The Band: Kenny is gonna come over this Thursday and we're supposed to re-record the vocals for the 4 demo tracks.
The Studio: I put up the trim and some guitar wall mounts yesterday. Tomorrow I'm going to install a stage in the back of the room to get Keith's drumset off the ground so it's not so loud outside. I'm in the process of acquiring filing cabinets to store mics, cables, etc. and to make a desk for the recording console.
Miscellany: Every day I go to work, there's a bum on the corner of Braker and 35. Not the same one, but there's always one there. I made a vow after I got back from Iraq that I would give food or money to every homeless person I saw. Well, they finally broke me. I just can't do it anymore. I've always tried to sympathize with homeless people because I look back on my own life and think that there were a few crucial moments where if things had gone just a little differently, I'd be right where they are. I'm a very lazy person; quite possibly the laziest in Travis County, which puts me in the running for laziest worldwide. I often wonder what a bum's life is like. Sometimes I daydream about being a bum; wandering from town to town, getting in adventures, no responsibilities...the ultimate "living in the moment". I'm pretty sure that's not really how it is.
Somewhere I read that like 85% of bums are either severely mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or both. The remaining 15% are the folks who totally opted out of society. Those are the bums whose lives I romanticize. But this weekend, I think I lived just like they live, except I was inside instead of outside. I slept 15 hours on Saturday and another 13 on Sunday. Not only did I not leave my house, I wasn't even standing up for more than 2 hours between Saturday and Sunday. I would imagine bums lives are pretty routine. You sleep, eat, and find ways to entertain yourself. I would bet a typical Austin bum sleeps an average of 12 hours per day. For the 12 hours they're awake, their time is spent eating, begging, or entertaining themselves. Some might argue that bums spend a lot of time travelling, but those aren't bums; those are called hobos. I don't know what the point of this is. Maybe it's just to get it off my chest that I daydream about being a homeless person.
I'm reading a book I got for christmas about Geoff Emerick, the sound engineer for the Beatles. It's awesome. First of all, I love biographies. Second, I love music. Third, I'm starting to get really interested in the art of recording. I'm far from a voracious reader, so a book really has to be down my alley for me to finish it, much less devour 300 pages in less than 2 days.
I've read a biography of the Beatles before. I've sort of ignored the Beatles for a long time, for various reasons. First, they were way before my time. Second, my parents didn't listen to a lot of Beatles while I was growing up. They had the Imagine soundtrack, which features 20 excellent Beatles' selections, but other than that, they weren't big fans. Lastly, the Beatles were just too big for my tastes. I was always kind of scared I'd get into the Beatles really heavy and realize that most of my favorite bands are just copycats.
Anyway, this guy Geoff Emerick did a pretty good job of describing what it was like recording the Beatles. He also does a very good job explaining many of the common recording processes and terms so that anybody can understand them. Many of the methods he used are totally obsolete now due to digital technology, but the art of capturing and mixing sound hasn't changed. The book's not perfect; he is totally on his own and Paul McCartney's nuts, and really dogs pretty much everyone else. Personally, here are my thoughts on the Beatles: Paul McCartney was the true musical genius behind them, but Lennon was crucial because he provided balance. Harrison was a decent musician, but nowhere near the songwriter the other two were. That being said, "Here Comes the Sun" ranks in my top 10 Beatles songs. Ringo is a humongous douche and from all acounts was not as nice or easygoing as he fashioned his image to be. Generally, John Lennon, as much as I love him, was overrated and McCartney was underrated--at least in terms of contribution to the Beatles' quality of music. Yoko Ono did not break up the Beatles; being way too big for too long broke them up. It's only a matter of time before a machine running at that velocity breaks down. Now, that being said, I'm pretty sure Yoko Ono was a crazy voodoo style bitch. No one could survive being that famous for that long--shit, look at Michael Jackson, and divide that by 4, and that's what happened to the Beatles. The same things destroyed them that end many a good thing: drugs, women, and money (basically, greed).
Anyway, there are some things I've taken from this book that I plan to use once I start recording. First, I've decided that I only need one electric guitar, one acoustic guitar, and one amp. Having a signature sound is not only cool, but cheap. Second, pretty much every song I record, I'd like to have some kind of vocal harmony. This is constantly mentioned in the book as one of the things that set the Beatles apart.
I had a laundry list of non-Stevenson Road related topics I was going to blog about today, but it looks like this post is already starting to drag on, so we'll save those for another time.
Thanks for reading, have a great week.
--Jake
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11 comments:
Good post.
