Haven’t been blogging so much lately..  bad Matt!  But how about a short little post? ( He says realizing short never happens for him )

So there’s basically 2 things worth talking about today.. or thoughts, or things I seem to be up to. #1 Is the music production stuff and #2 Is thinking about promotional efforts.

The Music Production Adventures

Though I didn’t post anything.. I have been writing about a new project I’ve started… inside of Ableton Live.. This project reached new hightes today.  So lets explore a little:

Of all the DAWs in my sonic arsenal, Ableton Live is the one I’m weakest with..  I have certain ways of working.. that I’ve been evolving for the past 15 or so years..  and I’m not sure how Live could fit into that way of working. Usually I think it has the potential to bring my work in new directions.. and so that’s some of what I find myself exploring…

The first stage in the current adventure has been creating loops.. I have a rather large library of audio.. music I’ve made, stuff I’ve recorded…  The process is one of loading up the audio files, and selecting loop points. Live will do the beat matching for you.. so whatever the tempo of the original work… Live will match it to the tempo..  

But the real fun comes from shaping looping envelops that control the parameters of whatever effect you might want to place on your loop.. Via various processing you “design loops” that are often unrecognizable.. from there original. This is, at least for me, a fun and unpredictable creative process… which yields results I wouldn’t other wise be able to achieve. 

Today, however, brought all this stuff to a crazy new level. As I began digging around my hard drives in search of audio files.. I started to find some interesting things….

A shape forms

Some of what I found were recordings made..  Well the podcast episode I recorded hours after my mom had passed… Left phone messages from my therapist and collection agencies.. There’s a collection of sounds that.. as I started putting together an arrangement of this stuff..

Well it was probably some of the most emotional sound art I’ve ever heard in my life.. It was powerful as hell..  It was also emotional draining, to the point that I felt on the verge of an emotional breakdown from going there.. but I think it was also therapeutic.. and I have this feeling that I really do need to go there.

So that’s basically that on the music production side of things..

Online Music Marketing

While running a few errins, I was seduced by the evil Barns and Nobel.. in to buying “Web Marketing for the Music Business” by a Mr. Tom Hutchison.. brought to us by Focal Press… 

Well I think this is about the best book on the subject I’ve come across. As a “social media peep” I’m hyper up on how marketing and communications are changing in this new media space.. Even if I’m not executing on it, I am an expert on social media strategy…  or something of one.. ( seeing as most of the people I look up to as mentors / experts in this area claim not to be experts these days )… In any event… this puts me in a unique place to evaluate such a book.. never mind all the music marketing type books I’ve read in the past.. and I’m here to tell you that this book is totally top notch.. from what I’ve been able to gather thus far.

So reading a book like this brings me to rethinking my strategy / shtick..  

So I’ll kinda leave this post short.. with just a couple finishing comments:

I’m feeling inspired by the promotional adventures ahead.. but also somewhat in awe of the challenges of it..  so wish me luck… 

So I guess it was thursday.. they had all gone out to eat some place when Melissa had an allergic reaction that lead to the UMass Medical Center in Worcester Mass..

in “critical but stable condition.” I didn’t actually hear about this till a phone message this past friday from Aunt Jackie.

[That’s a picture from our 2008 family reunion in upstate New York.]

So we arranged that we’d meet and see her this Sunday, aka today… And it was this morning’s call to confirm the let me know my sister was doing significantly better… which was nice.

Waking up dad is no easy feat.. especially not lately, and especially not this early… but somehow I got him up, and it was off to a late start.

It was about a 45 minute drive to the Hospital. There was only one catch.. the directions where wrong.. the address was wrong, Goggle Maps is a lier… but eventually we made it.

I haven’t seen very much of my sister since I was a kid: My sister has sever mental retardation and autism..  and was a kind of nightmare in terms of the amount of stress her condition put on my parents while I was growing up.. and was, by extension.. an issue for me. So sometime around.. well when I was in high school.. so late 80s, my Sister went off to live in a home in Western Mass. 

My mom died this past december.. It was a combination of lung problems.. related to cancer and cancer treatment.. as well as a bad heart condition.. which was first created in the stress-fest days before Melissa went to live at Archway. My mom had kind of set things up so my Aunt Jackie would take care of Melissa’s affairs, and what not, after she died.. though I now play some kind of a roll.. a roll I don’t do so well at, this and taking care of my Dad with Dementia…

In any event, I haven’t seen my Missy since Mom died… and this certainly wasn’t the best of circumstances.

