Left & Right. Right & Left.

My mom arrives tomorrow.

I was given every middle-class opportunity. Good schools, basketball camp, art camp, churchianity, boy scouts, little league, brothers. Some things stuck and some didn't. We had an upright piano in our living room, to this day one of my favorite pianos, which, admittedly, is probably a chicken/egg situation. There's no precise age when I first approached that alter. Just an uninterrupted, blurry ascent as my legs dangled evercloser to the pedals. Old-timey piano bench pieces: mom playing the right hand, me playing the left with both.

Downingtown, Pennsylvania was a "main street community" long before they began advertising Downingtown as "A Main Street Community!" It was on that street, actually called Lancaster Ave, that my mom first chauffeured me, eight years young, to my first piano lesson in what would be just a few years later a quaint tea room. I still remember the first piece I was ever assigned, "Left & Right", and the second, "Right & Left". Each piece has only two notes, play, repeat.

(Both songs are still quite beautiful to me. And in the way that anything becomes everything if you plum a sufficiently deep depth, I can plainly see now that all secrets of all music were already captured in those first childish pieces, just as the terrifying complexity of an entire human body is written in the DNA of every single cell.)

And now, these almost twenty years later, all that remains is the path begun, legs dangling long ago. Everything else has changed, everything. Family, friends, myself, even God, who changeth not, has changed perhaps most of all: one of his best tricks.

They say that reality may actually be not three or four dimensions, but rather ten or eleven or twelve, though they are curled up, hidden between, unseen, but very real. I couldn't ask for a more perfect mirror, now that music, time, space, money, love, food, sex, they are all inseparable, all one, curled up together in pairs and pairs. Left & Right. Right & Left.

Give me enough time

Give me enough time, and I can explain it all to you. Everything...well, everything I understand at least, whatever that is. It's a bit. It's some, sometimes more than others. 

Give me three or so years to wallflower, to dip in and out of your life, to build a true trust, to grill you hamburgers, or long slices of yellow squash if you're a vegetarian. 

Give me your phone number, and then text me a few months later when you change it. 

Give me spontaneous conversations that show us how similar and different we really are, and give me a chance to show you that you have things to show me. 

Give me whichever pieces of your personality you're prone to present to whatever category of person I am to you. Give me enough time to see that tupperware type melt in the microwave. 

Give me a few bucks for tortilla chips; I'll get the movie later. 

Give me enough time, and I can help you. I can try to.

But I don't have enough time for any of this. I have between 3 and 5 minutes, an army of ones and zeroes, and a willingness to try to love you. Wish me luck.

Musings on Having a Beard

I guess I have had something of an itch lately -- to play with the notion of my own physical identity, with how I see myself, with how others see me, and how we both react. (Part of this has to do with my current obsession with short shorts, but that's another story for another time.) This kind of experience is part of the fabric of everyday reality for most. Whether it's clothing, make-up, tattoos or accessories, physical expressions of identity are common. But this is somewhat exotic for me; I don't count myself among the majority of people openly interested in actively crafting their outward image. I've never, ever felt even the slightest twinge to get anything pierced, or anything permanently written on my body. And while it would be naive to say that I don't dress and groom myself in a way that I find comfortable or cool or good, I'd say 90% of the time I just don't care.

It is this lack of caring that led to having a beard, which I guess I do right now. Isn't that funny: hair is one of the few things, if not the only thing about your physical appearance, that simply happens by not trying. You have to get dressed to wear clothes, you have to exercise to shape your body, you have to apply make-up to accentuate your features, but to grow hair, all you need to do is not cut it.

 

I'm writing this blog because yesterday, this subject reached something of a tipping point with me. Three people, in three completely different social contexts, went way out of their way to comment on my facial hair. I'm not just talking about someone saying, "Oh, growin' a beard, huh?" or "I like the beard, man." These were very interesting interactions.

#1. The "I Look Like Jesus" Comment

This observation deserves attention just because of the sheer number of times I've received it. Yesterday's specific example was a friend telling me, "Yeah, when you walked in the room and sat down, it felt like Jesus was watching." This is really interesting to me. Chew on this for a minute: Jesus is, without a doubt, the most famous person who has ever lived. He was so unique, so different from every other human being, that he's, well, he's Jesus. So how do you physically capture the image of Jesus? Show him walking on water? Lightning bolts coming out of his eyes? 20 feet tall? No. It's just some dude with a beard and long hair, smiling. Isn't that crazy?!

