Summer and Starlight

Today I had a featured album on amiestreet.com.

-i work too much and create too little.

-2nd shift was invented by Satan himself.

-i love/hate my studio apartment.  living completely independently is great/terrible.  i think the thing that really gets me is that i sleep in the same room as a refrigerator.  it can’t be good for your ears.  and it sucks to have to wait until the fridge is idling in order to record something.

-i like the new aimee mann record a lot.  who says you can’t have soul and synths at the same time?  who produced that anyway?

-instead of doing ‘hey rube II’ i’m going to release a single/two singles - one you’ve heard already called ‘all over the place’ and the other is called ‘it snows in april.’  the other songs i was working on for that e.p. will go on the backburner for now because i’m excited about some newer sounds i’ve been messing around with.  not to give anything away but i’ve been listening to a lot of hip-hop and am considering purchasing an alesis sr-18 or something similar when i can afford it.

-currently reading:

“bonk: the curious coupling of science and sex” by mary roach

“clapton” by eric clapton

and “misquoting jesus” by bart d. ehrman

art is hard.

the “Hey, Rube” EP is now available on the iTunes store! (in iTunes plus so no DRM…)

Here’s a direct link (it will open iTunes on your computer if its not already open):

I’m also excited to finish mixing the “Hey, Rube II” EP.  It will be six more songs that were written and recorded in the past couple of months.

over the past few months the importance of defining your own reality has been hitting me over and over again.  you can look to people around you, far and near, for someone to define what your reality should be and chances are it will depress you.  

i’m cursed with having a generally dim view of human nature which makes me generally reluctant to think of myself highly or take my art seriously after its created.  the actual creation process is a weird sacred thing for me and then when something’s complete i have this weird ability to shy away from it almost like i’m a pet that crapped on the rug and doesn’t want anybody to find out. 

that being said, i completed ‘hey, rube’ and i’m almost done mixing what will be ‘hey, rube II.”  i have some other musicians who contributed tracks to this one.  

i also got a job at a place called brilliance audio, inc. which is a publisher of independent audiobooks.  they are wholly owned by amazon.com, and due to the whole conflict of interest/noncompete thing, that might be the last i ever say about it.  

well, i’m home.  sometimes i enjoy road trips immensely; this was one of those times.  exhausting as it was, there is no substitute for forced quality time with yourself.  also i read “the audacity of hope” and “slaughterhouse five” via audiobook on the way.  

one true mark of a genius is the ability to break down relatively ‘complicated’ concepts into simple terms.  example:  people have written entire books about how to use an analog synthesizer - and while this is by no means comprehensive, bob moog does more in this video than some ’scholars’ have done in entire master’s theses:

as great as that was, the best part of that video is the awkward pause/smile right after the narrator introduces him.

amen, brother.  RIP.

“We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us.  Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.  And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.  How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.  Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”  

-From “Letters To A Young Poet,” chapter 8 

well, my official time as an artist-in-residence at the CMC is coming to a close.  the weather is beautiful.

today i learned more about goats and sheep (and the fibers they contribute to the world) than i will ever need to know.  (lanolin?)  it was also the second-highest paying gig i’ve ever had.  that’s right, i’m talking about Fiber Fest 2008.  only on martha’s vineyard.  

also, Tom just posted this.  pretty spectacular.  this is from one of his lectures, and i didn’t remember until today just how profoundly it affected me.  

yours, 
justin

so, i’ve been mulling over some recordings i’ve been making for the past couple of months, and today i just had the liberating thought that the songs are the same songs regardless of the style of production in which they are presented. which in turn spurred the old me who used to geek around tweaking all sorts of stuff on recordings instead of just letting them breathe on their own. i feel like now i have a happy balance, knowing that the songs exist as themselves whether or not i can present them the same way live, and the fact that they can be interpreted in many different ways is not discouraging or scary but actually liberating. so that puts more stuff on my plate to work on in the (very) near future.

i can’t wait to go home though. i miss people, whether or not they miss me.

jvh