Latin, Logic and How to Raise your Kids

It used to be slap bracelets. Remember slap bracelets? Those things were fucking lethal and we all loved them. Then it was Nirvana. Then Titanic and Leo. Then College applications. Now, the latest fad seems to be getting married. That means that the next “big thing” will be children. Naturally, I find myself looking forward and asking questions about what kind of father I will be. Not the annoying questions like, “Will I be a good dad?” but more specific, unsettling questions like, “How many words can I use to explain why something is against the rules before Sacajawea (my future daughter) tunes out?”

Kids don’t listen – when they’re five, it’s because they can’t and when they’re fifteen, it’s because they don’t want to. What are you supposed to say?

It all comes back to Latin. In high school, we were told that “back in the day,” (Ceasar’s day?) the order of the words in a given sentence did not matter so long as all of the grammatical parts were present. Our textbook arranged the words so that we would have an easy time understanding the sentences based on our predisposition to English. Mathematically, I am fine with this. Two plus three equals five and guess what? Three plus two also equals five. Magic. But the rub comes in when Ms. X, my junior-year Latin teacher, told us that in addition to jumbled order, there were no spaces between words in ancient Latin texts. This was too much for me. The fact that we’re reading Latin words arranged for our ease was one thing but to find out that the spacing was added by Ecce Romani made me feel like an idiot. Latin! Our Latin!! Dumbed down so that I could understand it. Aeneas’ mother wasn’t this depressed when the Greeks fucked up her boudoir and murdered her husband.

After years of therapy, dad-issues, and anti-depressants, all stemming from that awful false-discovery, I read yesterday that spaces were most likely added to Latin text by accident hundreds of years ago. The idea is that when the words stood shoulder to shoulder, Latin was difficult to read prohibiting the majority of people from even bothering try. Ask yourself: would you read all seven Harry Potter books if the brilliant sentence, “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure,” looked like this: AFTERALLTOTHEWELLORGANIZEDMINDDEATHISBUTTHENEXTGREATADVENTURE. And just for kicks, let’s mix up the order within the clauses: THEMINDTO WELLORGANIZEDDEATHGREATADVENTURENEXTISBUTALLAFTER. At this point, it’s important to note that for ancient Latin, majuscule was Twitter and punctuation was Myspace, you know what I’m saying?

In a school setting, where the core premise is “teachers talk, students learn,” you’d think someone would separate the textbook author’s changes and the 13th century’s changes but perhaps Ms. X was too busy managing a room of twenty teenage boys. Although it would appear I am angry at my teacher, I’m really much more frustrated at myself and everyone around me at the time. It’s not her fault that none of us were listening. In fact, it’s probably a miracle that we took in any Latin at all, mixed, broken-up, or otherwise.

So when it comes down to Oswego (Sacajawea’s unborn brother), how much can I expect him to take in as I pontificate on the finer points of peeing inside, as opposed to on, the toilet?

It’s simple, really. How many kids would read all of my writing above? How many would read all of it and walk away with my ideas accurately floating in their reality-TV, internet porn, cesspool brains? Even if they did read all of it, how many more pages would they have to read afterwards before their seventeen-hour SATs at 5:00am?

And as the mighty greeks slip out of the horses belly, a twist…

It doesn’t matter what I tell them. They'll either take it in or they won't. I can guarantee, however, that they will take in every teeny speck of my energy, failings, compassion, anxiety, and love, regardless of how I express it.

This piece came together after reading “Against Camel Case” by Caleb Crain, in the November 23rd issue of the New York Times Magazine. You can find a copy of the article here.

Energy

A thought worth the seven minutes it takes you to fall asleep tonight:

First off, there's a huge balance of energy between the players and audience whether it's theater, music, dance, a movie or a thousand other things. It's all about the vibes between the doers and the observers. If you're wondering about a movie, I site the example of watching a movie with a group of people - when they all laugh, you laugh.