It goes back to what I was saying before about the whole lack-of-caring thing. My response to the "I Look Like Jesus" comment is this: contrary to our current culture of Mach 3's and electric shavers, to look like Jesus is simply the physical default position of being a human male. If all shaving and cutting paraphernalia vanished tomorrow, about a month from now, every human male in the world between the ages of 23 and 33 would look more or less like Jesus. I think it's such an interesting commentary on how small the minority must be of people who have not cut their hair, who have not shaved their face, that for someone to let the natural course of events happen looks unnatural. 

#2. The "Nobody Grows Facial Hair Like Dave Madden" Comment

This is a favorite of my friend David Tobey, who went to the trouble of interrupting my rehearsal yesterday to tell me how amazing I am at growing facial hair. Who knew? Must be all those facial hair growing supplements I've been taking.

#3. The "Long Stare...Is That Real?" Comment

This one was priceless. So I'm at the Barton Hills Market, a local convenience store run by some kind of foreigners, I dunno, maybe Indians? They're good people, if a little hard to understand sometimes. The guy working the register clearly did not have a confident grasp of the language, which probably added to the awkward flow of this conversation.

I was buying two Cokes and some mayo. This guy rings me up, and then just stops. Dead stops. Staring at my face, not saying a word. It was a long enough pause that I thought "maybe this guy is a narcoleptic, and he just fell asleep". I'm not being funny, I really thought that...this guy's glazed-over expression was so extreme. 

So he finally snaps out of it and just points and says, "Real?" Relieved that my cashier was not in fact dead, I say, "What?" Real, he persists, pointing to his own face. "The beard? No, it's not fake. Yes, it's real." Are you kidding me? Does my beard look fake? Why would I wear...no...why would anyone wear a fake beard around? My friend Brandon is standing behind me, and I turn to him with a can-you-believe-this-guy? I take my Coke, my mayo, and what little I can salvage of my dignity and leave.

Pflugie the Lonely Duck

It is sometimes said that there's a fine line between heaven and hell. I experienced this today. 

I met a few friends out at Pflugerville Lake, a man-made, mostly non-de-script-yet-generally-beautiful fresh water reservoir, 3 miles in circumference. I've been swimming all the time lately at Austin's beloved Barton Springs. After a lifetime of adequate swimming, it has recently occurred to me that I don't actually know how to swim at all. (I hope to someday try my hand at some triathlons so I've been working on this weakness.)

Both my swimming technique and endurance have improved dramatically in just a few weeks. In fact, we simply hung out in the water for perhaps an hour or so, about a quarter mile away from land, just swimming and treading water and floating. The water was warm and inviting, clean and bluish green. Out in the middle of nowhere, out of my element, just swimming. Heaven.

Then this duck approaches us, just swimming casually towards us. A common duck. My friend Melody informs me that she has seen this duck before and that it is famously friendly, that it likes people, that it allows people to pet it. Note: There are no other ducks in the entire lake. Literally. Zero. This is the only duck. Melody had named him "Lonely Pflugie". 

From afar, Lonely Pflugie paddles towards us. We're delighted. As he approaches, it becomes clear that he has chosen to swim directly to me. We laugh. I greet Pflugie. Pflugie continues to swim closer. And closer. Ten feet, five feet, arm's length. He slows. I am shocked at this duck's extraordinary confidence, his lack of fear. If only I knew. 

I timidly reach out and gently pet Pflugie's feathers. He seems to like this. He comes closer...he comes too close. He seems like he would just swim until he bumped into my face. This is a little too much random confident duck interaction for me. I back away. He follows. I back away more. He follows, but more aggressively. I gently splash him. He is undeterred by my water attack. Probably because, oh, I dunno, he's a duck. 

I splash harder, but it's no use. My wussy attacks are no match for millions of years of evolution. I reach out to Pflugie, but instead of petting him, I push him away. It seems like everything I do simply fans the flames of Pflugie's fire. By this point, I'm getting freaked out: Out in the middle of nowhere, out of my element, just swimming. Hell.

