faint light

i presently sit listening to the song i wrote about jimmy carter (wherein he is really an alien and his "people" have come to reclaim him) and i am enjoying it quite a bit...not something i can always say while listening to my own work. so judgemental of ourselves we can be. anyway, jimmy carter reported a ufo sighting while in georgia at one point in his life (pre-presidency), a fact that i find interesting. as silly as it may sound, it suggests to me that perhaps his mind is capable of perceiving the world in a less egocentric, ethnocentric, (human-centric) way than many of our other leaders. or maybe not. maybe he just has bad eyesight.

well...my eyes are a bit tired too (lack of sleep and too many hours mixing) but we are all indeed done. christian, matthew, and i that is. 42 songs about presidents. i am proud of us. i think we all lost our momentum about 2/3 of the way through, but somehow all focused on some faint light at the end. our lives, so often driven by faint lights off in the distance. if you've not checked it out yet, it is indeed a sight to behold. go here.

i believe today i'll just read...perhaps something futuristic. i'm done with history for the time being.

the mixing board

dinner last night with ron and sara. good friends and good spanish food make me long for andalucia, but then simply thinking of andalucia makes me long for andalucia. a predicament perhaps. so the previously listed performance came and went (a wonderful evening) and nine men who are the subject of the present documentary that mike and i are making were at my house for the weekend. yes, it's true that none of us have shaved (or trimmed) for three months now. we've indeed reached the halfway point, and things are getting messy to say the least. i'll explain in greater detail later.

presently, i am immersed in the february album writing month again, rushing through songs at a dizzying pace. this year, christian kiefer and matthew gerken (of the sacramento band nice monster) have joined in the revelry, and we decided to do all of our songs about all of the presidents. except george w. this year i've given myself much less time than last year, simply because i have much less time, and so the songs are coming out raw and unfinished, something that makes me feel mildly uncomfortable, but also something that i think is inherently valuable as an artist. anyway, you may all follow along on the fawm site, or at christian's where he's set up a really nice page detailing the project with a list of all the presidents.

in the meantime, i've been reading rather voraciously about experimental music lately, fascinated by just about everything john cage has to say. i leave you with a quote, and then back to the drawing board...or in this case, the mixing board.

"when a composer feels a responsibility to make, rather than accept, he eliminates from the area of possibility all those events that do not suggest this at that point in time vogue for profundity. for he takes himself too seriously, wishes to be considered great, and he thereby diminishes his love and increases his fear and concern about what people will think. there are many serious problems confronting such an individual. he must do it better, more impressively, more beautifully, etc. than anybody else. and what, precisely, does this, this beautiful profound object, this masterpiece, have to do with life? it has to do this with life: it is seperate from it."
~john cage