July 6, 2010: Introduction

A series of recent events, mostly joyful, have led me to fear death. Or, not so much death, but the things that will die with me when I'm gone. Anyone involved in the creative process can tell you (or, rather, I assume so) that no matter how much one creates the form never seems to be enough; this obsessive act of creating the world around us in other forms can never fully encapsulate my entire being or the entire being of the world I perceive. I may paint a portrait of my friend and display her beauty, her ugliness and mortality all at once but this one thing will never display fully how wonderful it might be to be in her presence. It is a thing, it is not a universe. So we continue to create more and more in a vain attempt to fully capture ones entirety. It is an act that can never be accomplished but in its continual act.

I hold many stories in me that will never be shared. I feel love and hate for everyone I share space with that I will hold inside forever. Every day I create. These things that pass into me I want to share but am often too focused on the present to fully express them in the presence of those who matter. I, here, will paint these portraits for those to see and hold on to as they please. I expect some will hate me for my openness but some will love, but what does it matter? It is presented here for you to pull into yourselves and do what you please.

For me, personally, everything comes back to sound. Music is my way of making sense of chaos. Go into a subway station and listen to the voices, the feet, the rush of the train and the echoing noises in the air from tiles and open space. Go to a grocery store, a protest, an office building, listen to the sounds. It's chaos. Then listen to Hey Jude! by The Beatles (I use this as an example as it is arguably the penultimate song of the 20th century). The song is the same every time you listen to it. The people who created this song went into a series of rooms and constructed those notes, always different from one performance to the next, to compliment each other and just once and forever. They moved the air around them, the sound, and ordered it into one discernible piece, unchangeable. Order from chaos. When one hears that song, ideally, they place it into the chaos that surrounds them in their lives, in their perspectives, in their histories. That song is now connected to everything that happened every time it was heard, ordered and stored away. My personal histories are connected to every song I've ever heard and sometimes the question arises: Which is more important? The history? Or the song? The act? Or the music? The words? Or the notes?

Every day, for 1 year, I will daily update this blog with thoughts, reflections, histories and how they are connected to certain songs and pieces of music. I will try my best to add a link to the song or an upload or some such thing and I apologize in advance if some such thing is not possible. Should I miss a day for whatever reason I will update and keep up as soon as possible. They are portraits of myself, of everybody around me, of the world I create and order as best I can. Ultimately, though, they are for you, somehow.