She sure does look different, shockingly so to me.. My memory of her is.. well of her being both a good deal younger and having a good deal more weight.. as a result of all the medication she was always on.. and bouncing around through. She looked like a women.. and that somehow startled me a little.

But my Father tells me she didn’t look thin to him.. but that she seemed less responsive and less alert then usual… but then he hasn’t seen Missy for a long while ethier.

Because of the direction problems I wasn’t able to meet up with my Aunt Jackie.. but from talking to her on the phone since getting home.. it sounds like Melissa was really only responsive to the people from Archway.. and apparently at some point she had asked for Mom. I don’t know how well she understands that Mom died. 

In any event, I thought she looked pretty good considering… and sorta.. it’s hard to explain really. I felt like there was something going on behind her eyes.. wishing I could somehow connect to her. That’s the way with Autism though.. But I felt this more then I ever had in the past.. She just kind of sat there rocking.. oscillating between smiles, a kind of looking around thing.. and this far off look..  

I sorta tried to connect in a kind of non-verbal-ish way… I don’t know if it did anything.. but there you go, right? It was kind of awkward, as it always is for me, not really knowing quite how to act.. I’ve felt that way since I was a little kid.. going to the special needs camps and whatever.. just not knowing how to relate to that world.. So I let my father take the lead on this part of things.. and that seemed to work out well.

And a Closing Statement to my Social Media Friends 

Out side of all that.. I want to thank all my social media friends.. who’s kind words have been so helpful while these sorts of things have been going on.. and not knowing if my Sister would be ok, and all of that. You guys are why I love social media!  So thank you.

It’s almost 12 30 as I write this. This past Friday I was notified that my sister was in critical but stable condition, having had am allergic reaction to something.. It’s made for a bit of a difficult weekend.

My sister suffers from severe mental retardation and autism. She lives in a home in somewhat western-ish Mass. When my mom died last december.. it sorta fell on me to.. I’m not sure what.. but to make sure things were.. not so bad. But also I’ve been in the position of being in charge of taking care of my father who has dementia… Between this kind of thing and like.. sorta normal challenges of life of which my mom largely shielded me from… I’m greeted with a set of challenges I’m generally not feeling totally up to… That I must find a way to rise to…  And it surely doesn’t help that career wise I tend to be the starving artist type.

So now I’m waking up dad and getting ready to leave to go meet with my Aunt Jackie to visit my Sister in the hospital. The good news is my sisters condition has stabilized.. and she’s being moved out of the ICU.

Ok, so its not really morning.. But I wake up late so… 

I’m paying bills.. I have not been paying bills for a while.. not a good thing..

The bad news

1. My father almost lost his health insurance
2. I lost my life insurance.. the one that pays out when I die… 
3. One credit card has been declining.. this one not so much my fault.. haven’t seen a bill.
4. It seems that Comcast is still billing me.. never mind not giving me the check they were supposed to.. I had canceled all my comcast stuff.
5. If I don’t go to the DMV right now.. My license will be revoked for not paying a ticket, and it has grown in expense
6. Guitar Center’s card is screwing me…

I’m not sure what else.. but I am fearful.

I don’t know what my problem is.. save that my mom used to pay the bills.. Its one of those new responsibilities I’ve had since she passed away.. and the problems I’m having paying them seem to be, at least in part, related to morning..

Dreams 

I had a strange dream a week or so ago. In the dream my mom came home.. I grabbed her, gave her a big hug, told her how I missed her.. and then being like “Wait, you died, you can’t come back, you’re not really here.” Somehow by saying that she vanished.. and the dream ended.. only to be followed by another dream with her appearing again.. this time seeming all the more real.. more convincing that she was really there.. and I reacted the same way.. like “wait, no, your not really alive, are you?”

There’s details to the dreams that I can’t quite remember.. I don’t understand the dream, but its one I keep thinking about.. One way I’ve been thinking of it is… that a part of it is about my own denial of her death.. The way it still doesn’t feel totally real to me… Its as if the dream was an expression of this unbelief and my own attempt to confront it.

My mom has been a huge, and complex part of my life.. which I suppose we all could say.. assuming we had moms.. but I think think her roll was huger then the norm perhaps… in.. I guess how close we were, and whatever.. There is the whole.. how she fucked up, was fucking up, my life part of things.. I say this not to blame her so much as to try to understand it all myself.. to kinda move through it.. and of course there’s also the love part of it.

