At-A-Distance
Course Diary 1999 back |
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Week1 | Week2 | Week3 | Week4 | Week5 | Week6 Sunday, October 31st A relatively quiet weekend. Sunday was my day off this week - a supposed day of rest. Restful work, that is. The bottom line: I suck at resting. Everyone who really knows me, knows this about me. The negative spin of this characteristic is known as workaholism. The positive spin on this characteristic is "intense drive." As soon as a slight vacuum appears in my schedule, and idea or a vision of what could be created or accomplished in this vacuum appears. Not only does it appear, but the visions usually come delivered with batteries included, and it lays out a clear blueprint for action. It's a mysterious process. I see the next four CD projects clearly (SB Roadshow, SGC2, ElectricGauchos2, SB Sampler.) And the two books underway ('Emailianation' and 'Bleak Strategies.') Of course, the most exciting cell on the horizon: the new company (BTV.) The ongoing systematics knotwork series. The three new songs, one with lyrics just hovering around, but I can't quite hear the consonants. The DirectMusic circulation project. Oh yeah, and what about my MS responsibilities which require creative decisions on demand and constant personality juggling in an environment of intense scrutiny and intelligence? No shortage of ideas. Or problems to solve. But ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. Ideas: constantly and readily available, to gently recycle GC lingo. So where does this 'workaholism' come from? Let's see, I could watch TV, or I could take another small step forward in realizing this vision. Even if the TV wins, the visions won't stop. Somehow, in the flash of seeing what is possible, I feel a responsibility to 'realize,' to make real, what I have seen. The bad news: there is another angle to this. Perhaps surrounding myself with all of these ideas is related to surrounding myself with so much stuff? An insight. The good news: I don't feel particularly trapped or stuck within the bad news. Much of this 'stuff' that is clogging up my home is necessary in the process achieving the goal: establishing an ongoing music community and school in Seattle. One day, one show, one note at a time. * * * Monday November 1st Wow - a really great evening. An energizing discussion with Steve Enstad. More spewing great ideas about possible futures. A few virtual high-fives as excellent ideas and puzzle pieces that fit appeared one by one. Steve strikes me as one of an extremely unusual breed: 3Cs (committed, creative and capable.) Hard for me to believe that there is not some hand of fate being played out here. We shall see how BTV takes wings in the next few weeks... Then, a light-hearted and fun rehearsal with the SGC. Jaxie was yawning and laughing simultaneously by the end (11:15pm) as we limped through "Where it Goes" one last time. Both her smirking and yawning were contagious. More progress on Vulcanization, too. Bob now knows all the notes. His fingers don't know them in real time yet, but with Bob, now that the notes are in his fertile mind, this is only a matter of hours. I can't wait to hear this piece really come to life. I hear it as Curt's golden masterpiece. I'm sure most people who hear it once or twice will not appreciate the intense depth and musical force which is alive within Vulcanization. This visceral piece embodies both a teaching and a practice. It is a ladder which spans many great divides. It is a treasure map to the lost island of Guitar Craft. * * * All of the lights were on at Bob and Jaxie's tonight. Kitchen, staircase up, hallway downstairs, TV room, dining room, and our work space. The bright side: it was easier to stay awake in the brightness. The dark side: the light (and our focus as a group) was dispersed all over the room. * * * We also explored Bob's new bass line this evening, and I hear the outline, but don't quite see all of the details of a counter melody and ascending progression. We almost found it right at the end of the night as Dean and Curt were walking out the door... (cracking jokes about me staying all night at Bob and Jaxie's to work on this...) but the seed of this piece needs some more play and some incubation time. Good wine takes time. Most music that is worth seeking and worth keeping sticks around and makes itself available for download over a period of time. The trick is in listening to and hearing what the new music has to say rather than filling in all the spaces and spewing out all the riffs tricks and stuff we already think we know how to play. Very hard work. Blank page. Vacuum. Very hard to make the space to bring in the new with all