PROPAGANDA SLOGANS FOR NEW REVOLUTIONARY MUSIC

Mr. Dead White Guy, this stuff is beautiful and I will celebrate it but I REFUSE YOUR INTERPRETIVE PARADIGM.

I will accept the traditions only under terms that give me agency over their interpretation.

Misunderstanding is a powerful decolonial tool.

We must care for each other's bodies. But not toeing the line between pleasure and pain is failing to confront our oppressions.

Equal parts virtuosity and bullshit.

Do not underestimate the power of enlightened nonsense. Remember that logic is not equal-access. Baffle them with bullshit - then you get to pick and choose who you explain yourself to. There is so much power in refusing to be known.

Noise, forever and ever and ever, amen.

We must build a religion out of perversity and disobedience.

Failures

In the few days before I make a temporary but crossroads-marking departure from America, I'd like to puncture a bit of the celebratory graduation mood while reminding myself of all the god damned bull shit that sometimes happens and not to erase the failures from my memory of New York.

Here's a list of all the things I resolved to do during my undergraduate years which I failed to do, or have failed to do yet. Let me know if I've missed anything!

become a professional trumpet player
become a professional jazz musician
learn how to shred
migrate to ubuntu
live cheaply for my whole undergrad
start budgeting
sleep around
finish Angband
memorize one of the bach violin partitas
practice the piano consistently
develop good fashion sense
destroy the Church
become Good at Cooking
learn to drive
cook an artichoke
save money
maintain a cast iron pan
keep my knife sharp
write stories or poetry consistently
write songs consistently
help the poor
organize the revolution
stay fit
not acquire more than 1 guitar
learn to sing
become a hardened city goer
learn how to rap
build a hardware instrument
go on a road trip
learn polish
become good at League of Legends
learn how to mix
learn how to DJ
get on the scene
get on a scene
win an award of some sort

A long, drawn-out going away sale, like the pain of knowing that a long friendship is about to end, and having that loom over you for months, and there's nothing you can do about it. Buy my stuff!

This post will be updated periodically. There are some things that I would rather not have to bring around when I end up either going back to Singapore or going to some other part of America for my MA/MM. All prices are in USD and are negotiable.

So, I am selling:

$1000 - A REAL VINTAGE '79/80 Fender Stratocaster. With hard case, gig bag that smells a bit like cat pee, whammy bar. Has been repaired/set up by a professional (Fried guitars in downtown brooklyn). Playable, beautiful, heavy - I'd keep it myself if I wasn't so sure I'd destroy it with forks and power drills.

$250 - A Yamaha Electric Piano. Can't remember the model - it cost me about $500 new. 88 weighted keys, a small number of presets. Comes with a keyboard stand.

$950 - an AER Compact 60 guitar amplifier. It's a terrible price (you can get a new one for $1000) but I'm not sure I really want to sell this, unless I get a great offer. Negotiable! Dollar for dollar one of the best amps money can buy - if you want cleans. No distortion at all, but it has stunning frequency response all the way up into super highs and super lows - meaning it's wonderful for 7 and 8 string guitars as well as smaller instruments, as well as a general amp for electronic (non-guitar) work. 2 inputs, one of which accepts XLR cables. Built in DI, headphones output, effects send/return, tuner output. Basically everything you could possibly need in an amp.


Books! $6 each. Plato's Symposium. Montaigne's Essays. Marguerite de Navarre's The Heptameron. ah, fuck it. here's a picture. If you zoom in you can read the titles. THE UPPER SHELF IS NOT FOR SALE.

Textbooks

Intermediate Chinese 2 Textbook & Workbook (used) - $35 for both.

Electronics

$72 - an Amazon Kindle Keyboard - one of the old black n white ones with the QWERTY keyboard. It's the model with internet access via Whispernet. 

$110 - Google Nexus 7 tablet, 1st gen. It's seen some use, but is in good, nay, great condition, and comes with a PVC case.

$80 - Nintendo DS lite. Comes with GTA: Chinatown Wars and N+.

$40 - Logitech Bluetooth Keyboard. Small, portable keyboard. Hard case that transforms into a tablet stand - perfect for iPads and other tablets. 

$12 - USB numpad. Useful, I guess. if you have no num pad, and need a num pad with burning ferocity. I used it to play Angband mostly.

Polyphony in Guitar Playing

Introduction

This essay should be read as a work document. It is thinking-out-loud about how I play the guitar, and an experimental attempt to devise, through analysis, new ways to play the guitar. I came to understand my interest in polyphony when I realized that one of the things I loved best about music such as the Bach inventions, or the music of Derek Bailey or Eric Dolphy, was the delicious tension between the presence of multiple, distinct voices and the presence of a single, unique persona. I came to polyphony as an improviser on the guitar, which presents special technical challenges. The intent of this essay is to think about the different ways polyphony can be achieved on the guitar.

1. Three Paradigms in Modern Guitar Playing

I call these technical approaches “paradigms” because they are illustrative of more than just a physical way of playing the instrument; each of them represents a different way of thinking about the sound possibilities of the guitar, and thus each of them is not just descriptive of a style of playing but is generative of many styles which share a similar relationship to the sound of the guitar.

