current status

Alcohol: I haven't quit completely since August last year when I had that great, wonderous, earth-shaking revelation for the umpteenth time that alcohol wasn't going to kill me and it therefore served no purpose. I was drinking almost a bottle of liquor a day with some beer in the mix because beer make happy. I cut down to a bottle every three days or less plus beer still in the mix because beer. The plan was to eventually totally get off the sauce, but that didn't happen because alcoholism.

That makes me question my mindfulness practice which believes quitting completely is not only possible, but even easy when mindfully applied. On the other hand, the reduced consumption (a schedule I've been on many times before in the name of cutting back) hasn't been making me feel like crap like the bottle a day did. There just hasn't been anything compelling to make me quit completely, but like my months at a monastery, now well over a decade ago, I theoretically could stop completely if I had to and not even think about it. Same as it ever was.

Sleep: Insomnia really went away with the reduced consumption of alcohol. Coincidence? The thing is that I've been on this reduced schedule of consumption before during years I've had insomnia, so they shouldn't be related. Psychological? I still always need music on to fall asleep with a timer set to shut off. Sleep is unsettled towards the end with multiple waking in the morning, but I turn on the music and reset the timer and that gets me back to sleep. If I don't turn on music, I don't fall asleep. Average 6 hours sleep with lights out between 1:30 and 2 a.m. and getting up in the 8 o'clock hour for morning sitting.

Exercise: It was full stop on even any thought of running and cycling since August last in the same realization as stopping drinking. Why am I doing this? So much effort and maintenance required, so much pain and risk of injury, so little satisfaction as performance declines. My bike is covered with dust and cobwebs, tyres flat. I don't even want to check how the last pair of running shoes I bought are doing.

Interesting how stopping exercise and stopping drinking are totally different things. Entropy working differently in either case. Or not. I'm kidding, entropy isn't at play at all (or is it?), but I'm realizing my jokes are too abstract, obtuse or just not funny. I realize now I should've been pointing out all along when I'm joking, which is even less funnier. Yes, that was a grammar joke. Yes, that was me pointing out that it was a grammar joke. Yes, it wasn't funny initially and even less funnier pointing it out. Oy vey.

Eating: Appetite has remained completely stable since August last. Faboo. Also alcohol related? Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe it was alcohol related at that time. Which still means it was. The Korean food obsession that started last November lasted until May or June when it relented. Literally Korean food almost every day. I still go for Korean when I think about it, but I no more have to think about where was the place I went least recently to decide where to go. Aigoo.

So what have I been doing? Reading and mindfulness practice has been the all-permeating focus. But mindfulness is more of a Zen thing and I've been playing and fiddling more with Vajrayana, so I should just say practice, mindfulness being a part of it. Pushing the teachings and my understanding the best I can without a guru. No great, mind-opening, satori-like breakthrough, but that's not a focus; not something I'm striving for. More slow immersion into my understanding with tangible, experiential moments of getting things. Applying whatever whenever, focusing on energies. Everything is energy. Energy equals emcee squared (on a total aside, to date there surprisingly has been no notable rock band that has named itself E=mc², but there was a white rapper who went under the name MC Squared).

K-pop girl group obsession and immersion has remained unabated. A lot of time spent watching YouTube videos. But with YouTube videos it's not just K-pop. I watch science lectures and documentaries. There's a "World Science Festival" channel where I watch videos on cosmology and astrophysics.

I watch a channel called "Asian Boss" which features vox pop videos in various Asian countries (at least once in the U.S.) asking people on the street about various topical topics. I think they edit videos for the most intelligent responses, which is refreshing and totally opposite of U.S. talk shows where they do the vox pop thing asking simple questions, but then air the most ridiculous, stupid-sounding people.

I also pay attention to a channel called "China Uncensored", which has sarcastic "news" videos about China-related topics, mostly pointing out China's hypocrisy and unfriendly or hostile relations with other countries. The sarcasm makes the outrage palatable. I like sarcasm, in case you haven't noticed. Wait! Was that sarcasm?! Was I being sarcastic talking about sarcasm?! Good grief. I'm having a crisis of (being) meta.

Back to the South Korea fetish, I follow a few South Korean YouTube vlogs. Apparently professional vloggers. They make money off of it. It's totally voyeuristic watching these people going through certain days they decide to video and narrate. I don't know how I feel about it. It's fascinating watching slices of these people's young women's lives, but it's not prurience. True, they are attractive but that's just the dressing, the bait, the aesthetic. It's the same with K-pop. I'm sure the boy groups are putting out just as good music as girl groups if it were just about the music, but for the pop genre, my aesthetic leans towards the girls. Same with golf, mind you. You couldn't pay me to watch men's golf, but I'll watch LPGA tournaments when sports channels choose to air them (NB: they won't if there's men's or motor sports or such boring bullshit to air).

It's the lives that interest me, the living life that they are doing which I'm not. The relating with other people, the moving through their cities/lives/world, neither of which I'm doing. They are reminders of what I'm not doing, what I may have used to have done when I was younger but don't even want anymore. And there is that tension between feeling I want to be a part of something and the reality that I totally don't.

Branching out of those videos, just recently I did a brief spate of watching videos of people showing their apartments in Seoul (still the Korean fetish). Again, it's just the look at and fascination of the lives going on. All those people doing something. Is there anyone doing the worthless nothingness I'm doing?

There's a class of apartments in Seoul that I don't think we have in Taiwan called goshiwon, which are tiny, basic apartments originally meant for students cramming for national exams. Mostly foreigners and students on a budget use them now, but they remind me of my ideal when I first moved to Taiwan. I wanted to live a simple hermit-like existence, and a goshiwon would've fit the ideal perfectly.

Now I look at my apartment and all the stuff I've accumulated and this is luxury compared to tiny goshiwons. This is my karma. I haven't torn myself and my ego down enough to deserve living in a goshiwon. I probably couldn't survive a goshiwon. I'd be like, "I gotta get out of this situation", and I could because I could afford it. I live in an apartment where I had the luxury of being an insomniac and baby it. Luxury of all my perceived problems without the added stresses of the perceived inconveniences of a goshiwon.

What made me think I could be a monk? I didn't deserve it. I haven't karmically earned it. My karma is still such "bad" enough that I tend towards comfort and luxury. In another life, I could easily become the hungry ghost my mother is in this life. That's the harsh possibility. Wow, that escalated quickly.

Last and least, since last December when cable TV went down for two months (I don't know if it's related; could be), I've been spending at least two hours a day with a bass in hand, plugged into my Korg PX5D and connected to iTunes and working on ear training along with K-pop songs. Why? I don't know. I'm not trying to do anything, it's not about making music or practicing bass or being a musician or anything. It may be closure to my discarded "musician" identity. I recognize now that I was never good enough to be a musician. I'm not talented, I never learned music nor got to know it, and I certainly never practiced near enough to be a musician. And if not any sort of "formal" musician, it behooves me to admit that despite my love of music and trying to make it, I was also not passionate enough to be any sort of musician.

Maybe it's an afterglow goodbye gesture towards musicianship. Ear training is one of those things I never got and never practiced as a skill. I'm just trying to see if I can improve my ear training, and that's it. It's not going to make me a musician, it's not going to make me know music. It's just training to listen to notes and develop a sense of what intervals sound like, where to go for the next note. I daresay it hasn't been a totally hopeless endeavor. It has been evidence that if I had started ear training early enough, in my teens, I could've been OK at it. I have good sessions where my fingers find the right notes without even thinking, and bad days where I feel hopelessly tone deaf and flounder about the fretboard hitting notes only after the second or third guess.

