Things had conspired to keep me on a PC. I liked that you could configure it yourself, that you had more free software available for it, with more platform flexibility. The x factor for Macs seemed so boutique, so full of shit that I was never really tempted. Then, one day between an open-source mp3 word processor that wouldn't stop crashing and a mysterious virus that emailed photos of my detumescent junk to my extended family and all my business contacts, something shifted. I found myself paying closer attention to the commercials, to the generally well-adjusted personalities and successful lives of the people I knew who "thought different." I began to wonder if it wasn't time to think different myself.
I went to the Apple Store. It was packed and everybody there seemed, I don't know how to put it, somehow hotter than they actually were. It wasn't that people were necessarily more physically fit, but the dudes who were 50 pounds overweight somehow knew how to wear it, and women (snaggletoothed but proud) seemed generally more interested in talking to them, about the latest accessories, about the iPad, about the ramifications of the new Iphone on communication as we know it. They all went bathed in a bright white light. I was hooked, and I almost broken down right there and bought a laptop on credit in the store. Fortunately, because I was so caught up in the moment I actually might have gone ahead with it then and there, the salespeople were too busy to answer my questions. By the time one had time for me, I had lost my nerve.
I drove home in a cloud of self-hate and lonely misery and cried for a long time. I made popcorn and jerked off and when that didn't calm me down I did it again, this time to the FBI Most Wanted website and when that still didn't do the trick I got drunk and dialed anyone who (a) had ever slept with me or (b) had even thought about it. Those few who still had the same number and were willing to pick up -- as a rule these represented category (b) -- could offer little advice. In the end, my situation was impossible. I wanted an Apple, but couldn't justify the $2500 it would cost for the computer and the cool new clothes to go with it. Finally, Ramona, definitively, sadly, category (b) Ramona, advised me to find one used and save for the clothes at a later date.
I was quite fortunate to find a used Macbook on Craigslist. The guy who sold it to was only willing to meet after midnight and at the Wawa of my choosing. He twitched a little and maybe slobbered once as he counted the money (and for a second I thought he was going to stab me and bolt) but the price was right. It worked great and eventually I would grow to appreciate the "Property of the University of Connecticut" stamped on the thing in bold, black immovable type. I think that hint of danger may have even added cachet or mystery at Starbucks, where for months after I was to parade my new laptop like a highly-convenient newborn child.
I got the clothes, as well: two Banana Republic shirts that I wash in the bathtub to save on detergent; one pair of Banana Republic pants that I wear every day and keep as clean as possible using Handy Wipes; and a pair of Berkenstocks that I wear rain, sleet, or snow.
The results have been outstanding. My world is bathed in a bright, cathode light, bold, heavenly light that emanates from behind doors and windows and through the branches of happy trees. My boss is off my back now, and on my steady diet of cupcakes and Mountain Dew I actually seem to be losing weight. The toothaches and painful diarrhea have stopped and my phone is always ringing. The best part is that I can pick up: It's never bill collectors or my mom or wrong numbers for the funeral home down the street. No, on the other end is Ramona, definitively, happily, category (a) Ramona.
10.20.2010
10.04.2010
reverse déjà vu
A selfish perk of parenting is getting to watch lessons and strategies that apply specifically to you, absorbed and expressed unfiltered by someone with infinitely less baggage than you bring to things yourself. In effect, from a very early age kids give you advice on how to live, advice that for its innocent implication or expression is somehow more hearable.
The kid's interests are catholic but skew categorically to music and sugar, to screaming for fun and throwing things, to Shrek and eggs and never going to sleep.
Subject also displays avid interest in garage doors.
For a while he would demand that I push the button, and each time he'd give a jump as the door engaged. Now, like everything (piloting a jet, open heart surgery, killing someone bare handed) he wants to do it himself.
Grandma and Peepaw have prime double garage doors, which open onto a tree-lined block filled with quiet autumn light so distilled and savory as to seem flown in from another country as a super-secret upper-middle-class suburban perk. The doors, the aura and smell of the garage are imbued with grandparent magic, characteristics of a fairy-tale world already remembered later in life as experienced now, in a kind of reverse déjà vu.
Saturday we were at it again, me the holder at switch-height, him opening and closing those vaunted doors. This time you could see a new thread: the boy was trying to conquer his fear. Each time he would push the button, each time giving a jump when the door engaged. Each time too, though, the jump would get less pronounced.
