There's Calm In Your Eye

Originally posted on 8/30/11


Hurricane Irene came and went with little effect to those of us in the EV of NYC. We're far luckier than the people in New Jersey and other places up the East Coast. The worst of it for us was two days of cabin fever. When Monday came, the subway system was still coming back online so many folks were unable to get to work. With the sun out, the cooped-up masses hit the street. Thanks to modern technology I could do most of my work via smartphone when I wasn't glomming wireless internet from the diner on the corner.

As there wasn't much happening on the work front I decided to hit the promenade by the East River on my skateboard. At one point I decided to sit on a bench and stare at Williamsburg directly across from me. Sitting there, I realized that I just don't have the time to do the things I really want to do. On Sunday as the wind was rattling the trees outside, we finally organized the front closet and rewarded ourselves by addressing the “Homicide: Life On The Streets” logjam in our DVR. We haven't spent a ton of time together recently so it was great to lie down and not worry about getting up for work or the next task to schlep to. The two of us (and the dog) could be together and present without the sense of an impeding stop time. After getting re-acquainted with “Degrassi: The Next Generation” via the web, I grabbed my beat-to-hell acoustic guitar, plugged in the USB mic that I've not been able to use, and recorded some music for the first time in months. Most gratifying.

While I was enjoying myself on that bench in the park, it dawned on me that the storm rid me of lots of outside distractions and allowed me to focus on things that were fulfilling to me: reducing clutter; hanging with the girl and dog; making music. Since there was nothing happening on the work front, I was able to let go of work tension because there was nothing I was going to be able to change with no one around. Sitting in front of the monitor right now as I compose my thoughts after a day at the office, I feel how tired I am. It took a little bit of pushing to get myself to put this together whereas the other day I spontaneously picked up the guitar and, after learning how to play Nirvana's “Heart Shaped Box” via YouTube, put down a track.

My life has gotten pretty busy these days and most of that time is spent on pursuits that are not meaningful to me other than the means to a paycheck. Lately, I've felt like my life is slipping away from me as I put on my worker-guy uniform and march in line like the rest of the masses. It's a prison of sorts and the choices consist of either sucking it up and accepting that this is my life or rejecting it altogether. Sitting in the middle where I know I'm unhappy without the resolution to rest firmly on either side of the fence probably feels worse than living in either extreme. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find those pockets of time to devote to the pursuit of my passions. I read a blog post recently where the author said that if you're not able to devote 5 hours a day to something you want to do, it's not that important to you. I wonder how that author is able to find his 5 hours. If I do a quick inventory, I work 9 or so hours a day, take about 90 minutes to get to and from work, try to sleep 8 hours a day and spend 30 minutes getting ready in the morning. My math tells me that I have 5 hours left. With that 5 hours, I would like to cram in exercise (30 minutes at least) and eating (total of 1 hour or so). If I want to spend an hour a day with my partner, that leaves me with 2 ½ hours to myself. Take 30 minutes for reading a book and 15 minutes to get ready for bed there's now 1:45 left. Not to sound like a cop-out but that's not a lot of time. The name of the game that I've been trying to win is called Balance. It simply does not exist in my life. I'm not saying I have it hard or that I have good excuses. I'm just saying what I'm saying.

When circumstances forced me to sit still this weekend, I found myself with energy and focus. Obviously, I still have to work for a living but when circumstances forced me to sit still I found that I had energy and focus. It was as if for a fleeting moment, Hurricane Irene came in and briefly swept away much of the junk in my life that separates me from my freer self. One other thing that dawned on me was that the world did not come to an end yesterday because I was not in the office working. All of the work was there waiting for me and my life did not suffer greatly due to the lost day of productivity. It goes to show you that perhaps some of those work urgencies really aren't as important as they seem in the moment.

Perhaps that's the lesson for me.

Image courtesy of cnn.com

They Walk Among Us

I just finished reading “The Psychopath Test”, the incredible new book by Jon Ronson. What starts off as the investigation of a hoax evolves into an exploration of psychopaths and the psychiatric industry. Ronson meets with leading psychologists as well as institutionalized patients in his quest to gain a clearer understanding of the psychopath personality disorder.

Much of the book centers around the Hare Checklist that was developed by Dr Robert Hare to help evaluate potential psychopaths by rating people on 20 components including:

• superficial charm
• lack of remorse or guilt
• callousness
• lack of empathy
• shallow nature
• failure to aceept responsibility for one's actions
• grandiosity

Early on, Ronson points out that while psychopaths represent barely 1% of the population, they seem to be prevalent in positions of power to a much greater degree. They're not all muttering to themselves in the streets or chasing people around with butcher knives. Some, like the former Haitian death-squad leader Ronson meets in Queens, certainly fit some preconceived notions of how a psychopath might behave. Others, like legendary headcount killer CEO “Chainsaw” Al Dunlop, become more vivid as Ronson uses Hare's Checklist to illuminate their behavior in this context. The point is that not only do these people walk among us, they are leading our industries and exist in the upper echelons of our society. The scary thing is that there is no cure as the root causes seem to be with the brain's own wiring.