1. Monophonic
   This paradigm describes a lot of jazz guitar playing, and “lead” or solo playing in rock contexts, as well as in styles derived from or related to these genres. The sound produced by the guitar is agglomerated into a single “line”, and is understood by the player and audience as a stream of notes (or sounds) that is something analogous to a single voice, regardless of what string or technique is used to create the sound.
   A paradigmatic example of this kind of guitar playing would be the work of Charlie Christian or Grant Green, whose jazz solos were sometimes described as “horn-like” in their use of the logic of a monophonic instrument. They rarely played more than one note at a time, and if they did it was not to create an additional melody with the extra notes; rather, they served to emphasize an existing note in a monophonic stream of notes.

2. Homophonic
   I use the same term that is used by musicologists to describe much of the music of the classical era, which was characterized by division between melody and harmony parts, and a more chordal (as opposed to contrapuntal) style of accompaniment.
   In contrast to monophonic playing, homophonic playing uses multiple sounds on multiple strings in parallel motion. Sometimes the highest note serves as a melody note, and other times the entire guitar part serves as accompaniment to another instrument.
   Jazz accompaniment is often homophonic, and this kind of playing was sometimes used in solo contexts by guitarists like Wes Montgomery or Jim Hall. Outside of the jazz world, a homophonic approach is used by any guitarist who strums the guitar – from country singers to the likes of Johnny Ramone.
   However, the important thing I want to emphasize about homophonic playing is not the sound of strumming, although that is a characteristic sound of much homophonic guitar playing. Rather, it is the logic of multiple strings acting in concert, having multiple sounds or voices that move in parallel, in the same rhythm.
3. Polyphonic

This kind of guitar playing is characterized by the presence of counterpoint, or the co-existence of multiple, independent voices which do not move in parallel.

Most classical guitar literature makes extensive use of polyphonic playing; so do most idioms that emphasize fingerpicking technique – the independence of the fingers on the non-fretting hand allows the articulation of multiple voices. Some jazz guitarists – notably George van Eps and his students – have developed an extensive technique of improvising two or three parallel voices with one hand.

Polyphonic guitar playing can be classified, very roughly, in two ways. One approach – which I call “barre logic”, is similar to monophonic playing in that independent streams of sound are created. Each of these streams may move across strings, like a monophonic line – the sounds of different strings are thought of as a unique whole, each proceeding from the last. Due to the complexity of the lines, this approach requires agile barre technique and difficult-to- achieve strength and independence of the fingers. This approach is often used in classical pieces.

The other approach, which I call “string logic”, treats each string of the guitar as an independent voice. Complex lines are difficult to play on single strings without needing to shift often and quickly. Such shifting would make the independent movement of voices, and hence polyphony, impossible. Hence, this sort of playing tends to utilize many simple lines in interlocking rhythms, played in “open” position (close to the nut, and utilizing unfretted strings.) Chet Atkins and “Mississippi” John Hurt are paradigmatic examples. Additionally, many prepared guitar techniques, by placing objects on or under some strings and not others, tend to exaggerate the different timbres of different strings, encouraging similar thinking.

Of course, these categories are not well-defined, and most of my examples use both sorts of polyphony in some proportion. I make the distinction only to highlight that two different kinds of musical thinking are in play – one that tends to treat the guitar as a single, unified sound source, and one that treats the guitar as a collection of six (or seven) independent sound sources.

2. Analyzing the different types of polyphony

It is immediately apparent to me that “barre logic” affords the most independence of voices, as free string-crossing allows voices to move in parallel, oblique or contrary motion at will. In contrast, “string logic” tends to result in oblique or parallel motion, as not every string can be fretted independently. It is also limited by the pitches of the open strings, which tend to be used often due to the fact that only four strings can be fretted at a time, in certain specific combinations.

On the other hand, “barre logic” is limited in its sonic vocabulary by the physical shape of the fretting hand. Only certain stretches and certain shapes are possible, and thus certain “licks” or predetermined phrases tend to dominate. “String logic”, while limited also, has more room for variation in the interaction between six voices.

All this theorizing cannot possibly outline the actual limits of technique. That is up to the imagination and perseverance of individual musicians; I only wish to note that different techniques are predisposed toward different sorts of music. This helps me to think about what I am interested in, and how I might go about doing it.

3. Looking for a hybrid polyphony

For instance, I am less interested in intricate counterpoint than I am in the co-existence of multiple, interlocking and interrupting voices. But I am also interested in a certain amount of harmonic freedom, and the possibility of rapid movement and huge leaps within a single voice.

While prepared guitar traditions allow for a great variety of sound, many of them (as with guitarists like Keith Rowe) are more textural than rhythmic, whereas I am very much interested in rhythmic repetition and development. Additionally, the inharmonic spectra produced by most guitar preparations preclude harmonic playing.

Several solutions are possible. If I accept the limits of open-string tuning, I can play further up the neck, using open strings as additional “voices” while my other fingers play a more complex voice. Alternatively, I could give up on the notion of playing “voices” that use pitches, using muted strings as percussive attacks, while other strings play melodic fragments.