The kid's interests are catholic but skew categorically to music and sugar, to screaming for fun and throwing things, to Shrek and eggs and never going to sleep.
Subject also displays avid interest in garage doors.
For a while he would demand that I push the button, and each time he'd give a jump as the door engaged. Now, like everything (piloting a jet, open heart surgery, killing someone bare handed) he wants to do it himself.
Grandma and Peepaw have prime double garage doors, which open onto a tree-lined block filled with quiet autumn light so distilled and savory as to seem flown in from another country as a super-secret upper-middle-class suburban perk. The doors, the aura and smell of the garage are imbued with grandparent magic, characteristics of a fairy-tale world already remembered later in life as experienced now, in a kind of reverse déjà vu.
Saturday we were at it again, me the holder at switch-height, him opening and closing those vaunted doors. This time you could see a new thread: the boy was trying to conquer his fear. Each time he would push the button, each time giving a jump when the door engaged. Each time too, though, the jump would get less pronounced.
10.02.2010
impact
I work for a charity in the South Bronx. Most of my job is stringing together words, and shaping and polishing other people's writing. Sometimes I go to meetings where people ask questions about the words we've written, and I do my best to answer, or punt to someone who can.
The chief impact of my work is financial. I bring in money to help pay the salaries of other staff, who go out into the world and have real impact. On good days that equation is enough to justify my work. On bad days I wonder if it isn't circular, if I'm not changing the world at all, but rather just being a guy who polishes words and thanks people for their contributions and does his best to sleep at night.
My relationship to the South Bronx -- like my relationship to many things -- is one of distant love. I walk around in love with the neighborhood and the people I don't know and the Spanish they speak that I rarely fully grasp. Then I retreat to the top floor of the tallest building on the block and polish words, looking out at the people on the street below.
From that view you can't see much of people's faces but you can see their postures, how they walk, and you can infer what you like about how their lives are going. It's hard to assess direct impact from that height and maybe it's just as well.
Last year someone gave me a coat at random, a nice winter coat with a lot of pockets. It was a generous thing to do and the coat fit me perfectly. I could've afforded it I guess (one of the real impacts of my work to polish words). But it's a nicer coat than I would've purchased. I'm just not a very stylish person.
Tonight I left work late to meet my family in Manhattan for a late dinner. I was wearing the coat for the first time this year. It's one of those rare coats that makes sense in fall and winter, somehow it just adjusts magically to the temperature. It's a comfortable coat.
The walk to the subway is short, but tonight on my way down the hill a woman stumbled from my right to land face-first on the curb. She broke the fall a little with her hands and a lot with her mouth and forehead. It look liked she'd blacked out. She struggled to get up but she crumpled on the sidewalk. Someone walking by said drugs in Spanish and kept going. A couple of us stopped.
The woman was bleeding from the mouth and couldn't really right herself (though she kept trying). One of the people who stopped called 911. We tried to convince the woman that she should stay lying down, because she looked pretty bad. She really would've rather left, but she couldn't. Still, it looked kind of sad to see her lying there on the cold sidewalk, so I took off my coat and put it under her head while the same few of us waited for the ambulance to come.
It wasn't drugs, or if it was it wasn't just drugs. The woman said she was diabetic, trying to get as comfortable as she could, bleeding from the head and mouth with a coat for a pillow on a busy street, barely able to express herself.
Maybe she still has the coat with her at the hospital. Maybe I'll find it on my way in to work on Monday, crumbled in a ball and in real need of a wash, but I doubt it. Sometimes the world passes you objects and sometimes it asks nicely to have them back. Sometimes the way the world asks isn't as nice as you'd want.
The chief impact of my work is financial. I bring in money to help pay the salaries of other staff, who go out into the world and have real impact. On good days that equation is enough to justify my work. On bad days I wonder if it isn't circular, if I'm not changing the world at all, but rather just being a guy who polishes words and thanks people for their contributions and does his best to sleep at night.
My relationship to the South Bronx -- like my relationship to many things -- is one of distant love. I walk around in love with the neighborhood and the people I don't know and the Spanish they speak that I rarely fully grasp. Then I retreat to the top floor of the tallest building on the block and polish words, looking out at the people on the street below.
