Last night, uke came over, bringing an amp and an electric cello and then he, Maynard and I sat about annoying the neighbors for a couple hours.

It was a hell of a good time. We weren't trying to play any particular songs, just hoping to get a nice sounding groove on. I've been listening a lot to Godspeed You Black Emperor!, whose music I might describe as "multiple layers of various stringed instruments repeating phrases through multiple crescendos" so the idea of having a more "classical" stringed instrument appealed to me.

(I don't remember mentioning to Jeremy that I was really into GYBE lately but I could have. Who knows? He has like, ever instrument imaginable.)

I have to say that the cello injected a radical change to both the sound of the music and how we were playing it. It has a very distinct sound that was a marked contrast to the deeper, crunchier sound of the guitars.

I found that in order for things to sound good, individual layers didn't have to be complex as complex as we'd (Maynard and I) been playing. I'd been used to zipping all over the place with more complex phrases but seriously, half the time we got away with some simple two or three note things, since there was an additional layer to fill the space.

The cello's tone also altered what kinds of phrases I normally played, which was both good and bad. With just a guitar and a bass, and the guitar in a distorted DADGBe, I tended to keep all my phrases on DAD, with an occasional G. This was giving me the sound I wanted in an almost artificial way: distorted chords standing in for an additional instrument layer. I didn't use the higher pitched strings because they stood out too much with only a bass line to back them, and ended up being reedy and demanding.

But with the cello, there was another higher pitched instrument, and it gave me "permission" to move to those strings. This was "good" because I got to flex some less used muscles (and it also made me wish I'd tuned to E instead of drop D). This was "bad" because I hadn't used that muscle training in a while, and I kept missing strings (fingers more used to stretching to the low strings than cramping to the high ones), or jumping to the wrong fret (because I've let my ear training atrophy with regards to the relationships of G, B and e).

I took a photo here.

I think what we need to do next is add some sort of percussion. I don't think a full kit; maybe even just someone with some bongos. Possibly another guitar or even something more exotic like a violin.

This evening I transposed someone else's music. Maynard and I are working on this because we can do it without a drummer. Ten points to who guesses what it is. (Tuning is Drop D; requires distortion for best effect; version transcribed was originally for piano).

e | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
b | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
g | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
d | ---4--------------------4-----------2-4--------------------- |
a | -5---4-5-2-4-0--------5---4-5-2-4-5------------------------- |
D | ---------------5-4------------------------------------------ |

I will never bother you.
I will never promise to -
I will never follow you.
I will never bother you.
Never say a word again,
I will crawl away for good...

(What follows is some pretty personal stuff. Do NOT read the following as a "cry for help." It isn't. Seriously.

It is posted publicly because I realize two things: that I have been extremely opaque in recent months, holding everything close to the vest and thus preventing anyone from getting close, and that I feel I was always happiest when I was being transparent because then I had control of things.)

I have been pretty damned happy the past couple weeks, even given all the other things going on (Mom's cancer, economy woes, you name it). Stressed out, sure, but in a good mood.

It is probably obvious to those who know me that I have been engaging in what could be classified as "self-destructive behavior." I could probably stand to drink a couple fewere bottles of whiskey, for instance. I only ever get involved with emotionally unavailable women, thus sabotaging any chances I have at having a positive emotional cadence in that regard. I'm eating like crap; I don't work out anymore.

But I know all this, and it isn't really "self-destructive" so much as it is "self-flagellation." It is transparently obvious to myself (and others, such as Maynard, who knows me best) that I am actively keeping myself from getting "burned" again. It's a known quantity and one that has been the topic of several conversations with my family and friends in recent weeks.

I met a woman last week. She's young, but smart, charismatic, and incredibly attractive. I am pretty sure I've gotten all the signals. Maynard says I should ask her out, but I feel that I'd just sweep her up into the aforementioned intention for failure.

The thought makes me happy nonetheless. Even if I never speak to her again, I'm pleased that I didn't immediately seek to destroy. Over the weekend, I even failed spectacularly at being self-destructive.

Which is why yesterday was such a shock.

I will move away from here.
You won't be afraid of fear.
No thought was put into this.
I always knew it would come to this -
Things have never been so swell;
I have never failed to fail
Pain

Pretty much immediately after I wrote about my switch from Lunesta to Ambien yesterday I found myself flailing inside the blackest depression cloud I've encountered in many, many moons.