These are not wholly novel approaches – rather, they are extensions of the existing ways of making polyphony on the guitar. It is up to the practicing musician to find ways of using, contextualizing, and developing the sounds that result from this approach.

4. New Polyphonies

One of the reasons this topic compels me to write has been the music of “Mississippi” John Hurt, who achieved fame in the folk blues revival of the '60s, having previously developed a distinctive style of solo guitar playing. Part of the joy of hearing his guitar is the clarity of the different articulated voices: bass, chords, melody. Whereas a player such as Chet Atkins would have left more space in his solo playing, John Hurt's guitar style is characterized by a constant stream of notes in different registers, interlocking to form the entire rhythm. I find it exceptionally beautiful to hear all of the voices weaving in and out – even the “chordal” voices that he plays on the middle two strings occasionally become prominent, articulating a short rhythm within the texture. This is polyphony in the spirit, if not the form, of Bach's fugues.

Understanding John Hurt's music as a species of polyphony is a fundamental starting point for me. I find that musicians as different as Derek Bailey and Eric Dolphy evoke a similar response in me, and I have learned to identify that response as pleasure taken in a sound that suggests multiple voices in playful interaction.

5. Possible strategies

Instead of describing how I want to play, which I have found to be a futile exercise, I will suggest some practical experiments that might help me to develop new ways of creating polyphonic music with the guitar.

• Keeping multiple voices going: Rather than muting a note as another is played on a different string, let each string ring (and meticulously avoid accidentally muting it, or unintentionally playing another note before it has died out.)
• Memorize the pitches of the open strings, relative to what is being played.
• Interlocking parts: No need to learn the country blues other than for repertory reasons /the sheer joy of it, but surely other kinds of music can be made with similar rhythmic principles: instead of long melodies, many interlocking parts with simple rhythms. Write some music down.
• Register Changes: As in music like Eric Dolphy's and Roscoe Mitchell's, a single voice may suggest polyphony through dramatic changes in register. This could work well with open strings.

Conclusion

As mentioned, this is not a discursive or argumentative essay. I have tried to make clear the streams of thought that occur when I think about making music: how to play, what to play, and why it gives me satisfaction. If any over-generalizations or inaccuracies were committed, they were for the sake of generating new principles and ideas, and hopefully adding more voices to the many streams of music I have had the privilege of experiencing. 

12/9/2013

Tears,
drop in the rain
I want to lose again,
see what things are really there.

Drop out of reality,
fold
the stars into consciousness
and the sand into the sky
and see what things are really there.

Tomorrow
is another screen
for the projection of today
Go into that sweet sleep,
remember,
remember,
I will carry your wave into the future.

I will carry your wave into the past
two signals
converging on NOW
now bright,
now then,
soon we will remember
to see again.

Salt.
Inside of me
dead like the sea,
better than aphrodisiac or pain
Shiver,
shrivel in sun
water gets between my toes,
salt, in the core of me and surrounding me.

I am an exclamation of Minerality,
I let salt go into the cycle that gives my molecules momentum
let go, let go,
the rivers flow to the sea
and remember salt, the basis of body
and their temporal inheritance.

Soon,
when we're sitting by the TV,
stars explode,
burning solar systems
streaming neutrinos through our skulls
while we, unbeknownst, munch on
peas

Cosmic wind, give the sight
that remembers how to pass
untrammeled through the universe,
stopping only to be born
and to die.

Someone asked if there was a teapot
floating around Mars - well, orbiting,
which is like falling on nothing.

Mr. Teapot:
I am sorry we left you there
There are comforts there -
the dim glow is Sol,
the red sky is a friend,
there will be a beginning,
a return to peace,
an end.

It's been a bad week. Things have begun piling on top of things, and thoughts on top of thoughts, until whole stretches of time seem to fold in on themselves like layer cake. Moist. Writing is a way of linearising, like extruding play-doh through a pipe. It lets things happen one after the other, which helps me think. Otherwise the parallel processing that makes me so good at almost everything I do starts to turn into voices.

I AM good at everything I do. I am a guitarist and improviser of uncommon clarity and brilliance. I have cultivated a stillness which I consider a healing presence in my music. I hope that it will someday be a healing presence for other people. The problem I have now is things that I cannot begin to do. I cannot convince people to help me. I cannot ask them for help. I cannot "hang out". I cannot become part of a social world. I'm not sure why this is, but believe me when I say I am not one of those people who thinks these skills are somehow uncool. I hope I am never that hip. If I could I would throw every ounce of effort I could muster at fitting in, being in a scene, hanging out, networking, making connections, friends and business associates, marketing, branding, advertising. I have in fact done that, and the only reason my complete and abject failure to achieve anything in this quadrant is surprising is because it stands in such stark contrast to my usual success rate. It irks me because I don't think it should be this difficult.

I usually ignore these problems with some success. Moving to Queens has helped. Grace and I have put up some walls. We make bread. But now that graduate school applications are bearing down on me I am daily face to face with the fact that someone is going to have to evaluate my work who isn't me. I am going to have to convince them that I am worth time and money. I have no idea how to do this.

