The cyclical...

…nature of my health habits is pretty consistent. I start getting bloated and overweight feeling (and weighing, although I usually avoid confirmation via the scale at this point) and this eventually leads me to swear off beer and snacks for a few months. It’s been a long while since I recommitted to that, and I’m consciously avoiding the scale, knowing I’ve let my weight creep up. It’s on me, but I have allowed the recent passing of Neil Peart and Lyle Mays to justify additional beer drinking in a nightly ritual of remembrance. However, this has segued into just a nightly routine of beer drinking along with television or reading.

So, it’s about time to get serious about calorie counting again. This is the method that has worked in the past, I have to be disciplined about it. If it were just extra weight without other adverse side effects, I’d probably ignore it, but it starts to affect my sleep and increased the various musculoskeletal maladies as well. Anywho, I’ve got enough beer on hand at present to get through next week, and with Opeth on Saturday, that will close things out for February and I’ll make March an abstinence month. I’ll see how I’m feeling and if it seems my weight's dropping, I’ll eventually step on the scale again. I’d like to at least get below 200 again, even though my ideal weight is probably 170-180 (based on being somewhat wiry underneath the layers of suet), I know just getting below that threshold results in feeling and sleeping better.

Now, on to the more fun stuff. Yesterday was a fairly solid day, with the requisite drums, keys, bass, exercise, dog walk, Korean study, and nearly thirty minutes of drawing. My writing yesterday was the journal, and I watched the next JCO lecture on addressing taboos. I’ve decided to try and plug along in her lecture series and choose the writing exercises a la carte because it seems like if you take on all her suggested writing and reading, the series will take a couple of years to finish, at least at the rate I read and write. The taboo lecture was very powerful. I gather a lot of her writing focuses on these sorts of topics. I haven’t read any of her stories to my memory, but I plan to rectify that gap. She highlights the history of women writers and how in the past, they were discouraged from writing in general, but if they did write, it was supposed to be about domestic subjects in line with the accepted roles of women in a patriarchal society.

It’s interesting to hear how subjects like domestic abuse and rape were just not talked about as if ignoring them would make them go away. In many ways, we live in a more enlightened age where these former taboos can be addressed in the open, but I know there are still many societies around the world that haven’t moved on from those darker days. My wife’s home country of Korea is still largely patriarchal, and it’s still fairly pervasive as far as I know; daughters are expected to get married and have children. I don’t regularly interact with young Koreans, so I have a feeling this may be seeing a generational shift, along with many other significant cultural shifts that have happened in the age of the internet.

Particulars aside, I think JCO hits on an important point that’s shared by Neil Gaiman in that a writer tells stories to reveal a deeper truth. Often the most upsetting events in our life shape so much of who we become, although we often suppress those memories and will rarely talk about them, even with our closest loved ones. For me, writing and my other creative endeavors are a way of learning just who I am and what I care about. The expression of this truth can manifest in various mediums, but specifics aside, the act of creating is a way of transferring a part of oneself into another form and revealing a bit of who I am and what is important to me.

Another integral part of her lecture on taboo was the technique of elliptical writing. She used Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” as an example of when taboo couldn’t be addressed directly, and so it was expressed in a vague enough manner that avoided the literal homoerotic and left it to the subtext. I’m not sure if I picked up on it when I read it as a teenager, although it wouldn’t have necessarily fazed me if I did. I plan on a re-read in the future. I think the elliptical approach is something I’ve already used, at least in songwriting and often in my natural language and these blogs. I think it’s not only a useful technique for one who may have been forced by their particular situation, but I think it can also be an effective means of leaving things open to interpretation and not being overly literal. It’s sort of analogous to Neil Gaiman’s “truth in the lies” approach, in that you’re expressing a thought, feeling, or theme but leaving it open to the reader to find their truth.

I should also mention I finished reading “The Song of the Black Sword” by Michael Moorcock. I’ve come to realize that Moorcock has a history of repackaging many of his stories, and so what I thought were some stories I hadn’t previously read were included in the original paperbacks I read all those years ago. Within many of those paperbacks were sections that were more like short stories but part of the overall narrative. The paperback book that was third in the original series I read “The Weird of the White Wolf” was comprised of three stories, “The Dreaming City,” “While the Gods Laugh,” and “The Singing Citadel.” I suppose these could stand on their own, but they make more sense as part of a narrative. The only significant difference between SOTBS and how I read the series originally is the later publication of “Fortress of the Pearl,” which now comes after “Elric of Melniboné” and before “The Sailor on the Seas of Fate.” It’s been such a long time since I read these originally that it’s like reading them anew.