As a rule, I do not perceive myself as being a "depressed" person - at least, no more so than any other human being I know. I have ups and downs, to be sure, and I've had a spectacularly shitty year, but for the most part I consider myself to be "up beat".

I am not the only person who thinks this; most people who I interact with feel the same way.

So it came as quite a shock to me yesterday when I found myself seriously considering giving up and ending everything.

Everyone ponders suicide from time to time. For me, every time that thought crosses my mind, there is a switch that gets clicked somewhere in the cob-webby recesses of my skull that activates some sort of animatronic ass kicking machine that delivers a solid whallop to my posterior. I drop the thought, and I move on.

But not yesterday.

I'm so warm and calm inside.
I no longer have to hide.
Lets talk about someone else -
Steaming soup against her mouth.
Nothing really bothers her;
She just wants to love herself.

That fact - that the animatronics didn't fire - was enough to tell me that something was seriously fucking wrong. At this point, the Batman process kicked in and told me "this is probably chemical in nature and not indicative of reality."

Minor research into the possible side effects of Ambien indicates that "altered thought patterns" was one of the known effects.

So I made an appointment with the doctor and saw him yesterday afternoon. He, too, expressed surprise at my mood, since, in his words, I have "always struck him as up beat." We agreed that Ambien obviously disagreed with me and he pulled me off it, substituting Restoril for my chronic insomnia instead.

There was also a short conversation that I assume he was required to have with me regarding whether or not I was seeking hospitalization. I wasn't; I just wanted to fix what was broken.

By the time I got home in the afternoon I was feeling about four thousand times better. For one, I had taken steps to change things. Taken control, been proactive rather than reactive (the fact that any residual Ambien [which has a half-life of like, three hours] had been flushed out of my system by then probably helped, too).

I will move away from here.
You won't be afraid of fear.
No thought was put into this;
I always knew it'd come to this.
Things have never been so swell;
I have never failed to fail
Pain.

Last night, Maynard and I jammed for about two hours. We both picked up our instruments only intending to play for five minutes or so and the next thing we knew it was late.

We've been doing that a lot lately. It has been cathartic for both of us (he is going through his own shit).

I remember when I first started playing, everyone I knew said, "oh, you'll love it, playing guitar is a great way to get rid of angst and anxiety." I didn't believe them at the time because I couldn't play. Far from decreasing stress, it amplified it because I was so frustrated by my inability to play.

Now, though, I know what they mean. We set down and just play. Sometimes he follows my lead; sometimes I follow his. We are in sync musically.

We open the porch doors and turn the amps outward so the music doesn't rattle the other apartments. I stand in the doorway and smoke cigars while playing. We drink beers.

The other day we had a rather nice thing going for about ten minutes and then one of us fucked it up (probably me). At that point, from the street below, we heard someone shout up: "HEY! Don't stop! That was great!". We had a little audience of three people going on.

It felt good. It felt like progress.

I write music that sounds like the desert. Sometimes it is aggressive and hot, but lately it has been the mellow sounds of creatures waking up as the sun rises.

There goes the siren that warns of the air raid
Then comes the sound of the guns sending flak
Out for the scramble we've got to get airborne
Got to get up for the coming attack.

There is something black and vile that is running through the "current events" thread of my family. I am not yet at liberty to talk about it publicly, but suffice to say that it involves the words "oncologist," "chemotherapy," and "lumpectomy." I'd like to discuss it more, but there is a moratorium on public discussion until everyone in the family has been notified.

I'm seriously, seriously getting sick of this entire "people I care about having heart attacks and needing bypasses and other life-threatening illnesses" schtick.

I am exhausted and frustrated by it.

I wish, sincerely, that it could be me that these things happen to. Surely, it would suck, but I can take it, and then I would feel less helpless. As it stands, I can only watch from behind the glass as horrible things happen.

Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines
Remove all the wheelblocks theres no time to waste
Gathering speed as we head down the runway
Gotta get airborne before its too late.

In the "good news" category, my contract with my dark masters has been extended through the 31st of March, and I am told it will continue past that (EA has a policy of only allowing 3 month contracts at a time, so they continually require renewal).

