Category: Scat Mask Replica

An homage to the late, great Don Glen Vliet (aka Don Van Vliet, Bloodshot Rollin’ Red, and Captain Beefheart). For those who haven’t heard their best album Trout Mask Replica, it is the most unique album ever made. 97% people who hear it, might consider it horrible, barely music, and wholly inaccessible. Is it considering one of the most polarizing albums ever made. Yet, repeated listens reveal its polyrhythms, multi-octave vocals, and atonality. In an era, and an industry, that seeks accessibility, TMR was one of the most complicated albums ever created. How does this apply to a theme of the pieces involved, it doesn’t, unless one factors in the discordant beauty of the music, and the finger Vliet gave the music industry that wanted more accessible music.

Scat Mask Replica VII

RilalyLeave a comment

We operate in patterns, and we’re all about routines. Those who doubt that should add a dog to their life. A dog spends so much of its life studying our patterns that when they peg them, they can tell us what we’re about to do soon after we decide to do it. Some suggest that our rituals are such that they know before we do.

On that note, my primary takeaway from the movie My Dinner with Andre was to do everything possible to break the routines of life. In that movie, one of characters talked about opening the door with his left hand for a day or two just to break that routine in a way that might lead to other breaks. The gist of this is that we have so many patterns and routines that some of the times we sleep walk through life.

In an attempt to break one of my routines, I mowed in a different pattern. I was hoping to break the tedium of that otherwise tedious task. I spent so much time wondering if I was saving time mowing in a different pattern that I focused too much energy on trying to save time. In my typical routine, mowing the lawn seems to take minutes. This experiment seemed to take hours. The difference between the two is that I normally sleep walk through routine mowing, in much the same manner I sleep walk through all of the routines I’ve developed over time. We develop so many routines, as we age, that life has a way of slipping by quicker. How many times do we say, “it’s July? What happened to June?”

We wake, we eat two eggs, toast. We add a glass of OJ, and we top it off with a delicious banana. “Is this banana as delicious as yesterday’s banana could’ve been?” I asked myself one Tuesday morning. On Monday, I purchased a bunch of sparkling yellow bananas shortly before breakfast, and I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into its brand-new solidity. While eating Tuesday’s banana, I realized I completely forgot to appreciate Monday’s banana for what it was. I looked forward to that first bite, while in the store. I thought about it a couple times on the short drive home, but by the time Tuesday rolled around, I realized that I accidentally slipped Monday’s banana in the routine of eating breakfast that day. When I bit into Tuesday’s banana, it was delicious, and I appreciated it, but I couldn’t help but think about how much more fresh and delicious Monday’s banana might’ve been if I remembered to appreciate it.

One of the best ways I’ve found to avoid falling too deep into routine is a grueling workout. I’m not talking about a simple workout, because some of us workout so often that working out becomes nothing more than a part of our routine. I’m talking about a grueling workout that leaves the buns and thighs burning, and when the buns are burning, the brain cells are burning just as bright. This idea led me to believe that working out might be a cure all.

When our Mondays melt into our Tuesdays, the best way to break the routine is to push our body beyond our otherwise lazy boundaries. If we’re feeling excessive fatigue, we can burn our brain and body bright with a long and grueling workout. I’ve expressed variations of this cure so often that those closest to me say it before I do, mocking me for routinely advising that this is the ideal way to fight routine. The footnote I now add, based on personal experience, is make sure you’re happy first. Before we start going to the gym three times a week, with at least one grueling workout mixed in, we need to make sure we’ve tended to life’s matters and we have someone who loves us at home. We also need to enjoy the job we have, because after a couple of long, grueling workouts we will become acutely aware of our life choices, and we will probably arrive at some painful critiques.

