Report: June 2018

It’s mid-july, so if I’m gonna do a June report I better do it now before I forget the stuff. This will probably serve as the total summer report, as I’m not bloggin’ as much as I aspire to. First up & most important is that I made an adjustment to the Bandcamp page. All the songs should allow you unlimited plays & downloads. I did not realize that the site was going to start harassing you after 3 plays. Sorry about that. I’m not trying to make this hard.

For my health and in anticipation of doing the songs live and loud I went through the process of obtaining these:

These are sound filtering earplugs. I finally went to the audiologist and got it done. Bring on the drums and full amplification. I also bought a PA head months ago when Greenshift Music was closing up. Don cut me a real deal, as he wanted to clear the store as much as possible. Still haven’t plugged the PA in-- don’t have any speakers yet.

June was a period of listening to the band The Sea & Cake (Thrill Jockey). Kind of a nice way to ease into the brutality of summer. (I’m not just talking heat, people lose their minds in Florida over the summer. I always forget this! Be careful on the road! We’re all confused & impulsive.) Tortoise is kind of nice this time of year, too. I also took a side-track into some metal with Corrosion of Conformity. The Technocracy album is the one for me.

Reading material: I finished Chaos Monkeys. (Finally!) I began and have almost finished Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion. It’s an overly-thorough compilation of Dan interviews. It’s exhausting, really, revisiting the origin story: Bard College, Gary Katz, move to California, session players & on & on… Though one effect of the book is that you actually experience what it’s like for artists to have to tell their story over and over again. Repetitions in this case that span decades. Becker articulates this kind of exasperation quite well by talking about losing facts in the repetition of storytelling. Did you know that I’m a Steely Dan fan? Well, I am.

There’s a new song:

It’s called (Yeah, you got it.) Cognitive Dissonance Blues. The basic tracks are laid down, lyrics are good, and it shouldn’t be long before I post it to Bandcamp. I’ve started storyboards for a video for this one & hopefully the shooting & production will rapidly follow the completion of the song.

And then there’s this activity in my life:

I began aikido training in February at the dojo Aikido Chuseikan. This has been a profound life-change for me-- and yeah, you can have your mid-life crisis theories, but this shit is real. I get a real sense of purpose from learning and doing this. In early June, I lost my blue stripe (Celebratory photo above), meaning that I’m less hazardous to myself and can have more technique applied with more intensity. I’m officially ranked as a 7th kyu, kind of a new thing at the dojo. The real progress milestone comes with the 6th kyu test-- and with success comes the goofy skirt-pants that aikidokas wear. Right on!

Lemme tell you something. I was on a statin drug for about 12 months prior to training. Three months of training & I let the prescription lapse… I didn’t really know (or want to know) the drill with this kind of drug (You’re supposed to be on it for life.) and was doing some magical thinking (dumbass!) that I did not require a statin any longer. Annual blood work came around and my doctor was pissed! I got a real talking to, lemme tell ya. Nevertheless, he scheduled blood work and it was agreed to postpone the statin until after the results. Guess what? Yeah, that’s right, when we got the numbers I was below the range that required being on the drug. No other dietary or fitness activities were undertaken during the time period. I place the credit for the improvement on my aikido practice. And I’m cool to be off the statin... Cuz Doc said so!

I didn’t know exactly when the time was going to be right to talk about aikido here. But my first test seemed as good as any other. It was inevitable, really. I just mentioned the health benefit. The mental health benefit is profound as well. I am able to (sometimes) maintain a sense of calm during stressful situations, when before I would try to find ways to emotionally retreat/withdraw. Don’t worry though, you can probably still startle me pretty good if you try. The benefit has something to do with not fully buying into whatever the asshole in front of me is putting forth… Somehow over the years I learned to be an easy push-over. This activity is about reversing (or at least examining) years of negative conditioning. Also, I’m not going all Full Buddha Zen Shithead Flea Market Karate Redneck (as yet). I’m not wearing kamikaze headbands or making other poor sartorial choices. The effect has been a lot more subtle and I hope I seem a little more present the next time we speak.

Bringing it back to the music: I wrote and recorded an instrumental song for the dojo. It’s called the Waterwheel Theme. The dojo posts lots of videos and I thought it would be nice for us to have an original theme. I gave two versions of the song to the dojo. No strings attached.