Deeper stuff...

Here we go again. I really need to write more....and I will, whether here in this stinking computer or with pen and paper.

Just had a nice show last night...nice, but not perfect...still lots to do....lots to improve.....lots to give....

and there in lies the key...give what you have to give....and I think my gift to give is (at least I want it to be) music. I'm sitting here listening to Herbie Hancock (Manhattan Island off The Piano album via Pandora ) and realizing that I want to leave that sort of body of work....and I'm not even really a huge Herbie Hancock fan....but I like it and I know his contribution to music and I know that he's made a life out of sharing his gift. I'm also not saying that I'm that good of a musician....but I think I hear music differently than most folks, and that I hear all kinds of stuff in my head that I'm dying to get out....ever the "victim" of self-discouragement....that little voice inside me that says I'm not quite good enough....or "you don't have the time....or the money".....or maybe that ever present fear of "performing"....of becoming so transparent and opened and vulnerable that people will really see me for who I am...and that maybe they won't like me.

Truth is, I have no idea what I'm doing....both in general daily life.....and on the bigger scale/on this planet. I love my kids and my wife....and many folks around me....I love them so much it makes me sick (in a good way....like when I really stop and think about them, I'm so overwhelmed with emotion that I start to well-up with tears of joy....true joy....that sort of fleeting joy that is so pure you rarely recognize it and its gone). I'm surrounded by people I love and whom love me; I am blessed beyond imagination....yet for some fucked up reason, I find it nearly impossible to attain and indeed maintain any sort of happiness....I'm just a sad soul at the core I guess...or at least I've resigned to be one....at least while listening to great piano music on an overcast afternoon after an all night rain in June....

I like photography too. and maybe I'll try painting. and I wouldn't mind being a writer...or a film maker perhaps...the craft fascinates me.

I want a piano.....a good piano......and I want to play it everyday.....and record songs....and show then to people and have them like the songs and then they buy lots of cd's of the songs and I pay off the mortgage, and play the piano everyday and record a few more songs....then maybe take a break from the piano and build furniture or something for a while, or design and build a magnificent garden or something neat like that and then maybe play the piano some more or the violin or the guitar...I like them too.

To garden and work wood and spend as much time as possible with my beautiful chidren and wife and play music. Play music and listen to the rain.

New Life...

Can't get over it......time is precious........money is valuable......and the root......

50's Pulp Advertising Art

Plan 59

Fascinating stuff.... good for some mindless browsing.

Fair Use is Dead!

or alternate title: "Whats mine is no longer mine".....

Check out this article over at ars technica: A CD insert to make Sony blush. Glad I read this article...I was actually considering buying the Cold Play CD....not any more....f' 'em. Now, I'm all for paying the proverbial artist for the proverbial art....but the RIAA and other big players in what is being called DRM (digital rights management) have no idea...or at least seemingly don't care about (undoubtably to thier own eventual demise) the end user, their customer, their "bread and butter" as it were. None of the current technology-based DRM schemes in place or even in the pipeline (at least as far as I've read) consider the end user and his/her relationship with the artist creating the product.....I haven't figured all this out yet, but here is some more interesting (if not somewhat outdated) reading on the subject:

Scott McCloud's "micropayment" idea

and a response...


more later....