have to do a ton of this "pay attention to me" stuff as a matter of necessity. I have to do PR. I have to brand myself. I have to flyer. I have to banter. I have to schmooze. I have to ingratiate myself to bookers and bar owners. Yes, there are parts I actually enjoy (designing flyers, for instance, allows me to locate my inner visual artist). Much of it, however, makes me feel dirty...like an ego faker.

Which brings me back to the article. If singers are the ones who crave the spotlight but guitarists (as the article suggests) are more interested in nonchalantly building everything and holding it together...well, who's to say that ego lies in one side or another? And who's to say that desiring the role of public face is any cheaper than wanting to be the all-knowing creator? Is behind the scenes really more a morally pure position than out in front?

Is there really a distinction here? Are they divisible in the first place?

When I had my big mental breakdown of 2011, I had a very unhelpful session with a counselor. In prepping for the session, I tried to boil down all my anxieties about becoming a father, about failing in my attempted career as a professor, about the lackluster reception of my scholarship, all of this I tried to distill to its essence. The best I came up with was, "how am I supposed to continue, how am I supposed to raise and nurture a new life, when I've come to the realization that there is no justice in our lives, that hard work will not necessarily pay off, that we're all at the mercy of random, uncaring forces?"

The doctor had no answers for me. At the time, I suspected it was just because he was bad at his job...or just didn't like me enough to put in the effort. Now, though, I'm beginning to suspect that the lack of insight was really due to my own failure to properly judge the situation. I was mistaking lack of visible ego for moral purity. I was thinking that simply wanting something enough and sweating a lot in an effort to reach that goal would be enough. Is it possible, I'm beginning to wonder, that I failed because I lacked...ego?

Yeah, I wasn't an attention-grasping academic. But I'm beginning to think I failed ultimately because I wasn't egotistical enough to sculpt my work to the places where it might be well-received. Yeah, my lack of  ego made me not try to be an obnoxious bink. But it also stopped me from thinking strategically about my scholarship. It stopped me from promoting myself once I did figure out how to make something that everyone might want. I thought that if I followed my muse, fame and fortune would naturally follow. That, I think, was my downfall.

Now I'm beginning to realize that ego would've helped. As a musician, I've tried to find a niche my music can fill. Why didn't I do the same with my scholarship? I promote myself as a musician. Why didn't I do that as a thinker? Why didn't I realize that being unfocused and unstrategic was not being pure and honest to my muse...but was instead just setting myself up for insignificance? Ego would've helped.

I'm not saying if I would've had ego, everything would've worked out. Hell, I do all the self-promoting ego crap in my music career but still am relatively insignificant on the scene. But maybe I would've stood a better shot.

Maybe this means I need to be the new priest of ego. I must stop people from making my mistake of not thinking enough as an entity to be promoted. I will spread my new knowledge to the masses Ego, I will proclaim, is good. Ego, my inner Gordon Gekko yells, works. Ego for all!

Or is that too much lead singer-esque?