My Hopes

People like to talk about the change that's coming over the music and video industry. The transition between analog mediums and non-transferability that comes along with it to digital mediums and the ability to make perfect duplicates. It's not a transition anymore. It's happened. Analog, much as I love it, has been relegated to DJs and audio purists; those willing to put forth an awful lot of effort to listen to music and have it sound real. The rest of the world is on digital, for better or worse.
It's my hope that we'll use this in a good way. I see it going in many directions. For instance, we could end up in a world where you have to pay some fee to Sony every time you want to play a song. It's not out of the question; it's what the record companies have always wanted. Now the technology is in place to do that. We're just not quite under the yoke of that technology yet, with CDs and MP3s still being ubiquitous. Ever try to use somebody else's WMA? Have you noticed the spyware/malware embedded in your latest Warner Bros. CD purchase?
Anyway, I digress from my hope. I see us as potentially being a culture glued to our broadband connections, downloading music at our whim, experiencing our art through a vibrating magnet and an LCD. It's so easy to do things this way. It's cheap, you don't have to get up, it's gratifying, it's instant. Records are so much easier to achieve/create, in a lot of ways, than a solid live performance. But it's my hope that we can parlay this technology into real human contact. It's so easy to hear a band's record, to get that advertisement, as it were, that maybe more people will start going to live shows. When recordings become ubiquitous and essentially free, maybe the live show will become (as it once was and remains for many) the venue where the true originality happens and is expected. The records are what gets you there. Live shows are already the place where artists (and TicketMaster) actually make their money. It would be ironic if we went full circle from the invention of the phonograph, where records were considered a cheap imitation of live shows, through the record-as-product, and back. It would be ironic, but it would also be excellent. Because we've reached a point where we need to make an effort to have actual human interaction, and it's my hope that maybe the availability of everything at our desk will push us back out into the real world, seeking reality with which to corroborate.
Seems like a long shot, but it's actually my driving force in seeking out art. Maybe it could work for everybody...

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen. Then see me live (whenever I get my shit together and start performing live. Anyway, it'll be on that page if I am).

Dried Plums

"Dried Plums" are the best thing to happen to prunes since prunes came about in the first place. The word "prune" has all of these negative connotations. We say "wrinkled like a prune" or "prune-y." Prunes mean old people, and they also mean pooping. Nobody wants to think about old people and pooping. So we don't talk about prunes. And nobody would buy a prune, let alone a whole box, because that would mean being associated with old people and/or pooping. Regardless of how well we would be pooping, we just don't care for that association.
Enter "dried plums." You may have noticed in shopping at your nearest food-conglomerate-convenience-utility store that the word "prune" is absent from the box. Advertisers have become savvy to the poop/prune complex, and have diverted a future generation from having to be subjected to the vagaries of old people, poop, and prunes by calling them what they actually are: dried plums.
Try it. It sounds a lot better. Mmm... I love dried plums.
Here's my new catch-phrase for Girl-Free 2006: "Ought Sex." Two months down and I haven't even broken a sweat.

**Update - 03/01/2006** - The local neighborhood store stopped selling dried plums. Boo.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

New Words (or, A Soapbox for a Soapbox)

I learned a new word today. Actually two words, but they're related: "yupster," and "yindie." Can you guess what this means? Let me quote from the article where I read it (The Dig, 2.22.06, p. 9):

"... the new 'yindie' or 'yupster' trend: young and hip, but professional. Too square for the tatoos and tight pants of the scenesters; too uptight for the relaxed fit of the b-boys and bedside DJs."

This in the context of an article about how a neighborhood (Allston!) is going downhill, because the punks that made it so sweet are leaving and the lame-o students and Young Urban Who-Gives-A-Fucks are moving in.
You can see where I'm headed with this. Tight pants aside, they're describing me here: ripe old age of 23, pro computer skillz, young, hip. No tattoos. More-or-less symmetrical hairdo. Fancy coat. No Technics on my desk. The implication is that if you're "professional," you're square, no matter how hip you look and act. No matter who you are, you're getting judged by your job.
Well, I'm sorry, Ean Frick, if mom doesn't pay my rent and finance my "homegrown" lifestyle. Hipsters are the same as the hippies were: hanging around and looking cool, talking big and living off your newfound morals is a lifestyle you can't support unless mommy and daddy are footing the bill. Sorry that I can't find an image that I'd want permanently etched into my forearm. Sorry that getting on my feet and learning how to pick up my beer bottles off the floor and put them into the recycling qualifies me as not fit to live in your down-to-earth rat-infested Allston Beat utopia. And it's a shame that you feel that way about me because I've got a job; we've probably got more in common than you think.
The first thing you get asked when you meet an American is "What do you do?" We should be more careful about defining ourselves by our employment (or identifying with our lack thereof). Real people don't always do what they want, and real people aren't defined by what they look like. They aren't definable at all.
I don't live in Allston, but gentrification is happening all around Boston. The same trend of homogenization and commodification is happening in Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, Brookline, everywhere. The real issue is that the city as a policital entity doesn't care about independent arts, affordable housing (rent control), public services (MBTA, looking at you here), etc., and that the people who live here are all too willing to replace JP O'Drinky's with Club Aqua, or to let somebody else do it for them without putting up a fight. Place the blame where the blame is due, and *do* something about it if it bothers you. For instance, the Brattle in Cambridge has been putting up a good fight to keep it's doors open and independent film happening. Send them a donation; we can turn this town around.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Compensation