Fucking Up My Life

This seems worth talking about.. or trying to.. that normally I don’t feel very comfortable trying to blog about it.. if for no other reason then that I’m not sure if I’m totally being fair about it…

There was, for a long time.. this idea that my parents were abusive to me. This is what we call in the biz “a very difficult thing to deal with.” The first problem is.. you internalize it… you believe the problem is you.. and that you would accuse them of being the problem.. is more evidence of how fucked up you are. 

We are talking about my collage years here.. and it probably doesn’t help that everyone says there parents fucked up… and that’s the reason they are how they are. There’s a kind of pop psychology to there take on these things.. It often plays a roll of…  ”aren’t we the victim you should feel bad for.” As a result.. when you say “oh, yeah, my parents fucked up, that’s why I am the way I am,” from a superficial reading of it.. it doesn’t really matter what the reality of the situation is.. or the reality of its long term effects.. it can be seen as an expression of..  well looks like someone who’s being stupid.. and blaming there parents for what’s wrong with themselves…  and so.. if you really are dealing with some form of abuse.. you have this prejudice to try and get through.. on top of the actual thing.. and this prejudice is trying to tell you “hey, its you’re fault, get over it.”  

A happy story 

Well, then a ‘fortunate’ thing happened: My mom was diagnosed with cancer, the reality of which exacerbated my father’s alcoholism to such an extent that it was no longer hide-able.. and after being rushed in an ambulance to the hospital.. after he had slipped on his own urine.. not being able to control his bladder.. being so waisted.. crashing his forehead through the bathroom tiles, blood rushing out.. and the doctors talking about his blood alcohol level.. the clear evidence that he was a raging alcoholic.. that he need to go through AAA, see an addiction specialist..  the specialist saying he was lucky to be alive given all the drinking he was doing.. etc etc etc… well, my mom’s denial over the situation finally broke.. and now I had something real I could point to as.. having something to do with my damage..

The story of.. “how my parents fucked up my life,” is more complex then this… And it is something I’m still struggling to wake up to. Since she died I’ve had multiple moments of wishing she was alive so I could strangle her.. for this that or the other thing… wanting to scream “what the fuck is wrong with you that you would have done X?!!!” 

The struggle

The thing is.. that many of the stupidities and mistakes of my parents.. are still things I struggle to understand as being there fault… So this isn’t an easy task.. this is something you have to struggle through.. and it has to be ok to say “They really fucked up, didn’t they.” None of this is to say I don’t love them with all my heart.. Just that love isn’t something that seeks to white wash things…

This is not an uncommon thing at all.. but one of the mistakes of my mom was.. her getting in the way of my own growing up / maturing / adult becoming. Now that she’s died.. its as if I’m forced to go through the process to get to where I need to get to.. at a break neck speed.. or else the sky will no doubt fall.

This is something that is somehow internalized.. something I see as my fault.. for not being where I need to be.. It is something that I have huge levels of shame around… And this is the psychological dimension to my struggles at this point in my life.. The problems that go beyond simply loosing my mom…. which is not an easy thing to deal with on its own..

Paying the bills means walking through the fire of all that.. and that’s why I’m having trouble paying the bills.. 

There are huge mountains ahead of me… that I must climb.. less the sky really falls. In all of this I feel amazingly alone.. and full of fear.. A fear that gnaws at me regularly..  

Latter:

So I think the biggest part of the challenge is really an internal psychological one.

Latter that night:

I suppose this is a good a place as any to end as any. 

I have a few post on the drawing board, of course last weekend was Boston Podcamp 3 and much of the week since has been recovery mode.. as I only had about 5 hours or so sleep as a result.. it was an amazing time.. I should add, but more on that latter. In any event, that’s reason why I haven’t been posting as frequently.

In other news.. stress and anxieties are up.. but I’m dealing..

This weekend I’ll be going to a cookout at my sister’s school in.. well more western-ish Mass then here. Have I spoken much of her? My sister has saver mental retardation and autism.. her and I are both adopted… from different parents. She’s older.. When my my parents adopted her they were not informed of her handy caps.. and um.. well not an easy scene.. anyway.. I’m not sure how long it’s been since I’ve seen her.. my father and I haven’t visited since mom passed away.. so it’s really important that we do.

