Category Archives: personal journals of my life

I’m sitting in a McDonalds parking lot.. and its too freaking hot

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For the internet of course… my battery says it’ll give way in an hour and a half.. if I don’t come up with some kinda power saving thing.. to do…

I hate fucking not having internet.. or where you have to be in a car in sweltering heat.. to get  it.

But at least its a nice day, and at least I’m out of the house.. I wanted to go somewhere, do something.. but I can’t afford much… at all.. never mind that for some unknown and bizarre reason.. I can’t get money out of my ATM… and not due to an absence of an available balance.. or… I’m pretty sure I put in the right pin number…

But I gotta get out of this sun.. seems like going home is the wrong answer… but what the hell else is there for me to do? Well clearly I need to hit a grocery store so that there might be more liquids in the house… but….

Well.. after a visit to the book store I have some sense of inspiration.. for further madness…

Maybe I’ll do that.. or any number of the other things I’ve been telling myself I’d do, but don’t end up doing…

Anyway.. the sweat is pouring into my eyes at such a rate that vision isn’t working for me.. so with that I think I’ll be on my way…….

That fire-e light-en-ing feel-ing Within (written at like 2 am)

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I’m feeling it again.. a kind of warm glowing feeling.. that seems to suggests great power.

In saying shit like this I always feel like a great deal of explanation is required to.. make any sense of.. WTF I’m talking about.. for the general reader.

Neuroscience kids have found that if you stimulate the right brain parts.. you’ll get abducted by aliens… by which I mean archetypes are a part of the structure of.. not only the psyche… but the brain.. our biology… and what have you. So.. this thing I’m talking about.. this feeling.. is an expression of such things.. wisdom of the body perhaps.. or something bigger still.

Symbols are sometimes a more powerful means of communicating then reason.. reason can be.. a bit flaccid sometimes..  because symbols can communicate.. not just ideas and concepts.. but experience it’s self…

And I think of it as a kind of cognitive compression scheme… you know.. how complex it is to learn to ride a bike as a small child.. all the sorta.. kinesthetic calculations involved… and latter we don’t think about any off that.. that stuff is like the basic building blocks that we’ve gone through so much it’s as if we aren’t thinking of them at all.. accept we are.. it’s just that they’ve been compressed.. into something like.. the chemical components of a structure.. that is.. what we now see our selves as thinking about.

So for instance.. how many of us think about digesting our food in order to get them stomach acids a going? Err..

Well anyway…  So.. what this feeling seem to be telling me is something about what I’m doing.. that I’m on the right path.. and never mind my often small minded way of thinking.. .this is big stuff.

I know the bigness because of the holographic nature of the structure via which I’m working.

Errr… that’s a hard concept to explain!!!

Well.. its like this cognitive compression scheme stuff… especially if you consider that at any given time our consciousness is only capable of a limited speed of images.. of limited size.. passing before our inward eyes.. of thought or whatever..   and.. only limited amount of stuff is accessible to us at any given time… but as you sorta look at larger time periods.. larger things are possible.

So the deal is.. that ideas are somehow nested in other ideas… in these complex chains of association.. .I am mentally walking down paths I’ve been walking the entirety of my life.. I know this psychic landscape quite well.. and…

This is the thing… this is really the thing that’s maybe central… for my entire life.. I’ve been trying to do this thing.. and I’m trying to do it still today… and that feeling i’m having.. is the strength… of all the me’s… stretching back to my birth to present.. the strength in me.. of all those moments… as I waded through this land scape… all that strength.. speaking at once.. seems somehow super human almost.

And in a sense.. the way this works is that we program our own consciousness.. and I’ve been a programing a life time.. with this set of tasks in mind.

It’s hard to talk about this stuff.. cause it is so crazy… that one would be so single minded.. from such an early age.. and through so much… adversity.. and to still refuse to let go of this path.. as if it were the same as letting go of your soul…

It’s that kinda bigness in my own life…

And so this burning fire, like the holy spirit it’s self.. saying “yeah bitches, we gotz a something here a brew-n.”

