metamorphosis

has anyone read "thus spoke zarathustra" by nietzsche?

in the beginning of the book, zarathustra bloviates that he must come down from his mountain in the forest - where he had been living a solitary life for ten years - to unleash his overflowing wisdom upon the local populace. he arrives at the downtown area and a small crowd is being entertained by a ropewalker. zarathustra decides to interrupt the entertainer and speak to the spectators. when he sputters off his mammoth concepts to them, they are bewildered. he decides to leave, feeling empty and depressed.

sometimes i feel that way when i teach drum lessons! hah, did i just take all the piss out of nietzsche?

don't get me wrong, i love to teach. it's just a job that requires patience. it also requires intense organization. it's hard to get a student to find point A, and it's even harder to have them make the connection to point B. this brain addled generation seems to have difficulty making logical connections between two points.

of course, i have trouble with it too. but i'd like to think that i'm curious.

i'd like to think that the modern teenager would be immensely curious and thirsty for knowledge, considering that the internet is an infinite sort-of free library. however, in my experiences, they just aren't. they are generally concerned with social networking - and that is about it.
yeah. i am a hypocrite. i use all the networking tools.
i've contemplated facebook suicide many times, but it's just too easy to promote my rock shows on there.
oh well. hopefully it'll end soon.
wait, i do like twitter. it's a nice way of networking without wasting your life. unless you do it obsessively, of course.
let's end this post on a positive note.
here's a list of "things i know right now":

i love art
i love my dog
i love my friends
i love my family

oh, and i'm also an endorser of ludwig drums now. i couldn't be happier about that!

coffee and vitamin e

right now, i'm typing to you from the "robert fripp suite" of adrian belew's basement. it's our temporary housing. we've been here all week making a brand new record.

our working schedule gave us only 5 days to complete 50 minutes of demanding instrumental music, and yet it didn't phase us one bit. i haven't felt this stress-free in quite some time...perhaps it's because our diet has consisted of mexican food and julie's gourmet cooking. for our final day of recording, julie made a show-stopping indian meal. let's just say the "fripp suite" has now been poisioned by some brown malodorous gases. gross.

for inspiration i've been listening to:

stravinsky's "rite of spring"
pierre schaeffer
henry cow's "unrest"
konono no.1
nat baldwin's "mvp"
alice coltrane
frank zappa's "lumpy money"

i've also been reading voraciously:

william kotzwinkle's "the fan man"
chuck klosterman's "downtown owl" (i keep getting negative responses about this from my friends, but i liked it for it's lonely charm anyway)
and right now i am in the middle of stephen hawking's "brief history of time". i've always found modern science to be fascinating, but high school was never stimulating enough to make me think about it (at least when i wasn't in school).
call me a nerd, but i'm having fun reading about quantum mechanics!

i will leave you with my favorite internet video of 2009 thus far:

2008 in review, 2009 predictions

i've been thinking about this for the past few weeks. in 2008, i was in transit during every month.

let's look:
january - u.s. tour with delicious
february/march - u.s. tour with adrian belew
april - u.s. tour with delicious
may/beginning of june - u.s. tour with adrian belew
middle of june - u.s. tour with delicious
july - canada/u.s. tour with adrian belew
august/september - russian tour with adrian belew
october/november - european tour with adrian belew
november - u.s. tour with project/object
december - australian tour with adrian belew

wow. no wonder i couldn't write any music.

speaking of which, 2009 has already started off as a productive year for me. i've been studying the elusive craft of composition in west philadelphia with a marvelous teacher named dr. benjamin boyle. he's the youngest person to ever graduate with a Ph.D in comp from the university of pennsylvania. go to his website and check out his "chamber music" and "art songs" - simply beautiful. with dr. boyle's help i am certain that i will be able to complete compositions with structure and intent.

i've also been attending bikram yoga classes twice a week. i wouldn't be able to focus on studying if it weren't for the power of this meditative yoga.

i also work for WDCDradio, an eBay record store. please peruse the selection and buy some records!

by the way, i have a brand new macbook pro thanks to my family. i can edit film, which means i'll be uploading all of my tour videos from 2008.

in the meantime, check out this wonderful video of the dude flying from the big lebowski:

tie me kangaroo down, sport

i wonder if writing a blog entry is conducive to completing a composition. it takes a lot of coffee to get myself motivated to do anything, and it's a shame i have such a hard time doing what i want to do, which is compose music.

at the beginning of 2008 i promised myself that i would complete 50 minutes of music this year.

i fell short. by a lot. it's sad and ironic. i eat, sleep, and bleed music. so why don't i have the proper discipline to organize my ideas logically? the relentless touring could be an excuse, but look at frank zappa. he could write a satisfying and compelling piece for orchestra in his sleep.

the real reason is that i have the attention span of a small puppy. i've been told that it's a dopamine deficiency. one thing that helps is practicing an intense kind of yoga called bikram. when i can find the time to do it, my focus is sharp and my stress disappears. if i could begin every day with that kind of disciplinary activity, then i could probably use more of my brain.

the brain is my favorite muscle. if i could flex it more, i would. on this current tour (australia) i've been having roughly two drinks a night. not good for my brain - but good for sleep. when i am home, i will be a good boy again. i don't like drinking. it makes me ugly and stupid.

so who can help me complete 50 minutes of music by the end of 2008? can anyone crack the proverbial whip and snap me out of my fear and laziness? or is it up to my own freewill? will i stop asking myself questions? will eric begin speaking in the third person?