I have a pet theory (that I haven't adopted by the way) that all of the choices in life are basically zero sum.* For example, religious/pious/believe in God vs. hedonist/agnotic or atheist. Which is better? On the one hand, with God, you sacrifice things like strange pussy, blow - the basic "coke off strippers titties" scenario and all that leads up to it. But, leading the pious life you are relieved of the guilt of leading the hedonistic and "sinful" lifestyle. Plus, you get the good feeling that you are doing the right things and will go to heaven and avoid hell. On the other hand, hedonism has some advantages too - great wine and food, sex, an occasional dube - whatever you want; whatever feels good. Add them together and you get zero. They are the same.
Same thing with a bum's life. Sure there are advantages - no responsibility beyond biological necessities, what some might call freedom. But, you have no money and few, if any, creature comforts. If it's rainy and cold you are most likely going to be uncomfortable. But, if you want a nice warm house you are going to have to subject yourself to the drudgery of a job. So, really, it doesn't matter what in the fuck you do. Literally. It's all the goddamned same. The only thing that makes it different are the seeds planted in our brains by society that says one is better than the other.
What this means is that anyone who contributes to bums in any way are part of the prefigured bum economic matrix. That is, homeless people can count on a certain level of contributions from the populace whether it be from the Salvation Army or from some guy who rolled his window down at the corner and gave a dollar bill. I'm sure you could conduct a study and find the exact statistical analysis of bum giving. The individual contributor changes nothing. They just conformed to the statistics. (I never give to bums. Ostensibly it's because I don't want to encourage homelessness or support it in any way. But really, I'm just playing my role too by not giving. Zero sum.)
The 15% you are talking about don't exist, I don't think. It's a myth. What do exist, however, are people who have struck a balance. They find a way to make money without having a cubicle or a boss or a shitty commute. They probably aren't rich, but they have enough to be happy. They probably have few material needs anyway. We all know people like this. They haven't escaped the zero sum hypothesis, though. They have simply taken half from one and half from the other - still zero sum.
* I would have to say that crime and prison represent exceptions to this theory. I mean, even if you did some crime that you got a lot out of, like, say, you broke into Marisa Miller's house and raped her and stole a million dollars. That's pretty money in the short term for you. But, the penalty isn't the inverse of the benefit to you. It's the inverse of the perceived harm to the victim and to society. And prison really, really sucks. So that doesn't equal out. At all.
Great comment!
I agree w/ your zero sum theory, it makes perfect sense to me; all that's left is figuring out how to beat it, but I guess maybe all that boils down to is that happiness is a state of mind.
LMAO at the final paragraph. I guess that one would depend on how much MM struggled. I mean if she got into it, it may be worth some hard time...
Well, if you actually believe that the Zero Sum Theory is correct and it doesn't matter one iota what in the fuck any of us do then you must believe that life = death. In other words, being alive is just the same as being dead. In still other words, if you did a pro and con worksheet on "Alive" and another one on "Dead" then the sum of the pros and cons would zero each other out. For me, since death is forever and life is very short and since, as far as we know, death is simply lights out, then it's better to be alive even if your life contains a lot of crappy aspects. Of course, if your life is really a living hell, then death might actually be better. But I think the instances where that is really true are rare. Of course if you change the variable of death where there is an afterlife, or, better yet, a heaven and hell existing as repositories of the good and evil, just like we're told then I'd say that would change things. I mean, if heaven exists for the good and it's for eternity, then it makes a lot of sense to adopt the pious lifestyle during this short life and reap the eternal rewards. No brainer! My question is, why does it have to be an unknown? Why couldn't it be revealed to us in no uncertain terms? That doesn't make any sense. That would mean that the most important information in the universe to a sensient being would have to be taken on faith. Why is faith so valuable? The ability to believe in something that you cannot sense is the most important quality in the universe?
Anyway, I figured out the secret to happiness after I read your reply to my comment when you said "all that's left is figuring out how to beat it." Turns out, it's not really a secret at all - more like common sense. If Zero Sum is true and it doesn't matter what in the fuck we do, then in order to find happiness you have to do things where the happiness response that you experience is greater than the perceived negative costs of achieving that response. In other words, happiness is essentially a good value where the benefits outweigh the costs. This assumes that human beings are simply fleshbags of chemicals and the brain is nothing more than a chemical receptor that responds to certain external stimuli. So, to put this into concrete terms, if the value you get from having a job (mostly the money you get, but could be prestige, reputation etc.) outweighs the amount it sucks having to drive there, sit there, deal with the people there, etc. then keep the job because it is making you happy.
Right; it's all in our head. Whatever each person perceives to be "happiness" is what "happiness" really is to that person. So, there are 2 ways to be "happy"; either figure out a way to truly convince yourself that you're happy doing what you're doing, or figure out waht truly would make you happy, and do that.