From that view you can't see much of people's faces but you can see their postures, how they walk, and you can infer what you like about how their lives are going. It's hard to assess direct impact from that height and maybe it's just as well.
Last year someone gave me a coat at random, a nice winter coat with a lot of pockets. It was a generous thing to do and the coat fit me perfectly. I could've afforded it I guess (one of the real impacts of my work to polish words). But it's a nicer coat than I would've purchased. I'm just not a very stylish person.
Tonight I left work late to meet my family in Manhattan for a late dinner. I was wearing the coat for the first time this year. It's one of those rare coats that makes sense in fall and winter, somehow it just adjusts magically to the temperature. It's a comfortable coat.
The walk to the subway is short, but tonight on my way down the hill a woman stumbled from my right to land face-first on the curb. She broke the fall a little with her hands and a lot with her mouth and forehead. It look liked she'd blacked out. She struggled to get up but she crumpled on the sidewalk. Someone walking by said drugs in Spanish and kept going. A couple of us stopped.
The woman was bleeding from the mouth and couldn't really right herself (though she kept trying). One of the people who stopped called 911. We tried to convince the woman that she should stay lying down, because she looked pretty bad. She really would've rather left, but she couldn't. Still, it looked kind of sad to see her lying there on the cold sidewalk, so I took off my coat and put it under her head while the same few of us waited for the ambulance to come.
It wasn't drugs, or if it was it wasn't just drugs. The woman said she was diabetic, trying to get as comfortable as she could, bleeding from the head and mouth with a coat for a pillow on a busy street, barely able to express herself.
Maybe she still has the coat with her at the hospital. Maybe I'll find it on my way in to work on Monday, crumbled in a ball and in real need of a wash, but I doubt it. Sometimes the world passes you objects and sometimes it asks nicely to have them back. Sometimes the way the world asks isn't as nice as you'd want.
10.01.2010
for the branches of trees
Funereal for the branches of trees, for leaves. All night the wind shook the house and when we woke up we were out to sea; the cat, the boy and I left you sleeping for once and rowed us back.
When the wind stops carrying portent take me out to pasture, plant me in the ground to ward off crows. Do leave a television with Netflix Instant, do lobby them to stock it more generously with the rare celluloid written thoughtful and crisp but for chrissakes let me be, don't make the mistake of talking my way. One day someone will get a bright and novel idea to pave over the field to build another thoughtful shopping center for the import of faraway vegetables. I venture they will still need a warder off for hassling crows, or at the very least someone to hoist out from the cellar every autumn to spice up the decor.
Funereal for the branches of trees, rotten where they sheltered years of alright suburban yard. A canopy not so diminished by the loss of one or several planks, a nature's structure hedging its bets in layered lattice until one day the whole thing gives way and falls, or some lawyer-fearing yardsmen call a tree service and extract further any hint of mystery from this old soil.
When the wind stops carrying portent take me out to pasture, plant me in the ground to ward off crows. Do leave a television with Netflix Instant, do lobby them to stock it more generously with the rare celluloid written thoughtful and crisp but for chrissakes let me be, don't make the mistake of talking my way. One day someone will get a bright and novel idea to pave over the field to build another thoughtful shopping center for the import of faraway vegetables. I venture they will still need a warder off for hassling crows, or at the very least someone to hoist out from the cellar every autumn to spice up the decor.
Funereal for the branches of trees, rotten where they sheltered years of alright suburban yard. A canopy not so diminished by the loss of one or several planks, a nature's structure hedging its bets in layered lattice until one day the whole thing gives way and falls, or some lawyer-fearing yardsmen call a tree service and extract further any hint of mystery from this old soil.
9.28.2010
graceless and ashamed
We're here to see an old ritual start again, built from preserved schematics and sewn from a continuous thread of anguish and pain. We've all brought our own pain and we're here to offer it up, some of us more stylishly than others, some of us older and further still from grace, some of us fatter and with more hair, hair in awkward and fearsome places, hair that makes us think of death.
JD expresses concern for the health of the performers; they are technicians, they are precision drivers into radiant discord, and they also look a little like our aging parents. Their actions are to be held close now in memory, because they cannot last forever. If this be some mislaid and freakish tribe, these are (if not elders) then our most senior warriors, scarred and broken, precise from the memory of a thousand futile hunts.