I’m still plugging along on the “Inside the Victorian Home,” which has proven to be a great resource alike “The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England.” It’s amazing how different our cultures were just a few hundred years ago. I need to pick my next novel to read, and I think I should shift back to a classic so I can eventually start to whittle down this behemoth of a TBR list. I think I’ll go easy on myself and at least pick something a bit shorter this time, and I’m eyeing “Slaughterhouse-Five” or maybe “The Maltese Falcon.”

It's Saturday, do you know where your journal entry is?

I’m still endeavoring to make this a daily habit, despite a few hiccups along the way. I have a tendency to get a little task or project stuck in my head that I’m compelled to finish and it ends up commandeering my time to the exclusion of a few normal daily tasks. Yesterday it started with importing the new Metheny album and Rush’s “All the World’s a Stage”, which I finally got on CD after all these years. My sister Dianna had bought the vinyl for me years ago and I still have that, but I didn’t have a version in my digital library. Well, as often happens I noticed a few omissions in the library, which is a “feature” of iTunes I’ve come to notice in the past few years.

Random albums and songs will just disappear from your library for no apparent reason. When you have a library as big as mine, it’s easy to miss for a long time. When I do notice it, and I’m at my computer, I try to rectify the problem right then. I think I’m going to just keep a running log when I notice discrepancies and then fix the omissions when I get time. All that to say, I spent a bit of time yesterday re-importing some albums I’ve had for thirty years, e.g. most of my R.E.M. albums were just missing, no idea why. I’ve also had an issue with my external CD drive where it has an audio drop out on the first imported track of any given album and you get the pleasant digital click, the musical version of nails on chalkboard. I fixed a few of those errors too, but there are still some lingering that I’ll have to deal with as I notice them again. I think I figured out the solution, which is just to skip the auto import function and manually hit the import button on iTunes. I don’t understand why that would make a difference, but it seems to be working.

These sorts of issues can tend to distract, but there are just certain areas of my life that I don’t like to tolerate errors or disorder. It’s funny in that some of my favorite stories involve chaos and disorder, such as Roger Zelazny’s “Amber” and “The Courts of Chaos” or Michael Moorcock’s “Multiverse”, which I’ve been re-visiting via Elric here lately. Some of the best story fodder is just the sort of thing that I can’t stand in my personal life. I don’t consider myself a control freak when it comes to others, I’d just as soon not get involved, but when it comes to my own life I don’t abide others who try to manipulate or control.

That aside, yesterday was a decent day overall. I ticked most of the boxes - exercised, walked the dogs, practiced drums, vocals, guitar, studied Korean and did some drawing in the Ink course. I attempted to make Pizza from scratch (mainly the dough, I didn’t make the other ingredients) and it was marginally successful. The dough rose as expected and the texture was okay, a bit chewy since I used regular flour. I’ve learned that bread flour is necessary for the more crunchy type crust. The other demerit would be for flavor. I think it needed more salt and sugar, it just tasted a bit bland to me. I’m going to experiment with various sauces and toppings in the future. The basic approach to making the dough is straightforward enough and it reminded me of my Mr Jim’s days.

The only negative from yesterday is I didn’t devote much time to writing (again). I’m not deliberately avoiding it, I think I’m still trying to find the ideal daily rhythm that capitalizes on the best time for a certain type of headspace. There’s a general level of mental energy and creative motivation that crosses all those different disciplines, but each has its own unique set of mental, physical, and spiritual (no, I’m not waxing religious here) demands. I find it easy enough to journal this early in the morning because I don’t need to have a particular analytical or methodical mindset, it’s more stream of consciousness than anything. I understand that first story drafts are often written this way as well, and it may eventually become my habit to write earlier in the day. I’ve also got to consider as the warm weather returns to Texas, one big portion of my day (at least an hour-ish) for exercising and walking the dogs must take place in the earlier morning hours. It becomes prohibitively hot after 9 am for a large swathe of the year, generally May to October.

I feel like I’m sort of languishing on guitar here of late. I subscribed to the “Cracking the Code” website, run by Troy Grady who I interviewed a few years ago for a class. Like many of my other classes, I just need to devote the time.

