0703 Wednesday 01 November 2023
“You must really hate me sometimes.”
Mother’s voice is the voice of resigned reason. A paragon of rationality. The timbre declares it soberly. In the half-darkness, she is looking at me, or, in this moment, through me.
“No”, I say.
Mainly to reassure myself, rather than an authentic, well-reasoned reply.
My skin is clammy and cold. The air is filled with the subtle funk of disappointment and a diaper that needs changing. The need for a lack of cruelty in this moment is absolute. The semantics aren’t lost on me.
I push forth, through the moment.
She had rang for me on the digital pushbutton like a guest at Downton Abbey.
And here I was, in the dark, cold morning trying very hard to be compassionate, kind; dignified like a Downton butler.
It’s obvious what needs to happen. An unspoken expectation articulated silently.
1811 Sunday 05 November 2023
I’m awkwardly leaning around the studio rack, flashlight in one hand, and the end of a 10 foot patch cord in the other. I’m about to push in the Neutrik 1/4 inch jack into the final jack sleeve of my second patchbay.
My back hurts. And although I’m engaging my core to support this contorted position, it isn’t without its challenges anyway.
Over 200 feet of cable sits between the back of the studio rack, and the shelving system holding my effects pedals. With the final patch cord connected to the back of the patchbay, I can now effortlessly introduce these effects into the signal flow very quickly. I can stay in the creative flow without having to stop.
Workflow efficiencies aren’t “sexy”, but they matter.
The cables draw a thick rubbery line behind my monitor and Beheringer DAW controller, underscoring their importance.
Power is next.
0631 Monday 06 November 2023
With the change in daylight time, the morning has become brighter earlier. But as with most things, this is only a temporary fix. As we get deeper into the calendar, even a concerted effort at holding off time will not be enough.
Daylight will become a limited resource. And with it, the rumination will be more frequent.
I can’t remember the last time I slept in. A decade at least. As I get older, I seem to wake up earlier if for no other reason than to enjoy the quietude. It’s such cliche, but, at least for me: i prefer it.
Yesterday I was able to wire up the power bricks for the effects pedals. One Voodoo Lab Pedal Power bar per shelf. I’m officially out of power outlets now. Three power strips supply power to the studio, and a fourth, a home office.
Actually, that’s not true. I still have one open outlet in the racked Furman Power Conditioner reserved for the final open rack slot.
The tv in the sunroom clicks off, anouncing a subtle request. There aren’t too many of those these days. The preference for a Shock & Awe assault on the senses from a screen has become ingrained. An advertising arms race run amok. Who can resist the juice of a dopamine hit expertly administered by the finest minds in service of an advertising blitz?
As I sit here, in the light of the morning, I wonder what anxieties I’ll be scheduled to to experience today. Which ones are knowingly and purposefully imposed on myself; and which ones to be executed by a third party. And, at the end of the day, what will the sum total of all the different anxieties net out to: a debit or a credit; a contribution, or a theft; a nourishment, or a deprivation?
I’ll be lucky to break even today.
0911 Saturday November 11 2023
I walk into the sunroom with a handful of meds. Mother is already awake. I’ve caught here staring up at the ceiling like a ruminating 16 year old when events still have a way of being outsized and momentous.
But now, at 80, probably seems quaint and amusing.
“Happy Birthday, Mother.” I’m holding the meds in my fingers, ready to drop in her mouth. She opens wide, and the pills plop into her maw before she turns over and takes a drink of water from her plastic cup.
She looks at me and registers the unspoken solicitation.
“I don’t feel eighty.”
How old do you feel?
Forty, maybe?
It’s strange, and yet, I find the time skew entirely plausible. Maybe our internal clocks run at a slower rate. Each person, an event horizon of their own, with a gravity well that bends time as one gets closer. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Close with someone, time has a way of slipping, stretching. The wow and flutter of experience the only marker of faith collapsing into a moment before it slips away forever.
Will these words become the fodder for that moment? Will I recognize it when it comes? Or will it be too fast: the sound of a firecracker in a supermarket, or Mall parking lot. The sound of metal across a median. Or will it be more banal; the low-bass reverb of a fall in the shower. That last one, a friend of mine heard and never came back. The sound of time expanding to fill the void.
0816 Saturday November 18 2023
I’m trying to remember the signal flow of the Moog DFAM drum synth through a pink hazy fog. My body aches all over. My hands tremble faintly while I trace the patch-cords, cross-referencing a “map legend” of the patch bays in a spreadsheet. I’m drifting through the pink mist of a cytokine storm triggered by a COVID vaccination.
The DFAM is being sequenced and triggered by the Roland TR8S, and fed through an elaborate signal chain to change its sound. It sounds like somebody banging on a door deep underground. Maybe a bunker. Locked in and terrified. Hopeful, though. Why else signal for help? Somehow, while patching in the ToneBeast, I lost the signal.
The muscles drooping over my body are telling me they got a signal, loud and clear. Yeah, thanks for that. Eventually, hours from now, the pain will subside. But for now: a cytokine storm to create immunity.
The signal I’m trying to hear, though, is somehow absent. The void of silence. Not even the hiss of a noise floor, just dead air.
Through the pink mist, I begin again. Fail. Fail again.
I start over, from First Principles, and trace the signal through its various state changes before arriving here… in this moment. A dead signal. A broken connection. Somehow.
I’m shivering in the bright sunny morning, on a Shaker chair, with headphones on. Tracing the inputs and the outputs, the debits and credits, the transformations of the signal through a convoluted path of hardware.
I trace my finger along the patch-cords, out of 5, into 33, out of 9, into 32.
I realize my mistake. The spreadsheet shows Bay 32 to be the input for the Quadraverb.
I pull the patch-cord out of 32 and jack it into 31.
The DFAM announces itself without shame.
Immediately, a new idea occurs to me. I grab another, smaller and thinner patch-cord and run it from the Minibrute LFO output to the DFAM Filter input. The LFO oscillates in the shape of a sine wave, changing the Filter parameters in relation to its position along the wave.
The sound buckles as the Filter changes, like a submersible microseconds before implosion. It’s the sound of pressure and hypoxia. It’s the sound of a signal contorted, transformed. And it’s a beginning.
1951 Saturday November 26 2023
The air purifier hums loudly. The phrase, “I sit collapsed like an empty monument.” emerges from the depths of memory, providing commentary on the moment.
I laugh. The voice in my head sounds vaguely female; powerful. Authoritative.
I realize it’s the preamble to the start of a 25 year old album by Sister Machine Gun.
It’s Saturday evening, a few days after Thanksgiving. Mother is playing one of her computer games.
My dog lays on the floor, ruminating. Beyond the noise of the purifier, the din of a game show. Alfonso Ribero is advising a player on the rules of Catch-21.
The house is still, otherwise. I wonder, if one were to peek through the window from outside, would this be categorized a Rockefeller moment…?