Hmm… I kinda dig this style of writing.. I think I’ll have to post this netx time i get online

Medication time: a story of diet

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My gosh, it’s 4 PM.. and I’m still in my wake up rituals…

I took a sleeping pill.. somewhere around… 3-ish… I woke up.. I wanna say around 2… although I must say there were a lot of cat paws in my face leading up to that… apparently kitty needed food….

Rolling around in bed is often where I plan out my day, as if from in the middle of an anxiety dream… and.. well here’s what I was thinking, more or less.

Do I have enough money to make it through the week?

There’s actually two show.. well 3 really.. but 2 shows.. I wanna go to this week..  and the expensive of these things is always about the cost of drinks… which is often connected to the level of anxiety I’m feeling.. which is always there.. especially when I first show up.

Now.. for sometime.. or for a while.. I had really been trying to cut down… not really because of an alcoholism problem as much as it is a wallet problem.. I went 3 months without drinking without feeling any kind of need to drink.. accept for wanting to go to the kinds of social functions that I might have a drink at…

If I’m not cutting down.. that is to say I’m just sorta doing the normal thing, which might be drinking too much depending on your definitions.. then a show could easily costs around $25 or so… of course.. that was based off of when I used to drink a kind of expensive beer..

So I’m rolling around in bed, not really sure what’s in my wallet exactly.. but the feeling was, or even is.. that I can’t afford to buy ANYTHING and still do A show at that sorta normal drinking level…

[it's worth mentioning that these shows tend to be my only get out of the house and socialize kinda things.. and I think part of what is keeping me down is not getting out of the house enough, particularly when I don't have internet at home]

The trouble is, of course, that food stamps don’t kick in till tomorrow.. and there’s these constant food cravings for food I don’t have….

Eating on Food Stamps and the Food Pantry

The food pantry is a strange place.. being a single dude.. I can have 2 bags worth of stuff a week… but.. the question is.. what exactly am I going to fill those bags with..

So I mean this is food that somebody.. or a business or something, donates.. and so you get these rows of canned food.. which.. you know.. is ok once in a while.. but you don’t wanna make a diet out of it.

Other then that there’s whatever is the freezers.. which is usually meat… and enough that could feed you for… I don’t know… 3 meals maybe.. depending on the week… an there’s serial.. but usually nothing I’m interested in…

Well.. ok.. so here’s there strange thing.. you have some of the cheapest of the cheap kinds of stuff there… and at the same time you get like organic grommet stuff.. that you could never afford…

And afford is the operable word here.. See… the poor.. are kinda forced into a diet where we don’t eat as well as…  well as well as the poor did say.. 50 years ago…  and I’m feeling like my diet is a real issue.. but… between a combination of not being a real good cook.. indeed generally being too lazy to cook in the first place.. combined with.. the state of food industries today.. I feel sorta screwed until such time as I ether fix my economic conditions, or get better at dealing with the cooking stuff.

The food in the house

So.. I can make another sandwich.. and something else.. and there’s serial and there’s what not.. there’s no real danger of not being able to eat for lack of food.

But there’s something inside.. that’s like.. when you try to live off of.. like say canned food.. or cheap stuff.. suddenly you find you’re self being impulsive, as if motivated by some irrepressible compulsion.. you find your self buying something to eat.. something that’s probably a little more expensive then you should get.. or this or that….

So the deal is.. that you really need to strike the right balance.. cause.. if you’re getting those impulses.. there’s a reason.

Right now.. well for I would say the last 15 days I’ve been living without the food stamps.. so in this time period.. I’ve been trying to make do.. and so there’s an ever increase urge inside me to go and buy something to make me happy.

At this point, of course, the questions is “can I just make it through the day?”

I don’t see that happening.. I see myself going to the super market.. buying something to drink.. enough to make it through the day.. probably get a candy bar.. cause those do make me happy.. plus I think they have some kind of a 2 for $1 deal going on right now..

Then I’ll probably get an energy drink or something.. probably 2 of them… and at this point I’ll be way over budget.

That’s the anxiety dream planning

Your in this state of anxiety.. and when you plan in those states.. it’s almost like you’re setting up your day.. based on your anxiety.. on what you think you can deal with… and there’s not a lot I feel I can deal with… so.. the deal is to take a pill and hopefully that’ll help.

