August 30, 2010

Aguado Dionisio — Study in A Minor (arranged for ukulele)

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Got my new tenor ukulele and it’s an absolutely gor­geous instru­ment, although I’m sure that’s related to the cost1. After a few weeks of try­ing out the Aquila’s they came with, I put on some Worth brown strings with the low-G.

Study in A Minor is a great piece to learn because it’s rel­a­tively sim­ple (so I don’t get dis­cour­aged too eas­ily), but there are three tricky parts to focus on improv­ing. They’re also each dif­fi­cult in their own way, grad­u­ally work­ing the dex­ter­ity or flex­i­bil­ity in a cer­tain fin­ger or two.

I wanted to film this as a record of the way the ukulele sounds now; it’s a solid lace­wood spruce body, so the tone will develop over time as the wood matures. Also, so I can have a quick ref­er­ence of what it sounds like with longer nails on the pick­ing hand (which were promptly cut after, because they were dri­ving me nuts). It’s rel­a­tively clear sound, whereas with­out nails it’s sort of “wet”.

I first learned this on a soprano ukulele, and I had to retrain my fin­gers to stretch on the tenor. It was a BIG dif­fer­ence, and I didn’t think my fin­gers would stretch far enough at first.

It feels amaz­ing to prac­tice some­thing for weeks, and to finally have it click one day. Then you never want to stop play­ing cause you’re afraid you may lose it the next day.

  1. Jesse says I paid “real instru­ment” price for it. [↑]
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August 13, 2010

29 9/12: The Rocker

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Music has always been a big part of my life, so it’s strange to con­sider the fact that I only seri­ously took up an instru­ment the year I’m turn­ing 30, which I gen­er­ally con­sider late to be start­ing any­thing new.

I used to play piano and flute, but that was never really my choice. For the for­mer, it was more of my mom want­ing me to be a good Chinese boy, and me not want­ing to let her down. When it came to the lat­ter, my school had a strong empha­sis on arts, and either visual arts or music were manda­tory. I chose music1, and played the flute; far from ideal for a teenager going through puberty and an iden­tity crisis.

I bought my first ukulele a few months ago, and I don’t think I’ve stopped play­ing since.

Self portrait at 29 9/12

Jammin’ in my jam­mies. With what may pos­si­bly be an erection.

Photo by Jess.

So much of my life has been filled by those four lit­tle strings. It’s an entirely new medium I’m still explor­ing, a mus­cle I’d yet to flex, a way of express­ing myself that’s so unlike any of my other outlets.

I get pains in my fin­gers and wrists from play­ing too much, so I struc­ture my life around the breaks; doing laun­dry, writ­ing, clean­ing my room, sort­ing my paper­work until the tin­gling or pinch­ing goes away. The pads of my fin­gers are dead. I used to fall asleep think­ing of her — now I work out scale pat­terns and chords across the fret­board in my head until I pass out. I even decided to make the ulti­mate com­mit­ment and grow out the nails on my strum­ming hand because the longer they get, the more pleased I am with the sound (and I find both long nails and asym­me­try absolutely dis­gust­ing).

It’s come to the point where I’d rather play ukulele than play games, or go out, or talk to peo­ple. I love play­ing so much that I enjoy it even though I’m still no good at it.

I turn 30 in three months, and music is my hot hot bath, my dead end, and my girlfriend.

The Turning 30 Series

  1. Ironic that I’m so much more of a visual artist now. [↑]
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August 9, 2010

second show

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I was sup­posed to hang out with Jesse last week­end. We were going to jam and talk and throw around ideas, and I was really look­ing for­ward to it because we always seem to be doing some­thing when we’re together instead of just chillin.

See, it’s right here on his sched­ule, between Floors and Dinner.

Jesse's schedule

Unfortunately, I devel­oped my annual case of strep throat that day and had to stay away from everyone.

Then, on Friday as I was going back through our e-mail cor­re­spon­dence, I real­ized that Jesse invit­ing me to play ukulele meant play­ing a house party on Saturday. We met up about two hours before we were on and had a very quick rehearsal to work out some parts with­out Nic being able to back us up, as well as extra bits and pieces of songs I fig­ured out over the week. Being so rushed was prob­a­bly a good thing; it kept my mind off the nervousness.

