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.

Into the Hornet's Nest with 'Alphabet'

I think a big part of why we're all so upset about being 25 and not knowing what to do is because there seem to be other people who have it all figured out, are happy all the time, and don't worry about this stuff. Mostly, these people are older. That should be enough to arrest us out of angst but it's not so we'll press on. New York could be a hornets nest, obviously. Or life after College. Or a band. Really, anything interesting and dangerous is a hornets nest. And that's everything worth doing. Is it strange that sometimes I envy Elphaba (the dog)?

My friend Evan says that I, like most people, am afraid of change. He's right, and not in a bad way or anything. Once you set up systems for yourself that you can fall back on - a job, a relationship, an apartment, roommates - abandoning those systems leave you open to all sorts of trouble. And lets get something clear: a well taken care of dog is an obvlivious rich kid. Take all the risks you want and someone will clean the skunk off of you. So how do you stick your muzzle into the nest unafraid of getting stung to shit?

Le'ts all do that thing where we sniff really quickly inoutinoutinout and then let out a big HHhhhhhnnnnnnn! and resume the inoutinoutinout. Cause that's how dogs start. I'll abstain from making a list of my findings (the things I'm happy and sad about in my life). Besides, this list is unimportant, irrelevant. It's not the specifics of the hornets nest, it's the fearless, happy attitude about exploration. Elphaba is constantly in a state of play. Everything is playtime. And why wouldn't it be? Eating, sleeping, running, jumping, sleeping, tug-of-war, fetch, car rides and sleeping are all so much fun!

So we've got two things to focus on that I bet will make life at 25 a whole lot easier:

1) You have to be fearless when it comes to change. New car? New job? New city? Great. Take a walk, smell someone else's ass, and go to sleep. It'll be a blast.

2) You have to balance the weight of detractors with the weight of reinforcements. For example, if you're going to be upset about going to work five mornings a week looking for a new job, then you have to be equally happy about sleeping in and watching a football game (or movie or hiking or Civil War reenactments) with your buddies on the weekend. In other words, if you're owner makes you hunt with him all day, make sure you catch a pleasant nap on the living room floor that night.

That's really it, as far I can tell right now. Besides, those two are pretty hard without having anything else to do. Happy and fearless. Happy about the good things and fearless about changing the bad things.