Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, the other day I had some extra time at John Wayne airport, which turns out to have a piano between terminals two and three which is public access. I started out just playing a few christmas carols, but then I started to get into it and played a short set including my modified version of Puff The Magic Dragon, Don’t Stop Believing, Southern Cross, Dust In The Wind, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Joy To The World (3 dog night), Silent Night Blues (my reworking of Silent Night into 12 bar blues), Cats In The Cradle, and probably a few others I can’t remember. I got $25 set on the piano even though I hadn’t set out a hat. This is the most I have made from a solo live performance ever, and it did feel like another milestone in my quest for musical greatness. 😉

I also have ordered, and gotten the impressions for, a set of my own IEMs – I’ve tried using COTS IEMs but they always fall out of my ears. These will be the most expensive earphones I have ever owned, by far, but hopefully they will stay in my ears.

This is somewhat less of a celebration than most because it’s the first second hundred hour increment since my dad died, and he was a large part of my interest in music and desire to achieve some sort of facility with it. But, life goes on. I’m still trying for 2000..

Edit: Apparently the first was right after he died.. I just forgot about it somehow.

So, there’s dozens.. but we need one for the modern age, in whcih people like Trump and Elon are completely unmoved by the visions the ghosts show them, and even cheer to see their cruelty and selfishness.

So, I was watching a television special about the War Of The Worlds, and was thinking about how no one could possibly be gullible enough to believe such things – and then my housemate commented that modern people were equally gullible. There are *still* Republicans who are convinced that America’s cities were burned down in the George Floyd protests, or are currently under seige and need the military sent to them. The *president* claims to believe it, although since Trump cannot speak without lying it’s hard to tell what’s really going on in his head. So apparently we still believe in these things.

So, while I’m getting warmed up to write a new album, I’ve been doing some multitrack composing just to get my head in the right place. I thought this piece was kind of fun so I decided o share it with the class

12 Bar Sheer –

So, I was talking with my friend Andy, who never fails to give me some good food for thought, and he mentioned the idea of post-traumatic growth. Basically he was pointing out that trauma is not without some value and that after all the other, more negative aspects of experiencing it, some individuals experience significant growth. I ponder whether this has happened to me or not, and if it has, whether it’s happened one or many times.

Towards The Dark

I’ve been trying to spend more time multitracking instead of woodshedding for the last few days.. we’ll see how long I keep it up, and how long it takes before I have a album worth of coherent, usable together recorded material. This isn’t ever likely to make it to a album unless I decide to publish a “best of movie soundtrack” thing at some point, but it is fun.

So, finally after many months of slowly nudging the project along, my solar lithium battery boxes are done. I’ve done a load test with a space heater, and nothing other than the space heater got even remotely warm. I am feeling victorious 😉

There’s many little bits of the project left to do – I need to hook up something to maintain the old lead acid pack, in case I decide to use it for something, I want to add lighting to each battery box, and a alarm light, and of course the battery box heaters – which are already in place and all the wiring is pulled for, but I need to connect up the relays and drill a hole for the 110 cable to go into one of the boxes.

But, still, I am running off the lithium batteries. This is a major milestone.

“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”

Anonymous, often attributed to Gandhi or Buddha

So, I’ve a number of times experienced the so called “Steakhouse Syndrome” – getting a chunk of meat stuck in my throat and being unable to swallow. I think that Seroquel makes this somewhat worse by weakening my voluntary control over those muscles.

Anyway, the solution for me – and note that I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, and if you kill yourself doing this don’t blame me – seems to be to hold my chin tucked while swallowing repeatedly. This is hard to dig out of the noise of the internet so I am posting it to my blog in case it helps anyone else.