Turns out it was an out­door gig play­ing to a group of hip­sters at a bar­be­cue, and we were open­ing. It didn’t go ter­ri­bly well. At one point in the mid­dle of Write Protected I screwed up the strum­ming so badly that we had to stop the song and restart, but we quickly picked up on a count of four and went on with­out another hitch. Jesse remarked that it was good prac­tice for next time, because prob­lems come up that you never think of when you’re in a new environment.

This time it was a tun­ing peg that some­how got knocked in the mid­dle of the set. I only dis­cov­ered this once the song had started — and I was the only one play­ing so I couldn’t stop. It must have been off by an entire semi-tone cause it totally messed up my senses and I had a hard time telling if I was even play­ing the right chords. It was also night by the time our set ended, and I had a hard time see­ing the frets, which only added to the confusion.

Note to self: strum once to before each song to make sure the instru­ment is in tune.

I did, how­ever, learn from the last show to bring a side-table to use as a step­ping stool. Usually, I sit when prac­tic­ing, but at the 160 Workshops show I had to stand; not being used to the pos­ture meant I was con­stantly adjust­ing the uke in the arm between verses and com­ing in late in the bar as a result. I brought a lit­tle Ikea side-table this time, and it worked really well.

Even with all the glitches, as rushed and under-rehearsed as we were, it was a fan­tas­tic time and a great experience.

The next set was in the base­ment, with a girl and guy look­ing like they were kids dressed up and pre­tend­ing to be Ziggy Stardust, singing to generic elec­tron­ica. And peo­ple were lov­ing it in their slow-nodding, hip­ster kind of way, although the weed and booze may have helped (Audra would later remark to me that it was hard to tell how into it peo­ple were cause of how cool every­one was try­ing to act).

I also missed see­ing a very drunk Tina cor­ner Jesse. I could totally see this being her scene.

Pizza with girls

Check out Audra sport­ing her styl­ish Hurley cap.

Jesse was being inter­viewed later that night and also wanted to stay to see Matt play, so the girls and I headed to grab a bite to eat. Audra bought us all pizza and drinks at a nearby pizze­ria, which had the BEST CRUST I’ve ever tasted.

Before the end of the night, in a good mood and feel­ing safe, I admit­ted to Em my crush on her boyfriend. She took it well.

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July 28, 2010

Fell in love with a beard at 160 Workshops

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I could explain how awe­some this night was, but I think this beard speaks for itself.

It’s a custom-made piece by Emily Comeau — named the Smirkin’ Merkin — and a pro­to­type for Jesse’s merch. As a per­son who’s never even come close to hav­ing a beard, I wanted to keep it SO BADLY even though it was brown and didn’t match the cur­tains (or the car­pet, for that mat­ter). I wore it for the first song I played, but it got way too warm to keep on in a house full of people.

beard

 

Read the rest of this entry »

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July 22, 2010

Collab

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This is pretty much the most awe­some sit­u­a­tion I can think of. A jam ses­sion with Nic on beats and bass, Jesse rap­ping and on organ + glock­en­spiel, Audra on clar­inet, and me on ukulele. Figuring out what sounds best, mod­i­fy­ing arrange­ments, prac­tic­ing until it feels right.

The night was actu­ally a rehearsal for Jesse’s upcom­ing Canadian liv­ing room tour, the last stop of which is in Ottawa, at the same place I first met Jesse and Audra and Jacob.

Rehearsal

 

Because Jesse’s sis­ter is only avail­able on the east­ern tour dates, that left a spot for one instru­ment on the final tour date, which I’ll excit­edly be fill­ing with my ukulele. It’s only for three songs (and singing one part of a three part har­mony) but it’s going to be so much fun.

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Here’s Jesse singing and rhyming and con­duct­ing us and play­ing the glock­en­spiel at the same time. It’s a new track off his upcom­ing album with an obvi­ous theme about video, except in this ver­sion he made an arrange­ment of Video Tape by Radiohead and VCR by The XX to book­end the verses. I’d never heard VCR, so Jesse had to teach me the chords on the fly.

I recorded this on my iPhone so I could prac­tice on my own; I won’t have a chance to see them for another rehearsal before they go on tour. I’d never heard the song before, and it was our first time play­ing it through together but every­one knew when to stop. It felt com­pletely nat­ural. We were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with­out words, our instincts cul­mi­nat­ing in that won­der­fully solid unison.

Even though I’m still rusty, it felt amaz­ing to be play­ing an instru­ment with other peo­ple again. And this time with mate­r­ial that’s fuck­ing genius, not the same old con­ser­va­tory pieces some teacher chooses for you. At one point I was play­ing around on the ukulele when Jesse had to get the phone, and Nic started putting beats to what I was doing and it made me want to steal Nic for all my practicing.