I had wanted to go to the library today.. .but I’m looking at how late it is.. and realizing that..

Well.. gas costs money… and I’ve allotted $10 for gas.. for this week.. and I’m on empty at the moment..  So the question is.. well…  I don’t know how many times I can afford to go to the library.. and that’s the one condition under which I have internet access that last for longer then my laptop battery.

What other issues are there?

There’s the proverbial what I need to do but aren’t dong.. I usually attribute this to anxiety.. and that’s a big thing.

There’s been countervailing force lately.. one where I find myself doing stuff I wouldn’t other wise be doing.. which is to say stuff that I don’t do for psychological reasons.. it’s all a part of the hell I live in.

And.. well.. I started off by making a big splash with that kinda thing.. but i’m not sure if it’s not fading at this point…. hard to tell really.

It started with.. both quitting smoking.. doing a great job of cleaning up the crap in the sink… putting all the soda cans in a trash bag, and cleaning out my car to a great extent…. that was mind blowing stuff..

This week? I’ve made some further progress in the kitchen / sink area… there’s been some progress in other areas.. but mostly it feels like.. progress has come to a halt…

Accept that.. something about this.. the how I’m spending money thing.. seems to be improving..

So it fells like there was this focus.. and inside of that focus.. there was this great improvement.. and it just depends on where that focus is.. and there’s, at least at the moment, a limited amount of stuff I can give that focus to.

Ok, Ok…

What do you say we reward our selves?

Here’s a plan for the day… I’ll do all the fucking laundry in then ouse.. it needs it bad.. and I’ll.. do a bit more cleaning… of course i’ll do it after I reward myself.. which of course is stupid…  but so be it.

From Shame and Depression to Art and Business Strateg-ary

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I have at least a half hour to wait around in this library, so I’m wondering if I can think up something else to post on… I have drafts of some pretty decent stuff still on my Mac Pro.. so.. but perhaps I should try and riff on some of this or talk about.. oh I know……

How about we talk about my shame / life issues / psyche / damage / what is wrong with me?

Yeah.. thats a fun topic

Well I had this conversation with my therapist last Wednesday where she said, on the subject of shame, that kinda the best thing you can do about it is talk about it with someone….  err you think blogging it is going to far?

Well ok, there’s lots of issues…

So lets start with what’s going on right now

My car has this noise.. that is growing worse. It’s scary cause I’m poor, and what is worse is my car is un-inspected.. and I got a ticket for that.. and if I don’t pay it by x date.. I have to pay more.. and that date has gone by and I haven’t paid it.

Now I haven’t paid it cause I’m afraid of putting out my credit card stuff through unprotected open wifi, and I don’t have a phone.. but the point is I haven’t done anything about it.. I mean to message my case worker on the subject, but anxiety over the whole of the situation has kept me from doing so.

So, the car probably needs to get fixed one way or another, and inspected.. but I don’t know how much all this will cost, and have only limited means to deal with it.. plus.. when I leave it off at a garage, and have no phone, not to mention no internet at the house, how do I manage all this? So this stuff keeps getting pushed back, thus making the situation all the worse.

Meanwhile when my internet died, and then my computer.. I lost my calender which tells me when my appointments are.. and I missed an appointment, I’m pretty sure, with my dermatologist.. for which I will likely be charged $80 (remember I have $60 a week to live on?)

I also have shame cause I feel like I’m spending too much money.. and not dealing with any of this stuff, or other stuff.

Then there’s the issue that to find housing there’s an application process to the department of mental health.. and they might actually need the records from the dermatologist.

The result of this, and maybe rainy weather and general coldness.. has had me not wanting to leave the house, or even bed really.. which is necessary for email / internet / all communications with the world.. thus produces more isolation.. and thus makes my anxiety and depression worse.

Fun stuff

So this kinda stuff kinda often happens to me.. where I just kinda breakdown a bit and stop dealing.. and then feel kinda fucked.. and of course have lots of shame about it, which makes it worse… and thus this post I suppose.

Ok, so moving right along.

