when you want to try heroin…whew yesterday was a doozy…everything seems a little hazier…like the mess of tangled chords that slowly forms in the corner of our rehearsal space every so often…only life’s not as easy to unknot and rebuild…or at least it’s not as easy to make the decision to start from scratch…
on the ride home from band practice, ron has fugazi’s steady diet of nothing in the cd player…i hadn’t listened to much fugazi as of late, but they’re unwaveringly one the most important bands i’ve ever listened to…i always thought it was a little strange that ian mackaye is pretty much remembered as the voice of the band…much as i love what he’s done, i always found guy picciotto’s vocals much more engaging…there’s a furious energy to his delivery that’s consistently inspiring…and his live performances are second to none…after i got home, i threw on rites of spring (guy’s band prior to fugazi) just because i wanted to hear his voice rip through my speakers…it’s going to be a fun night…
oh, and go buy yourself a fugazi record…any of them…really…they’re all spectacular…
ooxx aa
“see, i’ve been putting up with this for thirty years!”…my mother on one of my dad’s irrational arguments about some miniscule detail regarding the house…they argue like this every few hours or so…it’s both slightly annoying and a little relieving…they seem to enjoy it in their own bizarre world…i guess spending thirty years with anyone exclusively is bound to make you a little insane…
i’m at a panera bread right now…i enjoyed a fairly delicious asiago cheese bagel with sun dried tomato cream cheese and my parents have taken a brief leave of me to tend to their visitors…this is most welcome as i require a reasonable amount of alone time in my daily digest in order to maintain my own sanity…this is often difficult to come by when i’m visiting my parents…but i’ve managed to do a decent job of it so far…
on the first day of my trip, i took a nice five mile run around my parents neighborhood…luckily for me, their neighborhood happens to sit in an enormous nature preserve…it was nice to run alongside a landscape of endless dark green woods, chirping birds and a smattering of animals i’ve never before seen…there’s no real nature in new york city and north andover, ma (by contrast) seems like the most relaxing place in the world…
yesterday, i spent some time sorting through old boxes of books that were left in what my mother labels as “arun’s room”…i dug up some books that i lent my mom that i plan on bringing back to brooklyn with me and found my old high school yearbook…it’s interesting to revisit who you were when you were young…i’ve been reading (and re-reading) ee cummings’ 73 poems along side a revisit of the shame of the nation by jonathon kozol…the latter is a really well researched diatribe about the way in which we’ve sold out our nation’s poorest children…it’s heartbreaking to read and i’d say it’s recommended reading for just about anybody…unfortunately, i often feel like his works are read mostly by educators…there’s nothing particularly wrong about this, because there are certainly some excellent suggestions that even educators can garner from his work…still, it’s a lot like preaching to the choir…i’d like the rest of the country to try and engage themselves in this problem a little more…i think it’d provide for a much better place to live for all of us…there are some great passages in there that i’d like to post, but i left the book at my parent’s house so it’ll have to wait…
i’m reviewing a resume right now for a math teaching position at my school…resume’s are mostly a whole lot of bullshit…i can’t really discern how i’m supposed to determine if anyone’s qualified for anything through a resume…i mean, excluding a few that are just riddled with grammatical errors and the like, everyone looks good on paper…this one happens to be a teach for america resume…so trying to decipher if this person is actually interested in education or whether this is just a place to rest in between undergrad and law school (or something of that ilk) is always the first step…an administrative duty that reminds me why i’d never really want to be a principal…
ooxx aa
last night in brooklyn before i head out to visit my parents in massachusetts…should be a fairly enjoyable trip and i haven’t seen mom and pop in quite some time so it’s most necessary…
spent the day running errands…finished the schedule for the new school…it’s pretty spectacular, i must say…had lunch with katie, dave and maria…came back to brooklyn and got some copies made and some various documents notarized…took a short nap and went to band practice…played music for a bit and then had a long discussion about what we’re doing next as a band…planned out the next six months in fairly good detail…lots of shows and a writing a new record are top priorities…
finished my packing…still debating whether or not to lug my extra acoustic guitar up to my parents house…i’ll see how i feel when i’m stumbling out of the house at seven am tomorrow…(“seven am” is a fantastic song by the constantines by the way, i recommend you listen to it at your earliest convenience)…trying to dig up a new book to read while i’m on my little trip…i finished the heather o’neil novel and i’ll write about it in great detail when i can dedicate more time to it…(the book deserves it)…
peace etc.