K-pop is particularly good for this because the songs are written by professional musicians applying theory, meaning there is a structure to the progressions, unlike rock which a lot is by feel and if theory is followed it's just happenstance. The theory-following structure makes a lot of K-pop predictable (they love their circle of fifths), which is good for ear training, but the writers are interesting enough to put in lots of twists and surprises to challenge ear training.

Ah, it all comes back to me. Another YouTube channel I pay attention to is ReacttotheK, a group of classical music students who react to K-pop. I generally avoid reaction videos as pointless and varying degrees of stupid, but it was interesting listening to people who know music, who pronounce "timbre" correctly, who know the difference between a piano, horns and an elbow, and had something intelligent to say about the songs.

Hearing them use music terms I recognize but have forgotten reminded me how lacking my music education has been, including ear training. That's what inspired me when cable TV went dark to at least try to do some ear training as a last gasp of musicianhood. I can grasp ear training, whereas I couldn't get music theory even if Kim Jong Un threatened to nuke Seoul unless I mastered music theory. I would pretend to try to do it and stall as long as I could to buy time for Seoul to be evacuated.

And bam, I found the gateway video that hooked me:

So physical activity is OUT because it would likely contribute to a false sense of accomplishment; no cycling or attempting to run. Until I do.

Fake reading Chinese is OK because it emphasizes the futility in learning the language in my case. I love the complexity in this pathology. I don't think I'm unable to learn the language in some fundamental failure of being. The key to learning a language is interaction and usage. You have to communicate with other people. That's what I'm unwilling to do and presumably the basic reason for my failure. 

Forcing myself to pretend to read a newspaper with Chinese phonetics just exposes me to a diversified vocabulary and emphasizes how much I don't know. It's not vocabulary I would necessarily need in daily conversation, or if it was I'd learn it in daily conversation. It keeps me mystified by a seeming impossibility of learning a new language because there's always so much more to learn, when basically the problem is that I've pretty much isolated myself from interacting with people.

Pretending to play bass or guitar is also OK for pretty much the same reason. I've given up any identity thinking I was a musician. I still have some basic technical facility on fretted instruments, so I can play along to songs and work out chord progressions and appreciate what went into the songwriting. 

I also have the Jamey Aeborsold jazz play-along series of workbooks and music files. These are apparently THE essential studies for anyone interested in playing jazz. Despite that not including me, I still wondered why I'd never even heard of the series, so I asked my sister-in-law's sister's husband, Tom Kennedy, an A-list professional bass player (go ahead, look him up), and he confirmed it. Everyone goes through Jamey Aeborsold. It's K-12 for aspiring jazz musicians.

It's an endless source of music learning and backing tracks to play along with for practical application. For me, it emphasizes that after however many years I thought of myself as a musician, I really know bupkis about music. Even the meager facility I have on fretted instruments, my fingers always do the same one kind of pattern and movements over and over, and even that I don't know what I'm doing. I assume it's some basic blues scale.

So in terms of wasting my life away on the conveyor belt of distractions to get from day to day, pulling out my guitar and bass is OK.

It's about getting me to a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance about my existence. I shouldn't be here, but I am only because I can be with minimal effort. I'm here because I'm lazy; too lazy to end my life even though the very framework I've built for it has been to end it.

The framework and foundation of my life, through attitude, theory and implementation, has all been set-up for ending my life. All the activities and things I've done and pursued during my life were just fluff and filler, false identity. I don't regret any of it, a lot of it was probably a blast as it happened.

But the fun should be over and I can't let myself be fooled by it now. I don't know what I will do, the pattern my history shows doesn't suggest anything dramatic *yawn*. The best I'll expect at the time being is continue to work on relatively sober development of perpetual cognitive dissonance and hope for the obvious and only proper outcome.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Just a few days left before I fly back to Taiwan. I'm not sure how I feel about anything. Just a general recognition of a certain inevitability about my life. I've been here for just about a month and I don't have any assessment regarding my time here.

Just to remind myself, I sabotaged my life. Life isn't something I want to do, even as I continue living on beyond my expiration date.

I've been appreciating the hot weather. Although my room at my parents' house gets too hot in the afternoon. It's the hottest room in this house in the summer (coldest in winter). Summer evenings and nights in New Jersey sometimes cool down quite pleasantly, as I noted when I got here.

I've also been appreciating the sunsets. I don't know if anyone else knows about the sunsets from this room with its southwestern exposure and height. As far as I know, I'm the only person who has inhabited this room long enough to realize the spectacular sunsets that, I think, no other room in this house gets.

So to sum up this trip? I haven't done much of anything. I haven't gone into New York once. I've been of no help to my brother and sister-in-law with their four kids. Her mother has been in the hospital with heart problems so she's been preoccupied, and I've still been of no assistance.

It's no excuse, but those kids are way beyond my control. I haven't been able to step up and open my heart to them and be more giving, matching my energy to theirs. I've seen relatives on her side of the family do it. They know how to be with them. The kids are still wild and completely unfiltered, but they engage, whereas I withdraw.

That's actually a fair delineation between their family and ours. They engage, we withdraw. I go the further step and withdraw from the withdrawers. Mind you, withdrawing is lame. I don't advise it.

I've started going on jogs after coming back from the cruise. This is the first time hitting the road since I joined the gym last May. Since then it's been all treadmill. I hit the gym several times on the cruise and I didn't want to go idle until returning to Taiwan.

Mind you, road work is a lot harder than using a treadmill, especially as you get older. You really feel the weight of hauling your carcass around. And mind you, it's not running I'm doing, it's jogging. I've accepted that I have to slow down as much as it takes to not inflame my Achilles again.

And slow down I have! When I was younger, I told myself if I ever was doing 10 minute miles, I'd just quit. That's just not worth it. Now, I figured I'd need to slow down to 10 minute miles. Nope, sloooweeer. So I've been plodding about doing sub-10 minute miles and still my Achilles couldn't take it. I'm on a third day of rest and it still hurts to put weight on it.

My parents are retired and they only have one car, and those facts have shaped much about my being here. It means they're home all the time and I only have use of a car after I've checked that they don't need it.

It means that I can only make noise by way of drumming, bassing or guitaring when they take leave of the house, which is no longer on a regular basis. It's not a big deal since I no longer consider making noise a part of my identity.

Still, whenever they went out, I sat myself at the drums and was surprised to find that I don't think I've lost any of what little chops I had. In fact it felt downright comfortable. I figure that if I were to get together with other people to play, I'd be able to hold my own. Although not necessarily for long, as stamina I'm sure is down with age.

"Issues I'm dealing with in this lifetime". I was introduced to that idea in my first year of college, I think from Richard Bach's Illusions. We choose our issues, our problems that we have to work on to grow spiritually. We are the otters of the universe.

Back then, suicide was already on my agenda, although much more angsty and not the edifice of philosophically developed bullshit I seem to think has a leg to stand on now. I labeled the issue I'm dealing with in this lifetime as "existence". And now that I think of it, that hasn't changed much through the years. As pretentious as "existence" sounds as an issue when I first identified it, I haven't replaced or upgraded it to anything else. Suicide for me is an existential issue.

But presently, I can tuck that issue in my cap because of another issue I'm recognizing in my self-imposed isolation. I'm not sure what to call it, but it feels like some sort of paralysis. I don't want anything, I don't want to do anything anymore. And by "paralysis", I mean that simply as a descriptive and not as something negative. Perhaps perplexing, but not negative.

People, if they're not depressed, want to do something. I understand it. For a large portion of my life, I wanted to do music. I wanted to practice, I wanted to play. I don't anymore. I may pick up an instrument now and then and noodle, but there's no feeling or wanting anymore. It's wet noodling. I used to be a runner, and that was almost a compulsion. If I didn't run, I would get antsy. It was even metaphor and motto, "you don't stop", á là A Tribe Called Quest. You don't stop meant the pursuit and the passion, which included towards suicide, as death is a part of life. I stopped. Then I got into cycling, and I still go for rides, but it's a major production in my head and a chore to get myself out the door by the scruff of my neck. It's not that I want to ride, I'm practically forcing myself.