Second, if matter is just energy moving so slow as to appear solid, then we have to wonder how solid we really are!

Sooooooo, we know that energy travels between performer and audience and we're going to assume that we're made up of the same energy. Wouldn't it be great if we could manipulate that in some way? We probably already do - a performer who reacts to and controls his audience with astonishing prowess - but what if we could do it with supreme ease? What if you could literally combine with someone else into one physical shape? What if you could send energy to someone else at the speed of thought? What if you could heal someone, as Victor Wooten mentions in his book about music, by finding their damaged personal music and setting it straight?

Let all the possibilities of energy flood your brain and send you to sleep like a fourth grader who just discovered Rock and Roll. Fly, fly, fly.

The next post contains the amusingly sad story of Albert, Panicked confessing his sins.

The Most Fun I've had in Six Months

To everyone who digs Dust on the Desk:

Although I stay somewhat far away from using this blog as a promotional tool for my band, today's little post may fly in the face of the norm. But really, my current elation has little to do with my band specifically and more with my journey up, through and around the pitfalls of life.

You see, lately, my band has played shows, worked on our album and, well, that's about it actually. And it's been awfully drab. We see these great ideas for how to be individuals and promote ourselves and have fun but for whatever reason, don't do anything other than the above two activities. To be fair, those two things take an enormous amount of time and energy. But today, all of a sudden, something clicked on. At lunch, instead of the typical unilateral message across our facebook group and mailing list, I wrote a two-part message and split it between the two groups of people. My thought was: Why not have some fun reading a wind-up update? You check your email and your facebook messages separately anyway! The writing was light and sentimental, feelings that this blog has been admittedly lacking for several weeks.

And what's more? An idea sprang up to for this weekend: Me and some band-mates and friends are going to run around manhattan filming people singing the chorus to one of our songs. People who are already fans of my band can watch the video once we edit it and hopefully the people we film will go check us out online and become fans themselves. Hopefully, they're singing will even make it onto the album! And the best part is it's unique to us and it'll be fun as hell. A party with a purpose, the best kind of living.

I don't know what happened today. I slept through my alarm this morning but instead of getting scolded by my boss, he essentially said, "Take it easy. Everyone gets one." (Special emphasis might need to be placed on "one" - If I come in every morning at quarter of eleven, they'll find someone else to do my job reeeeeally quickly.) So maybe the extra sleep made me feel a certain POP in my brain. But that does not explain the "bada documentary" to come this weekend. That idea came from Dave, the wind-up's guitarist. Maybe I'm excited for my mom to come into town tonight with our Dog, Max, who will hang at my place for the next few days. Whatever the reasons, lately, my writing has been droll to the point of making molasses look like fucking WD-40. Angst about life and music and blaah blaaaaah blaaaaaaaah. So why the change today?

Pause for a second to really consider this question.

Who the fuck cares? Sometimes, when riding the subway, the train stops for a second and the lights and fans go off. Then, for whatever reason, the thing springs back to life and keeps on rolling. God bless the 6 Train.

Not unlike my messages to fans of my band, I must take a crucial second to thank all of you who read this. Lisa, Katie P, Sanjay, Rob, Jarek and countless others who send me notes laughing and commenting on my silly shit. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading.

And I hate to promote the band but I would strongly encourage any readers to check out the message on facebook by becoming a member of the wind-up group. I would also encourage people to hop on the mailing list and see the second peice of writing. You can do it by filling in the box at www.thewind-up.com.

Love,

James

As cool as it looks

5:30pm: Leave work, walk to subway, ride train to Astoria, walk to apartment

6:15pm: Shower, dinner-standing-up, vocal warm up, drumming warm up, grab all the equipment you need

7:30pm: load the car and drive to venue

8:15pm: arrive at venue, mingle and waste time

And then 9:00pm rolls around and the place blows up. I am convinced, although I've never seen it, that a performer could shit on a plate and throw it across the room so long as he or she engaged the audience, played with honesty and bridged the gap by communicating and creating a bond. But with music, more specifically with drumming, the enjoyment is felt on a sub-human level. Rats in the walls stop and wait while their whiskers glisten with vibrations. The clothes are just the car body, plastic and somewhat unimportant compared to the engine beneath. The lyrics and melody and rhythm are candles on the cake. The real magic, the cool, is all subtext.