The week coming up is looking to be.. well another one where I’m likely to slump off on the blog.. have a friend flying in.. one who’s helping me with my promotional efforts.. and we’ll perhaps do a bit of that while she’s here.. and maybe have her help me straighten out my life a bit.. which leads back to the stress and anxiety issues…

The long and the short of the anxiety issues.. well its broader then anxiety.. but basically I haven’t been coping well since my mom passed away..  Most of which has to do with new responsibilities that I wasn’t really prepared for.. I must say it’s an interesting plot. Ever hear the voice of God? Something about a merger between the unconscious and the unfolding of life.. or something.. who knows what it really is.. but the feeling like something is speaking to you from “the other side” so to speak. It seems to speak to me about the unfolding plot of my life. If I were to listen / trust in it.. I’d tell you everything is groovy.. which is a part of why I never quite know how I’m doing.

I can feel it and taste it.. opportunities… the chance to take flight.. for the time being my existence feels a little as if it were taking place on an island that was slowly falling into the sea.. one that if I don’t find my way off.. disaster strikes.. at least with respect to my dependancies..  which makes it quite a transition.. But the way the plot seems to be unfolding.. it looks as if disaster will be diverted..  and really, this feeling of impending doom.. it’s not likely doom at all..  or the sense of doom is just a construct of where my head is at at the moment.. It’s as if we took the whole of reality and magnified a portion of it.. and other parts sorta reseed.. and this image we have.. we took as the actual thing.. which it is.. but, its actuality is other then it’s image..  

None of that should be to diminish the reality of imposing doom.. It is “a psychological reality” which makes it, at least in my book, no less real then material reality.. It speaks to the psychological transformations needed to make it all happen.. and if this transformation doesn’t happen.. well.. then you have disaster.

Anxiety, as near as I can tell, is the voice of those parts of me that.. are dragging there feet.. and the question, the fear, it’s what roll do they play in the unfolding of the whole. Could the derail it all? I wouldn’t put it past them..   

I don’t mean to paint such a bleak painting of things.. but its not a good strategy to avoid these things ether.. so what the hell.. and with that I post. 

[editors note, yeah.. this was written a day or so before posting] 

Laura Fitton, aka @pistachio, was having a small cook out today for Scott Stead, so he could meet Boston area media makers… I got to the area late, as seems to be my bad habit / curse… and then had a kind of heart breaking anxiety attack that lead me to… well driving back home.

It is heart breaking.. I spent about an hour in a parking lot, drove by the house about 5 times (though a few of those were just trying to figure out which house it was).. but wasn’t able to overcome…. and eventually drove home..

Next day sometime:

Anxiety has always been an issue for me. It seems to stem from my mom.. though I love(d) her very much, even all this time after her passing, my rage can run hot.

I’ve missed out on a lot of what life has had to offer thanks to anxiety… Indeed my life need not be as hard as it has been.. and I think, when in the heart of the of the anxiety related issues, about what life could look like if I could just overcome it.

Truth is.. I’ve been feeling like I have been over coming it.. The last 8 or so years of.. unemployment has been a great help.. finally able to take the path of self becoming… the becoming over comes.

Social Media has been a great help to..  So much talk about Social Media’s ROI seems to miss the point.. social media is saving me.. hell, its even helping me to develop some social skills. My point being that social media has more to it then is often understood in the land of “the experts.”

It used to be that I was too shy to comment on people’s blogs really.. but I forced myself. I felt a little bit like a drunk dialer.. like a phone call you’d get late some night from a drunk x lover.. me with my crazy comments!

Around this time I left a crazy comment on Laura’s blog.. at this point I don’t think she was yet the web celebrity she is today… The next time I saw her was at a Boston Social Media Club thing.. I wanted to cringe and hide.. but oh no.. apparently she REALLY liked my crazy mad comment..  and so she brought me into whatever conversation was going on.. which lead me into a conversation with Bryan Person about the New England Podcaster group.. but that’s nether her nor there… though still a thought on my mind.

I suppose the point is that Larua’s someone I have a lot of affection for… She’s someone whom I think, in a certain kind of way, embodies the spiritual core of what social media is really all about.. and I guess its a mix of her kindness and this feeling, that made last night an especially heart breaking sorta anxiety night.

When I got home.. I had this kind of defeated feeling.. I was just so sad.. which was a strange and mysterious sorta reaction..

It had taken me 3 or 4 months before I got up the courage to actually attend a New England Podcaster Meet Up… down in Quinsy. (The first social media group I started going to) The social media club was harder in the early days.. Boston Media makers wasn’t so hard.. but I still have a hard time telling them what “I really do.” I’ve only just started going to the Havard Berkman “blogger” group… that took a little while.

