Man, I am tired. When I’m on an upswing, only getting 3 - 4 hours of sleep is not a big deal. But I had a crash over the weekend, slept about 20 hours, and have only been able to sleep about four hours a night. Two nights ago, I took a sleeping pill at 9:00, when I still wasn’t asleep at 1 AM, I got up and took another one. It took me an additional two hours to fall asleep, and it was agony trying to wake up for work. I drag-assed all day trying to solve a production problem (that was eventually identified), then last night I went to bed about 1 AM (theoretically giving me 7 hours), but woke up screaming most of the night, stuck in a recurring nightmare that pretty ensured my wife didn’t get any sleep either. She’s a saint. Who else would put up with a lunatic that wakes up screaming at the top of his lungs all night long?
In my reading life, I started “A History of God,” by Karen Armstrong and am, so far, engrossed. It’s so interesting to see her address many of the same myths (and their ramifications) as Victoria Nelson did in “The Secret Life of Puppets,” though the former is a former nun and believes in a mono-theistic God, and the latter is a-religious. Both have sort of come to the conclusion that though this age of science has become a kind of empirical, episteme-based experience, there is some evidence to suggest that we are (or will be moving toward / incorporating) the older, gnostic sensibilities that began in late antiquity. Fascinating stuff.
I, like everyone else in America, plan on watching the vice-presidential debates tonight. I’m very curious for a number of reasons. Though I despise Sarah Pallin, I don’t think that she is as dumb as people make her out to be. I think she is a highly intelligent and capable woman who just so happens to be a complete idealistic nutjob as well. This is otherwise known as complexity. Biden, on the other hand, will have to tow the line between argumentation and condescension (or rather, the perception of).
Two months ago I had my studio bill paid off, after six years of doing subcontracting work outside of work for website development. Now, after pressing a CD of work composed during the same period, and purchasing a set of much needed monitors, my debt is back up to around 1700 dollars. And I still have to put out 2 books this year. I had placed moritorium on studio purchases (which I have again re-instated), but I’ve realized that my mixing skills have outgrown my monitor setup (which is, basically, a piece of crap set of Behringer 2031Bs), and I have been increasingly frustrated by the lack of definition the lower mids. If I really want to compete with larger shops and get serious about my music, I need this critical piece in the mixing chain. The new monitors are demo versions of Adam A7, so I saved about 150 dollars off the price of new ones, and got those, two XLR cables and shipping for under $950. I’m very sick about spending this money, but I’m also sick of being a small fish in a very big pond, going to a job I hate every day, and keep hoping (with little evidence to say otherwise) that I can somehow create a life that will be more fulfilling. These monitors won the monitor of the year award last year. Because they have an extended frequency range (about 20 db on either side of the audible hearing range) and because the subfrequency drivers are 6.5 inches instead of 8, I should be able to reduce the amount of standing waves in my studio (lower frequency waves are much longer and bounce off from the walls in smaller studios) and dramatically increase the definition in the critical area of my mixes. But this also means that I have increased the time to pay back the debt to around 1 year (and that I’ll have to scrap for a lot more work).
Today, I met with a friend of a friend who also does web design. He is an immigrant from Ethiopia and he has a dream of returning to his homeland and starting a school, clinic, and providing basic clean water services for the village in which he grew up. I will be writing copy for the website as well as writing copy for the brochures and such. There is a group of 9 or so people who will be part of the board and they are applying for non-profit status for this project, which they are hoping will serve as a model for future projects across Ethiopia. This is one project that I am excited and proud to be participating in.
I am in the final stages of setting up Matthew Shindell’s new book. The front matter is nearly complete, and then it’s just one more proof away from readiness. I still need to fill out the Library of Congress’s EAN assignment info as well as Bowker’s online database, but everything else is done. Then I need to begin setting up Jehanne Dubrow’s prize-winning collection from last year’s contest as well as start reading the new batch of manuscripts for this year’s contest.
Tomorrow, I am going to see my therapist (which I do every two weeks). I am starting to come to the realization that I am finding a purpose in my life — one that has been missing for the last twenty years or so: to undertake an authentic search for god and the intersection with the idea of the holy and creativity; I’m thinking I might finish my second master’s degree (which I started about seven years ago as a “renegade” graduate student).
With the second set of monitors I can take my current ones and plug my Line 6 X3 live directly into them for practicing the 12-string touchstyle Toneweaver I bought last year (it was supposed to be the instrument that supplemented my search for God). Now that everything in my life is being aligned toward wholeness and unity of purpose, the pieces are starting to fall into place. The first example of this is the project in Ethiopia (that I mentioned above). Not a day after I recommitted myself to this purpose this opportunity arose. I immediately felt a sense of rightness, and it is toward the rightness, as a constant state of being, that I want to move. I want to move toward it without the baggage of organized religion, and recognizing the complexity of all contemporary religions, historical myths, poetry, the creative, etc. I am convinced, on a very basic level, of the reality of some other reality that coexists with and is a part of ours. I don’t think it is gnostic or epistemic. I don’t even know how to express or explain it. In another post, shortly, I think it would be good to sort of layout what my thoughts and feelings on this subject are and to prepare a system of investigation.