What I think is at root to all this is a combination of the wreckage brought about my a whole lot of life trauma mixed with a huge about of fear.. sometimes fear just to remain among the living.. but fear that blocks me, or challenges, my moving forward.

The solution to this is to try and be gentle with myself.. and not judge it so harshly.. and try and facilitate my own becoming.. and kinda try and built a supportive world around myself that’ll help me move forward.. but it is forever a struggle.

Strateg-a-ry

Now there’s also this deeper side to this that lives in my art.. a story I have to tell.. which is sorta what I’m trying to do with my art and with promotional efforts of that art.. or.. well I guess this is a long story.

See.. the idea is that a part of how you market something is in the story telling.. and the more drama / the thicker the plot.. generally speaking.. the more compelling the story.. so this is a story that’s to be told.. sorta in the art, in the packaging of the art, and in.. let say the promotional materials.

A combination of.. probably shame and lets say.. the trauma stuff.. and general unpleasantness of starring at the darker sides of your being.. and whatever have you.. has a way of making this stuff difficult to talk about, or even hold inside your own consciousness.. but the idea is that this is what my art is to explore.. or to try and explore.. and thus.. in so doing.. I gain some degree of control over it or.. it helps me to grow through it.. or something like that.

Further more.. the stories that are hardest to tell are usually the most important, most valuable stories.. and this is really the gift I have to give to the world.. assuming I’m strong enough to tell it and get through it.

Yeah.. so that’s looks like a decent enough post?

(still have like 20 minutes of downloading to wait through though)

Fleeting hopes

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I don’t really know what to post about.. I’m just sitting in a parking lot with open wifi and figured I should post something…

I’m in this kinda funny zone.. my loneliness has me wanting to post more.. cause hey, at least I have you to talk to, right? Err, are you even there?

I think I’m making some breakthroughs in my struggle with self.. but.. I don’t want to get to excited about this stuff.. but there is a kind of rising sense of hope lurking about.. hope that I could kinda sorta start feeling human.. or like..

Ok, so there’s a whole lot of stuff in my life, and in my psychology…. my life being in some ways an out ward manifestation of my psychology… that kinda keeps me feeling less then human, or like.. like there’s something wrong with me that keeps me from living a life that would be.. sorta less about pain…

On the subject of this problem… what I’m finding is new understandings of like.. what is keeping me here, and how all this is working.. and it seems like the tightness of the weave, that keeps it all in place.. is starting to loosen up a little bit..

Wasting time

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Apparently today is some kind of a holiday… which has created a few problems..

I couldn’t get an appointment to see my doctor to see about getting a chantex prescription refill… I literally only have about 2 and a half days left.. and I haven’t totally stopped smoking yet.. and you should generally stay on them for a bit after you’ve stopped.. and.. well.. I’m down to smoking not very much at all, only had a couple yesterday..

The big issue her is money.. that I can’t afford to both go out and smoke… and im in this mad lonely isolation, being without internet… plus a lot of economic things hitting me at once.. and there’s a real need to get out from under it all…

The second thing is I screwed up on was an appointment with a person trying to help me in my housing dilemma… which is a serious looming problem… but.. the messing up on it bothers me more then the effect of the messing up on it on the loom.

I meant to go to the library on some… its probably a wrong assumption.. that its somehow more secure then, say, mc donalds open wifi… in order to create a new google account.. but then there were also a number of other balls to try and get rolling.. and it turns out the Library is closed for the same reason as the hospital..

And so now I’m sitting here… in the heat… in my car.. in front of a McDonalds.. thinking I’d probably be better off if I stayed in today… and just worked on learning that HTML 5 business.. and whatever else.

Revising Plans of Attack

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So.. my plan of attack seems ever evolving.. I’ve now got some kind of a studio thing set up using this computer which is.. perhaps “good enough for government work…. under the Bush Administration” if not good enough under any other circumstances.. We’ll have to see how that goes.

In the mean time.. what the real priority item seems to be is building the web presence the right away… I’ve sorta tones down my expectations in relationship to the last time I post on the subject… and am now thinking more in terms of “iterations” of the site.