Since my impending project schedule will likely keep me busy for the next six months at least, I'm feeling relatively safe despite the fact that the company has been laying off people right and left.

I've been working a lot lately. Probably too much, but I've had a project that's been nipping at my heels for the past month or so pretty hard. In fact, I am demoing it tomorrow for the client as well as a couple high-level people. So I spent all day (and the early part of this evening) applying a lot of spit and polish.

Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live. aces high.

I've been playing a lot of guitar lately. So much that the other night I ended up with blisters the size of Texas on my fretting hand . . . and one popped. That made me slow down for the next couple days.

I seem to be up against a new "wall." In my brain, I'm hearing all sorts of stuff, and I can tab it out, and then even pull it off . . . just really slow. I keep doing a lot of speed exercises (like spending an hour or so every evening pulling off scales while watching TV or something) but for some reason I just can't do the stuff I write at the speed it needs to be.

I think I'm getting old.

We (Maynard and I) got a microphone and set it up with the gear in the apartment and then promptly realized we didn't have anything to route it through. So we tried putting my vocals through a bass amplifier for a bit, and that sounded frickin' awesome for the most part (since I have a very low singing voice) but anything mid-range or higher sucked ass.

So I got this old Fender monitor from my friend Joe. Only, it isn't powered, and I don't have a spare amplifier to push through it.

Move in to fire at the mainstream of bombers
Let off a sharp burst and then turn away
Roll over, spin round and come in behind them
Move to their blindsides and firing again.

I finished Prince of Persia last night (review here).

I have to say that, now that I'm finished, my review is still pretty bang-on for my thoughts. The combat got more tedious (as expected), but the story kept me captivated - even the post-credits activities (if you play it, you'll know what I mean). I found the ending to be a bit of a bleak nut-punch, but that's okay, because there was hope in the form of a "to be continued" thing.

This is infinitely preferable to the "to be continued" ending of Assassin's Creed, where I couldn't care less about the story or any of the characters by the time the game ended.

(Maynard sat and watched the final fights and the post-credits stuff with me. He said it was enjoyable to just watch.)

Bandits at 8 oclock move in behind us
Ten M-E-109s out of the sun
Ascending and turning our spitfires to face them
Heading straight for them I press down my guns

Speaking of bleak, we went to see The Wrestler over the weekend.

It's a Bleak Steak served in Bleak Sauce with a side order of Bleak with a Red, Bleaky wine. But it's also an excellent, excellent film - one of the best of 2008 - and well worth seeing if only to remind you of how much shittier your life could be.

Rolling, turning, diving
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die.
Run, live to fly, fly to live, aces high.

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere.

2008 was a year of defeats.

I don't really know what, if any, major accomplishments I managed to pull off last year. It seems that most of my time was spent being reactive rather than proactive: there was just so much shit rolling down the hill towards me and those I care about that I haven't been able to secure any footing and make forward progress.

(There is still stuff coming down the hill. I just can't talk about it yet.)

2009 will be better, I think. I actually have a resolution (sort of) which is mostly to sort of clean myself up and stop being such a mess.

Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow.

I had a most excellent visit with my parents and family over the Christmas holidays. I had not been back to West Virginia in four years or so - and hadn't made the journey alone since 2001.

My time was mostly spent drinking, smoking cigars, and shooting the shit with my father. Our relationship - his and mine - has improved so much over the past fifteen years (pretty much since I moved out) that he has become one of my best friends. We talked about everything - including politics, which is a subject we tend to avoid (we agree to disagree, for the most part).

I managed to get in all the food I planned: Jim's Spaghetti House, Tudor's Biscuit World, Midway Hot Dogs, Chili Willi's, and my mom's fried chicken. I ate a lot. I think I've gained ten pounds.

While I was out there, I had hoped to find a decently-priced semi-acoustic guitar. In this I succeeded (I found one for four hundred dollars) but it was a peice of crap, so I did not purchase it. It felt kind of cheap, and I swear to $DEITY I think it had a plastic fretboard.

While at the pawn shop, I thought I had found the Holy Grail: a vintage 1957 Fender Stratocaster. However, upon doing some investigation and matching the serial numbers, I discovered that it sadly was not a fifty year old guitar but was instead probably made in 1986. Still a good guitar (and I really want a good Strat) but I couldn't justify the expense.