Honesty is probably a performers greatest source of strength. Like all balancing forces of nature, honesty makes you vulnerable. The key to remember is that even if they can't express it in words, the audience knows who and what you are beneath all the layers you try to cake on. By actively shedding the layers, you're only complementing them, assuring them that you don't think they're stupid. So be honest, smile and be sure to drink plenty of water. Performing on a stage is as cool as it looks.

Five Minutes (or CHUG)

I want to be a famous, world-renowned, feared, admired, love-hated Rock Star. Huge white lights like a thousand suns burning the skin on my thin face as I scream lyrics, misting the microphone with hot, rock-star breath! I want an enormous video screen blasting my sweating, angst-crossed body surrounded by fireworks and pyrotechnics and delirious fans. Maybe I wasn't given enough love as a child. I want to be Phil Collins. Apparently, he doesn't do any drugs and is a pleasure to work with. That sounds wonderful to me.

How to do it, how to do it, how to do it...

Hmmmm. The wind-up makes good music, is received well by fans and friends, but it's taking forever to finish an album and move on to whatever is next. Speaking of which, what is next? Should we play in other cities? And how do we sell our album? And how do we get more people to hear it? Okay, I've made a decision: I'm out of the band! Off to pursue my solo career just like Sir Collins. Glorious Phil with his adult easy-listening and bizarre voice and "Taaaaaaake, take me hoommmmme. CAUSE I DON'T REMEMBAH!!!"

Your goal can't be to become famous. Nobody likes those assholes. Since the Kardashians and Paris Hiltons won't read this, they won't mind if I use them as examples. Oh, and the family who lied about their kid going up in a balloon. And serial killers. All of the above wanted to be famous and either filmed themselves having sex (camera ads ten pounds and I'm too self-conscious), lied to the press (don't have a balloon or children), or killed many, many people (wouldn't want to put my mother through the stress of finding out her son is a psychopath).

So if the goal isn't to become famous, I'll just sit here and work and do things for the wind-up. I've decided to rejoin the band and go on a reunion tour. Our first and last stop will most likely be Arlene's Grocery. Maybe Japan. From now on, you can call me Chug. Or, if you prefer the German pronounciation: "Chooog"

The Big Club

The next time she goes on a plane, I’ll be sitting next to her. The last time we flew together was in 2005 coming home from Ghana for the first time. We wrote notes to each other saying we’d give it a try. That was back when “a try” meant a few months. Now, as years buzz like the last few seconds on a toaster oven, “a try” could be a decade. That plane ride from Ghana was so long ago that it feels like a different relationship. It’s hard to imagine not knowing the person coming home tomorrow. Like standing on the beach with waves carving your feet into the sand: after a little while, you’re so sunk in that you might have always been there, staring out at the salty green heaven in front of you.

The Harvest of Love (revisited & clarified)

I really like the Decemberists, "Hazards of Love." I think I'm the only one (outside of the hardcore fans). That's alright though; it's got some great moments. When I listen to the album, I hear the feelings they had as they battled for their goals: happy when they reached them but sad as they had to let great ideas go. Sometimes it's not about the crops, it's about the harvest.

Band practice the other night was really amazing. We were going at it until almost 1:00 a.m. in MJ and Rob's apartment. No instruments - we didn't write any new music - just pizza, Bud Light, and conversation.

I have to call Billy Stratton today on my drive up to camp - he can explain to me the fostering of an independant spirit and how it relates to Motorcycles.

Ilana comes home in about four weeks but Faf will be gone when I get back.

Sometimes it's not about the crops, it's about the harvest.