of the old stuff spewing around. * * * Tuesday November 2nd SB.com was down all day today for some mysterious reason. My web host, like many fast growing web businesses, is either to big or too damn busy to take care of their customers. I was on hold with 'Site-America' for over two hours today while I waited to speak with a human being. One never showed up and I gave up after 136 minutes of waiting. God bless the speaker phone. There awaits great opportunity for any company who can effectively transform the frustrations of irate customers into loyalty via quick and excellent technical telephone support. Site-America is missing this opportunity, and perhaps losing a customer with a slew of URLs and a mega-business about to bloom right under their nose. Site-America: if you happen to read the ascii on your own servers, I have two words for you: Buh-bye. So this diary will have to sit on my local machine until the site comes back to life. * * * I had a significant email exchange with and phone call with Bill Rieflin today. He found a passage of a book that touched him and shared it with me in an email. This was something of a breakthrough - Bill saw something real. Later in our phone conversation, he mentioned that he might share our brief ascii exchange with Frank and Curt for potential re-mailing to the At-A-Distance team. For those on participating in this course, here is a sneak preview:
then,
Now, I've stayed up way too late writing a deceptively simple, but trickly-to-execute SGC application for the Jack Straw Artist 2000 awards. It's 3am, and I've just completed the draft. Another task which, on the outside, apparently has nothing to do with music. With this simple task, I am reminded again that the act of playing notes is only one miniscule part within the great symphony of necessary but non-musical logistical work that fills up the life of a performing musician. Arranging a sequence of notes; Arranging a sequence of words. It's the same process, really, when you boil it right down. * * * Wednesday November 3rd SB.com is back up. No explanation from Site-America. Just another random pre-y2k cyber black out. Apologies to those who came here yesterday (Jaxie) to read the dirt about their home-lighting habits. Another SGC guerilla raid on the OK Hotel tonight. This time, we brought our own sound system. And the sound still basically sucked. Perhaps it is the space, the vibe, or the audience? Or maybe we just sucked. But I don't think so... Even when we suck, we are still basically competent. But competence aside, anyway I look at it, no matter how much I search for rationalization or bright spots,... I really did not enjoy playing this way, in this place, or for this audience. Does this matter? Probably not. Who knows what potentially hungry ears and hearts may have been in this audience (besides Ben Sheppard) needing to hear our shocking, out-of-context, esoteric-yet-asymetrically consonant instrumental guitar music spewed out across this vast, talentless landscape of open-mic hounds? Even if a few people loved it,... (did they?) I really would not mind if I never did this kind of performance ever again, ever. Ever. Was I clear about that? Doesn't mean I won't do it again, though. In fact, I know I will. But just to be clear: this is not something I wish to do. I do it because it needs to be done. * * * So many other potential details to fill in here, but I have no time or energy left. So I'll leave the new patent idea, new exciting BTV developments, SGC gossip, and personal tidbits to silent prayers for a better tomorrow. * * * Thursday November 4th I woke up early this morning (another 7:30am phone call) and I could not get back to sleep. So I got up, and stayed up. I had a remarkably efficient morning before heading out to work at 8:40 for a 9:00 meeting about a DirectMusic web control. How many times have I been in this exact meeting over the past 4 years? Oh, at least a dozen. The meeting always has the same tone: excitement and thrill of possible new non-linear music futures -- "Look what a DM web control will do for the internet and web designers -- this is great this is amazing... what is keeping us from doing this?" Then, the long silent pause - followed by the inevitable letdowns: "who is going to own test for this thing? What is the cross-platform story? Where will we get the content? Hey -- what about a Production Music Library?" This morning felt like my own personal groundhog day. But the rest of the day was not without a few short but sweet bright-spots. I received an exciting DAT and CD in the mail today that gave me some post-halloween chills and shivers down my spine. Some more good news from Steve Enstad on a potential growth