I offer DX a Sour Patch Kid and he refuses. I think to myself that I'm getting old too, that the time comes when a man must put down Sour Patch Kids. When I was young, I thought of childish things. Now that I'm old, I like sour things. I think about buying (but do not buy) a second pack.
The opening act a kind of mis-adventure; leading with the promise of gorgeous accordion that fills the old and lonely hall with sorrow, with pain remembered from across the sea, long ago. Followed by (it sounded) the ramblings of a charmless troubadour, the one you always end up stuck talking to at the party. A nice enough person, I'm sure.
From this you fear that order will never appear but out of the din arises Thor, sturdy and true, down-laying a blanket or better a sea of bells. Now the water is put to fire, now the angels fly from it, their eyes alit too; now they are burning, lighting the night sky with the pain of lost love.
This is a first show, this is a holding together, the eyes of the band locked to the central drummer, he and the bassist with the whole band and the whole audience hanging on each move. We are wishing, we are holding together and praying and by some point we are angels too, transported, on fire, over the ocean.
When Thor takes off his shirt you know you have arrived, but don't let it distract you. The man obviously goes to the gym; a nod to health, to health's need, to the rule of the body. Gira (this really happened) describes his naked body as ice cream on a stick, with "a little thing sticking out." Near the end of the show the thread is nearly lost, the rhythm section must rally. Gira implores, the table nearly skews but for its near loss the fire burns only moreso higher, only moreso killing and scalding and renewing, moreso branding or tattooing us in our shared pain.
At shows I retreat to my head and listen too technically, for mistakes, for chord progressions, for melody in its fluid parameters, a million ways to listen and stay in my head, detached, barely dancing, always self conscious. But at some point in this show I am really transported, non-technical, lost in time in a way that has never happened to me before, set into a pinball collage of old memories of pain.
I remember a boy a long time ago, a young boy just a little older than my son, remember his confused pain and all the pain that followed it a bit predictably, stupidly, unconsciously, the pain I've felt, the myriad and shameful pain I've caused. All I can remember is pain, stupid pain, futile and ridiculous pain, and I feel sorry for that boy at a distance, as if he were another person I remembered.
All around the room you see faces intent, offering, all of us here to offer our pain, here with the hope that it can be channeled in this ritual, poured out of us and into the loud air, blown free and leaving our spirits lighter, more alive, less drowning in time and memory, for God so loved the world he gave his only son.
Why do the angels hide their eyes from the light, graceless and ashamed, aloft in a stellar column, awaiting heaven's fire. What do they remember of their sin, what of it did they cherish, for what is their skin full of memory, their mouths, their fingers alive with the memory of fire.
Why do they mis-hang their heads, their limbs, why are their eyes so without life, what do they share of their last dreams, their pain, the looks of the ones they knew, or loved. Once there were their mouths, their fingers, kissing fire from tongue to tongue, once they lived.
Swans show @ the Trocadero, 9/28/10.
JD expresses concern for the health of the performers; they are technicians, they are precision drivers into radiant discord, and they also look a little like our aging parents. Their actions are to be held close now in memory, because they cannot last forever. If this be some mislaid and freakish tribe, these are (if not elders) then our most senior warriors, scarred and broken, precise from the memory of a thousand futile hunts.
I offer DX a Sour Patch Kid and he refuses. I think to myself that I'm getting old too, that the time comes when a man must put down Sour Patch Kids. When I was young, I thought of childish things. Now that I'm old, I like sour things. I think about buying (but do not buy) a second pack.
The opening act a kind of mis-adventure; leading with the promise of gorgeous accordion that fills the old and lonely hall with sorrow, with pain remembered from across the sea, long ago. Followed by (it sounded) the ramblings of a charmless troubadour, the one you always end up stuck talking to at the party. A nice enough person, I'm sure.
From this you fear that order will never appear but out of the din arises Thor, sturdy and true, down-laying a blanket or better a sea of bells. Now the water is put to fire, now the angels fly from it, their eyes alit too; now they are burning, lighting the night sky with the pain of lost love.
This is a first show, this is a holding together, the eyes of the band locked to the central drummer, he and the bassist with the whole band and the whole audience hanging on each move. We are wishing, we are holding together and praying and by some point we are angels too, transported, on fire, over the ocean.
