Recording Goodbye

As I mentioned previously, our band has embarked once again on the process of recording our songs. A few days ago, we did some test recordings (you can listen to them here). I"m especially pleased with how the cover of Steve Earle's song, Goodbye, turned out.
Last night, after having spent a bunch of time listening back to and playing along with the latest mix of this song, I found that I couldn't get the song out of my head: It was "playing" so loudly that I couldn't get to sleep. Then I realized that I was getting that deep, achey sadness that I get when thinking about loss, and especially, when contemplating the loss of my father (see earlier posts).
It seems that even a song about a different kind of loss from my own can trigger my own feelings of loss and sadness. Loss is loss, I guess: Whether we know it or not, we all suffer from it in one way or another, and this seems obvious to me now that I think of it. It's just that it can surprise you from time-to-time. Loss waits in ambush: You never know when it'll trip you up.
With the "holidays" approaching, I'm especially vulnerable to these feelings: My father's death spun my family into a place that yielded a few not-so-fun memories around Christmas. So, I'm a bit down today. Enough for now.

The Monkey on my Back

Hal Keely,an old friend and bandmate of mine, once said that being a musician is like having a monkey on your back. Hal was the kind of guy who just oozed creativity. He was a drummer and songwriter, and he composed his songs on a dulcimer, which we would then transpose over to guitar and bass. He even had a solid-body electric dulcimer built by local rising-star builder Ralph Novak (this was in Berkeley, almost 30 years ago--yes the time, it does fly by).
Anyway, that monkey, and the idea of it, stuck with me all of these years. It's maybe a bit of a negative way to look at having the muse be part of your life's calling, but in a way it's quite accurate. There is a certain eccentricity, a certain wobbliness in the life of a musician. There is always the need to give expression to that muse, along with the drawing-down of resources that might otherwise go into doing "normal" things like washing your car on Saturday morning, or hanging out with family, doing chores, going shopping, and so on. It's as if you were a distant star being viewed by an astronomer, and the astronomer were noticing a certain shakiness, a certain tendency for that star to wander off of its predicted path through space. From that observation, the astronomer could deduce that a planet was near that star, circling around it, pulling it this way and that.
The muse orbits us musicians. Some of us just shake and wobble a little bit. Some of us stagger. Some fall down and can't get back up. Sure, it's not just the muse behind this eccentricity. Other life events (like, oh, say, the death of a parent) can produce these effects as well, and maybe even be responsible for introducing the muse into our lives in the first place. Suffering is often the source of creativity: It is what defines us best.
Last night my band played in a local concert hall for a small-but-enthusiastic crowd. The sound was great, we played really well (in spite of the fact that I was recovering from the swine flu, and our leader had a cold), and we had a really good time, followed by a great band get-together in a local bar afterwards. This is the kind of time when the eccentricity suddenly gives way to an arrow-straight path to the heart, when the monkey disappears and we stand up straight, and we know that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing, and there is no doubt.

Regular Exercise Protects Mice from Flu Symptoms (but not from researchers’ scalpels…)

This just in! If you’re a mouse and you’ve been running regularly in your exercise wheel, you'll have less-severe flu symptoms after researchers have purposely infected you than will your non-exercising kin after they, too, have been infected. Also, when you are cut open and examined, your researchers will find less virus in your lungs than they'll find in your lazy friends' lungs.
So keep running, little mouse! And, if you don’t have an exercise wheel, make sure you find a way to request one from your caretaker.
And, thanks for volunteering!
This news might also be of interest to owners of pet mice.
Source: Iowa State University.

On Being Barefoot

I was stung between the toes by a bee last summer while running on some grass. The stinger was difficult to extract, and it stayed in my skin long-enough to inject a hefty dose of venom. Later, I was laid low with a fever and body aches. In my running-induced euphoria, I had forgotten the cardinal rule about going barefoot: Watch where you put your feet.
This experience reminded me that we go through life insulated from our natural world, and while this insulation is protective, it also prevents us from interacting with and enjoying our surroundings. Instead, we tend to barge around in our shoes, in our cars, in our airplanes, and we stop seeing what's out there, and we stop seeing our effects on what's out there: The connection is gone, and what's "out there," even though it sustains us and gives us our humanity, slowly degrades away.
And so we have people racing around the suburbs in gigantic, diesel-fume-belching, 4x4 trucks, parking-lot freeways (carbon-monoxide festivals), buildings scattered willy-nilly in formerly-pristine areas by developers engaged in feeding frenzies, global warming, collapsing fisheries, unecessary wars; the list, though it may seem endless, will be terminated by our demise or by our self-restraint (we get to choose).
A little mindfulness can move us towards the best choice: When's the last time you enjoyed the feeling of grass under your feet?