As the laughter of my "friends" rings in my ears, I attempt to escape. I swim as fast as I can towards shore, but Pflugie out-swims me without breaking a sweat. Probably because, oh, I dunno, he's a duck. I panic. I am not proud of what I did next, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  I punched Pflugie. Punched him right in his little duck body. It had no effect. This duck was like the fucking terminator, except with little cartoon hearts in his eyes.

I swam like crazy towards the shore, and it is at this point that Pflugie caught up to me and climbed on my back. I shook my feathered foe loose and gave him a thunderous kick to the ribs. While it surely stunned him, I was terrified to think what Hellish duck fury would now be unleashed upon me. It is at this climactic moment that I looked up and saw my savior: a big dog swimming close to shore. Sure enough, as I approached the dog, "Nanook", Pflugie slowed and eventually stopped, keeping his distance. The nightmare was over.

Epilogue

Pflugie was not hurt by my water karate. We watched him happily harass other swimmers for a while, and eventually swim off into the distance, all alone. Who is this Lonely Pflugie? What made him the way he is? How did he get separated from his family? These are questions that may never be answered. But I, for one, will tell Pflugie's story, the story of a brave young duck just trying to find his place in the world, trying to spread love and getting kicked in the ribs. All I know is, if you're ever up at Lake Pflugerville and a friendly duck swims towards you, swim like hell. 

Let's Talk Music

There's this little anecdote I've told so many times that a) my close friends must be SO tired of hearing it and 2) I've actually come to believe that I made it up. I mean, I'm pretty sure I didn't, but now...I'm pretty sure I did. It goes something like this:

Pianists start out by learning the piano. But they also learn music theory, and ear training. And then they pick up an old bass guitar and start plucking around on it. And maybe they learn a few chords on guitar. And eventually, they buy an amp and a guitar, and then they start writing songs, and they want to record them, so they start messing around on computers. Then they get a drum set and learn how to play that.

Guitarists start out by learning the guitar. Then they buy a better guitar. Then they buy a blue guitar. And a sparkly guitar...and guitar effects...and a guitar amp...and a semi-hollow-body guitar...and a 12-string guitar...and a vintage guitar...etc.

You probably only think that's funny if you already know how true it is, because it's one of those "it's funny 'cause it's true" things. There is just something about the piano that creates an intense outward focus, and something about the guitar that creates an inward focus. Nothing wrong with that. Just different.

In that way, I'm a pianist through and through. I have this insatiable appetite for new musical perspectives, understandings, languages. When I was in high school, I became intolerably frustrated with my own inability to understand the drum set. Drummers are easily the least understood of all mainstream musicians. As a pianist, I couldn't comprehend a world comprised solely of rhythm, lacking all melodic and harmonic content. It would be like someone from our three-dimensional world trying to exist in a one-dimensional reality ("Wait, I don't get it...I still have height, but where should I put my length and width?" (<---wow, dorky!)) So I (or probably my mom) bought a drum set and practiced my brains out for a summer. In a closet in a church where they kept the air-conditioner. Very glamourous. 

I've practiced along the way, enough for my nascent skillz to survive and sometimes even thrive. And here's really what I have to say: I am really glad I put in the time, because this drumming thing is about to get really bad-ass. For all of us.

See, although drums are the most ancient of all instruments, drum set is brand spankin' new. The modern drum set wasn't even around until the 1930s. Compared with piano and guitar, that's just a wee baby. People messed with pianos for a long time, adding this, changing that, but after a few centuries of evolution, consensus is reached, standards are set, and today, a piano is a piano is a piano. They've all got 88 keys and the same 3 pedals. Any pianist can sit down at any piano and feel at home.

The same can't be said for drum set. It's so young that people are still messing with it, experimenting and deconstructing, fidgeting and redefining. Engineers can't agree on how best to mic a kit. Drummers can't agree on how many toms to have. Or how high to sit. Or what the measurements of depth and circumference should be. Consensus has not been reached. The evolution continues.

I think this is the Age of the Drum Set. The 60s and 70s had the electric guitar, the 80s had the synth, the 90s had modern recording techniques. From all different corners of the music world, from different genres and styles, I feel like drumming is honing itself, refining itself, maturing, really standing on its own two legs, once shaky and now strong. It's beginning to display a newfound confidence and creativity I've never heard before.