When Thor takes off his shirt you know you have arrived, but don't let it distract you. The man obviously goes to the gym; a nod to health, to health's need, to the rule of the body. Gira (this really happened) describes his naked body as ice cream on a stick, with "a little thing sticking out." Near the end of the show the thread is nearly lost, the rhythm section must rally. Gira implores, the table nearly skews but for its near loss the fire burns only moreso higher, only moreso killing and scalding and renewing, moreso branding or tattooing us in our shared pain.
At shows I retreat to my head and listen too technically, for mistakes, for chord progressions, for melody in its fluid parameters, a million ways to listen and stay in my head, detached, barely dancing, always self conscious. But at some point in this show I am really transported, non-technical, lost in time in a way that has never happened to me before, set into a pinball collage of old memories of pain.
I remember a boy a long time ago, a young boy just a little older than my son, remember his confused pain and all the pain that followed it a bit predictably, stupidly, unconsciously, the pain I've felt, the myriad and shameful pain I've caused. All I can remember is pain, stupid pain, futile and ridiculous pain, and I feel sorry for that boy at a distance, as if he were another person I remembered.
All around the room you see faces intent, offering, all of us here to offer our pain, here with the hope that it can be channeled in this ritual, poured out of us and into the loud air, blown free and leaving our spirits lighter, more alive, less drowning in time and memory, for God so loved the world he gave his only son.
Why do the angels hide their eyes from the light, graceless and ashamed, aloft in a stellar column, awaiting heaven's fire. What do they remember of their sin, what of it did they cherish, for what is their skin full of memory, their mouths, their fingers alive with the memory of fire.
Why do they mis-hang their heads, their limbs, why are their eyes so without life, what do they share of their last dreams, their pain, the looks of the ones they knew, or loved. Once there were their mouths, their fingers, kissing fire from tongue to tongue, once they lived.
Swans show @ the Trocadero, 9/28/10.
9.24.2010
rhinoceros
This is going to sound a little weird but the other day when I was cleaning the basement I found the skeleton of a rhinoceros. I'm pretty sure it was a young rhinoceros. I'm not going to lie, when a man reaches a certain age and loses control of his basement and the years go by sluggish but inevitable -- like plus-sized models heralding hand-me-down fall fashion on a cheap and freely available kind of ketamine -- when that man one day can stand it no more and he cleans his basement and unearths the skeleton of a rhinoceros, it gives him pause.
When that day comes a man takes stock.
I'm clear on the fact that cleaning the basement was probably overdue. Most reasonable observers or agencies concerned for the welfare of the young or the population at large would tell you it was. When I told my wife I was finally going to clean the basement (my tone hopeful, my eyes full of romantic spark and pointed vaguely in the direction of her face) she grunted and began softly to cry, which I took to mean that she knew for sure that the cleaning was long overdue and in fact by this point totally insufficient. Then my wife buried her face in her hands and cried less softly and it was five or ten minutes before she could watch TV or text or even drink.
I was determined to clean the basement myself. On TV when a man loses control of his house (or even when he just falls a little behind for a few years) all these TV people basically surprise him at his house in the dead of night and like rape him or punch him in the stomach or face until he cries on camera, then his relatives testify to how impossible and selfish he is until he cries some more, then a therapist asks him why he's crying and while he answers a dozen or so people in ninja costumes break down his door and rape or punch him again and wisk everything that isn't nailed down to the town square for a televised sacrificial bonfire.
You can spare me that, friend. When I make a mess or get a little behind on things I want to handle it myself, even if it takes me a while to get to it. And it isn't like having a clean house is some salve or boon. If your house is perfectly clean you still have to live in it with the same people you lived with before, you just have less stuff now to distract you.
If for some reason it *were* me on TV, I wouldn't be the bozo clutching my privates defensively and blubbering to the camera about my lost years or how I never really knew what a clean house was. I'd have fun with it. There'd be outright sabotage ("oh, I see you found the deadly adders... I'd nearly lost hope"). There would be costumes; I'd spend most but not all of the episode dressed as a chicken, and the rest of it in a bathrobe. There would also be a room prepared for weeks in advance wherein (I would try to convince them) I routinely expressed my heartfelt belief that my urine should be preserved in three liter bottles that had once held Wegman's Diet Root Beer, and that feces is the living expression of God's will and should be smeared liberally onto the faces of all who enter my home.