People, if they're not depressed, want to be social and hang out with friends. I just don't want to. Some people I know have called me out and after reluctantly agreeing and meeting up with them, they subsequently haven't made any contact. Maybe I've become socially inept. I didn't feel I was inept, but it also may have just been the vibe I gave off. As much as I tried not to give it, it was, "I don't want to be here and want to leave as soon as I can".

I haven't rented a movie in an awful long time, because I just don't care to. I've been to Blockbusters since, but I would just walk out empty-handed.

Family in Kaohsiung have made overtures, but I just have no interest. I can't imagine a visit to Kaohsiung. What would I do there? Stare at family members I can't communicate with or be marginalized by family members having a conversation I can't participate in? Been there, done that.

I could travel now if I wanted with that windfall, but I just have no interest. Not even Taiwan, much less respond to Madoka's entreaty to visit her in Japan after she heard about the windfall. As much as I love Madoka and feel comfortable with her, I can't imagine going there and interacting with her in close quarters for whatever amount of time I'd be there. I'd want to be alone. I can't even imagine making the effort to go visit her.

And love itself. Just NO INTEREST. I don't want to be loved, I don't need to be loved, I'm perfectly happy not loved. Love, sex, intimacy: no interest. Connection: no interest.

And New Jersey family is asking me if I'm going for a visit for my father's 80th birthday, and I just have no interest. I'm still composing my email response that I don't want to go. Birthdays have never been a big deal in our family and family gatherings I've always found to be awkward. I can't imagine a visit to New Jersey. I'm trying to make the email not sound grim. If they do press for me to go, I might concede, though. Everything's a big whatever, meh.

I do things during the course of my days because I have to do something. I'm not a vegetable yet. I've already said I'm not a hermit. I can watch TV or DVDs or surf the net all day. I read at bookstores and the library. I go out to eat and I do eat, but I can't say I have much of an appetite these days. I don't ever feel hungry. I go out and eat because it's something to do and to ward off what I expect will become hunger if I don't.

I know, it all sounds like depression, but I don't think I'm depressed. I don't feel depressed. I'm fairly at peace, I really have nothing to complain about, so I don't for most part and dismiss it when I do. I cultivate happiness just for the sake of happiness; happiness not being the result of desire or acquisition, but just from this idea of conscious human existence. I'm here, why not be happy? I'm here, why be miserable?

I've even gotten bored of blogging. Actually, a blog I was following and inspired by became private and blocked and I think that may be a reason I haven't felt like writing anything here. That blog made me want to get more stuff out earlier this year, although that mostly meant a lot more random nothing posts.

I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I sorta do. It was a slap in the face after turning the other cheek after the last post before going private, which was a slap in the face to her readership. She sounded like she was starting to melt down anyway, so maybe it's all for the better. 

Oh well, easy come, easy go. Little high, little low. Any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me. Tooo meeee. I can stop pretending and get back to my next attempt, which isn't forthcoming but I'm still convinced it's imminent.

My boredom of things I used to be passionate about has been systematic and feels like it's a part of my dying process. I have been dying slowly all along and this boredom may be a sign that it's seriously speeding up. The big thing was a few months ago when I realized I could no longer consider myself a musician. Part of me really felt like it had died. It was something alive or a life energy for my identity or something and then it was gone. And it's not the technique, the being able to pick up an instrument and make a joyful noise. It's still in my hands, but it's gone out of my heart. I get bored quick every time I try now.

My bike hasn't left the apartment for months. Every time I think of it, I just feel a withering emptiness. Physical activity used to represent survival. My mantra to keep going when I was suffering while running was, "you don't stop", á là rap records from the late 80s/early 90s.

My appetite's gone, too. I can only eat one modest meal a day and sometimes I'm not even hungry when I do. Also a lot of things I used to like aren't all that appealing anymore. A lot of this sounds like depression and I'm not going to try to refute that. It may be so. It may be a necessary part of the dying process when the death is a projected suicide. It's a prognosis. Even though depression is not a reason for suicide for me, the symptoms of it may be a necessary part of getting to it. Anyone wanna study me yet?

Morrie was a dying man. Truth to tell, a lot of the insights he offered as he was dying I felt were old hat to me. I think maybe because my goal of suicide means facing my mortality as a dying person would. My life has been a prolonged dying process. At least a facsimile. Truth to tell, I also thought that Morrie's insights would largely fall on deaf ears, despite maybe millions of people being touched by his story. He's right, but they're just pretty expressions about life that don't have any meaningful, long-term effect until you're finally in that position yourself. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Like a dying process, every day is pretty hard for me. Every day is a waste and each wasted day makes it even harder. Aside from watching Korean TV shows, I've been doing a lot of catching up and cramming of Tibetan death theory not only to review, but to see if I can eke out one little bit morsel of insight into what I believe. I'm actually pretty confident about my level of preparedness because when I think about the question of my confidence, there's no other way for me to be. I am what I am and I know what I know. I don't doubt, I'm not afraid.

I run through the trainings, visualizations and meditations and work on insight into the nature of mind and consciousness in a state where there are no physical senses to feed sensory perception for the mind to form concepts, and no physical brain structure to organize the information into the cohesive, ordinary reality we experience every day.

I reject the idea that if there is anything after death, that our consciousness and perception is just like it is when we're alive. Once the physical structures are dead, whatever intangible essence of what we naturally are is unleashed in what I imagine to be quite a storm. But it's a storm that can be prepared for á là the Tibetan teachings and theory.

And if I fail at the attempt? I said before that it looks bad, and it still looks bad. But I'll probably have to decide to head back to New Jersey. New Jersey where my parents will no doubt continue to test my mindfulness training. The optimist in me tells me that I can participate in raising my nephews and nieces and help avoid them getting screwed up. It also sounds like both of my brothers are having issues now. So the sooner this next attempt, the better.

Maybe I should enter a doctoral program in psychiatry and study myself for my thesis.

07. Diving
The last song! Finally, I can get back to blogging about whatever it is I usually blog about. The entire collection fit on one side of a 60-minute tape. Do you even know what a tape is? Jesus.

And for the big ending, the song itself was a full-on, pants-down confessional. Very simply this song was my suicide note, describing why and how, more or less, and I think I even considered that as a title, but opted for subtlety instead, borrowing the title from Nirvana's song Dive.

The bass part and the guitar part in the intro started as two completely separate snippets. At some point, I think I was like, "Hmm, I wonder..." and tried playing them together and they happened to fit together really well, so I kept it like that.

I think both bass and guitar are going through the Super Phaser in the intro. I was also pleased with myself by how that intro bass motif became a vocal line later in the song, I think that worked rather well, flatter myself not.

The bass part in the verses is a full-on slap bass part and I think I ran it through both Auto-Wah and Super Phaser, which was risky because of the possibility of effects overload, but I think I was going for "bombastic" in regards to sound for this song.

I think the Compression effect also helped keeping those two effects from totally blowing up. I think Auto-Wah and Super Phaser are about frequency sweeps, and if certain frequencies come together and peak at the wrong point, it gets ugly. The Compression keeps everything contained.

The drum part in the B sections I want to comment on, but unfortunately I'm just geeking out and this will probably make no sense to anyone. It was actually a pretty technically tricky part, based on a 16th note hand pattern on the hi-hat with alternate strokes of both left and right hands hitting the ride (right hand) and crash bell (left hand) in a crazy pattern that I was only able to come up with due to practicing steel drum music grooves from my time with the steel drum band in college. The snare drum hits kinda, sorta reveal the latin influence of the pattern.