The way I see it, for decades now there's been something of a template for modern rock/pop/soul/funk/blues drumming. It was basically all the same beat. What's that? You want me to play drums for this brand new song of yours? No problem. How 'bout we start with me playing the kick on 1 and 3 and the snare on 2 and 4, and when it's just kind of cruisin' along, I'll hit these smaller cymbals, and when it gets all big and loud I'll hit these other bigger cymbals. Add appropriate modifications to accentuate melody, rinse, repeat. Cool? Cool.

And it was cool! It is cool! Duh, that shit will make you shake your money maker, wonder where that $60 that was in your wallet went and why "balls" is written on your forehead. 

But what I'm seeing and hearing in today's bold new generation of drummers is the willingness to leave behind Mother Template and start anew. What is this song about? What is it trying to say? How can my part complement what the music is trying to express? Death Cab For Cutie. Cake. Imogen Heap. Switchfoot. And increasingly so, If I have any say in the matter, Dave Madden.

The Music Industry does not equal Music

My friend Amy Mitchell, young, shrewd, intelligent music attorney, just sent me a link to a young (about a week old), shrewd, intelligent blog posting (by Gerd Leonhard). It contains all kinds of new, amazing ideas about music and technology and the Internet that, to your average consumer would sound like something straight out of a Ray Bradbury piece.

It uses words like micro-music-channels, longtailing, MediaRSS, wimax-ing, imoogli, beatwibes, digggster, RL. It talks about "this will be the next that", leaving many of us confused, because we haven't even heard of that yet.

As a musician, it's impossible to avoid these conversations. You may or may not be aware that the entire music industry is in a state of panic and crisis right now. Remember 9 years ago when you downloaded that N*Sync single for free using Limewire? Well, you don't get something for nothing, the trickle down has happened, and you (and hundreds of millions of others) have brought the industry to its collective knees. It is in its death throes.

The funny thing is that even as these millions of cogs were turning -- as people were forwarding links, tweeting on Facebook, checking out new music on Myspace, syncing their iPods, honing their streaming radio stations on Pandora and otherwise getting their technoratic rocks off, as my friend Amy was sending me this blog about waves upon waves of new gadgetry, new mediums, new platforms -- I was sitting here in my room, playing harmonica. I am learning to play the harmonica.

Because I'm a musician. What new platform is that?

How many flash drive Terra bytes are in the college-ruled Five Star notebook that I wrote my newest song in the other day, a song written on my acoustic guitar, all rosewood and steel and fingers and vibrating air, a song in C# minor, a song about being aware of your life, living in the present?

Where is the 360 merch-publishing-online-distribution-record deal in this Hohner Bluesband harmonica, a little too moist because I'm still learning how to block two reeds with my tongue, learning how to use the shape of my cheeks and mouth to bend notes flat?

A message, from musicians to the music industry: I don't know what shape this whole thing will take. I don't know if we'll be lifted up, turned around, or screwed harder than ever. I hope everything works out. I hope everybody wins. But at the end of the day, I know my place. It isn't with any infrastructure of any kind, but with the raw material of music itself. And that will never change.

A Letter from Melinda Wheatley

This is an email from my friend Melinda. She loves my song, "You Don't Have to Worry"...but thanks to her persistence, I'm officially changing the name of the song to "Dirty Feet".

I was leaving home this afternoon for a meeting downtown, feeling absolute fear over my work situation. It woke me up several times this morning before daylight. That, in turn, kept me in bed until almost noon. I develop horrible fantasies of being homeless and without a car or husband or friend to save me; my kids have gone onto new lives and are embarrassed of their mother's inability to act like a grownup. These kinds of thoughts wrap around me sometimes. I'd assume they do it to everyone at some point or another.

Your song comes on and it's different for me today. Usually, I hear your voice and it's like I'm listening to someone I love (I do), and I'm envisioning you singing it, writing it. I'm usually thanking God for you being you, the usual shit when you love someone and want them to do well and create great stuff. It's part maternal, part friend, part sister. I'll feel the sense of "how cool to know this incredible young man," etc.

Today it was the backdrop for my own music video, the message to a girl who's got a weighty problem. I felt the sense of commonality, that place we all need to be reminded exists for everyone else- that things are a bit dirty; indeed, they should be a bit dirty.

I felt God say I was okay, channeled through my sweet Dave Madden. It was profound and sweet; when it was over I smiled. I'll be okay, I'll be alright.

For this, I wanted to thank you.

M