Yeah, so anxiety is killing me… 

Found this video, thought I’d share:

I don’t think I have it that bad? Though I have had it pretty bad in the past. 

I kinda liked this one to:

And how about we leave on a cover on of that great Ramones track:

 Ok, I’m done

It’s late at night.. super late actually.. sun’s starting to come up.. I should be in bed sleeping.. but it’s just one of those late night howling kind of moments.. a need to howl from this blog.. or via this blog.. out into that there internet.. and blah blah blah.

Seems like there’s a million things I want to say, and as time passes.. they slip through my fingers.. those sands of time I’ll tell you!

So I just wanted to write something random.. in the hopes that I might touch upon some of this stuff.

I’ll tell you a big thing I want to say.. Thank you.. you as in the universe.. you as in..  err… God, I do need to explain myself here, ha? And if I do that, I’ll never finish this damn post.. never get to much of anything I might like to touch on.

Well.. what the hell, who cares, it’ll be what it’ll be!

I feel a real need to thank social media….

I believe it was last night.. well, lets back up a little..  Yesterday I made my way to a book store.. aww, the temptations for Bad Matt! But Bad Matt was good, and didn’t give into any of said temptations.. but none the less.. I spent some time in that there magazine section, and in electronic musician monthly there was an article on vocal synthesis… which is to say using a computers to generate a vocal track. This particular article focused on how to do it for free.. It was rather avant guard in its aims… but it got me to thinking.. and reunited me with some old ideas..

I write poetry, or song lyrics or.. not sure how to describe them really. I haven’t written too many lately, but I’ve been keeping note books since highs school…. so I’ve amassed quite a bit of stuff… and one figures, just statistically speaking, there must be something in there, somewhere, of value.

I’m a crappy judge of myself and my work. I really am! I often need to take a good deal of time away from my stuff in order to come back to it, without emotional ties to it, in order to see what’s really there.

So I was having this conversation with someone online.. while trying to figure out what kind of sound synthesizers where out there.. and how much they are running these days.. and um.. well the person I was talking to is a fan, I guess you could say.. a fan of my music, a fan of this blog, a fan of me..

It’s so nice to have such people in our lives.. particularly when you’re struggling to believe.. well this wasn’t really a night of struggle.. but as I was showing said person some of what I was finding.. the subject came to these lyrics / poems / whatever.. that I had.. and could this person see.

Well it just so happens that I was on my pc lap top at the time.. which happens to have folder full of stuff.. dating back to when I got the lap top.. which I’m guessing was sometime in 2004.. simply because that was the date of my Indra’s Net Project… which was done on said laptop.

Matt Searles – Archaic Rejuvination for the Post Modern Male and Female

And um… So the deal is.. I tend to not like showing this stuff… mainly cause I figure it sucks, you know? Like who am I kidding? I’d be embarrassed to show that trash… but ok, what the hell, why not?

Well.. my fan friend was blown away buy it and I was like “you really like that stuff?” Before you know it.. I had sent something like 20 or more of them through the IM.. and I think we were both a little astonished.. this person had, after all, put me in the right mood to see the virtue of it..

Oh my God! This stuff was insane! I almost want to describe it as the words of “a bad boy saint.” It’s stuff that just screws with your head.. It has an intense kind of darkness to it, that almost kinda scares you.. and..

Oh my God, you know how I’m given to talking about Jesus and God and all that sorta thing in this blog? I always feel like.. when you bring up those kinds of subjects.. people kinda want to run away..  run from the Jesus freak.. like talking about religion is just not a safe topic.. its more dangerous then politics.. Well what was crazy about the treatment of the subject was.. it was mystical.. and it was like.. well it was twisted.. just in how it played with it. It was as if it was this crazy heretical sorta thing.. kinda like South Park playing with Jesus and all that stuff.. accept this was like.. way more dangerous. It was more dangerous because it seemed to be speaking truths.. speaking truths that most folks wouldn’t have the balls to say..  I mean it was just crazy.

It had this kind of earthy feel to it.. made me think of Muddy Waters.. but like crazy intellectual.. which is part of how it would mess with your head.. It’s as if there’s the prejudices of our modern time and of authority.. prejudices that produce the mental cages we are all living in.. and it’s tearing the hell out of them…  to the point where it all most hurts.. 