See Jesse Dangerously in your town:

Friday, July 23rd — The Bird House in Halifax, NS — 6156 Duncan Street, 10:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 24th — The Galley in Fredericton, NB — 1–178 Westmorland Street, 7:00 p.m (with feminist/anti-capitalist gum­boot troupe Rebelles).
Sunday, July 25th — Gallerie Rye in Montreal, PQ — 1331a Rue Ste Catherine Est, 8:00 p.m (with the vegan ukulele of Nicola IV).
Monday, July 26th — 160 Workshops in Ottawa, ON — 160 Primrose Avenue, 8:00 p.m. (with electronic/acoustic singer-songwriter Jacob Earl).

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June 7, 2010

Jesse Dangerously — Halifax Rap Legend (Live @ Zaphod Beeblebrox)

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The last stop of the 1000 Crooked Miles was right here at Zaphod’s in Ottawa. The last song of the night was Jesse’s (who was head­lin­ing) with a per­for­mance of Halifax Rap Legend, the beat taken from his upcom­ing album.

I know of no other rap­per who can use the expres­sion “rest­ing on your lau­rels” in their rhymes. I sus­pect this is why MC Chris once named him as the only rap­per he liked.

hugs

Hugs after the show.

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May 31, 2010

I didn’t come here for the tea

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I came here to get out of the house. Room, actu­ally. I haven’t had a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion with any­one in three days.

I kept going through my phone book. No one. Not a sin­gle per­son I want to talk to. No one with whom to be myself com­pletely, with whom to spend in com­pany with­out con­ver­sa­tion. Hank told me a morn­ing of awk­ward­ness is far bet­ter than a night of lone­li­ness, but I beg to dif­fer. The morn­ings always seem to last much longer.

At the same time, this is when I want to dis­tract myself the most, and being with other peo­ple is the most effec­tive way. I’m too busy being focused on spend­ing time with some­one else that I can for­get about myself.

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In the car it’s all Kid Cudi, and even though I’ve always told myself I wouldn’t drive when I’m like this, I’d always wanted to hear this album when I’m in this kind of mood. I was never one to resist a night in cool sum­mer air, cruis­ing under the city lights to old haunts.

Waiting for my order affords me the oppor­tu­nity to sur­rep­ti­tiously observe peo­ple and try to fig­ure out their roles each clique as they inter­act. Even though I’m alone, it’s com­fort enough to be among strangers.

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May 3, 2010

Famous Blue Raincoat (ukulele cover)

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Almost three months ago, I walked into a music store and bought a ukulele. I didn’t even know the frets on the ukulele (or gui­tar, for that mat­ter) were raised; I thought they were just lines painted on the neck used as guide­lines for fin­ger posi­tions. Ever since, it’s filled a void in me. A void I didn’t even know existed until I found myself feel­ing empty when I didn’t get a chance to play.

Famous Blue Raincoat is one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. I wish I could write let­ters like this.

I haven’t quite fig­ured out what kind of style or genre I want to apply to the ukulele, but I think my singing abil­ity (or lack thereof) will limit me to the soft Sam Beam folk sound unless I started tak­ing singing lessons. Borrowed in my inter­pre­ta­tion is a vari­a­tion of the pick­ing pat­tern Cohen uses in a lot of his ear­lier songs, such as Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, adapted for the soprano ukulele.

While my brain picks out the mis­takes and details I need to work on when I see myself play, I try to keep in mind the words of my Tai Chi teacher, “We’re never as bad as we fear nor as good as we would like”. I don’t think I’ll ever be sat­is­fied with my musi­cal abil­ity unless I could com­mit a lot more time to it. Unfortunately, that would mean less time for another hobby, so I have to accept that this will prob­a­bly be close to the limit of my abil­ity. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clean things up in another few years. Patience will come from learn­ing to be sat­is­fied from the act of play­ing itself, and not the mas­tery of it. For now, this’ll serve as record of my progress.

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April 9, 2010

Duets

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One day I’d like to pick up an instru­ment with a big­ger range (than a ukulele1), and start writ­ing my own mate­r­ial. It’d be even bet­ter if I could form a duo with a per­son I was roman­ti­cally involved with, like The Dresden Dolls or Wild Strawberries2.

