I left right after the game to head home for fish fritters and a quiet evening. No mob of relations on the warpath, gathering gossip and forming huddles the moment your back is turned. That gives you an idea of my experience with family. Nope, I’ll crawl in the shower and then sit here butt naked and kick back. No picture. I’ll count the money tomorrow, but it will be a good week to come.
Nonetheless, one cannot make a paying hobby out of two good months per year. That’s how many times 2013 beat the average. And that is pitiful. It was this type of situation that resulted in my decision to pay my help. It’s too early to declare success but the difference is already evident. Good, because there is no middle ground left, we must put on a top notch show or fail. I reckon the decision to play sitting down (instead of standing) results in a 15% better delivery. It pulls the audience closer and fixes the other musicians in place so we exchange stage queues much better. (There was a time I said I would never play sitting down.)
Ah, but the early part was a quiet day. Just the traffic roaring around over on Federal, people with an ounce of credit left doing their last minutes. How indoctrinated can they get? Myself, I’ve got electronic déjà vu, that sensation that I’ve designed this same circuit before. Still dabbling with the new 7489 memory chip, I could have programmed the Arduino in an hour, but I prefer to keep building this control panel. It represents proof that I understand the chip, not just the engineering concept. The delay has constantly been the need to develop long interconnected strings of small “building blocks”. And this was not very easy.
You know I have a long standing conviction that most students never grasp the full meaning of what is being taught. I was often the class dummy, needing a full explanation while the “smart” students nodded and wanted to move on. Well, as we see much later, that explains why they graduated by the millions and yet never invented anything new, never unlocked a single mystery, and their behavior is a good explanation of why so many urban legends and false concepts keep getting re-fed into the system generation after generation. I can make a good guess where old fogies come from.
I’m saying after what I had to study and the depth I had to uncover to finally get at the knowledge I need to do what I’m doing, that there is no way my former classmates grasped anything like what time has shown to be essential for thinking outside the box. Just no way, don’t argue with me. Some of them do damn good jobs, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’ve learned one cannot possibly improve the wheel without re-inventing it. It is the fools of society who think there is a shortcut. Let them man the oars.
Time to time, this realization gives me flashbacks of when I was nine and in the scouts. I’m sure I already mentioned the “shoe box” I built with a rock and a broken chisel, so I won’t go over it anew. I was terrified to ask my father for help as getting that ogre involved meant a sharp cuff in the head every two minutes. I can only imagine what the scout leaders thought as I walked up carrying my box on my shoulders while the rest of the troop unloaded theirs from the trunk of daddy’s car. All the scouts got merit badges, but I’m the only one who built anything.
The Miami Herald is still slandering people. They publish articles stating people who won’t talk to the police are being “uncooperative”. The Herald needs a slap in the head and a kick in the ass—the police version of “cooperation” is nothing less than you signing a confession. Your right to remain silent begins the moment you are born, not after the police “read you your rights”. The Herald is staffed by totally anal dorks with curvature of the brain.
There is no law that requires you to make a police statement, but the cops aren’t about to inform you of that. Not when you are locked up in a room, probably handcuffed, and they have a goon telling you they need your story “for the record”. They love to play that game that if you ‘fess up, they’ll "go easy on you". If you do get arrested, trust me, they are going to try to build a case against you, so lawyer up immediately. If the cops want to know why you need a lawyer right off, tell them, “On principle alone.”
Here’s something scary. An ordinary white cotton rag I use to wipe up bench spills, usually peroxide or acetone. The material is white, yet when I rinse it, the water turns dark purplish-brown. Need I repeat my warning treat any chemicals on a workbench as contaminated? This is weird, the cloth remains white but rinses brown. Until further notice, I consider anything like this to be poisonous.
ADDENDUM
The mechanics of music. That’s what goes on starting a new band, or in the case of Jag and I, returning to a band after three years. It dawned on me that some might be curious about my psychological approach to the subject. Sure, since nothing reveals a person’s character as much as his thought process. Begin by defining “music” to me not as merely a pleasurable experience, but one carried to the level of providing it as entertainment for the express purpose of, guess what—fame and fortune.
At some point, all success in music becomes an extremely selfish undertaking. Few admit it. Yet I’ve never met any musician who imagines someone else as rising to the top. Except himself. Herein lies the biggest obstacle. Most humans are incapable of planning ahead and musicians as a subset are worse at it than average. In reality, very few musicians come from out of nowhere. The musical shooting star is so rare it borders on illusion.
Take a closer look at those superstars. It is a strange environment. The ones who succeed are not those who planned ahead, but those who behave as if they had done so. If a performer does not have what it takes to adapt and react to every tiny change in his environment, well, let’s just say that explains the guitar player pushing 50 who still thinks he’ll find salvation on Craigslist. Thusly, what Jag and I are doing is intentionally the contrary. You could say I am merely replacing the usual musician’s illusion of planning ahead with the real thing.
There’s another important but blurry aspect to my conclusions. It is that others could derive pretty much the opposite viewpoint from the same facts. I counter that most musicians have a vested interest in pretending to be cool at all times and all costs. The difference between the two opinions is that to reach my conclusions, I necessarily had to pass through the various stages of thinking that goes on in their heads. If they are sincere (which I doubt) they would have had to at least once thought it through like I must have and then somehow moved logic in the reverse direction. And I’ll believe that when I see it. Hard to follow? I warned you it was psychological. And there are easily picked psychologies around my place.
That’s enough for now. But that’s plenty for anybody out there who might otherwise think I was dumb enough to overlook the Freudian aspects surrounding the musical pursuit of happiness.
From y'day, here is a video I found amusing. Take my money! And here is a little poem I first heard long ago, but cannot find who said it. Look on line yourself, there is nothing. And it reinforces my claim that the Internet only contains the shallowest amount of information, but it spreads it far and wide.
My little sonny.
And a rich man’s joke
Is always funny.