So it's been a bad week, and my self-confidence is flagging not because I have begun to suspect that I'm not brilliant, which I certainly haven't, but because I'm staring failure of a different sort in the face every day. This constant inability to get with the program isn't just a professional impediment. It is a cause for serious loneliness, even though I have plenty of cause to be otherwise happy. I can't fix it the way I fix everything else.

The Improviser's Workbook

Clearly, I am not an authority on this, and this project in particular is founded on a solid base of skepticism towards any and all authorities.

But I have been thinking about the process of improvisation, and in my effort to become better at it, I have developed a collection of rules, statements, aphorisms, formulas and folk wisdoms. They are not truths but working heuristics for practice. The first principle is that heuristics are good enough for anything, except maybe rocket science. Here are the rest.


A melody exists in all its dimensions.
Improvisation is the rupture of skill.
I don't know if it matters if you know the theory.
But you gotta deal with what you DO know.
Concern with the importance of technique can impede listening.
Discard the illusion of self-contained moments.
All is process. Improvisation does not begin when you start playing and does not end when you finish.
It happens whether you want it to or not.
Discard the notion that it should feel good.
Improvisation is PROCESS. It is not feeling.
It may feel good.
You may dissolve. But if you don't, that is okay.
As long as consciousness does not fill up your senses.
Improvisation is a cyborg mode of being.

What purpose does practice serve?
Learning physical habits?
How have I achieved what I have achieved?
I have not learned to DO.
I have learned not to do.
That is the substance of practice.
Part of it.
Part of it is also learning to DO.
What is that? How does it work? What is learned? (it is peripheral;
we celebrate the peripheral,)

We watched the world torn apart by heroic sentiments, so we invented a music that is incapable of them.

It is small music for small people. There is no place here for greatness.

There is no place for greatness in the future.

This is the food tumblr of the person of the blog. Bagels and Heidegger or somesuch -
http://beingandbagels.tumblr.com/

Hashtag me, Keith Richards!

Give Thanks 2012

i remember when the storm hit and there were leaves everywhere and my friends were drinking tea in my apartment, imagining what was going on in manhattan.

1. It's different this week, yes? Didn't quite have the same equilibrium.

Yeah. I felt that. Maybe it's cos I don't know this tune as well.

It's hard. I mean, what do you do with that melody? But I love it.

2. He came up to me while i was smoking and literally just sat in my lap.

3. Adam! You're actually home!

Uh, yeah. I'm on hiatus from being dead. You should try it sometime, it's quite relaxing...

4. When I was 23 I was in New York City looking for my body.

5. -someone died. There are bars of light on the pavement beside Washington Square.

6. Mummy, what's philosophy?

7. I dreamed of music that was of the body/that neither commoditised soul nor technique/Lived its melodies as the unceasing dance of bodies/I dreamed of music that carved out of the rain a cave to sleep in and be warm.

8. I sank below the street, dripped onto a subway track and kept going. Soon, warm rock and then lava. Amid the strains of guitar music there was a cluster of souls.

A soul looks like a long, white string. Most people's souls dangle far beneath them into the mantle, where their concentric movements cause them to knot and tangle in the heat.

This causes problems.

9. Judith Butler thinks my penis is a fiction. I hope it's a good one.

10. Makeup is a prison for your face.

11. I am in love with the tubist in the NY philharmonic.

There was one time I was sitting second circle and my head was full of cotton and every breath I took was a mute contortion of my lungs into new shapes of pain and the sounds of people, their ticking and fidgeting and the noise their hair makes but FWOOOM some ritual FWOOM it was fall but we were longing for spring FWOOOOOOOM spinning and nose hurts from tears sprouting in the frost FWWWOOOOM freefall, the arc of birds, blood in the morning, when my body was with the air and free, free, free, free, free.

12. this is a good place we found. For you and me and kim and yuki and ricky and leo and all of our crazy friends and all of our crazy things.

13. you can look at the traffic forever. I never get bored.
Neither do I.

Russell:

Grace tells me you were probably not conscious. It seems a peripheral matter to me. Even inanimate objects collect the detritus of the human worlds in their orbit, and so you did, gelatinously being the locus of friendship and togetherness. So perhaps in one way to grieve would be illogical : in another way this transition would be incomplete without grief. Either way, I feel the need to mark that the seasons have changed, and acknowledge that things are irrevocably different, as it is with the passing of all things and all people who bear the burden of our loneliness.

For John Votta

I did not know this man. Therefore I feel qualified to eulogize. We are constituted he and I, from the cold air on particular autumn mornings. I saw him on the street corner; he would holler the time, and I would say nothing in reply, maybe a grunt of unassented thanks, but trustless. Perhaps he was an artifact of the village, the Village, where the knots of the square-block city congregated in parades of funny hats.

I am struggling. I knew not the man but the voice as passing strangeness on a certain autumn morning, which drove me to uncomfortable hand-rubbing in the toilet cubicles beside the park. He spoke to the alien worm in my stomach that burrows and calls weirdness from the sky. It says: those clouds are the billowy shapes of your fears, and these veins and scabs are the exhaustive circumscription of your little existence; and it calls back inarticulate through the groans of half-wakers.

