Alright, alright!

Here they are, my excuses for not blogging:

-Life has been terribly busy of late. I've been feeling like I have no time for anything that isn't a basic bodily function.
-This blog started as a means to keep myself motivated to practice guitar. It quickly became an exploration of why it was that I spent so much time doing music. It really puzzled me because I wasn't even playing gigs let alone being financially rewarded. Then I figured it out and I lost a lot of my motivation.
-I got engaged. Yup, the former Lovely Un-indicted Co-conspirator (LUC) has agreed to be indicted. It took me a long time to set up and execute my plan for the proposal and as you can imagine this was the biggest thing in my life for quite a while. If I was going to write about anything it would be that* and, well, she occasionally drops by these here parts. As does my mother and there's no way I'd live it down if she found out about the engagement by reading it in my blog.
-There's other big news that I can't talk about yet.

Anyway, those are my reasons such as they are. The plan is to open up my subject matter to include more than just my musical life although I suspect that will always be a large factor in what I have to say. I've never had a huge readership and don't expect one, but there are a few people who still drop by regularly despite my lack of posts. Thanks folks.

*I will be writing about it as soon as I have some time.

Still on the road

Here I am in Moab. One of the mountain biking mecca's. These last few weeks have been crazy. Las Vegas was surreal. Zion Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Moab, this whole part of the world: all surreal in a much more natural way. It's the sort of landscape that must be fake, the beauty of it is that absurd. It has an atheistic that speaks to the part of the brain that never climbed down from the trees, the part that still dwells on that African Savannah of our flint-knapping ancestors.

The trip's been pretty good. The highlights so far: riding the roller coaster at New York, New York in Las Vegas. Seeing Penn and Teller. Getting caught in a thunderstorm during a mountain bike ride at the Grand Canyon (lowlight actually, very scary indeed). Riding the Thunder Mountain trail in Red Canyon and getting around around almost all of the switchbacks on the scary descent. Driving across the desert of south west Utah blasting Richard Thompson's Mock Tudor album as the sun sets. All good stuff.

We're going to be in Moab for a couple of days then on to Fort Collins.

I've played my guitar a couple of times, mostly waiting for laundry to dry. Musically, I've been more inspired by the book I've been reading "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azarred than the landscape and the camping, but I'm sure that'll change once I start sleeping in a comfy bed and having regular showers. :)

The Jet Set lifestyle

The LUC and I are going on three weeks vacation* starting next week. First to Madison Wisconsin for ProBike/ProWalk. Then flying to Las Vegas for two days, 'cause well, I've always liked Hunter S. Thompson's description of looking west out of his hotel room window and seeing the high-tide mark where the idealism of the 60's washed up around Las Vegas and retreated back. We're then renting a car and heading out to the Grand Canyon, Moab for some mountain biking, Fort Collins for beer and more bikes and ending in Denver.

The last time I spent longer than a day or two in the States the Canadian dollar was worth 9¢ more than the American. I'm really looking forward to it. Despite the bad image that the current US government is projecting around the world I've discovered through these here internets that there are plenty of warm, giving, funny and thoughtful neighbours to the south. (See above links for some of those folk)

I haven't the faintest idea if all this is achievable in the time we have, but the point really is to spend some time together, camp, ride bikes, boggle at wonders both man made and natural and generally relax.

This is not what you're waiting for.

*I know, believe me I know! She just gets back from a month in Australia and off again after a mere week at home. In all fairness she's speaking at Probike/Prowalk so that part of the trip is work and she's having to cram a whole month's worth of regular work into 5 days. There's more than a little stress going on right now.

I'm waiting too

People, people, people, this is suppose to be a sleepy little corner of the internet. Ya make one comment on the Blurb's blog and next thing you know your site meter actually has something to do. :)

I can't talk about it yet. Sorry. There's an order to these things. I'm sure you understand.

It's all down hill

So there's a name for it, I suspected as much. What I didn't realize is that it's a well known psychological phenomenon. It's called flow.

This is the state that I seek, the state that I haven't the skill to achieve in anything but music. Oh, I've felt it riding my bike, and a couple of times back when I fenced, but music is where it happens the most consistently and the most profoundly.

I'm not sure it's a good thing to know what to call it. I'm relentlessly curious and now I'm going to have to look into it. It might help, I could get some good tips on how to achieve it. But it might make it harder too. Conscious thought is the enemy of flow and the more I have to think about, well, the more I think. Truly, my head is a cement mixer, all restless and churny when on the go and setting up hard when at rest. No in-between.

What I really want to know is the connection, if any, between the flow state and the meditative state. The obvious difference being that in a flow state the body is active, but what about the mind? Interesting.

The bike fest gig, it seems so long ago now, went well enough. I had a great time at least. K wasn't really enjoying it though. The settings on his bass amp got messed up in transit and he struggled through the first couple of tunes trying to get it sounding right. Years ago I took some whiteout and marked my settings for just this eventuality, I'll have to suggest it. He also broke a string. This doesn't happen often with bass guitars, those strings are pretty thick. He also broke the one he replaced it with which is frankly weird. It might be he was nervous and over tightened it or there could be something wrong with that bass. Whatever, it really threw him.

Eventually he got going again with the wrong gauge string used as a temporary substitute. This was the point the gig got really fun. Despite the chaos I wasn't really uptight and as we got started again the band struggled. In the past I'd let such things get to me to the point of derailing my own performance. Not this time. I laid back and listened as we slipped in and out of time, dropping into the pocket* and falling out over and over. It was like listening to a car warming up on a cold winter's morning, running rough then steady in slowly inverting proportions.

The thing that had me grinning like a dope fiend was that I knew it was going to be ok. I could feel it from the band, we'd been here before, struggling and disjointed and everyone knew we'd get past it. What's more, we managed to convey that feeling to each other as we played. It really was astounding. I don't believe in telepathy or any of that sort of mumbo-jumbo but I do believe in the human ability to gain meaning from the smallest of physical clues. I'm a pretty cynical and negative person so the absolute conviction I felt that it was all going to be ok was really, really great. If only I could feel such optimism at will.

The last half of our second set was as good as we've ever played in front of an audience. We were tight and energized and made such a glorious racket that it's a wonder that Apollo himself didn't show up to see what the fuss was about. Flow indeed, a veritable four branched river if I may be permitted another watery metaphor.

Oh, and the memorabilia? They sold as a group for $30. This still makes me laugh.

*An expression used in jazz to mean perfectly in time, especially of bass playing that is 'in the centre' of the beat, i.e. neither slightly leading, or ahead of, nor slightly behind, or dragging the beat. [I took this definition from a on-line music dictionary. While strictly true, I think that when you're deep in the pocket you're constantly and consciously making the choice to stay on the beat, push it or drag it as the tune demands rather than simply being perfectly centered all the time.]

I have a plan

I'm pretty sure that there must be some kind of bloggy hell I'm going to for my lack of posts. So very busy: two jobs, the band, a relationship, a new cat and The Tour* are eating up all available time.

The LUC is going away for a month starting next week. Hello pseudo bachelorhood! Yup, it's going to be ice-cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner except when it's ice-cream for breakfast and lunch and beer for dinner. And hey, does anyone know how to get a hold of some cheerleaders who'll bring their own keg and perhaps some lawn darts?

Every other time she's gone away I've told myself I'll get a lot of practicing and or composition done, but who am I kidding? I'll probably just work more and spend the rest of my time sitting around in the self created rubble of dirty dishes and unpickedup undergarments. Joy.

*Yesterday's stage was 5 frickin hours. Even I'm not enough of a fan to get through that in one sitting.