i am/will be drumming again and only for myself (unless EJK asks) for the first time in 20 years and other auditory news

in

60ºF, sun: yes, Scott, I ordered the electronic kit (Roland TD-1K) and it's due to arrive today. VERY excited: can already tell that my informal workings with a regular practice pad are helping to reduce hand pain and increase wrist strength. Movement, movement, movement: working to get my main problem from previous drumming life – too right-hand dominant (even though I'm left-handed; have a feeling that the drumming past explains my ambidextrous acumen in all things but writing – efforts at writing with my right hand look even worse than with my left) and a blind spot for flams – ameliorated before I let myself move forward: cobweb and rust dust-off/pressure wash via metronomic warm-ups and flam accent (without terrifying the dogchildren) variations for FTW. If nothing else, it helps me think.

In other audio news: Phone-maleXLR cable arrived so I'm ready to continue fiddling with the next part of the Vocaster Two: so far I love the thing. The gain feels right, and the auto-enhance/gain is perfect: while I can do the production side of things, I prefer to focus on the conversation - anything that lets me focus more on the conversation is worth the expenditure. Test run this weekend then first for-real conversational trial on Tuesday evening. Sorry, Maud.

meanwhile, in timespace warping

in

60ºF, sun: dogchildren are frolicking in the backyard and by frolicking I mean that Kirby is trying to get his sisters to play with him and they're growling and lunging at his face. This is the way.

I've somehow managed to convince myself for the last three weeks that Labor Day weekend was two weeks away; clearly, school starting tends to warp my sense of time, which has a weird habit, here at least, of seeming to stand still and then move ahead in scattershot fashion to the next stalling out – even the local rooster can't get his schedule straight.

I think I'm going to let myself buy an electronic drumset (amazing how small and cheap they’ve gotten since I started playing 30 years ago) to start playing again without terrifying the dogs. Having fun with the warmup exercises and my little practice pad: first time playing not for a grade or as a fuck you or as an occasional job but for fun – with traditional grip, which I was never allowed to do in my more formal training – in longer than I care to remember.

AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH (Postman, 1985)

in

(read: 20220817->22; my complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here)

"Television is the command center in subtler ways as well. Our use of other media... is largely orchestrated by television. Through it we learn what telephone system to use, what movies to see, what books, records and magazines to buy, what radio programs to listn to. Television arranges our communications environment for us in ways that no other medium has the power to do... the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed." 

While these are only two examples, replace "television" with "the internet" in both and the proof that Postman is just as relevant today as he was in 1985 is unavoidable. Better, I think, to let Postman speak for himself, given that, a.) I agree with 99% of what he says – we are, indeed, far more in Huxley’s future than in Orwell’s – and that, b.) compiling these fractured thoughts into a coherent “review” for want of better phrase is, for me, the end of processing: what Postman offers and requires is a continual processing.

"The problem, in any case, does not reside in *what* people watch. The problem is in *that* we watch. The solution must be found in *how* we watch. For I believe it may fairly be said that we have yet to learn what television is."

And we’re still trying to figure it – and the internet – out.

percolate / collate

in

57ºF, sun: Wednesdays are my off-days from the MainFictionThing: give my brain some percolation time, let things merge, transform; get the inbox wrangled, books and reads processed / TSR preppings and writings for this space.

Truth of pod-prep: Every time I do it, I worry I don't have enough questions. Every time I collate all the fragments and shards assembled over the month(s) of prep and reading, I see that I'll do just fine and that it'll be a matter of cutting things out and of being able to go with the flow: the latter is probably the main thing – for me, at least, I have to have a deep knowledge of the subject matter (not as much as the guest, obviously) in order to go with said flow during the recording and lend each interview the combo of "in the moment" and timelessness I try to add to each (I rarely, for instance, discuss current events - though they may come up as an aside.)

Still on the "to-process/review stack": SUPERMAN'S METROPOLIS. Might have a thing about Postman's AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH coming later, but it won't be a "reviewy review": better to let Postman speak for himself and for our times from 1985.