As I enter the park, the man is behind me but I build him in my imagination. He walks down to the corner in the burgeoning daylight. Death and struggle collide in his head. Not struggle – the village struggle, always a matter of height, always the 'I Am' in the face of the tall heroic, the infantesque colic, bones broken and feet bound, endlessly walking/negotiating the intersections of height and queer subject formation in the sun-barred back streets. Every morning from the sticky unlatching of eyelids he rebuilds himself, an unsellable story of liver spots and shortness of breath.

Breath is unacknowledged father of performativity. Prior to gendered subject formation, lungs expand and respond to the edges of the air. Perhaps he practices. Non sequitur, the time (the time) and the momentless passing of cars, the imperative Hey, the imperative subject formation directed at one but addressing the other, in a bathroom crucible addressing the passing of the centuries: Hey. Watch the fuck out. Five minutes.

Five minutes snuck up on me with my coffee and leather shoes. I stood, became a walking subject, sloped the ninety-eight steps from bench to staircase, and whisked by the man who had by now addressed his interpellations to other sun-struck denizens of weirdspace. They do not recognize him. I do not recognize him except as an urge to pick at scabs, to bleed imperceptibly. Who the fuck knew?  

Delores

A candle and a table spoon
delores in the living room
she's forgetting all the fables soon

but look at what they bought her

She tried to go out for awhile
and show the morning fog a smile
but fathers never reconcile
the darkness of the daughter

she made a penny of her rage
and inky menses dot her page
but calligraphics never caged
the warning winds of slaughter

But pay a thought to those before us
who never saw what you, Delores
saw within the rib of horrors
Death: you never sought her.

Meriden

just a little thing i wrote sometime last year that i dug up recently and thought I'd share.

I

The suburbs of Meriden. I spent a few days there, looking among roaches and empty bottles, cruising the hilly housing district with Duba and Chris Ward and moustache Dan (who had had a facial hair crisis) and Mary Jane. The hanging hills of Meriden. This is not my world. I am a grandchild of immigrants. I am a native of south-east Asia, and the reticence of those people is in my blood. And these people with a tendency toward substances and rock and roll are as removed a people from me as anybody in the world. Alien habitats - rows of wood-walled houses and green lawn, the great expanse of ambition.

The hanging hills of Meriden. I spent two years serving in the Singaporean army, mostly against my will, hacking through jungles. I encompassed the unfamiliar, the wide streets and cold forests that were everything except my crowded high-rise country. I was compelled to leave by the sharp corners of the unfamiliar. So this is my world, and these are my people. The poetry of Dylan and Garcia, Hendrix, the itinerants of the evergreen nation.

We spent St. Patrick's day making music. We sang songs that we had written. We drank and played an Italian card game and passed out and threw up in the sink. I spent the night in someone else's bed. What are we looking for. Nobody is looking for anything. We will wake up in the morning and laugh at the excesses of the night and take the train back home to New York City, where we live beside a church and a bank. The eternal pilgrims, hawking their trade by lamplight and jesus by sunlight and cutting down trees.

There is a ringing in my soul. I am tongue-tied outside the world of my childhood, as if words sprouted from the stones of an old home and were ripped from my throat as I tore through the upper atmosphere, headed west. Frankfurt, JFK: The slow progression of the soul. The sprouting of the soul. I am also hesitant to be sentimental but something inside me calls out to the trees - I want, more than anything, to be at home, to breathe the air of home, to be held and to be whispered to that everything will be alright. Too much strangeness in this country, too much freedom.

To wake up and laugh the night off. That is my desire. The warm air of Singapore. The embrace of trees. The short, brightly-lit highways. The smell of hawker food. The great expanse of ambition. To wake up in America and scrape the paint off the walls with my eyes, looking for the spirit in the mortar. The smell of cigarettes. The frantic clutching for meaning. To wake up in Singapore. I am composed of the streets of my homeland.

Perhaps there is nothing here - all was left in England by the Puritans. I have only come, then, to look for something that is not something. I have perused bonfires and leafed through the arches of New York City in the night time. I am the son of Aristotle. Perhaps the sight of moonlight on a lake through clouds of smoke is only the reflection of an alien yearning. We took the train home, smiling to each other. The pilgrims came for the New World, but they soon discovered that no world is forever new unless you are forever lonely.

II

1. Nicholas : I don’t know what’s up with Adam. We gave him some of the sweet leaf and he’s been sitting in the car all this while just staring ahead at the back of Chris’s seat. I asked him if he was alright and he just nodded and continued staring. I think he’s just far too high, the poor bird, he never took a hit for twenty years while he was in South-East Asia.

We’ve been driving for about an hour now, working through the last of that quarter ounce we got from the Doctor. I hope Adam comes out of that stoner coma, he’s usually pretty fun, but he listens to some weird music.