Ok, how about another track from yours truly.. again from Indra’s Net:

Matt Searles – A Short Trip To Another Day

The words called back to me the psychology I had at the time.. I was reminded of the darkness of those days.. of the struggle.. of the darkness. The struggle to just hold on to hope. The pain…  The blood that was just dripping from me.. psychologically.. from the wounds of life.. all the ways life can be cruel.. and how it felt like that then.. and that deep struggle of not knowing if I’d ever make it in life to where I needed to make it. Feeling like… life could get worse then I could really handle.. and that it might not be too long till that reality would be confronting me..

This is the subtext… beneath how I was driven to make this work.. driving to try and make something of me.. get to where ever I needed to get to.

Funny thing is I haven’t gotten there yet! Funny thing is I’m still struggling…  And though, in my current struggle.. though I do struggle with faith, in what I’m doing or trying to do, on a daily basis… I must say there are moments of overflowing hope. That over flowing hope comes through the vehicle of social media.

I’ve had this feeling in my head for sometime.. that in the end it will be social media that saves me. To really explain how this works.. well it would take more then I have to give tonight….

A couple things though.. You meet so many great people. I can’t really tell you how thankful I am. I don’t know how to tell you how moved I’ve been…  I mean like when my mom died and people reached out to me via blog comments, twitter, emails.. At a moment I had anticipated as being the loneliest moment of my life..  I felt the least alone of any moment in my life.

So one of the things that’s giving me this need to Howl.. is just the want to give thanks.. which I am sometimes so bad at.. If you’re reading this.. and we’ve had some sorta social media type.. I don’t know.. we’ve met, had a conversation.. or maybe not even that much… you’re probably someone I feel somehow thankful about…  So.. if I don’t get around to.. doing something that would properly express my gratitude.. I just want to tell you thanks here.

It is the little things that count, isn’t it?

How about another track:

Matt Searles – Offering A Hand To The Ghost

That’s actually one of the few Indra’s Net tracks that was done on my Mac.. With like Reaktor and Cubase SX.. maybe SX2? Maybe 3? I don’t remember.

So back to the story of vocal synthesis and these lyrics:

Well a few years ago there were a bunch of vocal synths that hit the market, and so immediately I was interested. I think people need lyrics to kinda.. “get it.” Or what I mean is.. instrumental music isn’t the most sorta commercially viable thing out there. So….

Well I can’t sing…. I don’t really have a vocalist I can easily call on any old time.. have yet to really invest in the proper microphones.. or learned the proper recording engineer stuff.. and not only that.. even if all that was a go.. It wouldn’t easily fit into my process. So, how to I get there from here?

As it turns out there’s a number of possible directions:

1.  Vocal Synthesis
2. “Vocal Tuning software:” There’s lots of software out there that can make an out of tune vocal in tune.. if you just get the phrasing right… 
3. Integration of found-ish elements.

Category 3 is where I would fit this track for Zar Matt A Thsutra’s Deep Space Adventures:  

Matt Searles – Hanser Show HerStory With Mark

Here we have a field recording type thing, of Mark talking on a train with his then girl friend.. It’s rather crazy experimental.. but I still sorta like it.

Any who, so I’m over tired.. and should prolly post here..

Oh wait.. can post without posting this here clip!

My last blog post featured some of my best pictures so far.. given, I’ve only been at it since Monday.. and as someone who’s barely ever handled a camera before.. I’m feeling pretty proud about those pics.. Though at the same time my honest assessment of my photography is not so high.. and I think this series will sorta show this off a little bit.. I like how these pictures function as a series, but if you look at them individually.. they are less then red hot..

Ok.. moving right along….

I love taking pics of my dad “for some reason.”  One of the things I’m learning about photography is that it’s “all about observation.” It’s in large measure a process of looking. You take once slice of time.. framed.. what have you.. and you can look at it for eons..

This amplifies that one moment beyond its significants in the flow of time.. to put it a certain sorta way. Significants, in this sense, meaning.. well what underlies… well how you remember things.. how things stick out in the mind. Another words.. I have an image of my father that is produced through a process of interactions.. let’s say.. and those interactions define the production of that image.. they define what stays in mind and what slips away.. which often might has more to do with my own interior.. whatever is driving me, then it has to do with my father. Taking pictures takes me out of that.. to one extent or another.. and now we are studying my father as a subject.