Basically the plan is get my music into online distribution.. from what information I’ve been able to get on the subject.. it seems reasonable that one can actually earn a living from nothing but making music in a studio and running a web presence.. maybe not a great living.. but… making more then $500 isn’t exactly too high a bar to exceed… err though as soon as I start making money I start loosing benefits.. so I’m not really sure where the real bar is, but it can’t really be that high, right?

So that would at least seem to be the primary objective of the site… other objectives would include:

  1. Trying to sell myself / services as a producer / engineer
  2. Attract team member of both the creative and business persuasions
  3. Have some kind of online portfolio to potentially get jobs as a web design, graphic designer, animator, photographer, video production person, social web strategist, and whatever the hell else..

To do this I’m attempting to learn the latest greatest ( or “cutting edge” as they say in the cliche biz ) web technologies and techniques…

So basically my time ought to be divided up into collaborative adventures, learning web technologies, web design, music production… and all that stuff about getting my life in order as far as keeping the car on the road, avoiding homelessness, and um.. all that good stuff.

And hopefully somewhere in here I can do some networking

Ongoing sages of despair, downward spirals, and web design

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Not despair at attempts at web design, or over web design adventures and project goals, and or what have you.. but… just the condition of my life:  Where mental health professionals start talking about the benefits of mental health hospitals, soup kitchens, and shelters… The wonderful life situations surrounding all this.. forming the sub context for the web design adventures.. and maybe check out my last post on the subject for even more subtext on the design, or how about why I’m focusing on this problem as a pose to say.. video and content marketing, or more hard core electronic music production.

Of course there’s more tales of woe then all that… but who wants to be a Debbie downer?!

Yeah.. so web design

I’m a deep diver.. I suppose like that women from Silence of the Lambs? No.. I mean in the sense that when I get into a subject I go DEEP… [try talking to me about Nietzsche, Jung, Foucault, Evolutionary Psychology, Marketing, Business models, Technology, Art, Film, or African American Politics sometime] and I suppose its just that cognitive behavioral whatever.. that has me contemplating a career in web design.. as I jump into the subject.

A part of it is that you can really only go so far down this rabbit hole(maybe any).. if you’re not planning on using it as an income source.. and I’m kinda looking at it going “yeah, I really don’t think I can hack this poverty much longer.” (not to mention.. how do you survive in suburbia without a car?)

But it really is a massive undertaking.. I mean sure.. I know all about web strategy, as it relates to site design, subjects of digital and social media marketing, content marketing.. and blah blah blah… but understanding the ins and outs of hand coding HTML5, CSS3, JQuery/DOM Scripting, whatever code libraries and whatever you call those other things things.. along other echo systems stuff.. best practices and.. on and on.. is kinda a major undertaking…

And the thing is…. drum roll please.. my design ideas kinda require a pretty decent mastery of all that stuff.

My approach to Web Design Grand Poe Bah Master Hood (or at least designing one hell of a bad ass site)

I have a multi part plan of attack.. waging the good fight on multiple front’s, don’t cha know?

  1. Mind Mapping functionality and software architecture for special web app style wordpress augmentations (all business application centric)
  2. Mind Mapping (personal)brand values.. which should inform branding and the visual identity stuff.. to say nothing of what.. the visual stuff of the site should communicate or express (nor to say anything about site content)
  3. Making frequent trips to book stores where I poor through various books (really all the current books on the subject) of CSS3 and HTML5. In many ways this is about exploring the functionality / feature sets of the technology, to think about how I might use these to facilitate my design ideas, and or how those ideas might be constrained.
  4. Starting to look at lots of visual design again.. thinking about art making from communication to expression.. with a high emphasis on impact.. aiming to kick a whole lot of but-ox in the process (this is perhaps an area of some of my greatest strength)
  5. Starting to explore various technologies / stuff out there that might aid me in the design and development process (with a particular emphasis on the free, as you might expect)
  6. Doing a lot of thinking / brain storming / whatever on my larger business strategy, objectives, and tactics.
  7. Did I mention I’m exploring musical collaborations? This might impact the design one way or another… as this effects business and musical strategy stuff.
  8. I suppose related to 6 and 7 I’ve been looking deeper into various music industry issues..
  9. Did I mention I’m still researching / on the adventure to try and resurrect my Mac Pro from the dead?
  10. Exploring possible business ideas.. or lets say alternative business objectives that the site might address.. that would shrink the scope of the design and possibly allow me results quicker (and perhaps getting some revenue quicker)

