../melody in chaos
Youtube user Saboruchan takes us on a journey through a “virtually untouched” abandoned bowling alley in Haikyo, Japan, that opened in 1973 and closed in 2018. Through the modern miracle of a cc-by-sa-nc Creative Commons license, the scene is soundtracked with “Chasing Flight” off my 2016 record Almost X.
Saboruchan’s affection for the abandoned-in-state space and its lost localised grandeur resonates through the video.… continued...
Park Slope is the mac ’n cheese of nyc neighborhoods. And not an artisanal macaroni and cheese, either. More like a boxed pasta with the powdered cheese packet, where the most adventurous thing that happens is the addition of a few drops of Cholula
Don’t take this wrong. Boxed mac & cheese is far from a damaged or morally bankrupt dinner.… continued...
One of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in sights, sounds, places, and people.
Alan Watts
You are the clear blue sky.
Pema Chödrön
Everything else is just the weather.
Let’s say you’re eschewing car travel to walk up Campden Hill Road, from Kensington to Notting Hill, London. Wearing a pair of Nike Air Force Ones, you are drawn uphill by memories of the mythical Geales for fish & chips and sticky toffee pudding, when out of nowhere you step in a pile of human feces on the street that entered the street-shitter’s GI system as a Double Big Mac Happy Meal.… continued...
written: 20191113.0927
key: A
time: 3/4
one for the lonely
I set out to write a “holiday song” a few years back, even daring to dream of expanding the thought into an EP I would definitely call A Very Westy Holiday.
The EP’s still a dream, but I was home in NYC a couple weeks back, and dusted off the track, while also dusting off Jolie, my Gibson ES335 modded by Paul Schwartz of Peekamoose Guitars.… continued...
“Matter is mostly empty space,” Luna piped up on a walk through The Club’s bocce courts. “Ergo, everyone has a big sucking vacuum between their ears.”
“Ergo?” I quired. “Fancy word for a fido.”
“Fancy?” she sniped. “You wouldn’t know fancy if it bit you in the Birken.”… continued...
Were there inner voices before there was oral language? Just curious what a Neanderthal thought to theirself.
Tbf, I still have no idea how an idea in my head ends up in a written word. I don’t think in words as I write. With no codified written language, maybe Ned Neanderthal, in his codified codpiece, had no facility to express it all, either.… continued...
In 2018, my wife Cat costume designed the Amazon series Homecoming in Los Angeles, so we decamped Brooklyn for a 1930s cottage aerie perched halfway up Laurel Canyon. I couldn’t bring any guitars to LA, because when you pack for an 8-month trip, with no back-and-forths, hard decisions have to be made between fashion studio and music studio.… continued...
DALL-E 2 AI INPUT: “A former musician, surrounded by destroyed instruments, under a pink sky, photographed by William Eggleston” (2022)
Someone randomly came into one of my social feeds today with “former musician” in their bio, and the notion sent me, well, riffing…
What, exactly, constitutes a “former” musician?
Did they never “make it?”… continued...
I write every day. I just don’t want to publish every day. Would that I did not think in drafts.
Hard to “Build that brand!” tho, when you have no routine around creativity.
otoh, deadlines make the writer, lest the lines go dead.
Running out of storage on a device hooked to a cloud is a feature, not your fault
Listening to music is a form of mind reading.… continued...
up ahead, opinions won’t be outlawed, but there will be no universal standard of listening. having any opinion on any thing will render at least some part of the world, virtual or irl, impassable
Dining off the curb is, in essence, tailgating, since you’re eating in a parking space
Dgmw, I love tailgating.… continued...
… continued...When you hate, you generate a reciprocal hate. When individuals hate each other, the harm is finite; but when great groups of nations hate each other, the harm may be infinite and absolute. Do not fall back upon the thought that those whom you hate deserve to be hated. I do not know whether anybody deserves to be hated, but I do know that hatred of those whom we believe to be evil is not what will redeem mankind.
all the things you love
20221003.2356
may you turn away
all the darkest things
and turn on the world
every time you sing
rolling on a ball
rolling off a log
rolling and falling for
all the things you love
may all the things you love
always
light the way you came
may all the things you love
one day
all know your name
breathe says the water
when trouble hides and seeks
to overthrow your order
and trade worries for your sleep
to the city walls
cast off doubt
with your bride fly off
reset the clocks
20220926.1306
may you turn away
all the darkest things
and turn on the world
every time you sing
road work outside your window
construction down the block
induction of plans
demolition of clocks
breathe says the water
when trouble hides and seeks
to overturn your order
and trade worries for your sleep
rolling on a ball
rolling off a log
rolling and falling away
from all the things you love
all the things you love
will someday
go back the way you came
all the things you love
will someday / always know your name
religion isn’t about the god, it’s about the faith
faith in a god (irrational and unprovable as any deity is) translates to faith in oneself
that is to say, one’s faith in a god is not faith in itself/himself/herself/theirself being true. one’s faith in a god is faith in one’s belief the god is true.… continued...
In this world, are there more cheap things or expensive things not worth the money?
commitment is a subset of love
none of my best performances have been recorded 😔
Sometimes I have a lot of trouble figuring out how people zipped themselves into their clothes
there’s more profit in the darkest futures.… continued...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_street
“A paper street or paper road is a street or road that appears on maps but has not been built.”
“Beware! Paper Streets” cautions a sign hung by the Kirkwood Bowl Foundation towards the base of Laurel Canyon, LA, where I lived for most of 2018 (Inside Track 002 dives more into why I was there).… continued...
10 Scratch causes itch
20 Itch causes scratch
30 GOTO 10
A few of the things you have fine-tuned control over in life:
How clean your home is
How made your bed is
How tired your dog is
Whether or not your passport is current and active
All of this adds up, really, to the one and only thing you have control over:
How you react to chaos.… continued...
the trick is to get paid for just being you
to “turn a trick” is to be paid to be someone else’s “you”
adopting war terminology for sports (“bomb,” “shotgun,” “blitz,” “strikers,” “defense,” “offence,” “flanks,” “attack,” “sacking,” etc) turned war into sports
Now, those not fighting are said to be “on the sidelines.”… continued...
There’s no such thing as “living a lie.” You live your truth and only your truth, and enjoy or suffer the fallout, whatever your truth creates.
The phrase isn’t, “you’re living your lie.” It’s, “you’re living a lie.”
At the very least, if it was your lie, you’d have some agency
If there are lives “lived in lies,” then life itself is devalued
The “problem” today lol isn’t that everywhere there’s lies.… continued...