Some call it hyper-vigilance or hyper-awareness. Hyper-vigilance is the ability to notice things most don’t. Those who have it, call it a gift and a curse. Yet, even the most hyper-aware person can have their senses dulled by routine. I’ve snapped at people on a Tuesday for something that didn’t bother me on Monday, and the only difference was I had a grueling workout in between. My various computer chairs were comfortable for years before I disciplined myself to rock hard buns. I loved the life I led before those rigorous workouts led me to recognize how unrewarding my job was. I knew the basic functions of my job were equivalent to data entry, but it never dawned on me how unrewarding the job was until I snapped out of the routine.

When people would ask, I would tell them the title my company gave me, and the tasks they assigned. After a few rigorous workouts, I realized that the company might have seduced me into believing the position was prestigious, in a manner I suspect a garbage collection company seduces a prospective garbage man applicant into the job of sanitation engineer. Do garbage collection employees tell their people they’re in engineering? When my brains and buns were all soggy, I found the basic elements of my job unrewarding, but I managed to convince myself that receiving bi-weekly paychecks and living the independent life were admirable no matter what the other circumstances were.

With my brain firing on all cylinders, I realized that the core tenet of the job was to make the boss happy. If she was happy, then I should happy. This description probably defines 99% of all jobs, but I have to guess that most employees find their jobs personally unrewarding. If we hit the peak productivity numbers for our department, it makes our boss happy, but how does it affect our life? Was I being productive in a sense larger than the relative barometer my department laid out, or was the work I did a colossal waste of time? Did the company truly value what I do? Do I clock out with a sense that I accomplished something that day? Those in my department knew that no one, outside our department, read the reports we wrote. If we wanted a raise, we knew the company didn’t devote much of the budget to the work we did, as most of the work we did could fall very comfortably under the title “busy work”. If one of the employees on our team wanted an in-house transfer to another department, we learned that the various recruiters therein don’t value the work we do, or the title we have. They knew the inner machinations of the job better than those outside the company might, and they knew the work didn’t provide a potential applicant to their department valuable experience. I knew all this, to a certain degree, when my buns and brain cells were all soggy, but when I was firing on all cylinders, it became painfully clear to me that I was wasting my life in that position.

Working out so often made my buns rock hard, and while the health benefits of that level of exercise superseded everything else, it also made my once uncomfortable computer chair intolerable. I could smell the flowers better than ever before, and peanut M&M’s were so delicious that I considered eating them by the pound, but I also realized how fraudulent my bosses were, how lonely I was, and how I had no home life to look forward to when my excruciatingly slow work day ended. I noticed all the little things life had to offer, and some of them made me happier, but others made me so angry and depressed that I realized one of the reasons I drank so much and smoked so often was to dull my brain to the point where I wouldn’t question the choices I made in life.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “if at first you don’t succeed try, try, and try again.” An addendum to this quote, that some attribute to W.C. Fields, suggests, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again—and then quit! No use being a fool about it.” A quote by the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock published in 1917, suggests that, “If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it. Try something else while there is yet time.” My addition to this quote is, “If one thing doesn’t work try another.” It seems so simple, yet how many people try to jam a square in a round hole and make fools out of themselves by screaming at the manufacturer of the tools in question. We scream, “It ain’t me. Don’t look at me. The instructions say this should fix it.” We then throw a fiery temper tantrum that suggests we’re better than this. We just fixed something just last week with wonderful aplomb. There’s nothing different about us with this particular project. It’s the manufacturer. “That’s fine, but have you tried a way other than just jamming it home? Try another way.” We then paraphrase Albert Einstein, “The definition of insanity is trying one thing one way, over and over, and expecting different results.”

When running down the street be mindful of your feet. Studies show that the chances of tripping increase exponentially when we run. Been there, done that. Experience has also led me to offer another quick warning to my loved ones: Watch out for the ground, it hurts.

