The Argument

I rarely reblog anything. However, I was really impressed with the clarity and directness of this man's argument regarding LGBT rights. Please check it out:

def shepherd: Why A Heterosexual, Married, North Carolinian Father of Three Cares About LGBT Equality: I am a heterosexual, married, father of three, who has lived in North Carolina for most of my life. There have been a few ugly North Carolina...

Coming Home

My friend Alexandre Lunsqui – an exceptional musician, professor, thinker, and composer of truly questioning music – said something a few years ago that remains key to my life today. I can’t even remember the exact conversational context now, only the simple statement "I want to wake up and think about music." It really struck me then and the line has stayed with me since, such a clear and concentrated expression of singular purpose and codified passion.

I have always felt that my best friend (besides my wife) Jason Lind has labored as a remarkably underrated and unappreciated visual artist. One of the most truly creative and original people I know, he possesses an unrelenting imagination and love of ideas, and whether with others or left to himself he is constantly constructing rich, unique worlds across a spectrum of media and formats. Nonetheless, I’ve watched his best skills go to waste again and again as he's passed from under one shortsighted boss to another, with only the rarest exceptions. Jason and I have been creating art together pretty much since meeting in high school, and working through ideas and projects with him continues to rank among the great joys of my life. One of many positive consequences of choosing to reengage my real life has been the opportunity to spend more time collaborating him and other people like him again.

It’s been an interesting process this last year+ as I’ve had more space for compositional work while at the same time initiating and re-initiating a number of ancillary projects. Among these, one in particular has allowed me and a bunch of important people in my life the opportunity to do something together, and this project recently landed us in the Hollywood Fringe Festival. In my professional roles over the last few years I’ve grinned-and-bared-it through countless exceedingly boring and unpleasant conversations/meetings/social events, and I already have too many memories of looking around the room and wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life that I had found myself surrounded by a roomful of lawyers and other utterly disconnected and powerhungry people. Hanging out in the beer tent of the Fringe Festival these last few days and meeting so many interesting, authentic, and adventurous individuals, it’s been such a pleasure of a tangible reminder to stop from time to time and just look around and see where I have returned to, breathing a sigh of relief that I stopped with that other game before I’d gone too far and sacrificed too much of myself.

It has taken a few years for Alex’s statement even to seem like a real possibility to me, and the fact is that I do still have to wake up and think about something besides music first. However, I'm much closer to that other reality now, and these days the money work is direct and quick and flexible. The real key is that when all that's finished I still have most of my day to think about my music, my family, and my ongoing body of work - whatever else my amazingly talented friends and I might come up with on any given day.

Letting Things Slide

So I began working on this blog a bit over a year ago now. I realize I’m an insanely late starter with the whole blog thing, one in how many these days? I was never much interested in blogs or blog culture and am usually the kind of person who takes some time to get involved with whatever the cool new mode of communication happens to be. Until spring 2010 in fact, I never thought I’d start a blog, and this project only really happened in the end out of some kind of basic necessity.

When I was a student, I spent some time running the graduate New Music group. I had a lot of amazing experiences in this role, and the process helped initiate my fire for producing. One of my responsibilities was arranging the weekly composition colloquia guests, most of which were local or in-house, though we had a decent budget for others further out as well. Once when I attempted to invite John Zorn, he instead turned the invitation around and let a bunch of us to come visit him in NYC. We took him up on his offer, subsequently engaging an awesome pilgrimage to meet the experimental music godfather. When we finally left after a few hours of unbelievable conversation, he said something to me that’s stuck ever since: that I might ultimately find more success changing the system by working outside of it. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t come to completely believe him for a number of years; for better or worse, I needed to see it for myself.

When I resigned from my last job, it wasn’t just the end of that job or, say, a budding formal career in New Music administration. Much more painfully, it was the effective end of a dream that I could be a part of true and significant progress in large US New Music ideas/systems by being a part of that system. One of the realizations that hurt most and that ultimately convinced me to leave was coming to truly understand how practically these visions and plans for ways that things could be improved, these things that were possible—that I was utterly naive in believing that the individuals with real power actually meant what they said when they agreed with me toward wanting to engage significant organizational advancement. Instead, I allowed my zeal to make me a target for use by powerful people who had no interest in real transformation, since one basic consequence of this change would be somewhat less power for those powerful individuals. So it goes, I see it, but it was the second time I faced this basic lesson and I decided that I don't have any place in my life for a third.

Nonetheless, the instinct that had ultimately led me there in the first place remained following my resignation, and in fact had ironically amplified as a result of what I’d seen: I still maintain a belief that things can truly be so much better, that better ideas well executed can indeed lead to significant improved change across the New Music landscape, and that real progress is possible if people with control are truly willing to do what's necessary. But that's the crux, and is in fact why it's so much easier for effective change to happen at the grassroots level. Anyway, progress is indeed taking place, everywhere, as creative musicians and producers are making new things happen in new ways—though at least regarding New Music in the US, it seems that they’re usually not the ones with the biggest pocketbooks or the legacies to protect (exceptions do however exist, to be fair!).

So to come back to the initial point, I left the job still with a million things on my mind, about New Music but also just about trying to actually live as a creative and curious individual in the world, and writing this blog felt like some good simple thing I could do to articulate all this mess in my head, little by little and piece by piece. And indeed, in many ways it has been an important part of finding my way back to some things I'd let others distract me from for a spell. So I posted on the blog religiously for about a year, barely missing a week—in part, just to make it real, but also because there usually feels like there's just so damn much to say. Why I haven't written in a while now is not really relevant, except to say that the blog had lately accrued some unnecessary rules from which I needed to extricate myself, and I have. When I started this, I didn’t really know what the project would become, and though I do have a clearer picture now, to be honest I still really don’t know where it’s headed and in fact I’m not really interested in dictating a path like that anyway—in honor of the life I had let myself become lost from and that I am now very gratefully living again, I am allowing it change as it needs to change, so long as progress is being made in some way that feels relevant to me.