It's funny the ways in which we compensate for the world we've created. We know we're built for grass, but we make roads out of asphalt, and then we have to make special shoes for us to be able to run on those roads without hurting our knees. We create cities, big dense stressful polluting non-human-friendly environments, then cram ourselves into them. We drink a gallon of orange juice a week and take yoga classes and drink de-stress tea, we smoke and we drin, we plug our ears into headphones to dull our senses to the overload. It's funny how humans are so proficient at creating environments that we can't tolerate. But because we're so adaptable, we tolerate them anyway. Modern science allows us to survive everything, enjoy little.
The thing about compensation, though, is that it's just as easy to overcompensate as it is to simply compensate. Especially when it comes to self-medication. The point is to be sure that you're still experiencing the life that you're living. We're living in a time when we've got an option to ignore everything, and paying attention is simply a choice we have to make, not an inevitability. So, um, I ask you to please make the choice to pay attention, and experience your life. If we don't do that, collectively, then the hard times ahead will be made that much harder.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Moved In

Well, I finally got a bookshelf yesterday, a big beautiful thing, six feet high with shelves over a foot deep. It allowed me to finally unpack the remaining five boxes full of books and CDs that comprise the rest of my life. It was cathartic to see my music, the novels I intended to read and forgot about, my old books on origami, my spanish-lanugage flamenco poetry, guitar parts, and to finally have a place to put them and refer to them daily. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel like yourself, but you don't know you're missing it until you get it back. I get that impression a lot lately, like there's a lot I've been missing, and it's just a matter of waiting before it comes back into my life. But after several months, I can take having a bookshelf (and a desk and a dresser) as finally being able consider myself moved-in to this place.
That said, i'm probably not going to stay in this particular apartment for more than this year. It's just not quite right, for the rent I pay. Not like you need to know why it's not right or how much rent I pay, it just sort of bears saying things like that if I'm to keep up any pretense of the "mass-email"-ness of this blog, and not go the way of a friend who just gave up on blogging in general. I'll probably stay in JP, but don't quote me on that. You can quote me on the girl-free 2006 thing, but not on staying in JP. I'm committed to the former but not the latter.
JP (eace on earth)
Donald

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Evolving

I hear that every seven years, your body has completely regenerated itself. That's to say that in seven years, every cell currently in your body will have been replaced with a similar one. This means that you're literally a new person every seven years. Which explains why I also hear that our lives go in seven-year cycles.
But think about this: say you've got a physical ailment, a bum leg, say. Theoretically, in seven years your leg could have healed itself. It's an entirely new leg, after all. What's to say that it can't be a good leg instead of your old beaten up version? A leg upgrade. So if we could just harness some ability to tell our cells to stop reproducing bad legs and start pumping out good ones, we would be on the road to getting better with time. We would be more like fine wines than nice cheeses. Or would we be like leather bags? I dunno, something that only gets better with age. Like, literally gets better with age. I love this idea. Everybody start telling your body to pick up the pace a little, let's see some real healing!

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Jeans

I was shopping for jeans in Boston. This took me to a number of stores. It took me to such a large number that I decided to do as Daryl Zero and stop looking for any pair of jeans in particular. I looked at all jeans, in all stores. Because if, of all the jeans in the world, you're looking for one pair, your chances of finding it are very slim. If you are very slim, your chances further decrease. If, however, you're looking for any jeans at all, suddenly you find what you are looking for everywhere you turn.
My unbiased search led me into Neiman Marcus. Neiman Marcus is near the Back Bay Metro station, and it contains jeans, so it's a likely candidate for my completely non-weighted look at the world of jeans. After some poking around, I see a pair that catches my eye. Banishing any thoughts of "these are probably too expensive for you to pay for" until I took a closer look, I, um, take a closer look.
Now, these jeans are pretty nice, at first glance. Premium jeans. First-rate jeans. A good dark wash, straight legs. The kind of jeans that look like they fit, and haven't already been lived in for a couple of years. Which is what I was going for. Upon closer inspection, however, I noticed that these jeans had these gigantic brass tetrahedronal rivets. Egyptian pyramid rivets. They played tricks of scale on your eyes, not being accustomed as our eyes are to seeing rivets of this magnitude on a pair of jeans. You don't even notice they're there, they're so big. A closer reading of the little booklet that accompanies the jeans says the following (paraphrased):

