Events are passing so rapidly, and I'm not as I had hoped, living up to the dream of making this fall a season of writing. I'll do my best to reconcile a few major events here.
On Saturday November 7th, the AP called the race for Joe Biden. I felt truly happy, and even had a glimmer of a new, or perhaps a very old feeling of hope. It's a little cheesy and put on to say, and maybe I was leaning into it too hard, but it's nice to see something go right for once. I spent the morning making music and found out on Twitter. Around noon I drove around downtown for about 20 minutes and blasted "We Are the Champions" in a hamfisted attempt to feel engaged or be a part of some wild celebration like I saw on Twitter. After several days of sleeping poorly and waiting for results, it was a great day. Of course Trump made a claim to fascism by declaring himself the winner, etc, so we will see what the future holds, but the victory is still sweet.
This past weekend I went up to Lebanon to vote, and spent a few days there. I found out that the biology teacher at LHS is going on paternity leave, and they are so desperate for a long term sub that my name came up. Without recounting the whirlwind of details, I ended up meeting the principals of the school who explained how I can receive a teacher rate of pay for the period providing I obtain an SOE from the DOE and pass a praxis exam. I'll be taking the exam tomorrow and should be in the running for the statement within the week, meaning I'll be teaching biology in New Hampshire in the room above my Dad's for about 6 weeks this winter, topping off a surreal year in an even more surreal way. It seems like it will work out, although I will need to commute and work full time while simultaneously attending class, but honestly considering its a path to a bonafide teaching license, pays great, and is a once in a lifetime opportunity I can't pass it up.
Besides, school has been going very well. My redemption arc is in full swing, though I feel I've slowed down in the past month from my high functioning regimen a little bit. Could just be knocking on wood though because I am keeping up with assignments, reading, and generally knocking it out of the park. I got a 101/100 on the last exam which I did comparatively less studying for. I've been chatting with my professors, developing rapport, and learning more about the business of Respiratory Therapy.
Increasingly I've been thinking more and more about medical school as well. Partially because of my habit of dreaming, partially the reintroduction of medical learning, and also from working at the University Club and seeing so many fabulously rich doctors waltz in and drop more than my 2 week grocery budget on a meal twice a week. It makes me think of Sophia and my other friends in medical school, and it makes me wonder if I might end up choosing to do it. Again, it's years away from now, but the allure of the prestige and the reminder that I can in fact achieve that in my life is enjoyable. It's a refreshing change of self image after spending the last 3 or so years steadily moving away from both the aspiration of a high achieving career in medicine and also moving away from that positive self image. I'm reminded that I do in fact have that capacity if I'd like, and being in school and generally trending more upwards lately is a big relief.
Work at the UClub is wild. It's fairly toxic, and while I have an appreciation for the restaurant biz and a sort of wonky love for the fast paced rigorous environment, there are more than a few reasons why I'm a little less than excited to stay on long term. We've been hemorrhaging employees for weeks now, from Dee to Tati and Erika (both in one week) to Cori and more, it's a scary place considering no one acknowledges their leaving. It's deeply confusing and troubling sometimes to be serving these rich and wealthy elite, while I am consistently condescended by my coworkers about pedantic and granular details of service. The direction a knife faces, which words not to use, what so and so ordered for breakfast 10 years ago, and the zig zagging web of late decisions and bad directions that I am constantly caught it. If I'm preemptive, its wrong or critiqued, if I wait for explicit direction, I'm seen as unhelpful or lazy. It's an impossible cycle of being made to feel wrong without ever being recognised for an earnest attempt. Such is life I suppose. With COVID spiking to March-level numbers again I predicted that the restaurant would close before Thanksgiving, and I quietly predicted that the management would lay me off without warning, and as we've closed indoor dining for the day off already I think my predictions will come true. Just as well, the teaching gig will kick in at a great time.
I got a kitten at the beginning of October, and I'm realizing how much he's grown. He just discovered that the toilet is in fact full of water and I paused writing this to catch the soddened cat and demonstrate the flush for him before towling him off, hoping he has the common sense to not repeat the venture. He's all black, very. sweet, and very excitable he's adventurous and loud and playful and also cuddly. Truly a perfect cat. When I came up to Lebanon to get him the first time I held him tight in a towel and fed him a syringe of warm milk my Dad prepared and had a fit of hysterics, I couldn't stop laughing. I took him to the vet for the first time on Friday and started checking him out, he's very healthy and was very brave. We got him from a crazy cat lady in Thetford who evidently let her cat breed with a feral one. living near her home and then would sell the kittens for $75 a pop. Not the most ethical thing I suppose, and in the world of adoptions and whatnot I felt sort of bad about it, but the truth is the adoption process was wildly difficult and chancy. As I've given him the catnip infused Citty Kitty pillow gift from his first vet visit I can see I've made the right choice.