On drums I’ve been starting my practice sessions with the heel-toe kick pedal technique that many metal drummers use, and it’s slowly coming along. Getting the pedals setup just right is an important first step, and I think I’ve got them setup fairly well. At present I’ve just been practicing one foot at a time, and unsurprisingly, the right foot has come along quicker than the left, no doubt due to the left foot being mostly ignored in the time I’ve been playing drums.

I had a brief go at playing both feet together, and there for just a bit I was able to get it running smoothly and suddenly I was starting to sound like a speed metal drummer. It was fun to reach that plateau and realize that progress is being made. I’ve still got a long way to go before this is really under my feet so to speak. I need to be able to quickly transition between this double stroke and the single stroke and to incorporate it into songs as opposed to just isolated practice drills which is where I spend most of my time.

I’ve also slowly been practicing parts of “Anthem” by Rush, and it’s also gradually coming along. Although these milestones are often far away, I look forward to being able to master the entire tune on all three instruments and record a video of my performance. This is what it’s all about, even if purely for my own entertainment. I also hope to incorporate these learned techniques into my own songs. Anywho, enough of my yapping.

Dateline, 17 February 2020

I’m probably not going to continue with that title, but maybe just this once. Yesterday was a decent day. I exercised, walked the dogs, did some laundry, made burritos for lunch, practiced drums, vocals, and guitar. I also studied some Korean (TTMIK lesson 7) and spent some time drawing a lesson from a Udemy course I’ve been slowly working through. What’s missing is any substantial writing study or practice. I tried to resume the James Hynes course but was getting distracted with other thoughts (nothing important, probably my plan to move my RAID drive a bit lower to reduce the noise) so I abandoned that plan and went ahead and exercised.

In the afternoon after I had finished everything, I sat down to read, resuming “Inside the Victorian Home”, by Judith Flanders. This was one of my books purchased in service of research for “Luma” (working title), my planned epic fantasy trilogy. To paraphrase Professor Tolkien, “the research grew in the reading”, and I’ve given myself months if not years of future study. Not a bad problem to have, since I love the subjects and the learning, regardless if I plan to put them to good use in the future. Anywho, I didn’t get very far before I started drowsing off, so I abandoned that plan and resumed watching “The Expanse”, a great Science Fiction series based on James S. A. Corey’s novels. This had started on the SyFy channel but was picked up by Amazon after three seasons when SyFy canceled it. It worked out well in the end because the video quality is better and there are no commercials.

All that to say I’ve been setting myself up for failure slightly by waiting to read until late afternoon. I either need to change my time to maybe late morning (pre-lunch) or at least have myself a cup of coffee before setting down to read. I want to devote some time every day for “productive” reading (research, etc.) as well as my more light reading. I’ve got a huge TBR (to be read) collection of books and I’m not making much progress at this rate.

Overall, yesterday was a successful day. I’m gradually making progress at my musical disciplines. The passing of Neil Peart got me reoriented into studying his style and I’ve decided to try and approach it from the beginning of his Rush discography (Fly By Night), assuming the difficulty level will be marginally lower than the later albums. Yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time futzing with the drum pedals, I still haven’t quite got the configuration the way I want. I’ve been starting to learn the heel-toe technique in service of faster bass drum playing (more for metal than Neil) and while I think the right foot is coming along okay, I’ve been having more difficulty with the left foot. This may be largely due to the left foot being mostly neglected in comparison to the right since I started playing about five years ago. I think part of it is due to the particular pedal setup I’m currently using. I bought this DW combo double bass drum and hi-hat pedal setup that’s all connected and I think for most applications it works well, but not heel-toe. I’m looking at eventually buying these pedals by a company called “Trick Drums”, as they have a very clever design that’s much easier to adjust and they look rock-solid in construction.

On guitar, I spent most of my practice time continuing to work on getting that intro riff to “The Spirit of Radio” correct after many years of playing it wrong. This is in service of gradually learning the song on drums and bass as well for the full song cover as discussed in the regular blog. I should be devoting more practice time to the other components of musicianship (ear training, theory, technique, etc.) and I need to start setting aside that time during each practice session. One of the great challenges of managing so many disciplines is not lapsing into auto-pilot when the overall weight of time required each day can start to overwhelm your more organized/planning mind.