"Your new jeans have rivets that are the best thing to happen to rivethood since the metal shop. Your rivets must be treated with the utmost of rivet reverence and care. Do not wash these rivets as you would a pedestrian garment such as a three-piece suit. These rivets demand that a left-handed Elbonian sherpa rub them daily with a chamois. If not rubbed with the proper level of care and rivet respect, your rivets will disengage from your jeans and attach themselves to Michael Jackson.
In addition, your jeans are treated with a special dye that cannot be washed, because it will disappear, being magically treated to bond with all elements and turn into formaldehyde. Also, don't sit on any white couches, because the color of your jeans will dry-bleed onto your white furniture, and you'll be left with a rash.*"

So, let me get this right: these jeans cost $450, and I can't wash them or sit down in them? You would think that for $450 dollars, you'd get a bit more performance out of a pair of jeans. But that's just my completely unbiased opinion. I guess I'll just have to settle for looking worn and baggy. Worn and baggy is so hot right now.

*I made up the rash part.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Pre-Approved

I have been Pre-Approved an awful lot more in the last few weeks than I ever was up until now. Until I moved to Boston, I had never been Pre-Approved. Nobody was happy to tell me that I qualified for a low interest rate, and a high credit limit. They were content, it seems, to leave me alone before. But now I have been Pre-Approved.
This is fantastic. Approval is imminent. Think of the possibilities once I have gained Approval. Things that had previously been banished to the realm of pure possibility happen when you're Approved. And Pre-Approval is the first step toward sweet Approvability. This is exciting, for while being in a Pre-Approved state is motivating in the extreme, my cultural assimilation will not be complete until I reach complete and utter Approval. Then and only then can I stand in the ranks of the Approved, and in some cases the Twice-and-Thrice-Approved, and laugh deridingly at the unwashed, unApproved masses.


Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Kindred Souls

Have you ever met a kindred soul, and you just know it from the moment you meet that you have more than just "something in common." You've got that special connection, that philotic link that connects the two of you at the subconscious level. You're tuned in to the Ethereal Subconscious Vibe Network (ESVN), and they're sitting on the couch right next to you. The feeling you get, the knowledge that things are right in the world because there are people like this in it. I love that feeling.
Then they go into how you should accept Jesus the Saviour into your life, and sharp cheddar and wine are really bad for you, and public transportation is a waste of time, and Tom Waits is just a horrible beat poet with a bad band, and really there's nothing to say for fine art and dance, and they need to make the highways bigger, and the war's really a good thing, because the terrorists in Iraq and New Mexico need to be killed so that once and for all we can emerge as the nation you just don't fuck with, for God's sake, and fuck Johnny Cupcakes because the t-shirts at Urban Outfitters are way cooler. And you think, "How could somebody hate Tom Waits? I was so wrong."
So wrong.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

High Hopes and a Dash of Cumin

I had really big plans for today. i was going to have a physical therapy appointment, visit a museum, reunite with a long lost friend, do some yoga, and some more reuniting with (longer but less lost) friends. Instead, I had the appointment, bought some stuff, went for a run, bought some more stuff (which was a trip originally poorly disguised as a trip to the museum, which inevitably failed when I couldn't find the museum and decided to keep walking forward rather than retrace my steps), and made some really killer enchiladas. Which really ruin your momentum. All you can do after eating really killer enchiladas (RKEs) is coast for the rest of the day. Coast and ponder leftover enchiladas for a week and all that this entails.
I'm a bit concerned about the implications of my physical therapy appointment. They did some ultrasound on my head, which ostensibly relaxes your muscles. That's fine and good, and it did indeed relax the muscles in my head, with the requisite tingling sensation that I've come to expect from all visits to people who re-align my body/energy/aura. But isn't ultrasound the same procedure that they use on babies to make a picture for the pregnant mother, the orderly, and whoever else decides to lean their head into the room? This begs the question: what is that ultrasound doing to those babies? Does it make them feel relaxed? Does it increase their self-esteem? Does it make them more inclined to listen to Aphex Twin and enjoy it?
One of the things I bought today, a purchase of which I'm especially proud, is the CD by Alarm Will Sound called Acoustica, where they play the works of Aphex Twin. This is not to be confused with Apocalyptica, which is a string quartet that plays the works of Metallica. Or Bjorn Again, which is a tribute band to Abba based in Australia. But I digress: Acoustica is a really sweet album; it turns out that you only need 22 classical musicians, at the peak of their power and concentration, to be able to do a decent acoustic facsimile of an Aphex Twin track. "Why would I care about this when I could go and listen to Aphex Twin?" You say. And then you say "And I don't even listen to Aphex Twin." To which I say: you should try ultrasound. It'll loosen you up.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Girl Free 2006