ooxx aa
“2X2″ by get him eat him is a terrifically feverish two minutes of guitar pop…the words are strung together quite well…and i’m always a sucker for good pop songs that use words like “bastard” in the them…it’s the album’s opener…i haven’t enjoyed the rest of the album as much…but this song’s a definite keeper…mix-tape worthy…
i spent a good portion of my time between the age of 16 and 20 making mix-tapes for people…i miss it quite a bit…at first, i exclusively made cassette tapes for friends…many of them found this annoying, but also convenient when they found themselves in cars without CD players…i liked tapes over CDs only because you couldn’t really skip a track you didn’t like after listening to the first twenty seconds or so…eventually i caved in and made CDs instead for people…but now that even CDs are obsolete i’m not sure where to go from here…a mix podcast?…anyone have suggestions?…
i woke up early and went to our new school site…it’s coming along slowly…i spent the morning putting together the pieces of our schedule…making a school schedule is painfully long and annoying…luckily it’s a highly mathematical process so i’ve had some fun working on it…i also found out that we’ll only have 17 kids in a class for next year which is phenomenal…anyone who talks to me about education knows how strongly i feel about small class size…especially at highly volatile time periods like middle school…i can’t wait to see what i can do with such a small class size…
among the wreckage at our current school site, we found eight midi keyboads with accompanying g4 laptops…i’ve already reserved a fairly sizable room for the guitars i’m getting at the end of august as a music center for the kids…excitement…everywhere…
i’ve always wanted to play guitar and sing/scream in a really loud, in-your-face kind of band like at the drive-in or certain parts of fugazi and q and not u…this might be a perfect thing to pursue whenever i hit my mid-life crisis…probably when i round the thirty-five years of age…i reason that it’s a pretty good idea to have a mid-life crisis planned out ahead of time…
i’m preparing to spend the rest of the week with my parents at their new house in massachusetts…i’m trying to figure out if i can bring one of my guitars with me to leave up there…every time i leave the city to visit, i’m left with any music making tools for about a week…i’m fairly addicted to music-making at this point, so it feels a little like a drug withdrawal…i think it’ll keep my irritation level low as well…i’m also going to try and convince mom and pop to purchase a nice piano to put in one of the rooms in the house…it would be swell and i’d probably sit behind the whole time i’m there…
still on the look-out for a fender rhodes…let me know if you know someone who’s looking to get rid of one…
ooxx aa
“years from now they will make water from the resevoirs of our idiot tempers.” – constantines
crime in my neighborhood is increasing…as i explained to joe at brunch today, people with more money are moving in and people with less money are robbing them…ah sweet capitalism…
at the aquarium, puja serves as my biologically gifted guide and explains why the lights in the fish tanks need to be blue (it has something to do with how fish see) and how the various jelly fish operate their life cycles (amongst other things)…she can’t seem to find her way anywhere in the city or do math…but it’s nice to have people around who are intelligent in a way that you totally aren’t…balance is extremely important…
yesterday was my parents 30th wedding anniversary…i remembered last week but had a mind lapse and neglected to call them yesterday…on the phone with my mother today, i apologize for my belated congrats…she quips that if she was late to the wedding thirty years ago, i might never have been born…
peace etc.