And oh, also in the B sections, I had trouble coming up with a bass line that I liked, and what I settled for was a direct, conscious rip-off of Paul McCartney's amazing bass line of Hey Bulldog. They're played a little differently and with different roots, but the relative tones and rhythm are directly from "Hey Bulldog".

I think the lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. As for the narration recitation in the background at the beginning and the end, it's taken from Jeanette Winterson's book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The full passage is as below, the bold sections are what I'm reciting underneath the song:

(excerpt from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson, pp. 170-171)
". . . But where was God now, with heaven full of astronoughts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That's what I'll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate I can't measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear. One thing I am certain of; I do not want to be betrayed, but that's quite hard to say, casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It's not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's."

Mind you, this passage I had posted elsewhere and had to dig for a while to find. I'm not that narcissistic that I dug this out for this post.

The file is over 5 and a half minutes long, but the song is less than five minutes. The tag at the end is the end of the recording of the Ode to a Sinkhole track. With songs that fade out, do you ever wonder what went on in the studio on the master tape? I think it's something like this. The recording goes on until it falls apart. And apparently there was a finger-snapping part in that song.

Clean the slate, try to clear my mind

Find a way to start over from the star...

The starting line

Leave behind what I've built thus far

Finally resolved to end this game of love charades

Back to the cave

And pull out the plug from the VCR and the TV screen

Leave my socks on the sand below the stars

And look around to see where the fires are

The sound of waves plead for me

The swim that never ends begins here on the beach

Clean the slate, clear my mind

Sound of waves, leave behind

Hold my breath, close my eyes

The shock of the first chill will only last until mourning

Opting out, cash in my dying deed

It's just a simple trade off between distinct realities

Body parts, functions and feelings

Everything reeling and fading out from here and now and I know how

To pull out the plug and watch the water go round and down the drain

Don't look back, don't think of crying now

With a ziplock bag around my neck to weigh me down

All I love is here with me

The stars, the sound, a gun and all my memories

Running start, take a dive

No one here gets out alive

Racing back, my whole life

Flashing before my eyes

For weeks it's been driving me crazy

I want to find some way to trust another lie

Nothing romantic that could be believed and I

Keep in the feeling that's rotting me from inside

She'll rest in peace with the newly deceased and cross my mind

Sometimes I think this is one big joke

And god knows that I've been at the end of my rope

For seven years it took to figure this out

She's laughing at my train of doubt about

Being found and being unidentified

Still concerned with all the details left behind

When I leave to find you

You'll know me when you see me, you'll see the signs

06. Quicksand Box
I actually like this song. In fact, years and years after I completed this tape and had forgotten how the songs went, I was still able to easily figure out the guitar part and played it for a few friends because I like the sound of crickets. The sound of crickets is so much more prevalent after I play a song for people.

I had the chords for the A and B sections and the first verse kicking around for years before I finally decided to try to complete the song for this collection.

And it kinda shows, the first verse is existential angst (with theatrical and angel references) and tries to have some clever (sometimes called 'pretentious') turns of phrase or plays on words, characteristic of influences from Marillion and Genesis (I would maintain that the chameleon reference has nothing to do with the Marillion song "She Chameleon", because it doesn't).

The inspiration for the verse was from the idea that our lives are like plays on a stage, and dying is nothing more than walking off stage and then we change characters and that's reincarnation. Sometimes we're not thrilled by the roles we take.

Then the second A/B section is straight-forward about Amina :p (the "means lead to ends" was not-so-cleverly derived from the sound of her name, believe it or not. It's a hidden MEANing, hahaha! not).

The first of the break verses wasn't targeted at anyone but was supposed to, I suppose, characterize a dichotomy between Amina and me. It started with the "there was a death in the family" line that I think I also had been wanting to use for a long time and once I had the chords, the rest of the verse fell into place. The second break verse reverts to Amina. No mystery there.

The final B verse references an idea I had about reincarnation and how I may have been aiming to be reborn in Japan and ended up in a womb that would within 9 months be taken to the U.S., and also a reference to how my parents used to tell me that I wasn't theirs and they had found me on a rock in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a joke. I thought they were serious. I was very disappointed when I found out it was supposed to be a joke. I did not find it very funny.

The main rhythm guitar part was my Takamine run through the Small Clone and with a capo on the 2nd fret. I had a rough relationship with the bass line. The final bass line is the same or very similar to the initial one I came up with, but for a long time I didn't think it was right.

I dunno, it was too distinct? Distracting? After vacillating for a long time and trying other ideas, I decided I liked the original idea. Or I had just gotten used to hearing it like that. These are the pitfalls of working alone. I didn't have anyone else to give me an opinion either way.

The guitar solo was my Peavey run prominently through a Boss Super Phaser (I love that box), and I think was recorded pretty late in the process, and I wasn't trying for anything elaborate or sounding very "solo-ish", so it's a more textural solo with not a lot of notes.

No audition, typecast in doubt

In a strange role-reversal, costume inside-out

Red lights, dead ends, I try to forget my lines again

Step into wings to change what my character has been

Up to my knees, concrete conformity

Chameleon fit to what's surrounding me

And chameleon fit to what I would never dream

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

Let my guard down, let you too far in

Didn't know you didn't know me and means lead to ends

I could have laughed at how you tried to sound sincere

Using all the same excuses that I used for years

Your family, models of chemistry

Chameleon fit to what you're supposed to be

And chameleon fit to how people want to see

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

There was a death in the family that you never knew about

A crime of principle that you never cared about

A breach of confession that you never told about

A death that no one knew, no one cared, no one came to tell me

I couldn't do a thing that you ask

You ask too much of my limited past

I can't make much sense of what you made us to be

Or how you made it to depend on me

So me I'm faced with what I could never have been

Never have hoped and never could believe in

The ground dissolves, look to the clouds above

Chameleon dragged by its tail across the sea

And chameleon found on a rock right next to me

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

05. Track 5
The reason why this song isn't titled is because at some point I thought of the perfect title for it and then forgot what it was. In self-protest, I refused to settle on some other title. Either I remembered that perfect title, or it would remain untitled. Guess what came to pass.

(Actually, there is a precedent for this. On the first collection of songs I recorded, there were two songs that were unrelated and lacking titles. Then I came up with a good title for one and realized it could be applied to the other and so I gave them both the same title, part one and part two. Then I forgot the title and refused to try to come up with alternate titles, but that time I eventually did remember the title I wanted).

It's also the song I like least among this collection. I don't know what I was doing with it or where I was going with it. The music started with the uninspired opening rhythm guitar part, upon which I formed the bass line, which I do like, and then the keyboard melody, which I don't. It's kinda sterile and contrived. The drums, I think, are OK except for the break which sounds awkward and is only there because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the main riff musically. Lame.

The song ostensibly is about memory and its reliability, but is a patchwork of sources and not very successful. A part of the concept was sourced in a coffee table book I had of black and white photos shot by Ansel Adams of the Manzanar Japanese American concentration camp during World War II.

And I'm pretty sure that part of the inspiration was my friend's song about the Japanese American experience in the early 20th century that I posted earlier. I wasn't trying to add anything, but his song was so good and I had these ideas from the Ansel Adams book, that it seemed OK to borrow his basic idea as a starting point.

In his song, the protagonist ends up stuck, unable to leave, perhaps metaphorically, in the desert heat of the concentration camp after being betrayed by his adopted country, after betraying himself and his original country. In my song, the idea is of a former Japanese American concentration camp prisoner decades later looking at pictures of the camps and thinking, "that's not what it was like".

