I am in love with music. I am devoted to music in the same way that a monk is devoted to meditation, or a Priest is devoted to God. It’s an all-encompassing dedication; I wake up thinking about it and I go to bed thinking about it. I sit with some empty paper and a nice soft pencil. I start from the beginning and write it down, and I have a lot of fun along the way. Sometimes there are contradictions, sometimes there is erasing, sometimes I turn the paper upside down, sometimes I put pencils in my ears to make my girlfriend laugh. It’s the greatest thing in the world to me. It’s right there at the very top.
Above all, my music is my own way of expressing that, despite it’s problems, I don’t think it’s delusional to think that the world is a nice place to be.
I express this by writing about what I know deeply and completely.
What do I know deeply and completely?
Here are some examples:
Hotdogs in the microwave, very very late at night. Eating them in front of the TV
Rolling down the window in the car
Delis
Watching baseball, listening to baseball, climbing way up in the stands and looking down onto the field
Telling wholly exaggerated, (and, at times, totally fabricated) stories to my friends
Obscenity, swearing, vulgarity, and most of any kind of off-color something or other.
Hearing a helicopter, then looking for it in the sky, then seeing it, then pointing to it
Seeing a license plate from a distant state
Goofing off at work
Sleeping until lunch on a Sunday
My music is a militant defense of the importance of these things. I’d go to war to defend these things.
Many believe that the happiest moments of your life are when you get married or graduate or have a kid or retire. I’m willing to bet that you don’t even remember the happiest moment of your life; the moment in which you were most content. You were probably in the backyard drinking lemonade, and it was nice and warm, and you forgot about it because you’ve been conditioned to think that it wasn’t important enough to remember. It is important to remember.
Again, Above all, my music is my own way of expressing that I don’t think it’s delusional to think that the world is a nice place to be.
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“Tolle, lege: take up and read.” St. Augustine
“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.” St. Augustine
“There is a justice of newborn worlds which cannot be counted. There is a mercy of individual things that spring into being without reason, They are just without reason, and their mercy is without explanation. They have received rewards beyond description because they themselves refuse to be described. They are virtuous in the sight of God because their names do not identify them. Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint and an outlaw. Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the command of man is powerful in the sight of God. Every star that man has not counted is a world of sanity and perfection. Every blade of grass is an angel singing in the shower of glory.” Thomas Merton
“Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have, I any influence, or who have any influence on me?…I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.” David Hume
“Just act ordinary, without trying to do anything in particular. Move your bowels, piss, get dressed, eat your rice, and if you get tired, then lie down.” James Tartaglia
“Tartaglia suggests that the moves of the game are meaningful even if the game is itself meaningless.” Nolan Gertz
“The printed notes were perplexing – directions to a bagel shop? What did this have to do with the piece? As it turns out, nothing. As I overheard at intermission, Mr. Duquette told the person sitting next to me that he wrote down directions that he passed along, and they ended up in the program notes.” New York Concert Review
“Put a small piano in a truck and drive out on country roads; take time to discover new scenery; stop in a pretty place where there is a good church; unload the piano and tell the residents; give a concert; offer flowers to the people who have been so kind as to attend; leave again.” Sviatoslav Richter
"To elaborate is no avail - learned and unlearned/feel that it is so” Walt Whitman
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the/journeywork of the stars…And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn/all machinery” Walt Whitman
My music is my own way of expressing that the world is a nice place to be.