Sometimes The Dresden Dolls play extended ver­sions of their songs at con­certs3. The way they inter­act reveals such inti­macy. In each face, you can see how they’re com­pletely lost to the music in those moments of dis­so­nant bliss, but they’re lost together. From body lan­guage alone, they read each other for tim­ing, vol­ume, and inten­sity, until they feel where the other is going by instinct. That kind of chem­istry is rare, and it’d be amaz­ing to be able to share that with someone.

  1. The high-g reen­trant is what gives the ukulele it’s dis­tinct sound, but it feels so lim­it­ing some­times. [↑]
  2. Hellllllllllooooooooo Roberta Carter-Harrison circa Quiver. [↑]
  3. Okay, admit­tedly, Amanda’s singing isn’t any­where as good in the video as on the stu­dio ver­sion, but the nearly five-minute extended intro with Brian’s bril­liant drum solo would be worth the price of admis­sion by itself. [↑]
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April 3, 2010

Make Hymn Cry + Cover

10

In the win­ter I made a short video teaser for Jesse’s upcom­ing album by get­ting him to per­form a song off it called Make Hymn Cry. As the only ukulele piece on a rap album, it def­i­nitely stands out.

Then it dawned on me this morn­ing to see if I could cover it. As I was try­ing to fig­ure out the chord pro­gres­sion, I real­ized it’s a fairly sim­ple song that only alter­nates between the G and C chords. The strum­ming in Jesse’s video is slightly sim­pler than on the album, the lat­ter of which is the pat­tern I use in my ver­sion, and includes the pick­ing arpeg­gio for the sec­ond verse.

Still, it took me half the day just to get com­fort­able with the strum­ming pat­tern because it’s syn­co­pated in a way I’m not used to yet, the rhythm at the end of each bar divided beyond eighth notes into six­teenth notes. This is what long week­ends are for.

The main thing I’m con­cen­trat­ing on is count­ing the beats so I can strum off them and keep track of where the extra strum is at the end of each bar. The next is try­ing not to speed up, which is a very bad habit of mine, regard­less of instru­ment. I also need to pay atten­tion to softly rest­ing my hand on the strings when tran­si­tion­ing to the sec­ond verse; firstly, to pre­vent the last chord from ring­ing too long, and sec­ondly, to phys­i­cally feel where the strings are so I can get my thumb on the C string. I’m def­i­nitely not good enough to know where it is at all times. Most of the rest came by itself (i.e. I’m not con­sciously focus­ing on it), prob­a­bly from already lis­ten­ing a few times to a pre-release copy of the album Jesse gave me.

The phrases of the lyrics are also syn­co­pated against the strum­ming; it always feels like your strum­ming is late because the first word of every line falls on the beat before each down-strum), which adds another layer of com­plex­ity. The fact that I made it through with­out any major mis­takes but fucked it up right at the very end1 is why I can’t stop laughing.

My singing is strained cause I’m try­ing to project above the strum­ming to stay in bal­ance, but it’s clearly out of my com­fort zone. I’m not good enough to strum softly with con­trol yet, so I cheated and just raised my voice. The thing is, I never prac­tice singing when I’m prac­tic­ing my play­ing, usu­ally because I need to con­cen­trate on one thing at a time. Singing prac­tice is also bor­ing by itself, so I never do it, even though I should.

Anyway, I had a good day after learn­ing this lit­tle piece, and being able to fig­ure out the chords and the strum­ming was prob­a­bly just as fun as being able to play it.

  1. I lost track of the extra strum in the sec­ond last bar! [↑]
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March 31, 2010

Linger On

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Love is the foun­da­tion of my uni­verse. To believe in it is to believe in other fun­da­men­tal truths, like grav­ity, and the fact that my penis has stopped growing.

That’s why it’s so hard for me to let go.

Because the moment I let go is the moment I stop believ­ing in love. I’d much rather fool myself into think­ing this loyal, faith­ful tenac­ity will make a dif­fer­ence, than believe the world isn’t kind and fair. Cause I know it’s cruel and unfair. I just don’t want to believe that.

And that’s why I still believe in us.

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March 24, 2010

I can hear the june bugs approaching

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(Thanks to Kasi for this one.)

