My Imaginary Interview

     "...Take Aesop Rock, for example. A rapper with a massive vocabulary who never gets any kind of radio play- well, not mainstream radio, anyways. Not the top 10 hits or anything. But he manages to rap intelligently. Or there's that super left-wing rapper, Immortal Technique. I don't agree with his politics. Every single one of his songs is a political commentary on one issue or another, and usually it's anti-American, but at least he's taking a stance and defending it intelligently. M.I.A. almost made it a bigger part of the international music scene when she had that single from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, (almost every single one of her songs has a deeper political message), but a lot of people seemed to miss the point.

Probably the same people who combined Rihanna and cats....not that they don't pair well.

    

      And the bigger point is that the majority of mainstream music doesn't make you think, and it's not going to start anytime soon. It's completely possible to do it, the rappers I've listed, and probably a dozen others I can't remember or don't know yet, they do it every day. We just don't enjoy that feeling of flexing that muscle all the time. It's exhausting. But it's healthy to do it sometimes, and I wish a bigger percentage of music on the big radio stations were more intelligent.. or at least used more than the same 10 nouns, 9 verbs, and 8 adjectives. Dumbing things down just shows disrespect for the audience, at that point.

Come on Music Industry, give us something.

      Then there's the other side of the argument, where you look at it from the radio station's perspective and think, 'What's going to make money?' And you decide you don't want to take that kind of risk, because you could alienate a lot of people that way. The industry giants are so big at this point, they have so much invested in every release. Well, they got that way because they're in the business of making money, not losing investment money. The people who are actually directly in charge of the radio play, DJ's and their assistants, they don't see a cut of those massive profits, so they definitely won't be playing a political commentary during the lunch hour, even though they could. That would be some kind of grassroots DJ revolution...and honestly, when is that a realistic thought? It's gotten so only the indie artists can take any kind of risk.

     So risk, intelligent or political music in mainstream media is all kind of a pipe dream. Even if it were a bigger part of the musical conversation, I think it's more of the kind of conversation that ends in, 'Well...that's a shame.' Instead of the kind of conversation that ends in, 'This music is terrible, change the channel!' Now, music industry is basically 'Bonfire of the Vanities,' but with prettier people."

La Folia

Today, I'm working on a piece called 'La Folia'. Which sounds like this:

But when I play it, I'm gonna make it sound like this:

ONLINE QUIZZES

After exhaustive research into the online quiz database, I think I may finally understand who I am. 

Thanks internet, I was really lost there for awhile.

You know you look ridiculous, right?

Some people dance like this:

And some people dance like this: 

So in my house, I will dance how I please,

And I will thank you, brain, not to fucking judge me.

Scene 1

"Oh, hey! How's deployment coming?"

"Oh, I'm doing good."

"Doin' great"

Night Owl

So by nature, I'm a night owl.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, because I can get everything I absolutely need, (like food and water and....well, that's about it), in the afternoons.

But if I want to have a functioning social life outside of the home, or schedule appointments any time before noon, then I'm going to need a normal circadian rhythm. To that end, I've been trying to get on a normal, healthy sleep schedule that does not involve binge watching netflix and then playing video games until four in the morning.

Every night I've been trying to go to sleep at midnight and get up at 8. That seems like a nice, normal time to be sleeping.  Unfortunately, my body has gotten used to my ridiculous schedule, and thinks that going to bed any time before three is some kind of strange, tortuous insanity.

So the result of my effort has been a lot of laying in bed staring at the insides of my eyelids for hours, and still waking up around 10:30 or 11:00. "Ha!" says body. "You're stuck this way! Learn to be a recluse!"

To help things along, I've even gotten rid of most caffeine and alcohol, except in very limited quantities. My body is just as happy about that as it was about the schedule change. (For anyone wanting to try it, you should know that a life without coffee is a cold dark place with no comfort or refuge.)

Then, last night, I had two cups of coffee, went to a friend's house, helped finish off four bottles of wine, and then stumbled around my house until around 3AM. Back to my normal schedule.

But this morning, bright and early, I woke up at 8. Wired and unable to go back to sleep. One of the super great things about being awake so early has been that I am able to fully appreciate the length, breadth and depth of the hangover I have.

I can think of no reason that my body would do this

except maybe revenge.

Wine

Dear friends and neighbors,

Why did you force me to drink so much when we hung out last night?
I feel terrible today.
I wouldn't have drunk so much,
but you lashed me to the wine glass and made threats.

I think.

German Orchestra

You haven't heard anything until you've been completely surrounded by a bunch of germans counting to ten in whispers.

They had to do it during a long pause in an orchestral piece, otherwise everyone would have lost their place. People do it in English orchestras all the time, but it's just not the same.

My new stand partner is doing it along with them, but for the rest of the practice, she's muttering to me in Italian because I told her that it was close enough to Spanish that I could understand her, (turns out that doesn't extend very far beyond the simplest sentences), and she doesn't want to speak loudly over the conductor. Whenever our violins go down, she starts. I have absolutely no idea what she's saying, but it is obviously hilarious, because she's laughing pretty hard most of the time.

I really need to learn German.

I'm pretty sure Cesar Milan suggested this.

My dog signals that he wants to come in by knocking on the back door with his paws. He will repeat this once every thirty seconds for the entire night until someone answers. Sometimes, he will do this within three minutes of having been outside.

Like he just wanted to check and make sure everything is still where he left it.

Again.

So, sometimes, I just stand there in the warm house- maybe get down on eye level with him while he's knocking to come inside, so he knows I mean it, and whisper at him,

"No one is coming to get you. No one can save you now!"

Then I laugh maniacally.

So he knows I'm dominant.