Another source was a pile of 8mm home movies from my childhood that I had no idea existed and found by accident in my brother's room. And curiously, I have absolutely no recollection of when it was that I found them. With incidents such as this, I can usually place somewhere in the timeline of my life, but not this one. Selective memory clearly engaged.

Also curiously, I have no idea where those 8mm reels are now. I'm even doubting their existence or whether my finding them ever really happened, because not only was there the film, but also . . . it wasn't a projector, but a machine that I watched them on where you set up the reels and spooled the film through a mechanism that lit the film onto a screen. Yea, sounds suspicious to me, too.

This is weird because the more I describe it, the more I'm doubting this ever happened. A machine like that just doesn't go missing. The film is real, actually. I do remember my father did have a projector, and when he got back a reel of film from being developed, the family would get together and watch it.

What I remember about finding and watching the film, whether that happened or not, is seeing my parents in a light that I never knew. They were acting as parents. There was footage of my oldest brother's kindergarten graduation. Seeing my parents acting like parents was very conflicting for me, and it was hard for me to reconcile that it happened like that. I think I even actually felt guilty for a while about hating them.

The film is fact, the pictures don't lie, but if our subjective memory and reality are in conflict with them, then what's the truth? Here was physical evidence of my parents acting like parents, but in my memory and reality, my parents were merely a bank. They provided funds, but were uninvolved and emotionally unavailable.

So what I was trying to get at was, whether it's historical or personal, does the documentary evidence contain actual truth. No, it contains a record, but the truth is subjective.

I used to be a pyromaniac when I was a kid and used to light fires in a small set of woods near my elementary school. Nothing major, but at one point the fire department was called. And shit, it seems harmless in retrospect and I never thought anything of it, but that's clear evidence that I was already one fucked up, sociopath of a kid. Or I was trying to get attention. But you have to get caught to get attention. I was 8 or 9 years old.

And then the lyrics get further muddy because I start reflecting on my relationship with Amina and start ranting on about her. Real mature. So many things to dislike about this song. And at 5 minutes long, it was a failure at the short and concise concept (most of the songs from my first collection were ridiculously long, most over 5 minutes).

Force a pause

Pass under lighted tracks of memories hung up in galleries

Desert sand still seems to fall from my hands

Black and white photographs, but it never looked like that

Lost in my thoughts

Lots to be guilty of when history haunts me in home movies

The pictures lie, they can't testify to facts

Childhood reality check, it didn't happen quite like that

Thirty years between being the same age

Through my eyes not much has changed

From the forest fire and the match I found

On the cold barren ground

To decide from a yes to a no

Have to stay, no way that I'm gonna go

Under desert rocks froze in snow

My confession, little forgiveness for the un- or underblessed

Trapped in the mess of burned barracks, government shacks

I recall a last night on the phone

Triggered something from a long time ago

Losing you was really no loss at all

It seemed so much better than it actually was

From a point of view it was nothing new

It should have come as no surprise

And as it goes around, it still comes around

I could have read between the lines

You, your glazed ceramic smile

Made of mud and blazed in fire so cold

The wrong shade of red lipstick

Little too brown, too bright

In the sun it made you look too white-eyed

Burned to brown like a native skin, tattooed Indian

Give me control over what I know

I only doubt what I found when I find none of it sound

I have no memory and no feelings and I'm free to leave

04. Ode to a Sinkhole
I'm pretty sure this song started with the main 4-chord, descending rhythm guitar motif in the intro and verses, and I think I had those chords kicking around for quite a while.

Like years, maybe. I forget if the keyboard melody or the bass line came next, but if it was years in the making, it may well have been a snippet with the keyboard melody laying around for years.

I always had a "snippet" tape ready to go in the 4-track, on which I recorded ideas and then may have put other parts on top of to see if I thought there was any potential. I don't know if any of those snippet tapes are extant, but there can't be too many of them. I wasn't all that prolific. Not that I'm terribly interested in what's on them.

The acoustic rhythm guitar sounds like it's running through a Small Clone chorus box, one of the first stomp boxes I ever bought when I was in high school, and it's the same one Kurt Cobain uses on songs like "Come As You Are". And reverb.

Oh, and reverb! When Boss released its first reverb stomp box, that was a huge thing for me. Almost every vocal and guitar part is going through reverb. And compression. I neglect to mention these effects because they are more subtle; assumed even. All voice, guitar and bass parts are running through a Boss Compression/Sustain pedal.

With the first collection of songs I recorded during college, I remember I ended up re-recording all the vocal parts and some guitar parts one semester, and now I remember why: the reverb pedal came out. As bad as my vocals are, without reverb and compression, they were even more excruciating to listen to.

It may be hard to appreciate now because all these effects are readily available now, included with multi-track recording software, I shouldn't wonder. But back then 4-track tape recorders didn't have built-in effects, digital processors were unheard of, and pro reverb processors were expensive. So it was a godsend when Boss created their reverb stomp box, which I remember was still really expensive at US$300, but worth it.

I think this is the only song whose drum part wasn't recorded with the "Phil Collins" patch. It's similarly big sounding, but the patch I used had a mechanical tinge to it. I think there were multiple tracks for the TD-7 because there's a quica sound in there that I don't think was recorded with the main drum part.

This is also the only song that I didn't record the bass with my solid-body Riverhead, but a hollow-body Washburn AB-40 acoustic-electric. That was a great bass with a Fishman pre-amp/EQ and a piezo pickup mounted under the bridge which picked up the full sound of the wood body which is why it sounds so woof-y. It's going through a Boss Auto-wah in the instrumental sections. I gave that bass away to Meghan during one round of "I'm not gonna be around much longer anyway".

I think the keyboard sound was created with a keyboard controller and a sound module which I bought to replace a Roland Juno-106 analog synthesizer that I foolishly sold around this time. That was an amazing keyboard and one of the last of its kind before digital synthesizers became the rage with the Yamaha DX-7. They're considered vintage now. Part of me regrets selling it, but I also remember it was an exercise in non-attachment and that part of me doesn't regret it.

The song has three instrumental sections, the first being just the background rhythm track, the second time there's an added crunchy guitar part on top – my Takamine run through distortion and no reverb – and the third time has a guitar solo played on the Peavey electric to fade out the song.

I guess the theme behind the lyrics is isolation, sort of feeling like I was at the bottom of a well and the view of the world from there. The "feels like I'm in a well...-kept dungeon cell" is a cheap literary trick, attempting to be clever.

There's an element in the lyrics that's a reference to Plato's cave and how our lives are like shadows of a reality cast by a divine light coming from outside the cave that we have no concept of. And there's a reference to an analogy between Plato's cave and movie-making. Movies are just light and shadow manipulated upon a screen, but we often ascribe a certain reality to them and let ourselves be drawn into it.

I think this song is the second reference in this collection of the back of my eyes, and the imagery was supposed to evoke looking at the back of my eyeball – my eyes being the view of the world and with eyes being the window to the soul for other people, the real me was actually one step further withdrawn, not engaging or interfacing with the world, but just contemplating what was falling on the back of my eyes.

More reference to angels with the "she with wings" line, and I guess I was getting out some feelings about a previous relationship in college, Luyen. She was from Florida, so I was obviously thinking about her for that line, but that's the extent of what I remember. We had discussed angels in a theoretical, conceptual sense, but she was no angel. And neither was I.

I was living in San Francisco at this point, going to law school in downtown S.F. everyday. I remember having existential problems being in an urban setting and all the concrete and all the people, and for a time I dealt with it by keeping my line of sight over people's heads trying to avoid acknowledging their existence. Pretty pathetic.

I'm scared of heights, or at least I used to be, and I was referencing that in opposition to the metaphor of digging my own grave. Dreamscapes, death states, I think they're fairly envisioned as being above, rather than below, and my lifescapes I was definitely feeling as below.