in the BTV team. An evening off followed by a late personal practice session at home. The theme for this evening's practice: there is no shortage of music. Some sadly sweet melodies were popping out all over the place - they kept coming and going in and out of this piece I've been working on with Bob. I did not work to remember them, capture them, or hold on to them. They just came in and were sent out into this empty quiet house. My practice tonight seemed slow and steady, but strangely focused. I think the terrible open mic gig last night brought me down from the recent Cle Elum energy wave. Glamour schmamer. Perhaps life is really just a big sine wave: the higher the highs, the lower the lows. RMS (average positive power of the energy contained in the wave for the non-geeks who may be tuned in) goes up as the amplitude rises. But, by definition, the real-time values always go below zero at least half of the time. Sometimes they even hit bottom. So, can you tell? I'm feeling slightly sad, grounded and back at square one: here I am. Just me and this guitar. Not in a hurry tonight. Not going anywhere. I'm just listening to new notes and once-in-a-lifetime intervals fly out of this black plastic box, wondering where they are really coming from. Then I remember that Christian is coming in 11 days. A slight ray of hope on which to end this day in remembering some of the powerful musical experiences we have shared. The best: One night, November 1996, in Gandara, a monastery outside of Buenos Aires. 1:30am in the hallway leading to the chapel. A high-voltage muse descended and took us on a half-hour ride of improvised bliss. It was like we both fluently spoke and understood a vast wordless language. And somehow, we were speaking the word of god. Or the word of god was being spoken through these guitars. It left us both charged and in complete awe at this intangible, dynamic, and yet utterly tangible force we call music. * * * Friday November 5th Sigh - no sitting today - it was one of those mornings where the bed was too warm and the floor was too cold. The temperature of my will was somewhere frozen below zero. I blew it. Part of my brain could hear myself pouring through a list of scenarios and justifications and rationalizations as I turned off the alarm, but in a moment of release, the warm and sleepy part won. When I did finally wake up, my brain regretted being behind schedule, but my body was really happy to have had the extra hour of sleep. How strange it is, no matter how many years of experiencing it, when the body and mind disagree. It may or may not be obvious, but I am well aware that this diary is not a diary of 'observations' in the vein of those offered by AAD participants via email. This is more like a subjective bucket of spewing monologues, which, if I were in a steady relationship, may otherwise be exorcised via conversation. Another slight sigh. This afternoon, I completed an application for the Jack Straw Artist 2000 program on behalf of the Seattle Guitar Circle. Our submission has me excited about the possibility of another potential musical collaboration next year in Seattle. It is clear that collaboration with other artists is one of the necessary next steps for the SGC to take a major leap forward. On our own, we will stumble along as a local esoteric 'art' ensemble. But let's be clear: I wish for more. I was speaking with Frank and Curt a few weeks ago and the subject turned briefly to a question about the relative 'success' or 'failure' of Guitar Craft based upon whether or not Guitar Craft has actually produced any 'successful' world-class guitarists. Of course, I assume that the aim of Guitar Craft is not necessarily to be a 'guitarist factory' (a la GIT) for stamping out excellent or commercially successful guitarists. And perhaps this is not even a fair question; but it has prompted some useful thinking in me over the past week as I have held and revisited this question in light of what we are doing in Seattle. One quick answer: In some ways, Robert Fripp is the premier 'product' of Guitar Craft, and it's most obvious 'success' story. Another useful spin on this: Guitar Craft is not about 'products.' It's about process. On a related, but tangential note, this idea is part of the shift inherent in the coming launch of BTV. Of course I could, but won't enumerate (in ascii) the substantial list of Guitar Craft "lifers" who are still working and growing and applying GC principles via practice in their daily lives. In some ways, the dynamic and quality lives led by the names on list IS the real 'success story' of Guitar Craft. Going over these names silently in my mind reminds me that it is a substantial and impressive