No Solicitors!

Our household recently suffered an infestation of vacuum-cleaner salesmen. I had been meaning to buy a screen door for our front entryway, because on those warm summer nights when mosquitos and other pests are abundant, some pests get into the house, and once in, they can be extremely difficult to expel. But I digress… To be clear, the salesmen entered with my wife’s permission, and once in, began a marathon session aimed at demonstrating why she should buy their vacuum cleaner for $2400. While they were cleaning our carpets, though, she began investigating the vacuum online. She found that the salesmen from this company are known for their high-pressure sales tactics, and that if you demand a lower price for the vacuum, you're likely to get it.
In all, this troop of sales-apes put in at least three hours of carpet-cleaning and product demonstration, and my wife, who was desparate to get something that could deal with the carpet-dirtifying consequences of having a young boy and his friends running daily throughout the house, bought the vacuum for about a third of the original asking price, plus they took our old vacuum as a trade-in.
While these guys never lied outright to to my wife, and they were quite personable, they managed nonetheless to imply things that were not true, such as that our favorite vacuum-repair shop, Mohler Vacuum, was a licensed warranty-repair facility, and that they were in the area because they had sales "appointments," and were just stopping by to see if we wanted give them a lot of money too. They were nice, but shifty, and the "ick factor" was pretty high.
It turns out that my mother-in-law also bought a vaccum from this company some 40 years ago, and she still remembers the gross feeling she had about the salesmen, but nonetheless used the vaccum, and was quite happy with it, for many years. The upshot is that this company has been making top-notch products for decades. After the fellow at Mohler told my wife that his business was not a warranty-repair facility, he went on to tell her that she had gotten a great deal, and that he himself owned one of these machines for home use.
In contrast to the quality of the product, further research on my part turned up the fact that the Better Business Bureau had revoked the accreditation of this company's local sales office, and that nationwide, there was a pattern of complaints about heavy-handed sales techniques. There was even one case of a woman being raped by a salesman from this company.
You really have to wonder why a company with such an awesome product (and yes, my wife is still thrilled with it) would allow its reputation to be so seriously damaged by the people who sell its products. What the heck is up with that?
And now, I'm finally going to put up the No Solicitors sign that I've been thinking about: The vacuum-cleaner-salesmen infestation is not the only door-to-door danger in our neighborhood. We also get shifty guys selling magazine subscriptions, some short guy with a beard trying to get money for a vague child-protection cause (he shows up once a year), carpet cleaning outfits who just "happen" to be in the neighborhood that day, just like they were last week, and other assorted annoyances, most of which turn up at our doorstep when we're sitting down for dinner at the end of a long day. Nuts to them all!

Loss of a Parent

Any of you lose a parent when you were a kid? My own father died when I was eight. I'm now in my fifties, and it was really only a few years ago that I finally began to realize just what an atom bomb it was that had exploded my life apart back then. Old-enough people often talk about what they did during the Sixties, where they were; well, that's where I was--atomized.
Rolling Stone recently ran an interview with Merle Haggard. Turns out his father died when he was nine. Mr. Haggard says he problably would not have gone to prison (he did time in San Quentin) had his dad not died. It's like that. Having a parent die while you're a kid blows your life completely part. Very few calamities can compare in their magnitude to having that happen while you're still a vulnerable and dependent young one. It's so big, so incomprehensible, that, for me at least, I had no idea for over forty years of just what had happened, how it had changed me, how it made me feel different from most other men.
Last night I started Maxine Harris' book, The Loss That Is Forever: The Lifelong Impact of the Early Death of a Mother or Father. The title is a mouthful, but pretty much says it all. I'm thankful to Ms. Harris for her elucidation of the great discontinuity that such an event causes in a child's life--a discontinuity of magnitude and awesomeness on the order of the Grand Canyon, but that, unlike the Grand Canyon, appears all at once, without warning, and is really like a massive meteor strike on the surface of your world: If you survive the initial blast, you might not survive the ensuing degradation of your ecosystem, your loss of sustenance, your loss of light. It's like that.
Ms. Harris' book triggered a night of strange dreams for me, the most vivid of which was about me digging in a large muddy hole, pulling out large slabs of sandstone, and attempting to pull a beautiful orange boulder free from the watery mud while worrying that the water must've been coming from a plumbing leak in the house next to where I was digging. As I awoke with a racing heart, I thought about how this was very like open-heart surgery.
As dreams often do, a scene from my childhood (digging in my uncle's backyard while a hose ran) combined with mundane grownup homeowner worries and then sucker-punched me with the psychic stone, a fossilized remnant, a piece of my heart that had died and turned to stone when my father died.
My mission now is to bring the power of this event into clear view and make it a conscious part of myself, who I am--to accept it and what it has made me, even though this process feels like it could kill me. Having a young son seems to be boosting me in this direction: I can see that I need to find clarity around my dad's death and integrate it for both of our sakes. Otherwise, it will be a danger to us both.
It's like that.