Scat Mask Replica VIII

RilalyLeave a comment

How much money does the average Fortune 500 Company spend learning the mind of the consumer? How many psychologists, linguists, and marketers do their preferred research firms and marketing agencies consult before starting production on a commercial? Their job is to know what makes us laugh, what makes us cry, and what intrigues us long enough to pitch a product or idea. They also have the unenviable chore of finding a way to keep us from fast forwarding through commercials. The average commercial is thirty seconds long, so advertisers need to pack a lot into a tight space. With all the time, money, and information packed into one thirty-second advertisement, one could say that commercials are better than any other medium at informing us where our culture is. One could even go so far to say that each commercial is a short, detailed report on the culture. If that’s true, all one needs to do is watch commercials to know that the art of persuasion has altered dramatically in our post-literate society.

Booksellers argue that we don’t live in a post-literate society, as their quarterly reports indicate that books are selling better than ever. I don’t question their accounting numbers, but some of the commercials big corporations use to move product are so dumbed down and condescending that I wonder if fewer and fewer people are buying more and more books.

When advertisers make their pitch, they go to great pains, financially and otherwise, to display wonderful messages. They then hire a wonderful actor, or spokesman, to be the face of the company. By doing so, of course, the companies who employ the advertising agencies want the consumer to find their company is just as wonderful. If you’re not a wonderful person, their carefully tailored message suggests you can be if you follow their formula. If I am forced, for whatever reason, to watch a commercial, I find their pitches so condescending that they almost make me angry.

Thirty seconds is not a lot of time when it comes to the art of persuasion, so advertising agencies take shortcuts to appeal to us. These shortcuts often involve quick emotional appeals. The problem with this is that people who watch commercials adopt these shortcuts in casual conversations, and they begin using them in everyday life.

I find the quick, emotional appeals these research and marketing firms dig up so appalling that I avoid commercials as much as possible. I find the opposite so appealing, in comparison, that I probably give attempts at fact-based, critical thinking more credit than they deserve. I walk away thinking, “Hey, that’s a good idea!” whether it’s actually a good idea or not, I appreciate the thought they put into making a rational appeal.

Some quick, emotional appeals add crying to their art of persuasion. “Don’t cry,” I say. “Prove your point.” A picture says a thousand words, right? Wrong. We’ve all come to accept the idea that powerful figures and companies require an array of consultants to help them tailor their message for greater appeal. Yet, if one has facts on their side, they shouldn’t need to cry. They shouldn’t need to hire consultants, they shouldn’t need attractive spokesmen, and the idea that they “seem nice and wonderful” shouldn’t matter either. I know it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle, but I think the art of persuasion should be devoid of superficial and emotional appeal.

***

Marketing firms and their research arms also spend an inordinate amount of time discussing “the future”. Some ads intone their pitch with foreboding tones, and some discuss it with excitement. Our knowledge of the future depends on our knowledge of the past. As evidence of that, we look to our senior citizens. They don’t pay attention to the present, because they find it mostly redundant. “What are you kids talking about these days?” they ask. We inform them. “That’s the same thing we were talking about 50 years ago.” Impossible, we think, we’re talking about the here and now. They can’t possibly understand the present. They can, because it’s not as different from the past as we want to believe. The one element that remains a constant throughout is human nature.

You’re saying that all the change we’ve been fighting for will amount to nothing? It depends on the nature of your fight. Are you fighting to change human nature? If so, there’s an analogy that suggests, if you’re trying to turn a speedboat, all you have to do is flick a wrist. If you’re trying to change the direction of a battleship, however, you should prepare for an arduous, complicated, and slow turn. My bet is that once we work through the squabbles and internecine battles of the next fifty years, the future will not change as much as these doomsayers want it to, and if it does, it will probably be for the better.       

***

Brian Dettmer

How many people truly want to create works of art? “I would love to write a book,” is something many people say. How many want it so badly that they’re willing to endure the trial and error involved in the process getting to the core of a unique, organic idea? How many of us know firsthand, what a true artist has to go through? If others knew what they have to go through, I think they would say, “Maybe I don’t want it that badly.”