Anyway, even though taking a little break from the blog was right and necessary for a number of reasons, I was feeling a bit guilty about not "maintaining my self directed responsibilities" until my old friend and secular shaman Peter Gilbert reminded me again about the importance of letting things slide. It’s true, there’s a place for letting things slide, just like there's a place for getting things done. And though I still work pretty aggressively and consistently, I think it’s one more point of good evidence regarding the positive shifts of my recent life that sometimes I can just let things like this slide, just pause certain tasks while life needs to go elsewhere. Part of that whole balance thing.

A final note: I can't believe how much has happened in a year, nor how wonderful and unexpected life can really be if you're invested in being a traveler. I am so grateful for the decisions we've made and the life we live now, and I believe more than ever that there's no other way than to truly follow your heart, no matter how insane it may appear, no matter how hard it may be.

Cheers my dear friends and thanks as always for reading.

My Faith

That, in the end, investing in a more thoroughly-considered and finely-crafted work will indeed prove the most valuable path. That no matter how things may presently appear, a dedication to the highest quality and most adventurous work personally possible will indeed win out in all the ways that truly matter most.

The thing about New Music

It may seem a deep irony, but the fact remains that I haven't enjoyed the majority of the New Music that I've encountered over the years. Or, I should say, a lot of it is okay and more than its fair share seems pretty pointless beyond providing the composer an opportunity to occupy someone else's time and attention for a space. I will, for instance, tend to enjoy a random pop song for what it is more often on average than a random work of Contemporary Art Music. I guess I've just found way too much of what I've heard at concerts and across the field to be wanting in the things that I most value in that music. Too often, new pieces seem to lack either seriously original ideas or a real interest in presenting the audience with a thoroughly well-crafted and well-considered work, if not both.

However, while I may too often find the results of my genre/style/field/whathaveyou to be fairly jejune, and while I'm suspicious that too much New Music is actually about concerns other than the art work itself, the key for me is that when this music does work well, the resultant experience is more thoroughly engrossing and comprehensively remarkable than any experiences I've had with exceptional examples hailing from any other musical genre. I've indeed been heavily influenced by and continue to love all kinds of music, and have engaged very personal and magical experiences with, for instance, the works of Jane's Addiction. Nonetheless, a truly exceptional, original, and well-crafted piece of Contemporary Art Music occupies me in a way no other music quite can.

This music can be difficult. This is Pollock, not Kinkade. Complex art requires a personal investment from us in order to truly bloom. However, wonderful complicated works can multiply this personal investment, while the unexceptional simply occupies our time and frustrates attempts at any kind of understanding. It's up to the composer, the artist, to make every bit of difficulty well worth the effort - because time is not something to waste, and because when this music does pay off, the experience can be special in unimaginable ways.

The Significance of a Remarkable Teacher

I walked into James Heiner's Theory and Musicianship course at Los Positas Junior College in the fall of 1996. Not counting cramped guitar lesson studios, I'd never actually studied in a music classroom before this. I'd been involved with the visual arts from a young age, but hadn't started playing the guitar until I was a sophomore in high school. Working through various rock, jazz, and classical lessons, I practiced like crazy and subsequently helped start a band later in high school. Though the project never got very far, it nonetheless consumed my life for a couple of years, and it was in the context of this group that I was first forced to figure out the basics of creating and assembling music.

I had little larger life direction when I graduated from high school. Las Positas Junior College sits right next to my home town and was a convenient and obvious choice. Attending community college, I could easily study full time, work nearly full time, and still leave plenty of space for the guitar. Nothing else really seemed that important or interesting. Though I'd done fine in high school, I hadn't bothered to take my SATs as I had no deep desire to go anywhere in particular. Music was the only thing I really enjoyed doing, though I nonetheless still couldn't envision pursuing it as a career. Given all this, my plan was simply to tread water while I searched for the thing that I wanted to engage "seriously."

Within this process, it made sense to fulfill some general credits while seeking an attractive path of study. I also reasoned that enrolling in a few basic music theory courses would both fulfill humanities credits while simultaneously helping me to develop as a songwriter. As I noticed no indication otherwise, I incorrectly assumed that both of the music courses for which I'd signed up were oriented toward novices, and I was therefore utterly unprepared for James Heiner's opening speech to the class that fall. Among other things, Heiner explained that those in the course needed to know how to read music notation, and that everyone in the past who'd remained for the entire year had ultimately opted to major in Music. Hearing this, I knew immediately that it would be my last day in Theory and Musicianship.

A number of us all went up to James Heiner after that first class. I explained to him that I'd made a mistake, that I didn't belong here, that I couldn't read music, and that I would never be a Music major. He simply smiled and replied, "stick around." Within the year, my band had fallen apart and I'd declared my degree, transferring to UC Santa Barbara to complete a concentration in Music Composition a few years later. Looking back, I cannot now imagine my life being about anything else. I have been very privileged to study under a number of remarkable teachers over the years. Nonetheless, James Heiner literally changed everything for me.

The Practice

You have to avoid thinking about the results. You remain focused on accomplishing the small work at hand - today, at this moment - to the best of your ability. To decide for yourself the work that needs to be done by you, and then to set about accomplishing whatever those ends may require. It is so easy to become distracted by so many things, such ancillary things. But the future happens so fast, and there are often only two distinct madnesses from which to choose. It is both incredibly simple and yet remarkably difficult, but in the end it is about the daily practice of opting for a personal reason above a general insanity, about actively choosing for yourself what matters most and then investing life in whatever that actually is, piece by piece and instant by instant.