list of high-quality humans: RF, BL, HM, PR, TG, TG, DG, CG, BW, DJ, JB, BR, SB, TB, JS, HN, FK, MS, CD, GO, PM, HP, CL, MdA, LP, VC, DD, AB, UD, MR, VM, VF, DA, FS, IP, JB, RP, CG, JH, GS, SG, TH, JTM,... and these are only the working faces in the fore-front of my awareness. I'm sure there are many more of whom I am unaware. Perhaps the real value of this work will not be recognized for a few dozen years? And this begs yet another question: recognized by whom? In some cases, perhaps even those involved. This is part of my parallel fascination the process of planting little seeds which grow into redwoods slowly over a century. What can I do to become a better 'greenthumb' to nurture and nourish this process? I am so impatient. Where is the "hurry up" for a redwood? In this context, my next question: what will the legacy be of my work today? What is the long term capital value of what I plan to do with my next 30 minutes? From all of this work, by all of these excellent, serious, solemn, and sincere people, will it only be the extensive use of symmetrical scales in odd time signatures in contemporary rock music that retains the most long term capital value for humanity? I kinda doubt it. So, how can I possibly relate this next half hour to the next 100 years? Will working on this one exercise for five more minutes change anything at all? * * * Saturday November 6th Up early again this morning - this time without the aid of early morning phone calls... I decided, rather than spend an extra 50 minutes today commuting to the sitting at Curt's, to sit at home, but at the same time as the group sitting. Turns out this was a good decision. Especially since there was no sitting at Curt's this morning... Then, soon after my sitting, the phone rang. Herni (Hernan Nunez) calling to check in from Germany. We spoke for about an hour on his "dime" (what a strange word for $50 dollars...) Herni gave me various updates on upcoming potential Los Gauchos Alemanes action in Spain, upcoming potential GC action in Argentina, current Martin and Christian action in Chile and Mendoza, and numerous personal matters, too many to list here discretely. In the good karma-department, he mentioned that a new book has been published in Spain which has many favorable reviews and information about Guitar Craft, Los Gauchos Alemanes, Electric Gauchos, and a few SB CDs. About a year ago, I sent a pile of music to a friendly Spanish journalist who sent me a sincere letter looking for information about new music by former League of Crafty Guitarists. I'm looking forward to seeing this book, even though it's totally written in Spanish, and since I have not been to Argentina since early 1998, my already pitiful understanding has gone straight to heck. Hope there are some pictures in this book for retarded gringos. * * * I spent the morning working on secret BTV web designs before heading out to meet (KSER DJ) Peter Dervin for a road trip to check out some potential venues for some upcoming SGC / SBRS shows. Here are some excerpts from the mail I sent out to the SGC performance team regarding the venues I saw: 1. Whidbey Island Center for the Arts (WICA) - a 240 seat theatre, high quality, sort of a cross between Broadway Performance Hall and On the Boards, but even nicer in many ways. Very intimate, clean, high quality facility, and very affordable. Rent is $300 for the evening with a few other small charges depending upon how much staff we provide. The best available date is Saturday February 5th and we currently have this reserved. We also drove around the nearby town and picked up a local paper - the goal is to get some funding from local businesses to help pay for expenses. Max ticket price for this venue is $13.50. There is a place for concessions (they staff this) and a box office that handles all ticket sales. I also reserved the date June 17th (saturday night) for a possible SGC/SBRS performance. They book up very far in advance - my hunch is that we could do a show here every 6 months or so and begin to develop a regular audience on Whidbey Island. There seem to be tons of artists, musicians, and generally "tuned in" people on Whidbey Island. This feels like the right place to build our audience there. Even if the Trey Gunn Band is not available for this February date, I think we could still drop the ticket price to $10 and still sell the place out. The Whidbey community has a similar vibe to Cle Elem. Peter also suggested that we could do an open "clinic" in the late afternoon for area guitarists. Might work for a small fee and a discount on the show ticket. * * * We then drove back to Everett and visited a second site: 2. PUD (Public Utility District) #1 - Downtown Everett.
