Curses

Mix for 12/19/10 - Subtly Unsuitable / Suitably Unsubtle

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For the past few days, I've been trying to stave off an impending yuletide malaise; early to bed, early to rise, run a couple miles against a bitter wind. It's a terrible time of the year, though I'm thankful for the lack of snow as of yet (knock on wooden legs, if you got 'em). If it weren't for the promise of Yorkshire Pudding, I'd happily choose hibernation over humanity for the next few months.

Teaching put-put-putters to a halt as families abscond to their Swiss chalet, leaving me to review reams of unfinished Brand New Curriculum, doing my best to hunt down misguided semi-colons, consistently dumbfounded by the quantity of arcane fart jokes and sexual innuendo woven into the text. Apparently all the perverts and miscreants that neglected priesthood and positions with the TSA chose careers in the Educational Textbook industry.

Which indirectly brings me to the theme of today's mix! Imagine that. I recently picked up Authenticity, the latest album by The Foreign Exchange, upon fervent (impersonal) recommendation by Gavin Castleton. It's an excellent record, full of great melodies and those warm synth textures that I grow to appreciate more and more each day. But as it's quite explicitly a "break-up" album, I was struggling with how to fit it into any of the typical abstract thematic structures that I usually mold my mixes by. So I said fuck it, imaginary break-up mix it is.

Sad thing is, while I was working on it, one of my good friends had the unfortunate luck of having his girlfriend of 9 years break up with him. Ouch.

Music is just that powerful.

Count Countenance

1. The White Noise Companion
2. Calcium Fortified
3. Thematic Distraction
4. Triumphant Beards
5. Wooden Legs
6. Fantastic Tales
7. Paul is Dead

/ / /

I had something of a doppelganger in college. He was a few inches shorter, couldn't quite grow a beard like I could, but damn we looked alike. And not only did we look alike, but in a lot of ways, we simply were alike.

As a teacher, depending on position I suppose, you start to see recurring faces. And these faces come attached to patterns of behavior, predetermined identities governed by a crook in the nose. Phrenology and Physiognomy aren't exactly the scientific fields I expect anyone to depend on, let alone myself, but it's almost discouraging when these archetypes seem to be less a product of their environment and more a biological construct representative of human evolution.

So when you're watching old movies and you see these classical beauties (name a whoever, it doesn't matter) you realize they don't exist anymore. And it's not just that standards have adjusted, it's that those specific physical qualities have faded away, leaving the present to cope with a glut of strange men like myself.

How Gizzard a Day Get?

Mix for 11/14/10 - Triumphant Beards

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Every so often I catch myself speaking with some vague accent or other unusual verbal tics, often acquired from the people around me. Visiting relatives in Colorado, they accused me of having some slight Canadian slur distorting the pronunciation of my vowels, leaving me concerned about my appreciation for plaid-print. When I teach I tend to slow my speech to a crawl while raising the pitch of my voice, resulting in some awful stoner-vibes wafting from the beaches of Point Break. Students are often unprepared for the grand reveal of my actual lusty baritone, as I shout at them about how "Vanessa was riding her bicycle at 30mph for 13 minutes...." Those word problems can get intense. Or: I get pretty worked up when I read them.

As I write, I have a habit of letting my thoughts race ahead of my typing, which results in frequently forgotten particles, participles, and other mundane parts of speech. If my attention starts to lag, I'll begin to hear my internal voice echoing inside my head and I struggle to identify if it's actually a copy of my voice or something appropriated. Sometimes it possesses a subtle lisp, the same subtle lisp that once prevented me from ever saying "synthesizer" out loud when I was growing up. But I have no lisp today, and I haven't for years and years and years.

And it's this constantly shifting quality of voice that results in so much misunderstanding, as it seems to take some months or millennia of knowing me to determine whether I just told I joke. Many jokes have met many stern gazes and never did they find the happiness they deserved. So I find myself often speaking in grand hyperbole, loudly describing terrible absurdities thinking surely it's clear — I am joking now.

Instead I get asked if I need a hug.

Of course I need a hug.

Carl Weathers Was the Worst Mercenary

Mix for 11/04/10 - Thematic Distraction

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A friend said to me, "None of us are doing anything we're good at," a statement only slightly different than the more traditional idea that it's hard to find a job that you enjoy. But it's a fact of our lives (my friend's, my own, and those of our mutual friends) that very little of our work experience is rooted in anything that we're especially competent with or trained in, even if we're finding some margin of success. Part of this stems from how we're all largely "artists" of one form or another, a character description that has little practical application, yet it's strange to think how we've become so cut off from our primary skills.

Of course it's entirely my own fault for being a bit of a nitwit without an ounce of entrepreneurial instinct. My brief attempts at freelance show how little I enjoy the act of selling, whether an idea, object, or my identity. My current job asked that I revise my biographical blurb so that it's more appealing to the clientele, but I find myself completely incapable of abiding by their suggestions because the thought of third-person self-aggrandizement triggers acid reflux.

And so it was, when I went to pick up some photographs of mine that had been kept at my old high school, the woman at the counter asked me if this was my job (referring to the photos) and I could only shake my head and laugh. It's been almost five years since I've taken a picture, which is unbelievably discouraging. Two years ago, when I posted the image of the Daibutsu, I had no idea that I wasn't even a photographer anymore.

I Remember One Sentence

Years pass with an unexpected quickness; though at this point I suppose that quickness should be expected. But if an hour of tedium can expand and overwhelm, why does everything condense in retrospect?

Does time slow for those with a gift of recollection?

My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's some 10 or so years ago. It may have been longer, but my parents being who they are chose to wait to tell us children until his tremors were apparent. Today he's a shambling shell of the brilliant businessman he was, speech slurred unintelligibly and mind caught frequently absent, and I wonder if this condition is even more torturous than it seems. Some relation of his (an uncle or great-uncle or something more obscure) has turned 100 years old, approximately one quarter-century older than any of my grandparents ever survived, all succumbing to one form of cancer or another before achieving that indignity of centenarian repose. An awful thought occurred to me that my poor old man might find himself cursed with an exceptional lifespan to accompany this dreadful disease, as improbable as that may be.

/ / /

Memory, memory, memory.

Sometimes I'm terribly nostalgic, but only in this strange unmanageable way, where I'm not necessarily yearning for a time past, but still hit by waves of wistful confusion.

I have regrets, though I try to deny that as much as possible.

/ / /

A friend linked me to this interview on the decline of creativity. Though the interview is both dense and dry (bear with it if you can), it provides some statistical support to what any teacher is sure to suspect. Most enlightening is how it breaks down the many facets of creativity as defined by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. My own day to day teaching experience is rife with students that lack the remotest capability for vertical or lateral thought, a quality that impacts all aspects of academia, not simply those traditionally creative domains.

/ / /

And since I'm talking about creativity, let's talk about these new mix[tapes]:

The White Noise Companion - 58'11''

Calcium Fortified - 31'08''

The first mix, The White Noise Companion, is meant to be an accompaniment to a reading of Don Delillo's novel, White Noise. It's hard to express how an hour of music is supposed to guide you through a 300 page novel, but in one way or another each song incorporates one or more of the following qualities:

• Abstract noise (feedback or irregular, non-musical sound)
• Reference to civilized malaise or degradation
• Suggestion of murderous intrigue or intent
• Reflection upon regret

The second is designed as an attempt at making a mix that avoids conceptual restrictions and does its best to present songs that are easily palatable and poppy, yet offering that depth of emotion and musicality that can sustain frequent listens.

Enjoy!