My relationship to my parents is a complex one.. psycho-socially speaking. Perhaps this is true for all of us? At this moment in my life.. shortly after my mom’s passing, in a situation of taking care of my father.. still feeling dependent on the money that is whatever wealth they managed to amass in there life times.. all this, along with other life issues.. puts me in a strange psychological situation.. which basically amounts to feeling like the challenges of trying to grow up.

A few latter: 

I’ve been reading some essays by Carl Jung recently.. which have re-lead me into a certain way of thinking about my own psychology. A somewhat simple way of saying it is that beneath the surface of waking life, and all our “reasonableness,” lys a “psychological reality.” Reality is, after all, never experienced outside the context of consciousness or our “psychological reality.” The empiricism of science, among other things, has lead us into a spirit of missing this underlying psychological reality.

I’m not blaming science.. Its simply that the scientific age, to put it a certain way, has lead us into a kind of psychological makeup that’s.. somewhat one sided and materialistic. Materialistic in the sense that we search for answers in the material world.. and understanding psychology from a material perspective is.. at the very least complicated from the stand point of our current understanding.. which is to say neuroscience is in it’s very very early days. 

Bug I digress…

So what of this underlying psychological reality? My sense is that it’s through a kind of dialectical relationship with this that I’ll make it through my current life challenges.. Though photography, at least as I’m exploring it at the moment, is slavishly tied to the material world, it has become a tool for exploring this sorta dialectical process.

So lets see if I can kind of wrap this up into a nice little bow: In a certain sense, photography is giving me an experience of reality that is out side the context of a certain psycho-social drama.. This is to say we are looking at the subject / object… err, how do I put this? Well in the case of the following series of photographs, I’m moving out side of “my idea” of my father, to my father. “Idea” here being a psychological idea that is out side of a purely conscious idea.. or one that is beyond conscious will. In so doing we shape the psycho-social drama in new ways.

I’ll conclude this part of the blog entry by telling you that what I’m saying is an over simplification of the matter.

Some background on these pictures:

There’s a couple things you might like to know.. #1 The cat in these pictures is named “Kitty.” Well actually he’s named Ginger.. or thats the name my mom and father use.. This would be our second cat to have a feminine name..  so that’s where I draw the line, and thus we shall refer to him as Kitty.

Kitty is an indoor cat who does not like being indoors.. All he wants in life is to go outside.. trouble is that our last cat probably got eaten by a coyote and thus… well my mom just couldn’t see letting Kitty go out after that. Personally, I believe in living dangerously.. so I side with letting kitty go out.. but at least for now.. the household continues to, kinda sorta, run as it did when my mom was living.

Anyway.. so Kitty is always trying to get out.. and no one accidently lets the cat out more then dad! 

#2 My dad has dementia. His dementia has not lead him to being totally unfunctional.. and he still has some short term memory.. but for the most part he’s not very capable of remember much from 30 minutes ago, to put it a certain sorta way. So a lot of really basic things can be very difficult for him.. and I think you can kind of see this in the pictures.

#3 My dad has a habit of sleeping too late.. so its my job to wake him up.. and thus we begin.

On with the Pics! 

Ok, so dad is more or less up.. but how can he start his day without getting the news paper or getting the mail? Hope he doesn’t let the cat out!

Aww, the taste of victory! 

So making a series like this was surely a lot of fun… And you know.. each picture, on it’s own.. the quality varies.. but as a group.. it’s kinda cool.

A final note / what we can look forward to in the future. 

These picts took about half of my monthly flickr upload allotment… they are, if you view them in flickr, about half the size of the originals.. So what I’m thinking of doing, in the future, is generally uploaded pictures that are a good deal smaller then this.. at least the ones for this blog.. 

I’m planning on releasing these kinda virtual photography books, in pdf form.. which will give you full the sized pics.. which you could even print out at full size if you liked.. 

I suppose the other thing worth mentioning is the pics are still not going through much of a digital work flow.. which is to say “photo post production” which involved working with them in Aperture and Photoshop..  which I of course hope to do for the books.. 

Finally, I’m hoping on putting Google Addsents in them.. so with any luck.. I could even make some money from the books! My ambition here being to pay for the cost of web hosting! 

So that all ought to be fun to do and play with.

I wouldn’t say I have writers block.. I couldn’t say that really: I write soooo much shit. Trouble is I don’t post.  Why?  Well, it seems like.. to write something worth while, I feel I need to push on it hard enough to get it some place interesting.  By the time I get there, it’s a long post, and with my writing as bad as it is, there’s a need for heavy editing. If a long post is poorly written, why in hell would you go to the trouble to read it?