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
Mad world

I saw several movies.
( Details )

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen.

The return trip to San Francisco was much better than the outward journey. My luggage even followed me, which was a pleasant surprise.

The most surreal moment was when I was strolling through the central hub at Charlotte airport and I heard what I thought was a muzak version of Mad World. Not the Tears for Fears version, but the really sad, depressing one. Turns out it was a kid - maybe fourteen - playing it on a big grand piano.

I think I was the only other person there who knew the song.

(Riddle me this, Batman: why, if we are under "heightened alert", did they give me real, metal silverware - including a knife - with dinner on the flight? Do they somehow think that terrorists cannot afford first class tickets?)

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me.

This morning it felt like someone had opened my skull and replaced my brains with some kind of itchy cotton that had been soaked in pain.

That means for new year's eve I . . . well. I don't really remember what I did, to be honest. I'm pretty sure alcohol was involved. I know that I hadn't planned on partying or anything like that, but when I got home from the airport, I found myself instantly bored, so I went out.

Today I have been productive. I changed the litter box, restrung my guitar (slapping on some higher gauge strings), and did a bunch of work (I have a project due on the 5th and time is getting tighter and tighter on it).

Maynard has been staying with me for the past two weeks, and will likely be here for the next several. The reason why is his business, so I'll leave that quiet. However, having a roommate is a new experience. I haven't lived with someone I wasn't sleeping with in maybe fourteen years.

We are keeping different schedules and he's been very busy (and I've been out of town) so we haven't seen a lot of each other. He's camped out in the library right now on an air mattress but I expect that if this becomes a more permanent arrangement we'll move the books out of there and he can make the room his own.

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
Mad World
Enlargen your world
Mad World.

Man, I'm soooo not going to go into the nightmare about how my flight was delayed two fucking days and they lost my luggage and then found it and whatever. Flying sucks; end of story.

I am in West Virginia. It is Christmastime. It has been extraordinarily surreal. Most of this time has been spent shooting the shit with my father over beers and cigars.

I flew in on Christmas Eve and I've been out drinking with crews from my high school years every night since (save tonight). It's been fun - words I would not have thought leave my lips a year ago.



cheezaddict and I have been hanging out a lot. I ate a Christmas dinner with her family (after one with my own family, so I was very fat and happy). It was good hanging out with her parents; I like them lots.

Last night we went to Jim's Spaghetti House - which is a bit of a Huntington tradition - with her parents. I was singled out by a diminutive woman with silver-grey hair who called herself the "spaghetti nazi" for extra special attention while we waited in line for a table. Eventually we got one, and I was sitting in John F. Kennedy's old chair (I moved for the photo, courtesy of Jenny).



Later, she and went to see Doubt at the theaters in Pullman Square. While waiting for the show to start, we saw an enslaved horse.



I thought about touching it, just to set it free.

This evening my father and I watched Pulp Fiction together. He had never seen it. It was quite entertaining to watch his reactions.

I have located what I think is a vintage 1957 Fender Stratocaster. It is on sale for about two thousand dollars. I'm not sure how authentic it is; I am going to go down there this week and check its serial number against a pattern I know that helps to determine age. I may pick it up.

I just popped my D string, while changing strings to avoid this and I don't have a spare.


|------------------------------------------
|------------------------------------------
|------------------------------------------
|------------------------------------------
|------------------------------------------
|-----1^p0--------1^p0-------1^p0----------


Ow. That hurts.

While yesterday I was feeling very discouraged about my progress with the guitar, I feel much better today after my lesson with Mike.

I brought up my concerns with him - that I didn't really feel that I was making any serious progress over the past six weeks, and was very frustrated - and he understood what I meant, and then told me that I was totally, completely wrong, and that I was actually pretty advanced for what he normally gets.

The reason I'm frustrated, he said, is because I'm jumping around - and that he's letting me. Boom Boom Boom Boom is actually much further along and complicated than he'd normally be teaching, and that we'd gone completely off-book. Stuff like A Major scales and power chord progressions, etc. We're both equally to blame for this: I'm a very curious person, and keep setting the bar higher for myself (but too high). And he and I are really "friends first" and "teacher/student" second, so we get into rambling conversations about the production techniques used on Nevermind to correct for Cobain's shitty guitar or the philosophy behind the scales used in Crazy Train.