2. Dan : I’m glad they let me drive. I hate sitting in the back. It’s nice to be doing things when you’re baked. Just gotta remember that left turn before Chris’s… Every time Adam says something I jump a little because I keep forgetting he’s there, except he seems to have a cold perpetually and he keeps sniffling. But he doesn’t say anything, I wonder what he’s thinking about. Maybe he’s just really high.
3. ‘Hey, Dan. Put on the, uh, put on some Wolfmother. No, the first album, before the line-up changed. Man, they rocked the shit out back then, I don’t think I like them as much now. Put on ‘Woman’. Remember when we covered that at the first session last year? We rocked that shit. Pity the singer’s such a cunt. I heard he took all the rights and fired his bandmates claiming that he wrote all the songs. Well, yeah, he wrote the words, but most of those songs is the rest of the band. It’s the fucking rock and roll. Hey, Adam, now that you’re playing bass we should try ‘Woman’ again. Do you like this song?’

4. ‘So what happened to the moustache?’

‘Oh, that thing I had in New York? Shaved it off, man. The girlfriend didn’t like it.’

‘Jesus. I barely recognized you.’

‘Which one is Andrew’s car?’

‘A blue Hyundai. That’s what he said.’

‘Blue Hyundai… he’ll be up in a few seconds.’

‘Is that him?’

‘No… wait, there he is. Roll down the window.’

‘ANDREW - Get in.’

5. Andrew : It is so crowded in here. I’m so confused right now. But everybody seems nice… yeah. Everybody seems alright. I didn’t think Adam would come all the way here from the city - he’s usually just alone. I thought he didn’t like us very much… but maybe they’re just all that way back in Singapore. He seems pretty good right now though. Hey, brother, been smokin’ some of that reefer, man? Yeah man, it’s pretty groovy. It’s REALLY groovy, in fact. Right on, brother. Peace. I should put on the Dead. I think he’d like that, maybe ‘I know you rider’. Jerry Garcia, man. Really really fucking groovy.
6. I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I’m gone. I know you, rider; gonna miss me when I’m gone. Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms. Laid down last night, lord, I could not take my rest. Laid down last night, lord. I could not take my rest. My mind was wandering like the wild geese in the west.
   
   
   III

We were all pretty high, so the reporting of events may be a little compressed in time or a little confused. Nonetheless, I’m fairly certain that all of this actually happened. Eric called – he was in town. We drove for forty-five minutes to his house, another twenty to the dealer’s, who dropped us a few dimebags’ worth from his second-floor window. Then we were in a basement for some time.

Somebody said, ‘Hey, it’s pretty late – why don’t we go down to the lake? Is there a road there, Eric?’

Eric said ‘Yeah, there’s a road, it’s like five minutes away.’

Then we were on a dismantled bridge that spanned halfway across the lake, now more of a pier than anything. There was a huge backhoe abandoned amidst the broken concrete and mud; we clambered over the treads and stood on the cab, looking at the moonlight coming off the water. We were quiet for a few minutes. Somebody asked if anybody wanted the rest of the blunt. I think nobody said anything – we just kept looking. It was so still. There was a cold wind blowing. I hadn’t spoken much in the last three hours, anyway – there wasn’t much to say. I was so far away from anything I knew how to talk about. But this moonlight, this lake – yeah, I was pretty baked, but so what? It was nice. Not a lot of nice things happen these days.

The best games I've ever played

I suppose I could use an outlet for my Diablo 3 - induced nerdrage. Seriously, Blizzard, way to drop the ball. But to prove, perhaps to myself, that there is in fact an objective standard for fun or whatever it is gets people hard for video games, here are some of the ones I've enjoyed the most.

1. Portal
The perfect one. Not even Portal 2 could top its simple formula of mechanics that are fun and a plot that I'm capable of giving a shit about. It turns out that the combination of a serious, thoughtfully written script and a little bit of deadpan neurotic humour was enough to convince me that the developers had made an experience worth having.

2. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Oh, SMAC. not s'mac, the food chain that fetishizes mac and cheese, but the bastard cousin of the Civ series. It dropped between Civ II and III but I think tops all of them any time, because it has a plot. In a free form strategy game. That happens as you progress without ridiculous scripted events and cutscenes. I won't be the first to say it, but game design has taken several leaps backward since the 90s.

3. Halo
This one's all about presentation. The ringworld-esque story might have smelled a tad regurgitated, but Bungie scored a bona fide hit by making environments I wanted to explore, enemies I wanted to shoot at, vehicles I wanted to drive, and missions I wanted to finish. The driving mission at the end is one of the finest moments in video game history.

4. System Shock 2
I didn't finish it. I'm not sure I even got halfway but goddamn. this is the scariest game I have ever played, and back then they had no recourse to fancy shaders, moody lighting, or realistic blood. Even so I had nightmares for weeks about zombies that pop out of nowhere and apologize to you while caving your skull in and eating your guts. Holy fucking jesus.

5. Starcraft
I hate to cry foul at corporate profiteering like some insufferable hipster. Indie games, like indie music, have just about as high a nonsense quotient as 'mainstream' games do. But Blizzard's post-WoW offerings have smelled too much of money-grabbing and committee design, jumping like bitches in heat on the gaming flavour-of-the-month design buzzword.

Here are some choice quotes from the first Starcraft, that I might remember the good old days of video game dialogue.

'Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I am the Overmind; the eternal will of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me.'

'You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities... Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream. A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare.'

'Jimmy, drop the knight-in-shining-armor routine. It suits you sometimes. Just not ... not now. I don't need to be rescued. I know what I'm doing. The Protoss are coming to destroy the entire planet, not just the Zerg. I know that because ... well I just know it. I am a Ghost, remember?'

I liked that they wrote characters who were interesting even when they weren't deep (The Overmind), and likable when they were (Raynor and Kerrigan). I liked that the plot managed to involve me. I was outraged when Kerrigan betrayed Fenix.

And then Blizzard took a giant shit on Jim Raynor in SC2. I can't even describe what they did coherently. It does sound to a lay person like myself that their post-WoW windfall managed to destroy what made them great designers in the first place: solid mechanics and workmanlike story telling, with characters who were normal enough to be real.

6. Diablo 2

Yes, it goes deeper. On the other side of the Blizzard spectrum we have D2, which lacked the solid writing and affable characterisation of Starcraft (Stay awhile, and listen!), but won the fucking lottery as far as mechanics go. I have probably spent more time playing diablo 2 than I have any other single activity in the world. It's very simple. You get rewarded for killing things by becoming incrementally better at killing things.  You derive satisfaction from killing things in large numbers, and also from becoming better at killing things in large numbers. Sometimes they explode when you kill them. The item system was well-designed, the random loot gave me a good reason to keep playing, the uniques were well-designed and thematically interesting, the bosses were tough, the enemies were varied and cool to look at (I'm thinking of Oblivion Knights here. Great balls of elemental death). The skills system was rigorous enough to demand attention, but loose enough to allow all kinds of ridiculous builds. Part of the fun was designing a build which worked in its own awkward, teetering way and finishing the bloody game with it. I remember staggering into act 2 hell with a kicksin, wearing a 6 socketed phase blade and a tiamat's revenge, kicking one thing to death and then getting mauled by everything else on screen. It was frustrating, but it was also good times.

The plot, while unspectacular, served well enough to guide you along from quest to quest and stayed out of the way while you were committing genocide on the Fallen. If nothing else, it had a pleasing symmetry to it. First 2 acts - the lesser evils. 3, 4 and 5 - the Prime Evils, each with their own unique flavour of horrible. It was an efficiently designed story.

So believe me when I say I know quite a bit about what I'm talking about when I say that Blizzard really boffed it with D3. There's no reward to the endless grind that is central to Diablo because none of the items are interesting beyond 'main stat plus damage' which is the only viable item build in the game, because all of your abilities scale off weapon damage. I loved D2 because I could design a workable character around hilarious items like Tiamat's Revenge (the triple elemental damage shield with no block and not enough defence) or the good ol 6-shael phase blade of ridiculous attack speed. Every item drop would unlock new possibilities for character building. While the skill system in D3 pays lip service to diversity, its monolithic weapon damage mechanic makes the item system irrelevant. Also, being able to change my skills at any point gives me no satisfaction for leveling up or building a character. 




EDIT: Honorable mentions. Some of these are just as good as the ones above, but didn't seem as relevant in a discussion of what makes games good.


Half-Life 2
Halo 2
Baldur's Gate 2
Angband
Diablo
Star Wars : KotOR
LoL
Fallout 3
Warcraft 3
Pokemon Gold and Silver
Portal 2

the experience of nicotine withdrawal

listen up,

on the 3rd day the shaking starts and it goes away when you finally wheeze out, fifty years later.

and in between then and then,

who can say what happens? the great auroric transition from boy to corpse,

punctuated with

palpitations and long aching dreams of short cigarette breaks

Give Thanks, 2011

1. Juliana is half a head shorter than me. In the rain I'm looking down anyway to keep it out of my face; she says something like 'that's why socialism is international, because one country can be socialist but it's gonna get screwed by other countries that want its resources.' The rain continues to pour, but in the clear plastic awning of the Tribeca Tavern we are sheltered from the brutal gusts of wind that send droplets down my collar.

2. 'I'm sorry you were waiting out in the cold,' or something to that effect, says Jean-michel. I say 'look at the trees. The leaves are beautiful.' 'You are enjoying it? I'm sorry for taking so long, I didn't realise you were out here.' I say 'We don't have autumn in Singapore.' He says 'Come in.'

3. Steve steps over to us, he might have said something but my ears are ringing and Chris and I share a look that says 'what just happened? Why did we stop playing' until I notice one of the strings on Nick's guitar is dangling, flapping about like a broken limb. Oh. Nick says that the new string isn't gonna stay in tune through a song like 'Power of Soul.' I say 'Nick, you wanna rap?'

4. In Singapore, I'm in a taxi crying my brains out. I thought you'd be better at this. What have you been doing? If you say that, it's never coming together. I will practice harder. I don't ever want to be a musician, it's too hard I've given it everything and here I am curled up like a stillborn foetus, covered in tears and afterbirth.

5. I am behind the cargo containers in the center of Taiwan. I can't remember my name, or what just happened; I know I failed in some way and that I shouldn't care but the rain and the gravel press into my feet and hands and nothing is escapable.