ooxx aa
feist performed at prospect park on wednesday…we put together a vegeterian bbq featuring hand-made tofu burgers that came out pretty well on the whole…the show was a pay show, so we just ate outside the gate by the picnic tables and listened in…i’ve never been the biggest feist fan, but she’s way better than the average singer-songwriter and the way she uses her voice is pretty interesting…i still think her performances w/ broken social scene are her best…
spent some time at gantry plaza state park with puja last night…it was a pretty cool evening, especially for a summer in new york…there’s a serenity in the constant ripples that propogate from any body of water…it would be impoossible to live in a city like this one without seeking out some peace and quiet every now and then…it’s nice that there’s a fair amount of hidden secrets here that allow you to escape from everything else…even just for a little while…
dr. abayev says that if i keep exercising that i could reduce the chances of getting genetic diabetes from my dad by fifty percent…timing of that information was good because i’d just started to go the gym…it’s been surprisingly enjoyable…it’s not so bad when you look at it like a playground for adults…
also, when did drew carey become the host of price is right?…this makes me feel old…
spent the last few days working on a lot of writing and a lot of music…which all together makes for a pretty happy boy…
almost done reading lullabies for little criminals…it’s beautiful and sad…and it’s making me miss and worry about the girls i’ve taught for the last couple of years…more on that when i finish the book…
ooxx aa
ooxx aa
(june 26th 2008)
after the philharmonic, we stroll down to clinton cove, a remote, relatively unknown park that overlooks the hudson river on manhattan’s west side…for the next four hours, we share small secrets, argue about whether a kangaroo’s pouch is clean or filled with some gooey (unappealing) substance and try and decide if the lights flickering in the night sky are airplanes or shooting stars…in the early morning, she notices a pair of geese settling on the water in the distance…and we just watch…a welcome silence before we decide it’s time to head home…
ooxx aa
he’s a mirrored image of myself…indian, tall and lean with dark hair…we talk about guitars and amps and sigur ros…and he understands my desire/dream to own a fender rhodes…at the end of the evening, we revisit that moment in college where you have to choose whether music is a hobby or a lifestyle…our decisions were divergent…and as we describe the outcomes to each other, we both enjoy peering into a “what might have been” type of kaleidoscope…i can’t speak for him, but i’m more than satisfied with the way things are unfolding…
spent the day in the studio working on some new music with ron…he bought a baritone ukelele and i picked up a melodica from main drag music today…we’re working on a little side-project that features all acoustic instruments, a loop pedal, and a bunch of varied effects…we have a handful of ideas down so far …a delightful mesh of ambient sounds that are really quiet and very pretty…(we love city breathing…but it’s nice to get away from computers and distortion and general loudness now and again)…if we keep hacking away at this, we just might have an album together before the end of the summer…keep your fingers crossed…
the timelessness of summer is a wonder that we all give up too fast…i feel like the wealthiest person alive right now…lots of time = lots of thinking…been having some really honest talks with my mom lately…all left hands and accidents…feels like relief…
ooxx aa
nada surf’s “fruit fly” came on my ipod on the subway today…when let go came out a few years back, i was pretty adamant that the song was a pretty big piece of trash on an otherwise solid indie-pop record…typically i skip by it when i’m listening to the album, but i let it ride today and it sounded pretty terrific…i’m not sure exactly what happened…good songs can creep up on you like that if you let them hang around long enough…
i spent the evening at shraddha’s bbq and then we all watched the fireworks on kent avenue in williamsburg…i haven’t enjoyed a fireworks display in a little over a decade…but it felt just right tonight…everything seems a little different these days…and it’s all been pretty good on the whole…twenty five on the 26th…i feel old…and it feels nice…
i spent a few hours going through all of my old solo recordings…most of them ranging from poor to adequate in terms of songwriting or recording quality…but an interesting documentation of my life over the course of a decade or so…with marwan and ron out of town infrequently for the next few weeks, i’ve been getting some of my thoughts together for another solo record…i’ve enjoyed playing in a band so much over the last few years i haven’t put much effort into realizing any of the hamilton ideas i’ve had kicking around…marwan’s been persistent that i get an album together this summer, and so far i’ve been pretty happy with the demos i’ve thrown down…without getting too weighted down in production aesthetics and with a little bit of luck, i hope i’ll have about eight to ten songs in the tank by the end of august…when my last ep came out, i performed one show on KSCR before moving to nyc to work in band stuff…i’m glad i got a recording of that performance because i think some of those songs sound better live than they ever did on my recordings…and my favorite recording ever is still my cover of “some sinatra” by the secret stars…it still pales in comparison to the original, but it’s pretty impossible to fuck up a song so beautiful and well-written…i’m going to try and spend less time recording and mixing this batch of songs…should be an interesting project when it’s all mixed down…
owen’s good stuff by the way…i think i’ve listened to all five of his records over the course of the last two days…all of the brilliant…but the first is the best…indulge yourself…it’ll be good for you…
ooxx aa