I’m not really sure what I’m forgetting here

Stuff I plan to be doing shortly

  1. Do lots of little visual design / art making.. nothing big necessarily.. its more about getting the visual muscles going, explore various visual ideas that might contribute to the design, and make stuff that might fit into are larger scheme of stuff that.. is beyond the scope of this blog post.
  2. Running through various tutorials and code experiments.. to try and see if I can get my head around how to implement various features I plan to use in the final site design.
  3. More mind mapping for information architectural stuff and like.. navigation / err what the site map might look like.. and perhaps moving towards wire framing.

I had thought of going deeper into some of these rabbit holes.. but this post is already kinda long…

I suppose what is most impressive about this.. is that I would be able to do this as my life falls apart, as every couple of days there comes a new blow that knocks me down, and all the rest of it.. err maybe I should make a post on that madness?

The end of the world: My computer died

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This is the end of the world for me.. It seems like some kind of crazy miracle of the gods that this my computer’s death hasn’t sent me spiraling out of control into some suicidal black hole.

The only explanation I can think of is denial.

To understand how apocalyptic this feels for me.. you have to understand two things

  1. Something about my relationship to technology
  2. Something about My life situation

My relationship to technology

I am a media artist.. which has always meant, and continues to mean, that I need the most powerful computer system I can get my hands on… My need for computation power, graphics power, disk space, and RAM… are huge.. several times that of nearly anyone I know.

My computer is where I spend nearly all my time every day. It is the heart of my studio: it is the tool that facilitates my work and life.

For as long as I can remember, every dime I made went into the studio: I’d rather spend money on the studio then underwear or socks.  If I could find a realistic way to live without an automobile I’d so so in a second for the sake of my studio…

My computer that is now not working.. is.. I want to say 5 or 6 years old.. but still pretty bad ass. A Mac Pro with 2 intel xeon processors.. each with 4 processing cores.. all running at 2.8 GHz.. there was.. I want to say 10 GB of RAM… I had two internal drives set up as a soft raid.. all together.. between the 4 internal drives and a Drobo.. there was more then 10 TB worth of disk space.

Now that my computer has died.. I’ve lost access to the Drobo and the soft raid.. which means the projects I’ve been working on and the digital assets that are of considerable value.. I also no longer have a decent audio interface.. which means recording isn’t really happening for me..

I still have this laptop, but I have no video production software on it, nor the ability to get video software onto it which means my content marketing campaign plans are now a none starter… There is neither enough room on this laptop or a means of installing my sound software to continue my music work, on the level I was working on – never mind that this computer doesn’t have nearly enough RAM or processing power.

My life situation

I’m have several social anxiety.. actually “sever social anxiety,” from a clinical diagnosis perspective, is not a strong enough term.. it’s social phobia(s)… pretty serious stuff… which has me on disability.

My disability check is considerably less then $500 a month.. even with food stamps… The income is not always enough to afford to eat the whole way through a month without going to a food bank / pantry.. where they help feed the hungry…

I’m now in a situation where I’m facing eviction and homelessness.. again.. and I don’t know what the moving expense will look like.

My car has some kind of problem with it.. a noise.. that scares me.. and its un-inspected… I don’t know how I’m going to afford to take care of that, pay the citation the police officer gave me for it a couple days ago, and afford the move.

Living a life of this kind of poverty… every bump in the road, financially speaking.. is magnified by huge amounts..  which means life is considerably more stressful.. and indeed anxiety evoking.. then any other economic strata…

I mean.. you can look at some of the most stressful jobs in the world.. but still..  starvation, homelessness, and utter self destruction are generally not even on the imaginable horizon.

The Heart of the Problem

Basically.. I can’t live like this indefinitely… somehow I have to pull myself up and out of this situation… out of this kind of poverty.