beauty knows no pangs

traveling in europe is such a privilege.
right now, i am sitting in a mercedes sprinter van and marveling at the mountainous countryside. the snowcapped peaks stab and jut through the clouds. forget about the autumnal massachusetts foliage - these towering trees are burnt to perfection.
the places we've visited in the past week (switzerland, spain, italy) provide the eyes with drastically different kinds of beauty.

in lugano, the 45 degree angle of the rolling hills turned all of us into r. crumb characters (even if you kept your posture proper) and walking became a chore. however, the payoff was big. the hill not only led you into the bustling town square, but if you walked a bit further you could witness a freshwater lake replete with ducks, swans, schooners - all with the backdrop of the alps.

san sebastian, spain. a place with a sort of old world natural beauty that truly grabs and consumes you, in the sunshine or darkness. the evening: we roamed around the narrow, pungent streets with jack and coke rumbling in our bellies. the daytime: a beach with the purest, grainiest sand my feet have ever walked on. muy bueno.

barcelona, spain. didn't get to see too much of it. we were only there for one day. probably the best show of the tour so far. more importantly, best singing audience of my entire career with mr. belew. it was the first time the audience sang in key when the "complicated" part came in on "three of a perfect pair".

milan. can i skip milan? we weren't really in milan at all. our hotel was in some city i can't remember the name of. we did laundry on our first day there and i made an ass of myself by doing "italian social experiments". these "social experiments" involved taking my shirt off and dancing around a laundromat while an old woman stared in horror. at least julie thought it was funny.
of course, on the day of the show my left hand crapped out during soundcheck. up until that point, i really didn't drink enough water. dehydration leads to muscle and ligament weakness. very dangerous for someone who needs to move their limbs in rapid succession. of course, we had two shows in one night at the prestigious blue note jazz club. first show was okay, second show was fantastic.
when we weren't playing or doing laundry, i spent most of my time in the hotel room reading hans richter's book on the history of dadaism. i also wrote 4 bars of music while experiencing the bizarre drunken focus of drinking 3 glasses of red wine with 2 shots of espresso. i call it the tuscan speedball.

anyway, can anyone recommend free video editing software for mac os x?!

hungary pangs and watching the debates

the fall european tour has commenced.

our travels began a few days ago in budapest, hungary. the flight itinerary was not any more complicated than usual - nashville to detroit, detroit to schiphol, schiphol to budapest. a thin man greeted us with a huge smile that revealed the most interesting set of teeth i've seen in quite some time. andras halmos, the trusty tour guide. i later found out he was an accomplished drummer who has worked with john zorn and many others. he was instrumental in bringing us there, a process that took an entire year.

after sleeping off a little bit of jet lag, we spent the evening wining, dining, laughing, stumbling, and drinking apricot polinkas that evaporated upon contact with the tongue.

the majority of the next day was spent rehearsing and getting ready for our show at the trafo club. after waiting around for hours, we played. blistering energy. nervous excitement. a positive experience. the obligatory post show autograph session. julie decided to use her permanent marker as a tattoo needle. our arms were covered with ink by the end of the night.

we got a few drinks and i tried to sleep, but the final debates came on BBC World. i had missed most of the previous debates. my knowledge of obama's policies was non-existent until this particular event. perhaps it was so moving because i felt as if he was using the camera as a vessel to talk to us. calming and reassuring, like a real president.

mccain was as hostile and agitated as ever and it was painful to hear his small business healthcare plans. idealistic and downright regressive. can you imagine trying to sleep after that?

on our final day in the marvelous city, andras graciously took us over the blue danube via the freedom bridge, which leads to buda (the western part). i had no idea that budapest was divided into two parts (buda and pest). then again, i'm glad i know that hungary is a country (i.e. this awful video)

an observation: the foundation of european culture must be art. the architecture and city design is aesthetically pleasing. streets and buildings intertwine to create a heavy cobblestone labyrinth. underground tunnels take the place of ordinary sidewalks and in the subterranean world avant-garde violinists violently screech for forints. it's culture shock but i'll take the jolt, because i've never been so dissatisfied with the american mainstream until this moment.

do i associate myself with the european way of life? not always, but i know that the U.S.A. would benefit greatly from their philosophies.

hopefully i can post some videos from our stay...
but for now, off to lugano, switzerland.

hunger pangs or kenny bloggins

before i begin, i just want to say something:

the band magma is amazing.

the past few days of my life have been spent in mount juliet, tennessee at the fabulous chateau belew. we've been working arduously on new material for a piece of music entitled "e". i can't really divulge any information about track titles or anything else, but i can say that it ranks with the best of adrian's material.
you're going to ask anyway:

what is e?

a complex post post-modern symphony. working on it involves a lot of patience and attention, especially when learning the sinewy transitions and breakneck dynamic shifts. a true challenge for an untamed musician such as myself. when writing my parts i try to adapt the steve gadd philosophy of "being behind every note". in other words, this is a serious composition - think about the sum of the parts instead of just thinking about your own.

when we aren't burning our brains on "e", we're shoveling our faces with mexican food at cinco de mayo or getting toasted at j. alexander's. of course, julie always provides excellent lunches, and yesterday was no exception. we filled our gullets with a warm roasted vegetable salad, which was topped off with a side of homemade pita chips and hummus. scrumptious.

i better get back to work though. adrian's music isn't getting any easier by the minute.