this is my hand.
it exists in a place between my head and my heart.
with it, i find shapes.
shapes of sounds.
mysterious elevation.
sonic devotion.
when i play a magic happens.
when my heart and hands and head swirl in a lustful haze.
the soul bleeds through.
this is my weapon.
this is my hand.
i don’t know
will i be there for you
random things and unpredictable people
exploding wheels
things thrown in the dark
questions and drones and dreams
afraid of sleep
this time
there is no reason
a word or two on creativity.
sometimes you don’t know what is going to happen.
sometimes nothing does.
sometimes something does.
there is a magic that happens when this element meets that element.
when you can let go and be thrown as though you were lost in the surf.
it’s as though you could drown in this ocean.
but that would be okay.
5am. eyes snap open.
damn it.
i could toss and turn like i did yesterday but I’m not in the mood for it today.
looks like i’m getting up. good thing i set up the espresso machine last night.
the next thought that pops into my head is that i never did figure out how to make that sound.
the sound? you know the one. that sound but you’ve been chasing. i think you thought of it after you saw this youtube video of some crazy expensive pedal, and you wanted to make that sound but there was no way you could afford to buy that pedal.
so you thought about it.
and thought about it.
you thought about delays. you thought about samplers.
you thought about bit crushers and granular synthesis.
you thought about signal flow. what comes out clean and what comes up dirty. and figured it all out one night as you were driving home from work but you never did have the time it seems to connect everything together and go looking for that sound.
but now its 5:15 in the morning you’ve had your espresso and now you have this thought on your mind.
will it all work?
there is only one way to find out.
isn’t there?
you feel it pressing down on you.
like gravity. this persistent weight.
time.
there’s never enough of it, it seems.
but here’s the thing.
there is no ‘time’.
it is a completely arbitrary construct that you can ignore.
computers.
the brains of our age. microchips and circuits and things that are as magic to me as lightning was to the people who invented zeus.
they are precise. mechanical. perfect. incapable of mistake. if there is a problem, it is the user.
so if i take my computer from korg and my computer from arturia and my computer from roland, and i let them run with their own sense of time, what happens?
they drift.
that’s right. the computers tell their own time.
sure i could link them together, but that defeats the lesson here.
if three computers can’t share the same concept of time, why should i?
and why should you?
throw out your watch. throw out the concept of ‘getting older’.
resist time.
it’s just a concept.
.
the first pedal i bought was the boss bf2 flanger.
might have been some time around 1989.
bought it second hand at a place out in scarborough which has since been torn down to make town homes, and which is less than 5ks from my current work place..
i bought it cause it was all i could afford.
and cause the cure used flangers.
i have a phenomenally poor memory for things like which side my heart is on.
but i always know where my flanger is.
bought back then.
used it tonight for my future.
nothing better.
squee ah ah ah ah ah ah ah whoo.
i spent last week in the hospital.
yeah, it was no fun.
but if there was an upside to it all, aside from getting healthy, was that it gave me time to think.
there are things that are important, and things that aren’t.
the people you love.
health.
sleeping in your own bed.
appreciating the things you have.
the view out your window.
music.
life is pretty precious, and wasting time on things that aren’t important, things that are negative, things that don’t add to life’s tapestry are, a waste.
politics. bills. jobs. apathy. bruises. negativity. worry. they aren’t the kinds of things we should spend time weaving into our tapestries.
so laugh.
care about others.
care for yourself.
make something.
love.
im looking out my back window, sipping on my coffee, listening to a song i like, with a book on my lap, waiting for my wife and kids to get up so i can tickle them.
and then im gonna play some bass.
there’s important work to be done.
im gonna get on with it.