6. Can we do just one more quick one? Stella by starlight, around here (Gilbert counts it off fast)

hey man, I'm glad you came by--Sorry about the amp--Yeah man, Ray Brown is such a boss--I think that's pretty swingin'--Do you wanna learn this Ron Carter blues I've been working on--Sound good guys, that's just like the record. Are you reading from scores or something?

7. 'I think music is an inherently political act. That's why Darlene Clark Hine talks about 'sexual politics' when she discusses the blues singers. I mean - yeah, it's not political music as in it's not really a social critique, but just by, um, putting your experiences out there... I mean, what I'm saying is, it really kind of affirms that you're a human being, with real concerns and real experiences and I think once people accept that through music then there's the possibility for social change.'

8. 'So what I've really been meaning to tell you--and I only say this because you're my friend and I feel like I can trust you with this information--is that I'm basically Jesus.' 'Oh yeah, I think I've known for awhile, I mean we suspected that was the case.' 'Yeah. it's not really all that. People bitch a lot about stupid things. Am I walking too fast?' 'Yeah, I'm still getting the hang of these...' 'I'm sorry you broke your feet. I made those, you know.'

9. 山 is my friend. She has red hair and she’s a little bit less tall than I am. Usually she floats about five to ten centimetres over the ground, though, so we’re at eye level. She says my right profile is more flattering and refuses to walk on the other side of me. I say, ‘山, god fucking damn it.’ She says, glowing a little, ‘yeah. It’s shit. But look at the trees!’

10. The lights had been turned out and there was the feeling of hands and faces and teeth and some shared laughter, and some shared apologies. I say some things, I was drunk at the time, but I remember the words ‘yeah, it’s alright. Freely given, you know? And freely received.’

11. It was a disappointing sundown at the Hudson. I tramped four blocks there through the cold, I had Keith Jarrett or Grant Green or the Duke, something which I consider Proper Sunset Music on the headphones. It was too cloudy to see anything but the gradual fading of the day from orange-tinted grey to dark-blue-grey. The lights on the cliffs of New Jersey came on one by one.

12. Nick and Kim are a kind of conglomerate entity on the couch. I am on the armchair. I say 'Jesus the weather is fucking awful.' 'Yeah, it's been ridiculous.' It keeps raining, somewhat.

A few weeks later, it’s still raining and it’s going to be Thanksgiving in a few hours and the trees are dripping. Freely given and freely received. God fucking damn it, Christmas is coming. Jesus mother fucking Christ. I hate the weather.

13. Keith Jarrett is moaning. Jack is swirling like a blizzard and Gary is thundering like a tropical storm and Keith is moaning and screaming and playing and playing and playing.

Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Gary Peacock

are some kind of celestial triumvirate. Listening their 'Standards Live' recording, little pockets of light push up between the spaces, illuminating everything they play in a weightless glow. On this record at least his achievement is not gravitas, but a kind of transcendent ease that is buoyant to the earth-bound.

The Old Religion

I have a bad habit, which is a kind of a Catholic retention, which happens when someone asks, or I ask what do I think about music, or what is my place in this as a south-east asian, as a guitar player, as an immigrant, as an American, what do I think about the great living tradition of African-American improvised music, or European classical music, and what is my place in them? And how am I a part of the contemporary society of professionals and journeymen who have dedicated themselves to this music, as a Chinese person, as an educated person, as an atheist, as a human being who loves human beings?

At this point all I can think of is to get down on my knees and say 'what kind of fucking question is that, I am incapable of asking let alone knowing. I am not worthy.' I shouldn't; professing not to know is as absurd as professing to know, like asking 'What are we?' where the what and the are and the we are equally incomprehensible. I have a kind of provisional answer consisting mostly of notes and sketches on manuscript paper. Music contains many elements of living, but only really answers the one question 'Are we?' The answer is yes.

budpowellbudpowellbudpowell

Today I re-read Kurt Vonnegut's 'a Man without a Country' and listened to Bud Powell play 'Cherokee' and my heart broke in two.

swimming in Monk covers

Kurt Rosenwinkel - Reflections, Ask Me Now

Bobby Broom - Rhythm-a-ning

Jean-Michel Pilc - I've Got it Bad and it Ain't Good, Solitude, Rhythm-a-ning

Couple of fantastic Monk covers here - just when I thought it couldn't be done. Rosenwinkel brings a special kind of poise to Reflections, and he channels the crazy in a way that appropriates no Monk-isms, yet is definitively loopy. Broom's Rhythm-a-ning in a guitar trio setting lets him cut loose with some crazy harmonies, and he gets to play the blues. It's the most straight-ahead of all the cuts mentioned here. Which brings me to Pilc. The first two of those aren't strictly Monk covers (they're Ellington tunes) but the way he plays them is so strongly reminiscent of the Monk Plays Ellington album - he even does that Monk 'cat running down the keyboard in suspiciously good time' lick once - that I consider these covers of Monk's versions. Pilc is actually insane, though. Sometimes I can't make head or tail of his music, but when it's good, it's really good, and he gets it right here.