Don't Feed the Bear

I often get insomnia. And when I do, I lie in bed fretting, fussing, and being anxious. Things that never concern me during the day are suddenly overwhelming. It’s like being harassed by one of those spoiled Yosemite bears, lurking in the woods just after dusk, waiting for the chance to dart in and grab something off of the table. I can hear the bear out there, and can just barely make out its form. The bear often darts in to grab the garbage bag—you know—those throw-away thoughts and mutterings that tend to pile up on the corner of the bench, and never really seem to go away. He’ll run off with that refuse, and I’ll hear him chewing on it, and then he’ll be back for more, or maybe it’s his friend that wants to eat now.
I’m being harassed because there’s stuff the bear wants to eat. I begin to relax, watch my breath, and disengage: The bear fades away. There’s nothing here to eat anymore.
I need that bear: He’s my animal strength and instincts. He’s a part of me. I just need to keep him foraging, and not leave anything out that’ll make him dangerous.

The Constipated Banana

As the parents of a three-year-old boy, my wife and I often find ourselves discussing our son's bowel movements—how big was the last one you changed? How soft was it? And so on. As so happens with busy little boys, our son does not always want to stop what he’s doing long-enough to poop, or maybe that is one of the few things in his life that he can control, and so control it is exactly what he does. Whatever. In short, he becomes constipated, and we end up having endless discussions about what to do about it.
Related to this problem, my wife and I have debated about whether we can feed him bananas (he loves bananas, as do I). My wife believes that they add to or cause his constipation. I say that there is no evidence for this assertion that I’ve been able to find, but of course, I have to yield to my wife’s motherly opinion: She spends far more time with our son than I do, and she has perceived a pattern.
Okay, fair enough. But I find another problem entirely when I go out on the web to search for a definitive answer to the question of whether bananas do in fact cause constipation. Everywhere that I’ve looked so far, I have found lots of claims to the effect that bananas are “binding” and therefore cause constipation. What the heck is “binding” supposed to mean? And then, looking further, I find that some people claim just the opposite, and there is even one website which points out the same problem with which I’m dealing, namely, that nobody making these claims cites any references to supporting medical studies. But then the writer goes on to assert—without citing any references—that green bananas are constipating and ripe bananas will relieve constipation. Jeez. Not only is there no supporting documentation, but this statement begs the question of how green is “green,” and how ripe is “ripe?”
Even one of my favorite evidence-based-medicine publications, the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter glossed over this subject with, "...substances in bananas, especially less ripe ones, may, paradoxically, have both a slight "binding" [ugh...] and slight anti-constipating effect." Bottom line, I guess, is that if your kid wants a banana, give it to him or her. It may help their diarrhea. It may help their constipation. It may make them happy, and you can have one too.
Any registered dieticians out there who want to give this question a whirl?

It Might Get Loud (believe me, it already has...)

Okay, this post is to you guitarists, as well as others who feel the siren-call of rock 'n' roll: Go see It Might Get Loud. While I am certainly familar with U2's music, and it was good to hear Jack White's music for the first time (hey, what can I say? I don't get out much), it was the opportunity to witness Jimmy Page's story, his music as he talked about making it, and--most of all--his present-day persona that really made this movie. Mr. Page seems to have aged very gracefully. In keeping with the overheard sentiments of one my fellow movie-goers after seeing the movie, I found myself thinking about how fun it would be to just hang out with Jimmy Page, maybe have a couple of beers and play some music. His demeanor in the movie was friendly, open, responsive: He has such a shining face and ready smile. And to think that he was one of the powers behind that great rock 'n' roll that I listened to as a kid and young adult.
Anyway, Davis Guggenheim (the filmaker behind An Inconvenient Truth) portrays Jimmy Page, Jack White, and the Edge beautifully. Their stories are interwoven and constantly juxtopposed with one another. The viewer is transported between England, Ireland, and Detroit numerous times, but in such a way that one is always able to quickly orient oneself in the narrative, and one is allowed to form many of the connections between the three stories on one's own, with Mr. Guggenheim as the almost-ghostly tour guide. This, to me, is film making at its best.
The overall effect for me was the feeling of three lives fully-lived, with the stories of these lives having arisen out of--and in response to--their times, their zeitgeist. I, for one, am thankful for the positive contributions that they have made to my own life. And to think that they are just three examples of perhaps millions.