It took me ages to decide on a name and I cycled through everything from Radio, to Rock and Roll, Ziggy, Broccoli, Leche, Beep (a fan fav of mine) before finally deciding on Echo. Which I think is quite cute.
I'm excited to see where he and I will go in the next decade or so...it feels good to have a pet of my own. A true landmark of my. adulthood. After all I am 24...how the years shall fly from here eh?
Lighting Fixtures came out in September. I didn't really promote it beyond friends, so it hasn't gottten much exposure. Truth is I don't know how to market at ALL and I kind of don't want to try. It's confusing because I feel pretty shite when I put all that work in and some people I know who just started producing in ableton this year get a spotify and 1000 streams in a short time...idk. Still, I'll continue to make music as I have been. With that project behind me I've been slowly, slowly, continuing to work on this new idea I've had for a while now. It'll be a new moniker, sort of a character even, themed around dance, synthpop, the color pink, and hard bass and drum machines. I'm trying to flip a bit of gear to hone in on the sound, selling the big looper and the Neutron in exchange for a bass station (best choice ever...wow) and I'm getting better about recording loops and tracks into Logic to do some minor editing to before I bounce it out. My logic there is to cut 5x more music than I would put on an album or even consider part of a set list so that I can practice the process and hopefully produce a short release or set list of about 30 minutes long that is 100% condensed and pure. I am having a hard time narrowing down the songs though, and a hard time rewriting songs. It's either a "throw-away", I didn't "intend" to write that came up on the octatrack and either found its way into a voice memo or was recorded wholesale into the computer without a plan for revision. I often end up hopelessly managing the original patterns in the OT making it hard to redo, and frankly I haven't been inspired to go back to that step. Instead what I'm hoping to do with a spontaneous song like that is to record each instrument track into logic one at a time, so I have at least the raw audio to manipulate DAW side if I'd like to feed it back into the OT to sample or play back. This maximizes both possibilities and work in rewriting. As it stands I've never bounced anything back out to the OT to process again, but maybe I'll find myself doing that soon.
The other way the song ideas I have for the project come into fruition are more traditional and I'll write or record several versions, using involving the bassline, and then continue to workshop that in my head with very little revision. Because I'm paralyzed by the final end product, I usually don't record a complete first draft which I know will get totally scrapped of that song, instead preferring to record shitty demos to workshop "off record" almost. These songs get to the core of what I'd like on the performance side, they are simple memorable, and more thematic. I could "cover" them or punch in fixes live to drums and such, it's the skeleton of a song which lends itself to improvisation and therefore doesn't have a "final version". Whereas the other side of the sound I'd like is more a studio endeavor, where each instrument is destructively mangled beyond recognition in ways I could never reproduce. In this model, I want to cut as many "mangled" sounds as I can (bouncing out options if possible) so that I can eventually choose which have the the strongest elements, the most hummable, the most resilient and memorable sounds. This is also good, and I think if I tried to sell nothing but raw groovy. dance music without any mystical production and sample techniques it might fall a little flat, so I don't mean to disparage this method, but it does lend itself to a linear way of song writing. Once I get a sound just right, to add too it or modify it can only be done by exhaustively and inaccurately reproducing that sound (probably not gonna work) or by sampling that directly, which has pros and cons. It is more traditional, in a sense, to commit to certain sounds as you. go and just build on them without much thought. It honestly. usually works, it doesn't need to be micro managed to sound good, most listeners will half listen once if you're lucky right? But I feel like I need to have that deeper level of complexity to prove myself as an electronic music producer, even if I am dropping obvious hints to it. I feel like I need to pay homage to the sounds and artists that inspire me, and to add a subtle element of sound design and texture to what ultimately should be digested as a "song" something with a sick bass line, easy groove, and summer song lyrics. Some mix between industrial deep house and punk rock, like peaches and prince and photay all put together and dispensed from behind a briefcase by a glam rock character in pink with a bass. That's my dream really, and though I'm spending far too much time considering the details in my head, I am practicing making those details happen. Cut 5x more.
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