Yearly Archives: 2012

Slept Through a Landslide

Jesse Dangerously — Slept Through a Landslide cover

Rap Legend Jesse Dangerously just released his lat­est sin­gle1, a remix of Tired Angels from Krista Muir’s most recent album. He want­ed a bit of breath­ing room between vers­es and asked me to write a ukulele solo, so we hit the stu­dio a cou­ple months ago. I was lucky enough to learn a lot about the record­ing process that had large­ly remained a mys­tery to me.

This was my first time try­ing to write music that was­n’t a cov­er. It was unique chal­lenge, cause it’s hard for me to tell what sounds good vs. what sounds good only to me. I also have a habit of try­ing to fill my arrange­ments with too many ideas instead of fol­low­ing a theme, so this time I tried to build on the hook that Krista sings. Then I added as much vibra­to as I could on my soft cedar-topped nylon-stringed uke to fill out the sound.

I also pro­vid­ed some back­up har­monies at the start of Noah23’s verse, and it’s weird to hear my singing with some real pro­duc­tion. I don’t think I’d rec­og­nize my own voice if some­one did­n’t tell me it was me.

Jesse has the abil­i­ty to piece togeth­er a bunch of mot­ley musi­cal ideas from var­i­ous gen­res, and it’s awe­some to hear some­thing that start­ed out as a sim­ple rap song become more than the sum of it’s parts.

  1. In the cred­its at the bot­tom, the city of each per­former is includ­ed. I love how Rosie’s loca­tion is “lives in a van”. [↩]

I want to know do I stay or do I go

So.

Filmed a great wed­ding yes­ter­day, one that left me tired and sore and much deserv­ing of a break. It’s a hazy Sunday morn­ing, and anoth­er day that it’ll feel like it’s above 40°C with the humid­i­ty. Working near­ly 13 hours and turn­ing into a lit­tle pud­dle of Asian man means I’m con­scious­ly avoid­ing the out­doors today. I’ll be con­tent to sip my cof­fee and peer out the win­dow at the gen­tly sun­lit trees.

cat and drink on a hot day

Majel helps us taste-test cock­tails for the recep­tion.

Even though it’s get­ting ever clos­er to her wed­ding, and Lisa has an increas­ing num­ber of things to get done, we’ve been able to see each oth­er more late­ly. I’ve real­ized that it’s not good enough to have her meet my needs. I have to fill a cer­tain role in her life too. That’s what brings mean­ing to the rela­tion­ship, cause it means she appre­ci­ates me the way I want to be appre­ci­at­ed. So often, it feels like that’s all I’ve ever want­ed.

I’m glad to have devel­oped a rit­u­al get-togeth­er with Aaron too. When we don’t see each oth­er one week, it feels like a year the next time we catch up. Tonight I’m head­ing over to his house for the start of bach­e­lor week, some­thing we’ve been excit­ed­ly plan­ning for a while now. It’s the first time he’s had the house to him­self since the kids were born, so I’ll be stay­ing there for a few days of games, movies, bar­be­cue, and gen­er­al guy stuff, com­ing back home to feed the kit­ties every now and then. We’re doing a six per­son Magic tour­ney tomor­row, my first in the Constructed for­mat, and every­one’s mak­ing new decks for the chance to open some M13 boost­ers. I think my deck con­cept is BRILLIANT and I can’t wait to try it out.

Chet Atkins has also been keep­ing me com­pa­ny late­ly. I’m so glad to have found his instruc­tion­al DVD, where he talks with his old man charm about what he likes in each song and how to play them, phrase by phrase. I grew my thumb­nail out nice and long for near­ly two months, cut it off for prac­ti­cal­i­ty’s sake dur­ing wed­ding sea­son, then imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted the deci­sion. The elec­tric strings I’ve been using have a real­ly flat, dull tone in the low­er reg­is­ter, and since the bass line is so impor­tant in Chet’s arrange­ments, it’s like an entire part is miss­ing from any song I try to learn. I’m going to try learn­ing with a thumb pick, which is some­thing I’ve been avoid­ing for a while now cause I hate the loss of sen­si­tiv­i­ty (like a con­dom on your thumb), but hope­ful­ly the com­pro­mise is worth it.