Sixty Days and Counting

Whereas Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End (reviewed below) presents a harsh, dark, and edgy world that is more virtual than real, Kim Stanley Robinson’s book, Sixty Days and Counting, is a story that is full of nature, nature writing, and natural philosophy, even though most of the story takes place in Washington DC.
Like Rainbows End, Sixty Days and Counting is an example of near-future science-based speculative fiction. The pacing is more leisurely, but then again, so is the pace of the Threat to Humanity that is depicted in this book: Global Warming (we frogs-in-warming-water still have a bit of time to reflect on this particular disaster—is it really getting warmer? Are we causing it? Can we afford to do anything about it? Can we not? We certainly need not mobilize the marines. But I digress.)
Whereas Vernor Vinge is a computer scientist and mathematician who seems to enjoy writing about such poet-laureates as his character Robert Gu, Mr. Robinson is an English PhD who seems to enjoy writing about scientists. This affinity seems to run deep for him: His other books are full of scientists as well, plus, he is married to a one.
Now to the story: Sixty Days and Counting is the third of Mr. Robinson’s Science-in-the-City series, a trilogy about the efforts of an earnest group of scientists and politicians to deflect the coming global disaster that is global warming. The old Washington-DC guard has been ousted, and a new president with high ideals has been elected. He and his team struggle to lead an international response to the crisis while Frank, a scientist at the National Science Foundation gives us excitement and intrigue in the form of a mysterious girl friend (their story begins in the first book of this trilogy) who is apparently involved in a conspiracy to throw the presidential election. Frank is drawn by his love/lust for this lady into a dangerous "black-op" mess; he is bugged, followed, and harassed by shady characters with sophisticated technology and government funding.
Frank is also the source of much that is beautiful about this book; his story (and this is why I really fell for this book) mixes in Buddhism via his interactions with the members of an Asian nation displaced by rising sea levels; and his own ruminations are the vehicle in which Mr. Robinson gives us an in-depth tour of the writings of Emerson and Thoreau and of their friendship with each other. Frank's fascination with these men belies Mr. Robinson's own love of Thoreau and Emerson, and it has spurred interest on my part as well. As a fun web-imitates-writing kind of we, Frank often accesses a website called emersonfortheday.com, a website that only came into actual existence when one of Mr. Robinson’s fans created it.
Though some may dismiss this book as just more doomsday writing, and therefore either too boring or too terrifying to read, the gentle treatment given by Mr. Robinson to the global-warming crisis through his characters, their relationships, and their philosophies make this book too enriching to pass up. Bring a copy with you to the hot tub!

Rainbows End

I am very much into science fiction, especially the hard-science-based variety. I recently finished just such a novel, Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge, and it knocked my socks off.

This book has it all--a great human-interest story, action, suspense, mystery, futuristics, and humor--and it wraps this all up in a near-future scenario that is as enticing as it is scary.

As protagonists, we have Robert Gu, a "retread" Nobel laureate who thrives on creating emotional torment in others, Miri Gu, a twelve-year-old girl genius, her dad and mom, who are military-security officers, top directors of various international security agencies, and a mysterious entity who calls himself, "Rabbit" (although Rabbit never actually says, "What's up Doc?" to any of his advesaries, I suspect that Mr. Vinge grew up watching the same Saturday-morning cartoons that I did). Together, these players swirl around the sudden appearance of the worst threat to humanity that has yet to appear (I know this sounds cliche, but wait till you see what it is) in a story that reveals Mr. Vinge's informed view of what our near-future could like if technology continues to progress at the ever-increasing pace of today. Since Mr. Vinge is a computer scientist and mathematician, I place a lot of weight in what he has to say about the possible future trends in technology and society.

Because of how Rainbows End delves into generational family relationships so well while still managing to tell a rip-roaring yarn, even the not-so-technology-interested will find it be an exciting read. And, Mr. Vinge does this with language that, while not necessarily being high literature, is certainly serviceable, often clever, and never over-the-top like some of the overdone stuff that is out there. (One example of why I like his writing is hiding right in the book's title--you'll see.)

I, for one, intend to read his other books. I was lucky to have found this book, thanks to a staff recommendation at my favorite local bookstore .
Now, will somebody please go out and invent some of the stuff in this book, or will I have to do it myself?