Actually, I think the concept for the opening line was digging my own grave and then by accident digging too deep and finding myself trapped. Story of my life. And then there are the obligatory references to death and choosing to die.

Dug this hole too deep to find sleep

Just a pinpoint shaft of light out of which I can see

Feels like I'm in a well-kept dungeon cell

Faint rose smell and the sky looks like the back of my eyes

Shadows move on rocks below me

Suspended here in the glare, in the glow of silver screens

I walk while she with wings tugs my puppet strings

Was she from Hollywood, moved to Florida?

With the camera focused far above the heads of the crowd

To avoid them now

From my height I'm deep in a dream

Don't know what they mean, or where they lead

Or where they have been

I'm scared of higher places where I can't see people's faces

No big deal to not know how I feel about my life

If there's something missed, choice to leave

Dismiss the world as it is

Dug this hole too deep under me

Drank myself to sleep, what I really need

Is time to rest in peace

I know that there can be no coincidences

Nothing happens that doesn't show through the cracks

03. Withdrawal
Hm, I thought the title of this song was "Wishlist". Not sure how it got changed. It might be a mistake. Or not. I have no idea.

I'm pretty sure this song started with the opening lyric which then got slapped on top of the bass verse riff, which I'm pretty sure is the origin of the music. The guitar part was just what fit over the bass part and then used to develop the other portions.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that for this collection, the music writing and lyric writing were very separate processes. So while I was developing and recording the music over here, lyric ideas were being scrawled down over there, and the two were mashed together at a later point.

I'm a little embarrassed by both the confessional and meltdown nature of the lyrics. There is little hiding my preoccupation with various ways of dying and self-destruction and my inability to bring anything to fruition in that regard, story of my life. But I did try to have a little fun with it, too. I mean what's death and self-destruction if you're not having at least a little bit of fun? Just morbid. And I am not morbid.

At the time I had recently broken up with the purported "love of my life" Amina, and some reference to her crops up in a few of these songs, and they are immature, snide jabs at her. She's Pakistani and had a Caucasian nose that I always felt was poking me when we kissed. There's more in other songs.

The Simpsons impression in the repeated verse may be related via the South Asia connection, but her mother being English, she spoke with a British Indian accent, and not a full-on Apu Indian accent. It's indirect, but it was conscious.

I forget what all the different "voices" for the repeated verse were supposed to be. Aside from Apu, one of them was "Tom Waits". Another was "meltdown". I think one I wrote down as "about-to-crack". One sounds like it should've been labeled "constipated".

Other lyric elements came from various sources. "Four and twenty bishops" was an expression from my Contracts professor that I liked, used to emphasize the importance of evidence versus innuendo attested to by "four and twenty bishops".

There's a reference to angels which was a thing for me late in college. One of my favorite films at the time was Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" and I think I even wrote a paper on angels for a religion seminar. How flaky is that? (not as flaky as the field "angelology"). There's more in other songs.

The internet is an assumed part of modern life now, but back then it was just coming into wider use, being touted in the media with the catchphrase "information superhighway". I was being topical! Imagine how much lamer it would be if I had mentioned Infoseek or Lycos. Or Alta Vista. All pre-Google search engines. All had to be used to find the optimum result.

The line about being allergic to myself was about an elusive skin condition I have. It's nothing major, just an oddity as far as I can tell, and unlike other physical anomalies, this one has never gone away.

My skin is sensitive and if I scratch it even lightly it turns red and leads to more itching. If I scratch it because of itching, it leads to prominent, unsightly welts wherever I scratch it. So the reference was a joke about being allergic to just being myself.

The reference to being "discharged" was simply in my mind about being discharged from mental institutions, which I have been twice in my life, so this was referencing that deranged period of my life.

I don't want to be too harsh against the people who had me committed, nor about how they were just doing their jobs and had no clue what was going on. Looking at the scenes objectively, I think they were justified, but ultimately my case was beyond their psychiatric analysis, and kudos for them for realizing it. Something was clearly "wrong" (from their point of view), but it was beyond their purview of what they could understand, much less treat. So they let me go.

The guitar part was played on my acoustic Takamine running through an auto-wah and the bass line in the verses is slapped on my Riverhead. I'm not a slap bassist, but it's a lot of fun, and at the time I was experimenting with slapping without a lot of popping, or at least not popping in a higher register on a higher string. The electric drums are on the Phil Collins setting and there's also a second distorted guitar part that was done on the Takamine. Meaning this song was likely recorded before I bought the Peavey Predator.

I want to die a bloody, violent death

Smashed against the rocks below the cliffs, amidst the surf
But the hands around my neck keep stopping me

Surf to servant, lifted up by wings that never worked

And I owe my whole likeness to the kindness

Of the winds that blew me kisses from a lotus flower

Stood around me by some four and twenty bishops 

Giving me the finger with a sneer they said, "You wish"

My number one priority

Is finding the only wish I had left

As I'm flipping through my filofax

For that wish I have left

I wish I could find a way to decide

I wish there was a way I could survive

I wish I could be buried alive

I wish everyone would leave me alone

Seems to me to be one more life decision

Every heartbeat murmurs secrets only time can tell me

Met Jesus on my path, nearly stepped on him

Searched for God on the information interstate

She crowned me in a romantic bravado

It's your classic fairy tale scenario we all know

Bring me to a better understanding

Bring me people who would never ever leave me

My number one priority

Is to not stand stupid in some idiot's pose

Kissing ass, distracted by your pointed nose

I don't think I would want to be that wise

I don't want to live just to survive

I don't want to find what's behind my eyes

I don't think I should be thinking these things

Someday I'll drown in my own sense of privacy 

Where no one can help me to be who I want to be

Eggshell exiles scrambled in cups of tea

Porcelain lips kiss my grasp on reality

(repeat 5x)

Why am I allergic to myself?

I get a rash everytime I come down and try to be real

Ask me about my drinking problem

That's one way to get a prime example of denial

I smeared myself with 80 proof holy water

I'm a failure of religious guidance, social science

I'm next in line to be discharged and I feel better

On my way home gotta make it look like an accident

02. Just for the Record (Marillion cover)
This song is on the last studio album that original singer Fish recorded with neo-prog rock band Marillion, "Clutching at Straws" (1987). It is one of my desert island discs – I'll never get sick of listening to this album or stop being amazed at Fish's lyrics.

It's not my fave song on the album. In fact, if there were a song I like least, this would be a runner-up, not that there is a song I like least on the album. No, the reason I chose this song to record was that the chords were easy enough to figure out on guitar, and the song itself was short and concise, which is what I was going for on this collection of songs.

I also fancied doing a full-on cover, rather than just acoustic covers of songs I liked, since I hadn't done that since I first owned my first 4-track tape recorder and recorded covers to learn the process of 4-track recording.

The funnest part was coming up with a bass part that was my own. I did away with copying the guitar hook on the original track because I would've sucked trying to do that, and instead incorporated elements of that hook in the bass line.

The bass is the Riverhead run through a Boss Super Phaser and Bass EQ. All the other parts are pro forma, just doing what I could figure out to do. I even changed the meter in the verses from 7 to an even 8, more because it fit the bass line I wanted to play and not that I couldn't play in 7, mind you, but it did make recording the song track-by-track easier.

Aside from the bass, there's an acoustic rhythm guitar track, electronic drumset on the Phil Collins sound, two vocal tracks and I'm pretty sure the solo is recorded with the Peavey electric and not my acoustic run through distortion. Hehe, me playing a "solo". It just sounds funny (and it does sound funny, the first notes of the solo remind me of a baby deer trying to get its legs).