I've decided that, notwithstanding some of my previous comments, I do have a New Year's resolution. I've decided that 2006 is going to be girl-free. I'm just not going to date any of 'em this year. I get more done when I'm single. I kind of like the power dynamic that it creates with strangers. I like to feel that control, the smile/smile-back. I need to be productive. You can't be as productive when you've got somebody else around all of the time. it's a fact. So I'm not going to play hard to get, I'm going to be impossible to get. That's the way it is this year. Girl-Free 2006.

Update: In retrospect, this seems to follow pretty naturally from my previous post.

Latiflearned.com - Go Listen

Poof!

I was writing today to a friend from whom I have not heard in months. To sum up what had happened in the meantime, I said, "I put my head down, and when I looked up again, months had passed." It seems strange that all of this time since I got to Boston would have gone by so quickly; as it was happening it seemed like it would go on forever. There have been some really long days and a lot of experiences that I'd rather not re-live. It passed all the same.
My ex-girlfriend Anna told me once that the thing that's nice about dating somebody is that you have some frame of reference for your experiences. You can say, "I did this!" and experience the validation of somebody else saying, "Yes! It's true! I was there. It truly was grand!" This is a profound insight, I think, into why people couple themselves off in the first place. Surely it's better to have a record. Memories, like photographs (or journal entries), create a better picture of the past if they exist in plentitude. Isn't it a fantastic thing about memory that if you don't take pains to cast a memory somehow, it'll simply disappear.
Well, just the things you did alone will disappear. If you've got friends and loved ones, they will share some of the burden of remembering things that you would otherwise forget. My sister and her boyfriend remember things about France that left my mind long ago. Maybe you don't really need a boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe they just condense a process that occurs with every human with whom you come into contact.
if that's the case, you deserve some thanks. Thank you for coming here and reading, for caring enough to want to remember. It means a lot to me, though I say very little about it.

Pets

I think that we should give pets more human-like names. I mean, Fluffy or Zoltan are fine names and all, but I don't think that they accurately represent our pets' status in our lives. It would be like calling your boyfriend "Dopey." I propose that we give our pets the same names that we would give to humans: "This is my dog, Joe." "Say hello to our new kitten, Mary." If they're going to be family members, why not give them appropriate names? It helps to remove the cognitive dissonance.
For some reason I can't sleep tonight. Every time I get pretty close to falling asleep, I'm awoken by this panicked feeling, like I stopped breathing right at that moment where you go unconscious. I thought that I had my anxiety pretty well under control, but I guess I've still got a ways to go. If you're capable of sending calming vibes through ethernet cables (or wifi, if you're fancy), please direct your talents my way: I could use the help. I mean, it's 3:26AM and I've got to work today. But at least it's Friday, so no harm done. Heh.

The Edges of Things

"It was not hard for me to think of nothing, the way I felt at the moment. In order not to think of any one thing, all I had to do was think of many things, a little at a time: just think about something for a moment and fling it into space."
-Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

When I was littler, I used to get these hallucinations when I was trying to fall asleep. In that state before dreams, but after awake would feel like my head was in a vice, like everything about which I thought was infinitely expanding and contracting. It hurt my brain to think about it. I would think about the edges of things, edges so razor-sharp that there was an infinity in their frontier. I couldn't think about it for very long, because it would make me feel like I was going mad. It would make me feel a very real sort of pain and pressure. So I would think about other things. Garfield comics. Doing the dishes. Girls (later on). I was eventually able to make the hallucinations (or whatever they were) go away. But I never felt like I solved the problem. I just felt like I was ignoring it successfully. A minor victory, but I have to wonder if the battle wages on.
Murakami is a good writer; I feel as if the character in this book rationalizes things in a way that I find very comforting. Like, if there are humans out there who think this way, then I'm not alone. It's good to be reminded of that.

latiflearned.com - go and listen.