I recently dis­cov­ered that gui­tar chords are the same as ukulele chords, which opens up the reper­toire of avail­able songs con­sid­er­ably. It’s a shame that most online sheet music is in the form of gui­tar tabs, which don’t trans­late to the ukulele. Still, I have enough songs to prac­tice that I can switch to another when I get bored with one. I find it inter­est­ing that since the ukulele requires two hands doing dif­fer­ent things, I run into a bot­tle­neck in hand dex­ter­ity; I can pluck or strum well enough with my right hand, but I can’t get the chords with my left hand fast enough, or vice versa depend­ing on the song. I have to prac­tice each hand indi­vid­u­ally, which is so unlike any other instru­ment I’ve played before.

I have a tele­scope now. My instruc­tor was able to get a great pack­age deal for stu­dents in his astropho­tog­ra­phy course for a 114mm reflec­tor, along with a track­ing motor1 and illu­mi­nated retic­ule2. I put it together today, and it was really excit­ing to be assem­bling all these pre­ci­sion parts to make my first tele­scope, a moment I dreamed about since I was a kid. Astronomy is much more com­pli­cated than I expected. Much of it is sim­i­lar to pho­tog­ra­phy in terms of the equip­ment used (although the terms and con­trols are dif­fer­ent), but now you also have to know your sub­ject, your ori­en­ta­tion, and your weather con­di­tions, not to men­tion being at the right place.

I’m feel­ing bet­ter about things. Maybe it’s the promise of warmer weather. I’m wait­ing for the day I can drive my car with the win­dows down and san­dals on. Those are the days of house par­ties, camp­ing, drinks on patios, and first kisses. Soon, it will be the time of stargaz­ing, bar­be­cues, and who knows.

A few peo­ple have sug­gested my depres­sion may have been due to a chem­i­cal imbal­ance, which I never ruled out. Even though it was one e-mail on that Thursday morn­ing that trig­gered all those bad thoughts, I nor­mally would have been able to han­dle it bet­ter. There wasn’t an imme­di­ate impact. Just a grad­ual sag­ging that got worse and worse through­out the day until I was com­pletely dejected at night. After that, I got a blis­ter on my neck from stand­ing in the shower for too long with water that was too hot. Now that I think about it, I com­pletely under­stand why I felt that way, but it seems kind of silly.

Joe Lencioni also rec­om­mended to me a free pro­gram called Flux — appro­pri­ately head­lined as “Software to make your life bet­ter” — that grad­u­ally changes the colour tem­per­a­ture and bright­ness of your mon­i­tors to mimic the set­ting sun. It’s also local­ized, so it knows when the sun sets for your area and changes auto­mat­i­cally. I’m pretty sure it’s made it eas­ier for me to fall asleep at night.

I’m in such a strange phase right now. I don’t know where I am. When I look back on this time in my life, I won­der whether I’ll look back with nos­tal­gia, pity, or regret.

  1. To move the tele­scope at the same rota­tion of the earth to pre­vent blur in astropho­tog­ra­phy. [↑]
  2. To keep track of a guide star in cal­i­brat­ing the track­ing motor. [↑]
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March 14, 2010

I’m upgraded daily all my wires without traces

2

Found these songs today:

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I’ve been feel­ing bet­ter. I don’t know why. I can’t fig­ure it out. I didn’t do actively do any­thing to fix myself.

Maybe it was Audra singing a verse on my answer­ing machine, and promis­ing to leave me a whole song some day. Or the fact that I was out of the house when the sun was out for the first time in as long as I can remem­ber. Or even writ­ing it all down and finally get­ting it off my chest, because explain­ing it forces me to ratio­nal­ize things and view them objec­tively, instead of with a bias of depression.

It kind of scares me. I have a feel­ing this depres­sion comes as eas­ily as it goes.

Lately, the only thing I feel like doing is writ­ing and prac­tic­ing my ukulele, but I’m just glad I want to do some­thing.

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February 16, 2010

Broadsword and a Ukulele

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Broadsword and ukulele

My Tai Chi teacher recently added the Yang style broadsword to the cur­ricu­lum. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ecsta­tic, as I’ve waited quite a while to learn a weapon form. There’s some­thing roman­tic and exotic about wield­ing one of the four great Chinese weapons. I find it delight­fully ironic that it’s a gweilo who’s cat­alyzed such an inter­est in my own cul­ture. Take THAT, my racist and sex­ist Chinese ancestors.

As for the ukulele, one day I found out how inex­pen­sive they can be and bought one right away. It’s a Mahalo Les Paul style ukulele (right down to the square tun­ing pegs) with an extended neck for higher reg­is­ter notes. In many ways, the ukulele is the per­fect instru­ment for me right now; cheap, easy enough that I can teach myself1, and not too hard on the fin­gers2.

