by Tripecac on 2010-07-21 02:40:46
My new songs have received good feedback, which is a relief. I guess it turns out I'm not as pathetically rusty as I'd feared. It's still very difficult to find time to work on music, so output will be slow, but it sure is a great feeling to be musically productive again.
There's also a silver lining to the 8 month hiatus. Sure, it was frustrating to be without music-making tools so long, but during that time I did a lot of thinking about how I might change the Tripecac sound and methodology in ways that might let me get closer to making the type of music I want to make. Usually I don't think that deeply about the music, and am content to just be productive, without changing anything in the process. My "make lots of music, at least some of it good" philosophy has not required a lot of deep thought or radical changes.
However, as I get older, and with increasing loads of responsibilities, I see my free time dwindling almost to nothing. The days of finishing 5 or 6 albums a year are gone. Right now I can't expect more than 1 or 2 if I am lucky. So, if I want to keep creating anywhere near the same number of "good" (i.e., memorable) songs per year, I need to rely less on the brute force approach, and more on deliberate analysis and optimizations of my engineering and composition techniques.
In other words, I need to start getting more intellectual about my music. I just can't afford to treat music as a relaxing activity and hope that, by lucky, good songs will fall into my lap. To combine complacency with too little free time will result in a piddly yield, which I don't want. I want to feel proud about the music I create in 2010, not bored. So I need to get my brain cells warmed up, not just my fingers.
There is another good side effect of the hiatus, and that is my social outlook. For almost 7 of the 8 months I was immersed in a different culture, forced, by not having any of my stuff, to observe and interact with locals. In the process, I became very impressed with the overall upgrade in the environment here, and in other countries as well.
Sure, there are no Bill Gates types nearby, or throngs of world-reknown movie stars a couple states south, or awesomely-paid lawyers and doctors injecting the local economy with gobs on money. However, there are also no school shootings, snipers, uni-bombers, anthrax poisoners, or any other seriously destructive weirdos. There are also very few bums; I can't remember the last time I saw one, if ever! I have yet to have anyone here ask me for money!
The fact is, people here are very conscious about the need to work. They expect to do their 8 hour days, and then go home to their modest but [reasonably] comfortable houses. They don't work 16-hour days hoping for Big Money, because there isn't enough money here to reward people like that. They also don't work zero-hour days hoping for handouts from the government, because there's not enough money for that either.
People here don't expect easy money. They don't expect fame. They don't expect a dot com bonanza. They don't expect a free ride. They work, at whatever "good enough" job they can get. Whatever it takes to pay the bills and buy the new mudflaps for the truck, the new hacked-together extension for the house, or maybe just a new case of beer for the game this weekend.
What you never hear are those mumblings familiar to anyone who has read Atlas Shrugged: complaints about "the system", or being "screwed", or being "unlucky", or being a "victim". People here don't make excuses. They don't blame others. They don't collect money from the government while contributing nothing to society in return. They don't spend their lives oscillating between: consume, complain, consume, complain, and consume. They don't leech off of taxpayers, friends, family, ex-spouses. They don't blackmail, bully, or beg. People here don't hold out their hands to anybody, because they are too busy working, either at their jobs or their DIY projects, or their pastimes. They have too much pride, integrity, and respect for other people. They are fiercely independent, and alive.
Atlas Shrugged should be required reading in America. Here, it doesn't have to be. Here, people "get it". They understand that to have food, shelter, and water, you need to either find and build it yourself, or contribute other value to society to use in trade. Either way, you have to be industrious. There is not enough surplus for leeches to survive here. This is my type of place.
So you should be hearing increasingly less bitterness in my songs, and more optimism, more humor. Tripecac has become pretty critical over the years, as I became increasingly aware of the parasitic, excuse-factory subculture in America which must make Ken Burns ashamed.
Fortunately, I'm in a better place now, surrounded by normal, hard-working people. And maybe that's why the first couple songs have been strong, despite the inevitable atrophying of my music muscles. I don't feel irritated, disgusted, or trepidatious on a daily basis like I used to. I feel inspired by the constant activity of the people around me. Their industriousness and enthusiasm makes me want to work even harder, and smarter.
So, I am very thankful for the several month break. If I had been buried in my music, staring at computer screens all day, I wouldn't have noticed that the scene has changed. Life has progressed. And so will Tripecac.