As I said, when I found the rhinoceros it gave me pause. I consulted with my wife, who spat in my face and kicked me in the balls, which I took to mean that she also had no memory of having a rhinoceros of indeterminate age in our house at any point. But then she got a beer and sat watching ESPN, which I took as a positive sign, a flicker of possibility that "the grill was still hot."
Back downstairs I puzzled over the skeleton. I thought about having a yard sale or hawking it on Craigslist but I remembered, probably from TV, that most of the time that's just an excuse someone makes when they aren't ready to part with their loot.
I thought of working the rhinoceros skeleton into the decor of the basement, making it the focal point of some prehistoric man-cave, but I figured more than likely it would just end up piled under thousands of copies of The Sporting News, exactly as it had been before. I thought of the ninjas and the masked gentleman with the taser and my brother-in-law explaining what a douche I was on national TV. I thought of my children and what they'd say, what their friends would say, what their own future children would say. Most of all I thought of the spirit of the rhinoceros, held bound to earth, lost and alone in a suburban landscape that it never could have chosen for itself.
Then I started breaking down the skeleton into the smallest groupings I could get it into and started piling those in trash bags, and I bagged until my hands bled, and then I bagged some more.
When I got back from the dump my wife was on the porch drinking mojitos. I told her I'd made real progress and asked if she might make me a mojito. She told me to fuck myself and called me by another man's name, which I took to mean make your own mojito.
I did and we sat out on the porch, listening to the summer cars out on the freeway, to the swift and loving passage of time, and I knew it would all be fine.
9.22.2010
Mix Like a Master
Albeit abjectly listened squinting into the far corners of non-isolated earbud soundplanes, albeit detuned and fractured into fragments by the loud subway scrape of metal in an interminably ferocious battle to the death with like metal; albeit imperfectly heard perhaps to the point of not being there at all he still could swear he heard a whispered voice in the far back right of this one track, beginning exactly at this point shortly after 2 minutes into the track that he skipped back to for the rest of the ride downtown.
The trouble followed him up the street and into his apartment, through making dinner and eating standing at the kitchen counter and staring meaninglessly at a book with the player cued unconsciously back and back before declaring it pointless, closing the book, turning out all the lights and dipping back into the track again.
He poured himself a drink, lit mood lights and even smoked a joint: There simply wasn't any understanding what was being whispered from 2:04 to 2:19 in this godforsaken track. He tried changing the equalizer settings and plugging the thing into his stereo with an auxiliary wire, he borrowed better headphones from his neighbors (a little too stoned to venture out, but not so much so that he couldn’t pull it off). Nothing did it. It wasn't an exceptional record, it wasn't anything he'd listened to more than a dozen or so times, but this tucked in corner of this one song would be his defeat or his turning point, his entree into a new world of close attention, of deep listening and an acolyte's awareness, of no longer fail.
There has to be a way to remove some parts of a song in real time. This should be a feature of the format by now, he thinks, that mixing down ceases to be a prerequisite for the transfer to home listening. Rather, every song should be delivered whole, to be mixed listeners in real time. He pictures the whisper isolated and looped by itself or accompanied by the barest spectral synth or TR-808 pulse, and the thrill of deciphering the code. He briefly searches online for software with such a deconstructive feature. One link looks promising, but turns out to not be freeware or open source at all. Rather it’s a piece of software that costs about $50, but promises to allow mixing in the moment. Remix any track, the pop-up ad promises. Mix like a master.
He looks around for others, but all roads lead him back to the Master. He smokes some more and pours another drink and sets to looking around for a hacked copy. Some look promising, but none of the torrents work. He looks more closely at the legit website for the program, hoping to find a free trial but seeing no indications of the slightest download option. He scans the FAQ and finds nothing about a trial version of any kind, but the questions and answers (mostly about intellectual property rights, most of the answers suggesting erudite terrains for aural revisionary exploration, a dense catalog for a world he'd only daydreamed of minutes before) only serve to pique his interest further.
He has an odd little feeling purchasing the software, like he's crossed some threshold to bourgeois respectability that he'll struggle fruitlessly and without grace to escape for the rest of his life. The download process takes five minutes, the installer another five. It's after 1 in the morning when he nails down the last of the soundcard settings (slaying an irritating pop, a stuttering beyond the first few seconds of any clip), and it's later still when he figures out how to port the track from his player to his computer and into the program itself.