It seems.. I sorta don’t have a choice.. I’m an artist.. and there’s just no getting around that.. and the feeling is that the only way to pull myself out of starvation is via doing the artist thing… which seems like quite the long shot.. but…

Well.. with my computer… the one that died.. I could make my music and art.. and I was hoping.. work on a video centric content marketing scheme.. to try and develop an audience that would help bring me out of poverty and perhaps to attract music business people whom I might be able to work with..

But now.. with my computer not working.. all of that is threatened.. and… with it.. a good deal of the hope I had been clinging to.

The only hope really.. is to somehow find the means to have it fixed.. but how do I find the means? I don’t know.

Self doubt in the creative process: My Remix Project

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So.. its late at night.. and tomorrow is the Boston Media Makers.. which means a couple things… #1 That it’s been a month since I’ve written a blog post.. and #2 I should go tomorrow.. but it being as late as it is.. I may not be able to find it within myself to wake from my comma to make the venture out… though it would no doubt be good for me…

Err….

So right now I have to “pimp” my music.. well actually ask you for your vote. All this amounts to is clicking on this here link….  at the end of which is a remix I did for this contest.. and so what I’m asking is you take a listen.. and if you dig it.. to vote for me… as of my last check I’m 28th out of 184.. although I’m not entirely sure how real that number is.

I guess to limit folks making multiple votes.. they ask for your email when voting…

Marketing is story telling: The Story of the Remix

But I should tell you about this production.. and I should.. or plan to.. do a number of blog posts about the production of this remix.. the story.  It seems that every jump into the arena of music production / art making.. for me.. it’s always a story, a drama.

How good am I?

The plot is many fold and I can’t give it all to you here and now.. But.. well here’s the question “How good am I?” For me.. that’s a question that fills me with a certain amount of dread.. My sorta.. response / thoughts / feelings.. with respect to what I think the answer might be.. well there’s many levels to it.

There is a part of me that is confident.. and a part of me that.. well where my feet don’t always touch the ground and I have these grandiose feelings about my work sometimes… but that grandiosity seems kind of bipolar because.. it also swings down into these dark depressive states of wondering who the hell am I kidding.. to think I’m good enough to even bother really….

And so it is that in making the music, making the art.. its like I find that I have to do battle with this question.. these fears… the demons that lye waiting around.. for me surrounding the question… this is my inward psychological challenge.

The other part of the challenge

The next part of it… is that I have no business calling myself an artist.. or this is what I believe.. if I’m not working my ass off trying to make it happen… Now this part of me sorta believes this question of “how good am I?” is sort of a bullshit, besides the point question. It’s the part of me that doesn’t exactly believe in talent.. but believes in muscles… that the more you work out on a muscle group..  the stronger it gets.. and so the point is I need to really work my ass off.. when it comes to this muscle group of music production.

The trouble is I have to fight my way through the demons of self doubt in order to obtain a state of… working my ass of… I have to kind walk on fire.. and.. all this sorta madness.

The measure of success

So on this level the remix was a success because.. I did indeed work my ass off on it. And not only did I work my ass off on it.. but I believe I also grew a hell of a lot from the experience… so there we go.. two victories.

Of course there’s another part of me that says “Look, it was a full time job that ended up taking about a month’s worth of work, and if you win the contest.. you only get $1000… and is that worth all the work you put in? And when you then see that there’s 183 people that I’m up against.. It starts to seem like a really mad thing to try and do.

But… but.. if I were to win.. that would be powerful.. It would be powerful because I put everything I had into this project… and so it would be a kind of affirmation towards working so hard.. towards putting everything you’ve got into a project… and not only that.. to all the fears of not being good enough.. it would say “um dude, you just won in a contest where you were up against 183 other people.” Not only that.. but then there’s the prize money… and your work getting released on an album where you get some kind of exposure and do some kind of reputation building…

And to the degree to which getting into remixing is something I need to do.. as it could be a source of money.. it would be a hell of a first step.

So of course that’s one reason why I’m asking for your vote.. and hell.. even if I don’t win.. but do well as far as people voting for me.. that would mean a lot to!

So what I intend to do is spend the month promoting my remix.. and a big part of that will be writing these kinds of blog posts.. on the story of the production.

So I guess this is one story.

Anyway… so once again.. here’s the link to my remix where you can vote.