I have things to orga­nize, chores to do, errands to run, and a house to clean before I leave. For now, I’ll enjoy the rest of the morn­ing, wast­ing time.

just another diamond day

In the mid­dle of this heat wave has come a hail­storm that’s dent­ed the shit out of every pan­el of my car, fol­lowed by a series of unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cool nights. I slept with the win­dows open, and the breeze kept me con­tent to be wrapped in my duvet until wak­ing.

It may as well be a lazy Sunday morn­ing in Autumn as I write this, sit­ting by the warm light com­ing through the blinds, wax­ing nos­tal­gic about more than I care to admit. I’ve been try­ing to write, but I don’t know what I’ve been feel­ing late­ly.

airplane ride!

Maybe it’s cause I haven’t had time to think. And it’s only going to get busier in the fore­see­able future. I’d like to spend more time alone, but that seems a lux­u­ry that’s quick­ly dis­ap­pear­ing. When I’m try­ing to nur­ture the rela­tion­ships that are impor­tant to me, it’s hard to refuse a hang­out, and mak­ing reg­u­lar plans quick­ly fills the week.

playing Magic: The Gathering

Tiana taps two swamps to add two black mana to her mana pool, and increase her sex­i­ness to nerds every­where by 500%.

Probably a good thing, cause I also feel like I’ve been spend­ing too much time alone dur­ing my bouts of intro­ver­sion.

It’s also been a while since I stepped out of my com­fort zone. I guess I did enough trav­el­ing last year to know where my bound­aries are. Since return­ing from my sojourn in the Old Dominion, I’ve been too com­fort­able, and slow­ly I’m being forced out of it as life catch­es up with me. But I know I can han­dle things, cause I’ve done it before.

So I’m try­ing to enjoy what I have now, caught some­where between day and night, iso­la­tion and over-stim­u­la­tion, work and play, sum­mer and fall.

zhui long

There’s noth­ing in this world you can’t turn into hero­in.

—Get Him to the Greek

At our last draft, Steph asked me what was new. It was weeks since we played, but noth­ing came to mind, and it felt strange to have no updates at all. It was only a few months ago that things fell apart. Things had been chang­ing quick­ly ever since.

And then, all of a sud­den, sta­bil­i­ty.

the hearth

The hearth.

Meanwhile, I’ve picked up an obses­sion with sort­ing my Magic cards. Darren came by a few weeks ago and he gave me his col­lec­tion, which we both start­ed around high-school. I have about 8000 cards now, ordered by rar­i­ty, colour, block, and alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, which took me the greater part of a week. There’s no deny­ing how sat­is­fy­ing it is to have a neat and orga­nized set, where I can quick­ly find a card instead of going through ran­dom hand­fuls.

I also start­ed watch­ing Cops, sea­sons 20–24, non-stop. A strange addic­tion1 for a real­i­ty TV show that’s no doubt biased in favour of law enforce­ment and against low-income cit­i­zens, but not glo­ri­fied with a nar­ra­tor, a sound­track, or any mon­e­tary incen­tives. After watch­ing the same episodes a few times, I feel like I have some inti­mate insight into the peo­ple who choose to break the law, and those who make careers out of stop­ping them.

They’re signs that I’m a glut­ton now, hav­ing to lose myself in some­thing, whether it’s being pro­duc­tive or social or hap­py.

Love used to be my drug of choice, but nowa­days it’s any­thing I can get.

  1. I used to see an episode here and there when I was a kid, but it was nev­er with any fre­quen­cy, and I haven’t seen one in years. I have no idea why I find it so fas­ci­nat­ing now. [↩]