Are you ready to Mix like a Master? He is. And then it appears; a beautifully-designed, absolutely simple mixing board, with auto-guess labels for each track of the song, each customizable on the off chance that a specific audio track was incorrectly identified by the program’s expert and unprecedented algorithms. The distorted guitars and meandering bass and wander-to-a-click drums go without a fight, as do the lead vocals and the backing vocals and the spectral synths and the well-intended but probably excessive theremin and string section. There's still a little bleed, from an irksome, optimistic egg shaker, but with another hit and some readjusting of the light levels in the room the whispering turns out to be some inscrutable indie shit, words for the sake of sound only, devoid of meaning and never intended to convey a single thing.
He scoops himself a robust bowl of ice cream and loads Dark Side of the Moon, mixing and remixing and isolating and recombining until first light, past the first steps in the hall and the school buses and a guilty Diet Mountain Dew from the fridge, later still when he decides he'd better call out from work.
The trouble followed him up the street and into his apartment, through making dinner and eating standing at the kitchen counter and staring meaninglessly at a book with the player cued unconsciously back and back before declaring it pointless, closing the book, turning out all the lights and dipping back into the track again.
He poured himself a drink, lit mood lights and even smoked a joint: There simply wasn't any understanding what was being whispered from 2:04 to 2:19 in this godforsaken track. He tried changing the equalizer settings and plugging the thing into his stereo with an auxiliary wire, he borrowed better headphones from his neighbors (a little too stoned to venture out, but not so much so that he couldn’t pull it off). Nothing did it. It wasn't an exceptional record, it wasn't anything he'd listened to more than a dozen or so times, but this tucked in corner of this one song would be his defeat or his turning point, his entree into a new world of close attention, of deep listening and an acolyte's awareness, of no longer fail.
There has to be a way to remove some parts of a song in real time. This should be a feature of the format by now, he thinks, that mixing down ceases to be a prerequisite for the transfer to home listening. Rather, every song should be delivered whole, to be mixed listeners in real time. He pictures the whisper isolated and looped by itself or accompanied by the barest spectral synth or TR-808 pulse, and the thrill of deciphering the code. He briefly searches online for software with such a deconstructive feature. One link looks promising, but turns out to not be freeware or open source at all. Rather it’s a piece of software that costs about $50, but promises to allow mixing in the moment. Remix any track, the pop-up ad promises. Mix like a master.
He looks around for others, but all roads lead him back to the Master. He smokes some more and pours another drink and sets to looking around for a hacked copy. Some look promising, but none of the torrents work. He looks more closely at the legit website for the program, hoping to find a free trial but seeing no indications of the slightest download option. He scans the FAQ and finds nothing about a trial version of any kind, but the questions and answers (mostly about intellectual property rights, most of the answers suggesting erudite terrains for aural revisionary exploration, a dense catalog for a world he'd only daydreamed of minutes before) only serve to pique his interest further.
He has an odd little feeling purchasing the software, like he's crossed some threshold to bourgeois respectability that he'll struggle fruitlessly and without grace to escape for the rest of his life. The download process takes five minutes, the installer another five. It's after 1 in the morning when he nails down the last of the soundcard settings (slaying an irritating pop, a stuttering beyond the first few seconds of any clip), and it's later still when he figures out how to port the track from his player to his computer and into the program itself.
Are you ready to Mix like a Master? He is. And then it appears; a beautifully-designed, absolutely simple mixing board, with auto-guess labels for each track of the song, each customizable on the off chance that a specific audio track was incorrectly identified by the program’s expert and unprecedented algorithms. The distorted guitars and meandering bass and wander-to-a-click drums go without a fight, as do the lead vocals and the backing vocals and the spectral synths and the well-intended but probably excessive theremin and string section. There's still a little bleed, from an irksome, optimistic egg shaker, but with another hit and some readjusting of the light levels in the room the whispering turns out to be some inscrutable indie shit, words for the sake of sound only, devoid of meaning and never intended to convey a single thing.
He scoops himself a robust bowl of ice cream and loads Dark Side of the Moon, mixing and remixing and isolating and recombining until first light, past the first steps in the hall and the school buses and a guilty Diet Mountain Dew from the fridge, later still when he decides he'd better call out from work.
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