It feels fuck­ing fan­tas­tic to be play­ing music in some form again. I did years of piano and flute lessons in ele­men­tary school to high school, and took a very long hia­tus from then till now. And that was mostly in band, when I couldn’t choose the music I wanted to play. Now I can play the songs I like, and the advan­tage is that I’ve prob­a­bly heard them a few hun­dred times so I already know them inside-out.

With my years of music lessons and per­for­mances from my youth, it’s not like I’m learn­ing music from scratch, I’m sim­ply fig­ur­ing out how to apply what I already know about tone, pos­ture, tun­ing, vol­ume, fin­ger­ing3, tim­ing, and into­na­tion, to another instru­ment. Admittedly, it’s been very slow going, and it’s like I’m learn­ing a new lan­guage as I train my fin­gers to achieve a dex­ter­ity that was never there before.

The inter­est­ing thing is that my last few years prac­tic­ing Tai Chi has helped me learn the ukulele. In my Tai Chi class, I’ve gained the patience and per­se­ver­ance required to prac­tice the same moves over and over again until they become a nat­ural part of my mus­cle mem­ory. In the begin­ning, it was a lot of con­cen­tra­tion spent just try­ing to remem­ber what to do next in the form, but now that I don’t need to think about them when I prac­tice, my con­cen­tra­tion goes into fine-tuning the lit­tle details. The same prin­ci­ples can be applied to the ukulele (or any instru­ment, for that mat­ter), and I’m try­ing to get to the point where I don’t need to think about what my fin­gers should be doing, and just con­cen­trate on play­ing with the right kind of expressiveness.

Which is why I have a broadsword and a ukulele rest­ing on the wall next to my desk. Any time I need a break, I pick up one of them and prac­tice for a few minutes.

  1. Because I really don’t have time for another time-consuming hobby [↑]
  2. The strings are nylon, instead of the metal of gui­tars, so the cal­louses aren’t as bad. The health of my hands is also an impor­tant thing to me. [↑]
  3. Though the fin­ger­ing for a stringed instru­ment is really dif­fer­ent from piano and flute. [↑]
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February 1, 2010

No Motive

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You know it sucks, real­iz­ing that every­thing you believed in is com­plete bullshit.

—Some guy sit­ting on a bench in some movie

This is how I’ve been feel­ing lately. I’ve lost the plot. I’m wan­der­ing and won­der­ing. Aimless. Floating. Disconnected. Questioning what it’s all for.

It’s not that I haven’t been able to keep myself occu­pied. My cal­en­dar until March is quite busy actu­ally. But I feel like a spec­tre, float­ing through the world; ethe­real, imma­te­r­ial, intan­gi­ble, and unable to be touched or affected by anything.

On the other hand, music is hit­ting me pretty hard right now. I tend to dance a lot, mostly in my room. I actu­ally recorded myself danc­ing to see what it looks like. I can only imag­ine that it’s on the same level of embar­rass­ment as get­ting caught mas­tur­bat­ing to fur­ries (yep, there’s a porn for that) with bean dip smeared on my chest.

I’m in a No Motiv state-of-mind; that strange period between Jacky and Louise, when I was liv­ing on Island Park with Trolley, and we would go for car rides in the sum­mer to Diagram for Healing. But it’s And The Sadness Prevails that I’m redis­cov­er­ing, hear­ing the songs from a dif­fer­ent point in my life very dif­fer­ent from when I last gave the album a thor­ough listen.

When John asks me how my day was, it seems like my answer is always some­where between “shitty” and “like some­one took a giant shit on my face1″. And when he asks what hap­pened, I can never give him a spe­cific inci­dent. It’s just this depres­sion, this sag­ging feel­ing that’s been weigh­ing so heav­ily on me, because I haven’t been able to let go as eas­ily as I’d like.

I’m try­ing to find my foot­ing in the Tao Te Ching. Verse 44 in par­tic­u­lar is speak­ing to me right now:

One’s own rep­u­ta­tion — why the fuss?
One’s own wealth — why the con­cern?
I say, what you gain is more trou­ble than what you lose
Love is the fruit of sac­ri­fice
Wealth is the fruit of gen­eros­ity
Be con­tent, rest in your own full­ness —
You will not suf­fer from loss
You’ll avoid the snare of this world
You’ll have long life and end­less blessings

The tran­si­tion continues.

  1. I should post­script this with a note that I wouldn’t enjoy this [↑]
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