While reading this book, I started thinking about the people who packaged sub-prime mortgages and subsequently bet against them. Their calculating ways led us into an economic crisis that ruined lives and made its architects obscenely wealthy. Did they sit around in their steel towers considering for a second the people who were going to suffer greatly if their bets paid off? I don’t believe they gave it a single thought. My belief is that these people do not possess the ability to think beyond spreadsheets and numbers to drill down to the level required to feel empathy. What they saw on paper looked like a sure thing and that was the end of the discussion.  If I were to come up with a plan to make a lot of money, I don’t think I would be able to move forward if I thought there was a chance that a lot of people would be seriously harmed in the process. If you look at the Hare Checklist, you might cite the bullets above as proof that these people possess traits of a psychopath. Who really knows?

As Ronson points out, there is a danger in putting people into neatly organized categories and making sweeping conclusions about them. He brings up childhood bipolar disorder as an example of how so many children have been medicated and labeled without thorough oversight. As I read “The Psychopath Test”, I started to wonder about myself. (Thankfully, Ronson takes the time to point out that if you become nervous as you read his book, you're not a psychopath). I don't think that most people are all one thing or another. The majority of us live on the in-betweens but I have to admit that there are people in my life that I'm seriously re-considering now that I've read this book.

Photo courtesy of http://neuroanthropology.net.

DIY In The Internet Music Age

As of last week I have two albums for sale on the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 with more retailers to follow soon. Ten years ago, it would've been laughable to think that I could make a record on the cheap for purchase at the same place where you could buy a U2 album. These days, the world is changing so quickly. If you've recorded music that you want to sell, it takes less than one hour to upload it to Tunecore. Within 72 hours, you're live and worldwide. Unbelievable. No agent, no manager, no record deal.

One of the records that's available is the "Sylvester Shalom" EP by D-KEZ, an electronic-ish collaboration that started late one night in the cramped living room of my attic apartment. Many years ago, my partner in crime was at my place as we were going to San Francisco the next morning. He started showing me an early version of GarageBand on his PowerBook G4. We grabbed a few instruments, plugged them into his laptop and had "Pleather Bland" done within a couple of hours. The rest of the EP was done over the course of the next few years in his home office. We used a much better Mac for the remaining songs but it was all done through GarageBand. Every single song was done by the two of us on the fly. Each time, we walked in with absolutely no notion of what to do. Within a few hours' time, the lyrics, beats, and riffs for each song were done, tweaked, and completed.

"From Billsburg To Beyond" by The Chavos is a punk/alternative band that started in the same attic apartment. I recorded a bunch of demos on a Fostex digital 4-track using guitars, bass, a toy electronic drum kit, and a few pots and pans. My hope of using those demos to find others to play with was dashed quickly as I hooked up with people on Craigslist who didn't follow through. A Craigslist ad that said "You Don't Need A Band!" led me to a recording studio in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn that was smaller than your average NYC studio apartment. I'll never forget walking in and peering around in search of the rest of the setup! While there was more equipment to use (as well as Logic), the concept was similar- make music quickly and simply. The last track I worked on (below) was recorded in a friend's bedroom studio with a Mac and other studio equipment. For the Chavos songs, I played almost everything except drums with a few contributions from my producers who also helped shape my rough ideas into cohesive songs.

The barriers to entry for creating music have been lowered to allow so many more people to express themselves more creatively. It is vastly easier to put music into the ether than ever before. However, the piece of the puzzle that remains elusive is how to get your music in front of people. One thing that a label does well is to get marketing muscle for its artists. To be honest, I'm not sure how to expose others to these songs. I'm aware of tastemaker blogs, trusted sites, and social media. (As an aside, most of the trickle of traffic to this blog has been through experimenting with Twitter.). All of the tools are in place to empower musicians to create, release, and publicize and as a result, there is a lot to choose from out there. While the means have been facilitated, it still comes down to rolling up the sleeves and slogging it out to rise above the fray. Technology hasn't yet replaced that age-old concept.

D-KEZ “Old Lame Sigh” (unreleased track)

Old Lame Sigh by strayriffs

The Chavos “Turn The Tides”

Turn The Tides by strayriffs


(Click the Down arrow on each track to download.)

Buy D-KEZ "Sylvester Shalom" EP on iTunes or Amazon MP3

Buy The Chavos "From Billsburg To Beyond" on iTunes or Amazon MP3