We prefer quick, emotional appeals. How many overnight geniuses are there? How many artists write one book, one album, or paint one painting to mass appeal? How many of them were able to generate long-term appeal? We should not confuse appeal with best seller. The idea of best seller or attaining market appeal is, to some degree, not up to the artist. They might have a hand in the marketing process, but appeal is largely up to the consumer. The only thing an artist can do is create the best product possible in the large and small ways an artist creates. In this vein, creating art involves a process so arduous that most people would intimidate most.

On the flip side, some say that there are artistic, creative types, and there are the others. There’s no doubt that there are varying levels of talent, but I believe that with enough time and effort most people could create something beautiful and individualistic.

Leonardo da Vinci was a talented artist, who painted some of the greatest pieces of art in world history. From what I’ve read about the man, however, he achieved so much in the arts that it began to bore him. After working through his apprenticeship and establishing himself as one of the finest painters of his day, he received numerous commissions for various works of art from the wealthy people and government officials around him. He turned some down, never started others, and failed to complete a whole lot more. One theory I’ve heard on da Vinci is that if he had a starving artist period, he probably created hundreds of thousands of pieces in that period, but that a vast majority of those pieces were lost, destroyed, or are otherwise lost to history. By the time, he achieved a level of stature where those in his day wanted to preserve his work, painting bored him so much that he created comparatively few pieces. Either that, or in the course of his attempts to create that elusive “perfect piece” da Vinci began studying the sciences to give his works greater authenticity. In the course of those studies, he became more interested in the sciences than he was in painting. These are just theories on why we only have seventeen confirmed pieces from Leonardo da Vinci, but they sound firm to me.

***

There is a hemispheric divide between creative types and math and science types. One barometer I’ve found to distinguish the two is the Beatles. So many types love the Beatles that we can tell what type of brain we’re dealing with by asking them what Beatles era they prefer. With the obvious distinctions in style, we can break the Beatles down into two distinct eras, the moptop era includes everything they did before Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the “drug-induced” era that followed. Numbers-oriented people generally love the moptop era more, and the creative, more right brain thinkers tend to prefer Sgt. Peppers and everything that followed. The moptop era fans believe the Beatles were a better band during the moptop era, because “they were more popular before Sgt. Peppers. Back then,” they say, “the Beatles were a phenomenon no one could deny.” Moptop era fans often add that, “the Beatles got a little too weird for my taste in the “drug-induced” albums that followed.” Although there is some argument over which album sold the most, at the time of release, it is generally argued that the latter half of their discography actually sold more than the first half. Numbers-oriented people should recognize that the latter albums were bound to sell more if for no other reason than the moptop Beatles built a fan base who would purchase just about anything they created after the moptop era. Those who lived during the era, however, generally think that the Beatles were less controversial and thus more popular during their moptop era, and if you’ve ever entered into this debate you know it’s pointless to argue otherwise. We creative types would never say that the pre-Sgt. Peppers Beatles didn’t have great singles, and Revolver and Rubber Soul were great albums, and we understand that those who lived during the era have personal romantic attachments to their era of Beatles albums, but we can’t understand how they fail to recognize the transcendental brilliance of the latter albums. We think the brilliance and the creativity they displayed on Sgt. Peppers and everything that followed provided a continental divide no one can dispute.

Further evidence of the popularity of the latter half of the Beatles catalog occurred in 1973. In 1973, the Beatles released two greatest hits compilations simultaneously for fans who weren’t aware of the Beatles during their era. The blue greatest hits album, which covered the 1967-1970, post Sgt. Peppers era has sold 17 million to date, while the red greatest hits 1962-1967, moptop-era album has sold 15 million. As anyone who has entered into this debate knows, however, it’s an unwinnable war.