The lyrics, of course, I found very relevant, dealing with alcoholism and derangement. Fish's line "It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this" probably refers to only being able to make sense when drunk, but in my mind, "out of it" meant out of life, and I sang a future tense "I'll".

Fish obviously uses a pseudonym (you might too if your given name was Derek William Dick), as arguably do I. But I don't consider my name a pseudonym. It's the difference between my "real" name and my "legal" name, and as I consider it my real name, it can't be a pseudonym. But, no, it's not my legal name, which I hold in disdain. Look, I rhymed!

Where he says, "When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty", that resonated for me because in my first collection of songs, I had an opening line, "I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself/But who am I to say it's a problem, after all, you're happy". Always people telling us we got a problem.

And of course the classic alcoholic response, "Just for the record, I can stop any day". No, really, I can.

(D. Dick/S. Rothery/M. Kelly/P. Trewavas/I. Mosley)

Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways

But when it gets right down to it it's the same drunken haze

I'm serving a sentence to write life sentences

It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this

Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down

Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around

Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym

Just a barroom dancer on my final fling

Just another writer paying off my dues

Just finding an inspiration, well, that's my excuse

Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down

Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around

Just another empty gesture with an empty glass

Just a comic actor behind a tragic mask

But I got no discipline, got no self-control

Just a little less painful here where my back's against the wall

It's too late, I found it's too hard

I'm in two minds, both of them are out of it at the bar

When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty

But I can put it all down to eccentricity

It's just for the record, it's just a passing phase

Just for the record, I can stop any day

And if I haven't geeked out enough, to go full-on maximus geekus, the whole album is full of quotes that resonate for me, including the closing verse of the album:

And if you ever come across us, don't give us your sympathy

You can buy us a drink, and just shake our hands

And you'll recognize by the reflection in our eyes

That deep down inside, we're all one and the same:

We're clutching at straws, we're still drowning

Clutching at straws, we're still drowning

- The Last Straw

And just for the record, I'm so not impressed by Windows 7 as an improvement over XP.

I've found a website that allows me to upload simple sound files, and I've had to decide whether to do what I always wondered whether I would do if given the opportunity: post my own songs from my past. And in what manner?

On one hand, from a music perspective, I don't think it's any good. I don't recall anyone to whom I gave the cassette giving more than a polite positive response. To be fair, I don't recall anyone having the same music tastes as me, either, go fig.

And even though the results sound like a final product, the purpose of the recording was to shop it around through my network of friends to find other musicians to play with. I finally accepted my writing process was too excruciating and results too poor to want to be a primary songwriter, but I was hoping to find people interested in the sound and forming a band. I just wanted to be the bass player.

On the other hand, I am trying to wrap things up and wind things down, and this is a significant part of my past, albeit small and very private and at times embarrassing. This is part of my history and past expression.

I've said before I'm glad I have these recordings because no matter how embarrassing, they are a record of what was going on at the time (actually that was about a previous collection I had recorded during college; this collection I'm personally not so embarrassed about).

It's not out of ego, it's not that I want anyone listening to the stuff, but it's fact, it's record. It's confessional, and that's part of what this blog is supposed to be doing. I keep myself completely hidden from people who know me, but this is the place where it all comes out. Anything anyone ever wondered about me can probably be found somewhere in here.

And I think I'll go full-on confessional here. When someone creates something, they don't know how other people will take it or interpret it. I'm removing that by saying what everything was about. I'm not pretending this is art for a listener to enjoy or interpret or figure out. This is an artifact of expression that I'm explaining for the record.

As for manner, the track order matters to me, so I think I'll post track by track in sequence, but then I'll see about combining it all into one ridiculously long post so it's all in sequence for the archives once I'm done.

01. Son of Solomon
So this first song is obviously inspired by my parents who I hated at the time, putting it mildly. Who woulda thunk?, I just admitted my parents were an inspiration to me. I don't think most individual lyrics meant anything specific. It was just general anger upon which lines were built. Suicide is, of course, alluded to in the song, and I think it's alluded to in every song.

The title doesn't mean anything either. I realized as an afterthought that I had to coax out titles for these songs. This phrase came to me in a quick little flash and stuck.

There is a line referencing when I went to Japan after college to find my way and stayed with a great aunt in Osaka for some months. My parents did arrange that, but beyond that I think every effort was made to discourage anything I was attempting to do, certainly not encouraging or supporting it. In the end, it worked and it was like they scooped a wandering child off its feet and put it back where they wanted it to be.

The song idea started with the bass line which then defined the guitar chords, and probably after I established what the guitar was doing in the verse, that led to the chorus and break sections written on guitar. The bass, a Japanese-made Riverhead Unicorn headless design, sounds like it's going through a Boss Auto-Wah pedal with the lows boosted with a Bass EQ pedal.

I only had an acoustic guitar up to this point since I never took guitar seriously, but I think at this point I decided I needed to include guitar solos and bought a first generation Peavey Predator which was a strat-copy. Later models were a totally different design, but I love the strat-copy version and still have it.

No solos on this song, but I think I used it to get used to playing electric guitar, with two tracks of electric guitar, one clean, one distorted. I think any guitarist will tell you that acoustic and electric are totally different beasts.

All the drums on this collection were played on what was then a state-of-the-art, 2nd generation consumer electronic drumset, a Roland TD-7. Being a huge Phil Collins fan, I gravitated towards the sound that was closest to his sound – very big with lots of reverb.

I was doing the best I could on drums, having worked on keeping a groove while I was in a steel drum band in college. I had a horrible sense of rhythm until then and I spent hours on practicing "groove" with a metronome.

I didn't consider myself a drummer at this point. It wasn't until several years later when I heard Jimmy Chamberlin with the Smashing Pumpkins that I was really inspired about being able to express on drums. Bash the fuck out of those things, I mean.

(Can I ask you something personal?)

Mom and dad could never have a baby

Mom and dad they never had a chance

Though they only needed dope to save me

They traded the hope for circumstance

It was never my responsibility to live past 20

It was never my intention to live through them

The psycho path has been my way out of the halls of plenty

Took my hand to lead me back again

Being pushed was just my way of learning

Pushed to suicide don't make it a crime

Found the agents they were sent as earning

Made me hate and made me do the time, made me survive

It was never my intention to live past 30

It was never my responsibility to be fool-proof

And the only way to pave my grave was to make it dirty

Make it up and make it be the truth

In the guise of a friend she came as a complete surprise

Said there's no worse than the will to live, may it be your curse

In return I wished upon her a real long, long life . . .

Mom and dad were just imagination

Nothing they could do could make me real

Just as they could make their own creation

They could make their DNA congeal

The nightmare grows like ivy climbing up my body

Year by year I never even noticed it being there

It make me realize somewhere implied I should feel sorry

It's all been wrong and gotten me nowhere

memory lane/poetry corner

repost: now with sound (and full lyrics)

Back in college, I made the acquaintance of . . . well, several incredible songwriters, each of whom I can gush about, none of whom made it big despite what I consider their more than copious talent. The one brought to my mind now was a personal friend with whom I worked, and his writing struck a chord because he wrote about Asian American issues.

The last I heard, which is actually quite a while ago, he had entered the noble profession of elementary school teaching (I'm not being sarcastic), and has given up music and songwriting altogether, although I'm not sure I believe that 100%. I have a feeling, or I hope, that through the years he has written songs on the sly.

He wrote brilliant lyrics that I analyzed and explicated to the extent that I now wonder whether I scared him, making him question what he was putting out there that he hadn't intended.

He had written a song called "Yellow Yellow Woman" which had gotten some criticism from people who hadn't read the (hilarious and profound) lyrics and were just reacting to the title and the chorus (Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman and have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names), and he was doubting whether it should be included in the collection of songs we were recording.