Life is a zero-sum only in the proper context. Basically life=death in the system defined as the universe. But we don't care about the universe. We care only about the system defined as our individual lives. In that system life does not equal death. That's why people feel like what they do matters. Their frame of reference is not the universe at large, but rather their individual lives. Perhaps the raging sociopath and the serene Tibetan monk have reached the same conclusion and simply react to it differently.
Personally, I feel that life is about trade-offs, but rarely are the decisions truly zero-sum. Small inequities in the cost/gain (call it metaphysical entropy) lead to individual lives not adhering to the zero-sum principle. The people that are successful and happy have made decisions that maximize these inequities in their favor. The people who are miserable have maximized them against them. Averaged across the entire populace you get zero, but most people are either positive or negative, and constantly in flux.
On the topic of faith, your stance demands the same level of belief, simply framed in hubris. You have to believe that there is nothing in the universe beyond your capacity to understand it. Basically, you ARE the god of your worldview. The standard "religious" faith simply takes the humble approach that some things in the universe are beyond the capacity of the human mind to fully comprehend. I'm not exactly sure where I fall, but I tend to always veer away from hubris.
Glad you liked the book btw. It was M*'s idea. Most thoughtful person I've ever met.
I still maintain that what y'all are both saying is that happiness is a state of mind. From the universe's point of view, everything is zero-sum, but each individual makes their own judgement. I pretty much totally agree with both of you.
On faith, I don't think the standard religious faith takes the humble approach that some things in the universe are beyond the capacity of the human mind to fully comprehend; in fact, I think that the standard religious faith is this: "There are things beyond our capacity to comprehend, and I KNOW WHAT THEY ARE. You see, it's baby Jesus, and sin and heaven and hell and Buddha and all that jazz." Now, I think your personal view of faith jives with the humble approach you described, and that's pretty much how I feel too, so I dig that.
On faith: My "stance" is that I am ignorant. I admit it. I DON'T KNOW. I WILL NEVER KNOW. And furthermore, NO ONE HAS EVER KNOWN, KNOWS NOW or WILL EVER KNOW. But, it's not for lack of trying and searching and hoping. All I really know within a degree of certainty that is satisfactory to me is that we are here. Thankfully, that is enough for me and I am at complete peace with that. I think my peace is your hubris. Now, I "believe" strongly that there is no evidence and I "believe" strongly that I am ignorant about the origins of the universe and our place in it. Maybe it takes a certain amount of hubris to believe in anything.
Snake, you beat me to it. "I think that the standard religious faith is this: 'There are things beyond our capacity to comprehend, and I KNOW WHAT THEY ARE. You see, it's baby Jesus, and sin and heaven and hell and Buddha and all that jazz.'" Right-O.
On happiness: I am not saying that happiness is a state of mind. What I am saying is that you can understand what happiness actually is, which are simply chemical reactions in the brain, and manipulate that process. One of the processes that allows you to do that just happens to be the silly-sounding statement, "Do what makes you happy." An anology that I thought of is having kids. Having kids is an enormous amount of stress, work, money, time and sacrifice. Huge cost. But, people derive joy and gain the only measure of immortality we know of for sure. Due to evolution, the human brain has been conditioned to react more favorably to the positive aspects of having a child than negatively to the costs associated with same. Now the costs might actually outweigh the benefits, but regardless of whether the cost/benefit actually comes out in favor of having children, our brains are going to perceive it to be worth doing; at least that's been the case for everyone who I've ever known who has had kids.
On zero-sum: "Small inequities in the cost/gain (call it metaphysical entropy) lead to individual lives not adhering to the zero-sum principle. The people that are successful and happy have made decisions that maximize these inequities in their favor. The people who are miserable have maximized them against them." Now this gets down to the mechanism of zero-sum and possibly proves it's wrong. Analogy: say the cost is $1 and what you get back is $.99. That's the difference of only a penny. People's minds might round that off and call it equal, especially if we're talking about increments a lot smaller than 1/100th. Doubtful that what we'd call a miserable life would be an accumulation of differences of 1/100ths or less. In order to reach misery or joy, you'd have to have greater differences than that. I'm not so sure there are many instances of that.
I'll leave faith alone.
As for zero-sum: you make a million decisions a day--how to say good morning to a loved one, how to react to a shitty driver, what to have for lunch--that all seem completely insignificant, but what I'm proposing is that there is no insignificant detail. Every decision counts and the results contribute in very small amounts to your happiness or lack thereof. My whole take on life is that people always want the big decisions to be the ones that matter, because that's what life in movies and TV shows is like, but in reality it's all the little decisions adding up.
I am?
Kiney: Yes, you are. No, this other dude.
Llogg/Ojo: just reread this thread and it was really interesting. Seems like Matt is more of the opinion that things happen to us, whereas Ojo is opining that we create our own reality. Like most things, I'm a blend of both of your stances.
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