It’s been a long time since I posted.. have a bunch of crap on deck to post.. but it hasn’t been posted yet, so it might just never get posted… and anyway.. I got about 15 minutes till I gotta leave for my therapist appointment.. so I figured… Why not try and spit out something.

I guess the biggest theme that strikes my fancy.. or just seems important for me to hear and hold onto is “believe.” Believe in the stuff of.. well I don’t know what to call it and don’t have enough time to get into it.. but dreams.. and.. passions.. and who you are in the deepest sense and that feeling of purpose you have about life…  about your ability to get where you need to go.. in order to actualize..

So.. that’s maybe one of the biggest themes.

Another big thing is this whole box of philosophical whatever… I think of it as a kind of toy box.. for the intellectual kids.. right? It’s this kind of complex way of understanding stuff that gets beneath surface phenomenology. It’s some badd ass shit.. and its sorta structured into this kind of critique of society.. including stuff like how we run business and whatever.. like critiques of management theory…. good stuff.

And then there’s the art… which is almost like applied philosophy… Like that’s the best way of putting it… Or its as if the philosophy was the theory and the art the practice.

I’m jumping of a giant cliff into the unknown with my art.. It’s pretty scary stuff in a lot of ways.. but.. I’m starting to see certain things emerge… that are like signs of things to come.. where all this jumping into the unknown is heading…  basically it’s heading to… knowing a whole bunch of new shit.. I mean that’s probably what it comes down to…

But it turns my music into something wholly new…. It totally changes the game.. and there’s a larger integration with the media stuff… I see a really kick ass potential here.

Ok.. so lets move onto points of anxiety….. about the art.

The main thing is i gotta keep at it.. and keep at it strong.. and work and work and work.. and find a way of making this stuff.. a lot of it really is coming down to craft..

Craft is like.. well some art is all about craft.. It’s like genera conventions and its about how well you do that genera.. not what concepts you bring to the table… you can roughly divide up artists, and other types for that matter, into the conceptualist’s and the crafts folk…. and in a lot of ways my work really rocks it on the craft level.. that’s always been a big part of my shtick.. but the concepts.. yeah.. that stuff is strong to I think…

But anyway.. .the craft is the thing I’m worrying about now.

I’ve been looking at a whole lot of dance music production.. the techniques.. how you do it..all the little pieces.. and sorta integrating that stuff into my work.. and trying to move my work in a more dance friendly direction.. but it’s not totally been working out.

And then I guess it’s like bringing the mix engineering stuff to the next level.

And really.. more then a lot of all this.. I’ve been focusing on sound synthesis.. Absynth, Kontakt, Massive, Omnisphere.. those have been my main virtual instruments that I’ve been busy programming..  and really the heart of the craft issue for me is.. gaining some real mastery over these instruments.

What else?

Oh.. there’s the subjects of words.. and they can do.. little captured bits of audio.. of life of people talking of whatever.. cut into the music to tell a story.. and all that goes into that kind of story telling and how it integrates into the music and everything.. that’s big stuff… anyway, lets edit and post.

One of the things I’m wrestling with is “what the hell is going on in my work.” Artists… we often take these giant jumps of intuition.. or perhaps flights of intuition…  we do things and we don’t know why… or.. you do a bunch of things.. you know why, but you have no idea of the bigger picture it’s leading towards or what is going on really.

Really what I think is happening is I’m “fighting my way through the basics:” On the one hand I’m super deluxe bad ass advanced… show me some of the best out there, I’ll show you how I can kick there ass.. one hand tied behind my back.

But.. but.. my incredible super human abilities… well.. I’ll let you in on a little secret… “they are very narrow.” What this means is.. inside of a narrow expressive range.. lets say… lets just use language this way even if it obscures certain things…. and because you’re really narrow.. it takes less time to master.. so you can be like mad master in a short span of time.. just cause you have this much more narrowly defined thing.

So that’s the deal, right? I’m a bad ass.. and I have this whole structure I created.. a structure of bad-ass-dom.

[editors note: what I'm trying to say is that my art represents various systems of narrowly defined ares.. that come together into a larger whole... this relative to skills, talent, whatever, and it's part of what allows to do such a broad spectrum of stuff]

And now.. what I’m doing…. is something different

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

That’s the fundamental question, I believe, we always need to be asking our selves… that is.. our own becoming.. .is the thing…. the important thing.. the thing about life that makes it worth living… the reason for getting up… so what are you becoming?

In a general sorta way I’ve gone through a number of phases… that all sorta seem recent… that are vaguely about “well we’re making electronic music, we should learn something about this.”

Like once upon a time I went out like an anarchist on my own personal journey… profoundly.. to worlds no one else had ever visited… I never even saw the well worn path of.. the way most folks go.. and now I’m sorta searching for the well worn path of… where folks are..

I’m taking this stuff.. these ideas… of.. well lets say the ideas of electronic music.. in a well worn sense..  and trying to bring them into my work.

When I kinda view what I’m doing through this lens.. I realize and understand all the struggling I’m going through… why the going is so slow.. cause I’m trying to climb such a steep hill… and I kinda don’t even want to acknowledge that there’s a hill there.

Once upon a time.. my biggest goal in a project was to “do something interesting.” Interesting… is… well usually it means you’re not trying to do what everybody else is dong.. you’re doing you’re own thing… or you’re finding novel solutions to problems or.. you’re just doing something unique.

As sooon as you start trying to do “what everybody else is doing” you have this really deep problem… and that is.. now it’s really obvious how to measure you.. you’re gong to be measured in how you stack up with everybody else.. .so suddenly.. it’s not about.. this inward voice pointing you in whatever duration… it’s how do you define you’re self as someone worth paying attention to.. in this over crowded room of people… in relationship to those other people.

So… here I am.. in my studio… working.. and.. the thing is.. some of the measuring sticks I’m using have to do with this crowded room situation… trying to work out how to move into that room… and do well in that room… but also.. fundamentally.. I don’t really believe that that room is really my room even… or what I’m about is not about how well I do in that room over there.

Here’s what I think… you gotta go into the crowded room… and you gotta do something there.. that attracts attention… and once you have attention… from whoever you get you’re attention from… that’s when you gotta prove you’re self as being… all that and a bag of chips.. or up to snuff or.. whatever it is you are.

Once you do that.. that’s when you have a real chance of developing a following.. or that’s what I’m thinking… and maybe you can get folks to follow you away from the well trodded ground.

And I guess it’s always about this tension.

What I’m dong now.. with this site.. this project.. all my ideas… is really doing something that’s super out there… so that once I go into the that room… that there will be this amazing trail… that people can follow…

[eitors note, this looks worth posting]