This and there are certain subjects that are a little difficult, like lets say… race, politics, religion… subjects that…  I suppose could get you in trouble, depending on how you write on them. Well not trouble exactly but.. I mean I want to be respectful of wherever a reader might be coming from, and sometimes I wonder if my positions might inherently not be, somehow, depending on where you’re coming from. Well, I suppose that’s what comments are for, so feel free to bitch slap me, should it be necessary.

A component of this problem is.. I have some strange ideas about things. Some of these strange ideas, at least on the surface, might look a little crazy. In some cases I’m not sure if they’re crazy myself. In my toy chest of ideas, there’s a set of ideas that..  well they are old.. from another time in my life. Ideas I haven’t picked up since.. well whenever. The result is, whatever certainty I had of them, back in the day, today they hold certain question marks, at least for me. Yet, at the same time, these ideas are not without a certain weight in how I live my life.

It’s sorta like.. what we do with our lives today, that builds the foundation for who we are tomorrow. So I suppose there’s a need for some foundation inspections, ha?

One set of ideas I call “the God concept.” These are ideas that could be shelved under “mysticism.” At one point in my life, I was searching for something akin to “a scientific proof of the existence of God.” The “experience” surrounding this, shall we call it an intellectual journey?, was one that defined the future direction of my life. Where I’m standing today, comes out of that.

The ground I’m standing on is not a certain ground. There are deep questions surrounding where I’m standing. Are these questions the force of damage sustained at earlier points in my life, or is there something real in them?

There is this force of socialization in our lives: There is this way that the world tries to define us. Seems like a bad idea to let it. So many of my questions seem to stem from this sort of thing. Perhaps this is a monster I should slay?

I remember as a small child, having almost like imaginary friends. Somewhere in here the idea of imaginary bands, or armies, or whatever. And I remember one idea was something like “monster slayers.” What is the relationship between the consciousness of children, and adult consciousness? What I mean is, being so little, wanting to kill the monsters of humanity, are those monsters not the anxieties of adult life? Anxieties that drive collective evolution? Anxieties that steer the life of our times?

It’s funny to look at it this way: like a childhood fear of the dark, or a monster in the closet, or under your bed, is a monster that grows up as you grow up.

I remember my parents seeming rather odd to me. I think much of this must come from being adopted. I still don’t really understand my parents.

Since my mom died, I have a lot more experience of my dad. In someways my mom’s passing actually makes things easier: My mom had a certain need to control, and in that need to control was a certain amount of anxiety. Anxiety often keeps us from seeing things as they are, and adversely effects our abilities to adapt. It seems like this must be a cause of my early life’s trauma, after all so much of a child’s psychology is the product of there parents.

But the monster slayers: it seems like this childhood idea has evolved into an adult idea. The idea that I should do battle with our collective anxieties, try to pass through the shadow worlds, and come out the other side, with all our lost gold.

Perhaps my trouble, when it comes to blogging, has to do with speaking from inside the shadow’s dark wood? 

This is a story of what my life looks like after my mom died.

The day before last I was buying a Mac Pro on Apple’s website.  When it came time to put in the credit card information, I figured it was time to go check the various credit card statements to see what sorta credit limit what cards had, after all Mac Pro’s are big chunks of change!  Well, in that hasty process I discovered a $130,00o credit card bill.  

A credit card bill like that means something like “time to think about selling the house and moving into a trailer home.”  Not that I would really mind the trailer home shtick so much… as long as I’ve got a bitch’n computer and studio set up, and good internet, I’m a happy camper..  But my dad has dementia you understand..  and folks with his kind of dementia do much better in familiar settings… thus I’d like to hold onto the house as long as I can.  

Not only that but I haven’t really acclimated to all the new responsibilities that my mom’s pass has brought to me…  So everything can get very overwhelming fast.  So as a result..  the idea of having to figure out things like “how do we sell our house” is just more then I’d want to deal with anytime soon.

Anyway, this morning I look at the credit card bill again and realize it’s not a credit card bill but a loan….  So the interest is like..  less then half what I feared, and isn’t compounded monthly.. its annual.. which makes it more like… well it’s what we call in the biz “good debt” as a pose to “bad debt” which is what credit card bills are.

This doesn’t mean I’m in a good financial situation..  after all I got a pretty big loan there..  but it’s as if I had a crazy weight over my head for a couple days, and now it just lifted…  and now I can probably get that computer after all!