So we decided to dial it back and focus on a couple things to get those right before going back into the branching, and he pulled up a couple songs (David Bowie's Heroes and Let It Be), both of which I could actually play.

Also, it turns out that I've written my first song. I had made up this chord progression in order to practice switching between fingerings, and then I got bored with it and threw a rhythm onto it. And it turns out that my little thing was more complicated than anything else we were doing specifically because of the strumming I was doing on it. He and I wrote it out in notation, and then went over it beat-by-beat, trying to strum, tap my foot, and speaking out the beats all at once.

Which was funny, because I totally sucked at it when I was doing all three things (playing, tapping, and speaking) at the same time. I can do the thing like gangbusters otherwise. But it is good practice to get into tapping and speaking at the same time. Tapping so that I don't drop the beat, ever, and speaking because it's the first step towards singing and playing at the same time.

(Though, I'm not happy with my singing voice. I think I sound like a frog; Mike says I'm more like Johnny Cash, but I think he may being kind.)

So, that's good.

I've been trying to learn John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom Boom Boom" for like, six weeks now. And I just can't do it. If it's not the timing, its the weird fucking 'upstroke' on the strum. Or the riffs. Or switching between riffs and chords. Or whatever.

It's just really frustrating because I've been working at this tune for a really long time, and I don't think I'm making any forward progress at anything overall.

I think that it is effectively impossible to play the "ooo-weee-oooh, weee-oooh-ooooo" part of the Dr. Who theme on a guitar. I can't find anything that remotely approaches its sound. I may not have the right pedals, and as near as I can tell, it's a slide from 3 to 12 and back.

However, the opening bass part (dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun, DUN-DUN-DUN, dun-dun-dun) totally is (Eo x 6, E3 x 3, Eo x 6).

So, funny thing.

The other day I was thinking about tracks that had recognizable "pick" openings - single strings instead of chords - because I wanted to, well, learn one. The obvious, most anthemic tune that fits this bill is Hell's Bells, so I got a tab for it and started goofing around on it.

Today, Mike and I went over it and talked about Angus Young (and AC/DC in general) for a half hour or so. I've listened to Back in Black on repeat four close to four hours today, actually; just paying attention to the way Young puts things together. It's very simple but also elegant. The opening picks to Hells Bells, for instance, are actually chords (Am/Asus4/Am7) - only, he only picks one string out of the chord at a time.

So that brought me to going back to a List (capital 'L') that I've been working on for a couple months. My List of Important Rules, which I'll get around to finishing someday.

A while back, I decided that somewhere in the top ten would be the following rule:

"Never trust the music taste of a man who does not own a copy of Back in Black".

Say what you will about the other albums (most of which I think are 10 filler tracks and one gem), but Back in Black is just plain excellent. Consider even the opening bell tones: the story goes that the bell is there for Bon Scott, who died from alcohol poisoning, listening to the chiming of Big Ben.

It's a terribly powerful album produced by a band who had lost its enormously popular lead singer not five months previously. It's an album that, merely by listening to it, makes you feel like a bad-ass. AC/DC and Queen, the kings of stadium loudspeaker music everywhere.

As is my wont, I spent an hour or so today lost in the intertron, reading pointless information about any one particular subject (hey, what kind of pickups does Angus use? Where did they get the bell sound from? Hey, neat, despite being an Australian band, all of the founding members are from Scotland).

Turns out that July 25th (Wednesday, in the US) is the anniversary of the release of Back in Black, the number two selling album of all time in the world (42 million, holy shit - and 21 million in the USA alone).

Synchronicity is awesome.

So, happy twenty-seventh birthday, Back in Black. May you continue to be used to rock out football games for another twenty-seven.

Around noon today, while on the way to the music store, I said to gnat23, "I should pick up some spare guitar strings." She replied, "I never break strings. Like, ever."

I did not buy spare strings. I forgot, actually.

Two o'clock, we are playing around with with a new tuner, and she is tuning my higher E string (the lowest string on the frets).

Of course, it breaks.

And of course, I have no spares.