09 Yellow Yellow Woman (lyrics/music/vocals by k. hung; I'm on all instruments including guitar, bass, drums, cowbell!, roto-toms, and an out of tune Eb on a cello steel drum pan belonging to the Oberlin Can Consortium steel drum band (of which I was a member and was able to record all the percussion in their panyard)).

Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names

Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies and they all will look the same

I wanna find a woman, yea, I need to find a woman

But I gotta find a woman who is my species

So I'm gonna take some action, some affirmative action

'Cause this lovin' that I need ain't equal opporunity

My momma keeps on askin', keeps on askin' askin' askin'

When you gonna settle down with some nice Chinese

She had better be from Taiwan or maybe even Fukian

But if not I'll settle for Korean or a Japanese

So here I am at college, at this equal, equal college

With my equal opportunity life

But I never ever thought that at this equal, equal college

I'd be lookin', lookin', lookin' for a wife

So now I'm roaming through the dining halls, scouting out the mailroom

Trying to find my woman in the library

And I'm looking through the phonebook, flipping, marking with a pencil

Every girl whose last name is Wong, Chen, or Lee

And I go to Asian students meetings, take East Asian Studies classes

Hopin', hopin', hopin', hopin' that I'll find her there

And at the very last all-campus Chinese New Year's celebration

Why the hell do you think that I was everywhere

And then I go to campus parties and I hear that Two Live Crew song "Me So Horny"

Oh, me so horny!

And then I laugh at all the Asian women, all dancing to a song that's making fun of them

But then I think:

That same song's being sung by me!

Well my mom wants to keep her traditions, wants to keep her past

Don't want no oranges when there's lemons growing on the family tree

But it's not like I'm already foreign, I was born in North Dakota

When I try to speak Chinese it all sounds Greek to me

So I'll respect my mom's tradition, her need to keep her past

And if she wants to keep on dreaming, well I guess then that is fine

But I think that I'll respect tradition, all the while I break tradition

I will draw as well as keep the family line

So if someday I marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names

It will kinda be ironic, 'cause it will not be intentional

'Cause yellow, yellow women, no, they don't all look the same

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow babies, yellow yellow names

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow babies, no they don't all look the same

(Well tell me who's to blame)

I had to argue him into including it because it was brilliant and we would make sure that everyone who received the tape would get a copy of the lyrics. I practically went verse by verse, line by line telling him how his song was friggin' brillig. I can see how that can be disturbing.

The lyrics below, which since I can't offer an audio version, I'm offering as a poem, he wrote in response to another brilliant song he wrote which is among my favorites of his.

That previous song was about a Japanese person who immigrated to America in the early 20th century to seek his fortune, only to face racist laws prohibiting him from owning land and then was sent to an internment camp during WWII while his son enlisted in the all Japanese American (and highly decorated) 442nd U.S. army regiment to fight against the Nazis, where he's killed in action. The significance in the title is that he changes his last name from Ohara to O'Hare to sound "more American".

08 The Ballad of Charlie Ohara (lyrics/music/vocals/piano: k. hung; I played guitar and bass; synthesizer by a. hirahara)

I call myself Charlie O'Hare

Though I know that's not the way to pronounce it

'Cause the voices in the postcards and letters

Dating back, back from the time I renounced it

Whisper my name 'cross the sea

Through the barbed wire, the sage brush lashed 'round my memory

For forty odd acres of land

Made a deal, just so the law wouldn't find us

 'Cause the laws in this land they assume

When we come, we leave our pride back behind us

So now I answer to this call

Even though I don't look one bit Irish at all

Our first born was named "Isamu"

"Uncle Sam", that was what everyone called him

He grew into a young man so strapling

Turned the head of even some giddy white woman

The day he became twenty-one

I signed him the deed and I looked toward the setting sun

Then the war came and, well, they lost our trust

So they sent us to a place where we choked in our dreams from the dust

Over a question of our loyalty

I said Look at my name, how much more American must I be?

Sam joined the 442nd

'Cause his actions spoke louder than my words did for him

They sent him to fight against the Nazis

Where he died taking the Gothic Line from them

Soon after that, they let some go

And sent 'em down to Chicago

On orders that we stay from our own

But I'm much too old to leave my home

So now I lie in the desert heat

Postcards and letters scattered at my feet

The voices there tell me of my shame

'Cause it's been so long since I've heard my name

My name

Heard my name

The message it came through the wire

"We regret to inform you of the death of Private Samuel O'Hare"

(Historical note: When the U.S. government started realizing that putting Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in concentration camps wasn't helping the war effort at all and wasting a lot of money, they started letting them go, but forbade them from settling back on the West Coast and forced them eastward in places like Chicago and told them not to form communities. Also, while in the concentration camps, loyalty tests were handed out to young men to determine whether they could be used in the war effort. While they were incarcerated without trial, solely due to their national origin, they were asked about their loyalty to the United States and willingness to fight for this government that incarcerated them and their families. Anyone who answered "No" to both question, whatever their reasons, were labeled "No-No Boys", and spent years in prison long after the war ended).

For this song he decided to try to write from a woman's perspective, and he chose the topic of an Asian war bride. I forget if we discussed it, but I think she's supposed to be Korean. That makes the most sense; he didn't want to repeat a Japanese character and I don't think it snows much in Vietnam. Also considering the U.S.'s hasty retreat out of Vietnam.

I do have a recorded version of the song, but I'm far too un-tech savvy to figure out how to upload it somewhere. We even recorded it at a real recording studio at the Oberlin Conservatory for one of our member's final project (who I think actually has become a noted jazz pianist in the New York jazz scene). His final project was to record a live ensemble in one take, which is why the arrangement is so threadbare and since he was engineering, he couldn't contribute any keyboard parts.

On the recording, our guitarist, an Indian American, couldn't figure out a part for the song, so we swapped instruments with me on guitar (his incredibly sweet Stratocaster) and him on bass. I listen to the song now and think of all the things he's doing wrong on the bass, and I'm sure he'd think the same about my guitar playing.

13 Let It Snow (lyrics/music/vocals/piano: k. hung; j. cotelingham: bass; me: guitar)

"Let It Snow"

In the winter's night, by the twilight's last gleaming
When the weatherman says it'll be 20 below
You can hear her voice from the window-ledge singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

Met him at a dance on the army installation
Where she hung out after work on the assembly row
Above the boiler's din, you can often hear her singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

So she came over here on the strength of his promise
She had heard it once on Armed Forces Radio
And his voice did sound a little bit like Frank Sinatra's singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

And after visiting Missouri to meet his parents
They moved on to the base where he was lieutenant
But the blur of America it soon got to her head
So she spent her first days there inside sick in bed

'Cos her English was bad, she spent her days in the apartment
In the evening he'd take her out to see a show
But then he'd come home late for all the work at the office
Piled like snow...

So she would wait for him with his dinner warm and ready
Growing impatient staring out of the window
And all the while the days were growing shorter and shorter
A sign of snow, a sign of snow...

But when the meal was all over and the dishes put away
They discovered that they didn't have much of anything to say
And from her window was all of America she could see
And the gleam in her eye became the glare of the TV

Then late one night around the holiday season
He came back from the bar staggering through the cold
Was so drunk that he slammed the backdoor wide open
And it snowed

He threw her to the floor screaming curses in English
Not once caring if they might be words that she'd know
And the punches came, first a flurry, then a blizzard
And it snowed

And in the midst of it all through the tears through the pain
Remembered hearing once that snow was just frozen rain
And though she knew in two days it would be Christmas Day
She realized that she didn't celebrate anyway

So in the winter's night, by the twilight's last gleaming
When the weatherman says it'll be 20 below
You can hear her voice from the window-ledge singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"