Scat Mask Replica VI

RilalyLeave a comment

Turtle and Tiger

My son has a very healthy imagination, and I encourage it in every opportunity I can. We play all sorts of imaginary games, some involving his stuffed animals. We put these animals through various life scenarios. I am in charge of developing these stories, but he will often spider web these stories into other side stories. In one of these sessions, he gave his stuffed turtle an unusual name. Playing the role of the tiger in this production, I asked the turtle if his parents were weird. “If they gave you such an unusual name,” Tiger said, “your parents must be weird people.” I was not testing my son, or playing any type of psychological game. The reader might flirt with such notions, because it was an odd thing for a dad to say to his six-year-old son. My only defense is that we play so many of these games that he wears me out.

Tiger pressed turtle for an answer on this question, and the turtle refused to denounce his parents in anyway, saying, “No, I have great parents who love me and don’t let me get hurt.” That was all turtle said, and we moved into other areas of the turtle’s life story. Months prior, someone suggested that my son’s lack of displays of affection could suggest that he might be on the spectrum. Boulderdash, I say. I say his lack of displays of affection means that his parents are doing one hell of a bang up job. I’ve seen my son’s six-year-old friends worry when they can’t see their parents at the park. ‘Shouldn’t that be the other way around?’ I wonder. I know my son doesn’t worry about such things. I know he considers every minute we can’t see him a momentary minute of freedom. I’ve witnessed other boys appreciate their parents. I’ve seen other kids his age, kiss their parents without them having to ask for one, and my reaction is 180 degrees different from envy. I think if a six-year-old voluntarily displays affection for their parents, it suggests there might be some deficiency in their home. It’s a guess, and it’s probably wrong. Some six-year-old boys are just more affectionate than others are, but that just seems so unnatural to me. If my six-year-old boy says, “Leave me alone”, and he hates hugs and kisses, it means he takes me for granted. He takes it for granted that I’ll always going to be there for him, and he knows that I will always “protect him from getting hurt”. As a person who has never had a parenting job before, it strikes me that if you’re doing your job, your child should be surprised to learn that other kids like you and think you’re fun to be around you, because he thinks you’re one of the most boring people on earth. Then, if you’re doing one hell of a bang up job, you might eventually reach a point when you’ll hear how much he appreciates what you do from his turtle.

The Death of a Gregory

A forty-something man on our block died recently. It’s a sad thing when any person dies young, but I didn’t know this guy as a man. I knew him as a rival when we were in our early teens. One could go so far as to say we “hated” each other in the harmless way young, testosterone-driven teenage males hate each other. We did whatever mean, harmless territorial peeing things that two teenage boys do to each other. I tee peed his house, he egged mine, I threw an M-80 in his yard, and he shot a bottle rocket under my car. I sidewalk chalked something awful about him on his driveway, and he lit firework snakes on the sidewalk leading up to our house (some of those stains are still there some 35 years later). I spotted him on our old block some 35-years later, and I waved at him. He did not wave back. He apparently believed that our teenage rivalry should extend into our forties, and I found this out soon after I waved at him. I was driving into our old neighborhood, and he was driving out when I stuck that hand up. He gave me the nastiest look he could. That look said, “I don’t like you, and I never will!” That’s fine, I guess, but how about I wasn’t asking if I could come over for dinner, or if I could play with his Star Wars figurines. I was putting my hand up in the air to him as nothing more than a momentary, symbolic greeting. It’s your job, sir, to put your hand up in the air back at me! You don’t have to smile when you put your hand in the air, and a wave is not a promissory note on future conversations. You just wave back, and everyone moves on with their lives. It’s what we adult humans do when we somewhat, sort of recognize each other. If you can’t forget the things I did to you at 13, well, that’s kind of on you. If he was still alive, I’m sure he could give you a laundry list of things I did to him, but I don’t remember them, and none of them would post date 1983. If anyone suspects that I bullied him, and it affected his personality in such a way that he could never forgive me, I can only say this in my defense, this kid gave as well as he got. When my family would drive onto our block, he would have a special twinkle in his eye when he spotted me, knowing that we would be spotting his latest bit of carnage. When I saw how much he enjoyed this, I realized what I was up against, and I stopped. He didn’t, and he apparently didn’t want to let it go 35 years later.  