(What a strange name for a performance venue.) On the outside, this place looks like a lite version of the British power company on
that Pink Floyd album cover. But inside, there is an amazing auditorium (300 seats) almost identical
in layout and function to that at WICA. The audience is in comfortable seats in a semi-circle, and the front of the stage (floor level, like OTB) is also
semi-circular. Exact same layout as WICA, with 70 more seats. Their terms are less clear, but in the same ballpark as WICA. Peter gets a discount on the space too because he lives in Everett. * * * So, a productive afternoon. I am constantly amazed by the huge amount of labor it takes to organize and manage one small event such as this... And then there is the music to take care of. Or is that backwards? I have had many discussions over the years with musicians of all levels about the dream that musicians should supposedly play music and "others" should work to support the musician by taking on the 95% of the tasks which enable performance and recording events to occur. In some rare cases, like the recent Cle Elem show, this has actually been possible for me - for this show, I mostly just showed up and played music. What a luxury! On the other hand, for this gig, Jaxie (one of the performing musicians) did most of the early coordination and legwork to enable our excellent hosts (Peg and Kathy) to promote and prepare the event. Frank Sheldon also did a heroic job initiating the entire event. It may be a false assumption that a professional musician or group spends most of their time playing music. * * * Continuing on the theme of 'capital value' raised yesterday, it would be an interesting and useful task to plot out the TCO (total cost of ownership) for putting on a show or manufacturing a CD. TCO is a recent computer industry acronym which implies that the cost of owning a computer (for example) is much much more than the cost of the hardware and software in the initial purchase. TCO is usually a very large and scary number that reflects and includes the insane number of hours we spend mucking around just making the thing work. The actual productive "up time" is generally a small fraction of the time most users spend fussing with the box, the settings, the re-bootings, the configuring, the debugging, the reinstalling, the cursing, the complaining, the downloading, the recovering, the wondering, the learning and re-learning, the un-learning, the playing, the praying, the suffering, the searching, the surfing, the crying and crashing. Managers with experience budget for TCO, not just for the purchase price. Musicians, on the other hand, often seem to mistakenly frame the cost of their efforts only in terms of cash spent. A more realistic event budget might also take into account the non-cash expenditures: time, gear, energy, talent, skill, know-how, opportunity cost. In my conversation with Hernan this morning, I was painfully reminded again of the huge cash AND "non-cash" intagible "expenditures" I made over the course of three years as a member of Los Gauchos Alemanes and Electric Gauchos. All of our financial accountings and transactions as a band were 'cash' based - that is, they did not take TCO into account on any level. This is one of the reasons Ferny is still struggling with his financial role (or lack of it) in our ongoing business relationships. There has been no basis or value assigned to the intangibles which we contributed to the process -- these intangibles actually make up as much if not more than the "cash" contribution to the real "capital" value of the band. It is clear that this is a real and primary source of stress, confusion, misunderstanding, and bad feelings between people involved in creative endeavors together. Based upon our inaccurate 'cash' accounting methods, we are blind to the real cost of what those around us bring to the table. Thus, we measure our various contributions according to different scales. I suspect this is also a large part of the constant battles between musicians and their record labels: musicians don't measure TCO for business processes, and music business people are not able to measure the TCO for musical processes. Therefore, both sides grossly undervalue the intangible sweat equity of their counter-parts, and wars begin. Some musicians (especially extremely successful musicians) sometimes tend to think of those who work for them as parasites, feeding like vampires off of their creativity or back-catalog. How many musicians have ever felt or been "ripped-off" by their managers or their record labels? How many music business people have felt "ripped-off" or undervalued by their ego-centric artists who apparently have no appreciation for how difficult it is to do the one million thankless tasks which enable their star to shine? How many musicians, fed-up with being "ripped-off" by those who supposedly work "for" them, have decided to go "indie" and set up their own shop to end the exploitation? This might be a partial explanation for the explosion of the indie music scene over the past twenty years. I'm going to go DIY because I don't trust you: you overvalue your contribution. Often there is good reason for distrust. On the other hand, the musicians I know personally who have taken the plunge to begin their own record labels (Robert Fripp, Jane Siberry, Bill Rieflin, Trey Gunn, Hernan Nunez) now seem to understand, acknowledge, and appreciate the extreme quantities of labor involved in producing, manufacturing, distributing, promoting, and selling their own music. But something is still very confusing here: why is Jane Siberry designing web pages and answering her own CD order line? Why is Bert Lams stuffing his own CDs into envelopes? Should they not be playing or practicing music? Where is the support team? What is the incentive for a support team to offer and sustain their support for the artist? How and how much will they be paid? I certainly don't see the answers, but perhaps accounting in terms of TCO (including and assigning "cash" value to intangibles) may be an insight into framing and understanding the problem. Perhaps this could be adopted as a new standard of accounting between musicians and their support teams, even if they are the same people acting in different roles. In the end, it boils down to four deceptively complex questions:
Compared to this nonsense, playing the guitar is so clean and easy. * * * Please visit the seattle
guitar circle site for more information about this project. Week1 | Week2 | Week3 | Week4 | Week5 | Week6
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