Latif Learned

I made a new album. You know, music? You like music, don't you? Get my album! You can get tracks and lyrics etc. over at latiflearned.com.
I hope that you enjoy it. If you ever forget that link, it's always over in my sidebar off of this blog.
Also, if you go to Seasac Records, you stand a good chance of being able to hear rare demos, b-sides, out-takes, Brazillian electro-remixes and other craziness. Also, you can hear the totally sweet bands Fujimo and Molocai and Ugly By Now, all for free. You're here because you're wasting time. Go and get some free music.

Toiling in the Fields

I've been thinking about the city. Life in the city, you have to admit, is pretty far-removed from what we're biologically constructed to be doing. Typically, people who live in cities spend the majority of their day immobile (sitting in chairs, which is actually a stress on the body), sheltered from the elements, etc. Fantastic. We've been through all of that before.
But if we're biologically constructed to be doing something more like running around in forests trying our best to kill rabbits and find berries or whatever, what is the analogue for a city-dweller? Is there anything that we can do to sort of simulate for our bodies the state of being healthy and normal?
So I think about my city friends who seem well-adjusted to life in the city. One common trait that they seem to share is that they're all really active. Always attending some event, or going to some party/event/benefit. Picnics. Bike rides. Shows. It seems like one way to be normal in a city is just to try to keep as busy as possible. Social hunting and gathering. Because food's easy to find, but it's just not right to sit around all day. A leisurely life in a city is potentially quite detrimental.
Or you could just join a gym, I guess.

listening to: Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus

Somebody Watching

Do you ever do things when you're alone as though somebody were there watching you? Or like, if somebody were to walk in at that precise moment, they'd be sure to see you in top form? When I got my first Beta Band CD way back in college, I thought to myself, "This is the kind of music I want playing when somebody stumbles into my dorm room. They would think I was maximum cool." I guess that since I had that thought, it just sort of bled to the rest of my life. Now I make sure that I'm looking sharp when I'm vacuuming, that the lighting is proper when I'm doing dishes, that I've only got my good side exposed when I'm lying on the couch. I mean, what if somebody were to walk in at that precise moment? What if they had TV cameras? You'd want to be prepared, right?

Blanket

I just watched The Producers (the re-make with Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom and Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock) the other day. It was pretty funny. There's a scene that keeps coming back up in my mind: Leo and Max are in Max's apartment, and Leo pulls this piece of blanket out of his pocket and starts rubbing it around his face. "It's not important, it just makes me feel comfortable," he says. But then Max takes the piece of blanket away and Leo freaks out. "MY BLANKET! YOU'VE GOT MY BLANKET! GIVE ME BACK MY BLANKET!" Up until that point he had maintained his composure, even though Max Bialystock clearly made him nervous. But when he lost his blanket, the thin facade of his composure wore through.
I like the idea, because everybody's got their blanket. Some thing or idea that, when rubbed the wrong way or put out of place, causes you to totally lose your cool. It could be something really small, like putting the tea bag in before the water, or stir-frying beef together with green peppers. It could be some past grudge that never faded, of which we do not speak.
Somebody told me once that our society is four skipped meals away from complete chaos. Best not to consider how thin that blanket that covers us all really is.
The Producers, though. Really funny movie, that.

I only think these things sometimes!

Blog posts and songs are snapshots. I would hate for anybody to get the impression that I constantly feel like I sound when I'm writing. That would be inaccurate. More accurate would be to say that I usually feel that way only for a couple of seconds, and in writing or performing the work in question I can revisit the feelings that it brought me. That way, I don't have to hold on to the more unpleasant things in life.
This could also explain why most of my songs are sad, and this blog isn't exactly the source of all things happy either. It's something I still need to work on, I suppose, letting go of the good things in addition to the bad...

Alchemistry

What is it that allows us to process ideas without thinking actively about them? I feel like much of the time I'm coming up with my ideas as I speak. How does that work? What kind of alchemistry allows us to not think not think not think and then eventually come to a conclusion about the way things were, the way things are? Is it a function of our memory, fading over the things we don't understand until we've only got a picture of the things that we comprehend? Or is it that our reality moves too fast, allowing us to only retroactively process that which, had we greater intelligence or perception, could have been immediately understood in the moment?
How is one to live in the moment when one can't understand the moment?
I've been feeling lately as though I'm sitting in the backseat of my life, watching it through a window. I keep thinking thoughts like, "wow, that was an interesting thing that you said," or "all right! you made it through another half an hour without forgetting to breathe!" Maybe this kind of meta-narrative happens often in other people's lives. If so, shout it out, because I'd hate to feel that I'm the only one.

Here's me and my brother playing tunes at Christmas. Stay tuned for links to Christmas photos.