He Stuck a Foot Out!

Yesterday I realized that sports announcing is a cutthroat business. The candidates for a top job in sports announcing must be knowledgeable, and interesting, but they must also have an extraordinary ability to make the mundane exciting if they want to win the job. That’s not an earth-shattering revelation, I know, but when I hear a hockey announcer almost lose his lunch when a goalie sticks their foot out, I see the profession for what it is.

“HE STUCK A FOOT OUT! HE STUCK A FOOT OUT!” the announcer screams.

As we watch the replay about seven times, the analyst describes the command a person playing goalie must have of his body, as if it’s something he’s never seen it before. “I hope the viewers at home recognize how brilliant this save was,” the analyst says with reverence as we watch it. “The goalie is in the zone, and he’s just playing on another level. To have the wherewithal to know not only how, but when, to stick a foot out, you just can’t teach that.”

As one who has never played hockey, I have to imagine that teaching kids who want to play goalie when and how to stick a foot out is one of the first things they teach. It is not our intent to diminish the athleticism it takes to play goalie in this piece. When a puck is traveling at a high rate of speed and the goalie has a center in front of him, trying to block his view, and that goalie gloves the puck, it’s impressive. Those of us at home know we probably couldn’t do that on a regular basis. When a wing flicks a puck to the goal and a goalie sticks his foot out to stop its progression, however, that’s just what we call sports.

The key to most sports, (spoiler alert!) is to cross lines. The defense doesn’t want the offense to do that, so they use various parts of their body to try to prevent that from happening. This conflict can provide some noteworthy achievements, but most of the time it’s just a guy doing what they practice to prepare for such moments. If an announcer can convince a viewing audience that the results are a brilliant display of athleticism, they will win the job.

Creativity in Tight Spaces

Some of my favorite moments of inspiration arrived in tight spaces. My manager put me on suspension. “Get your numbers up, in 90 days, or you’re gone!” he said. With my little world crashing down around me, inconvenient flashes of inspiration bombarded me. Some were so good that I felt required to write them down. A guy interrupted me with a question, and I thought his mannerisms were perfect character-driven piece. The inspiration for another piece arrived when another fella said goodbye to me. My mind was on fire when I heard a set of lyrics from a Sufjan Steven’s song, and those lyrics inspired a novel I would spend the next two years writing. These were all inconvenient interruptions that took time away from the moments I should’ve spent trying to get my numbers up, but I couldn’t stop them from pounding into my brain.

It wasn’t a great novel, it turned out, but the inspiration for it struck me during a very inopportune moment of my life. I’ve had these moments before, I think we all have. They’re the “You’re not supposed to think about that now” moments when creativity seems to flourish. I had an “in-class” friend one time. We engaged in “what you’re not supposed to do” fun in class, when the teacher wasn’t looking. We developed a temporary, very real bond misbehaving, but when we ran into each other in the hallway, we had nothing to say to one another, other than a conspiratorial “there he is” point. I used to love to make my brother laugh in church, with stupid, little in-jokes that would not have been funny anywhere else. We were having naughty, “You’re not supposed to do that here” fun that required subtlety and a deft hand to avoid getting caught. Was that what my brain wanted, with my job on the line and my boss watching every move I made? Regardless, my mind was on fire with naughty, “You’re not supposed to be thinking that now” thoughts that I would spend the next two years completing.  

I did manage to quiet the inspirations long enough to survive the suspension, and I spent the next five years juggling my need to be creative and the need to be productive for the company. I wouldn’t say that these tight spaces always resulted in creative inspiration, but I was never come that close to losing my job again, and I would never have that much inspiration flooding my brain either.