i bet you're wondering why i called you here tonight...

1) i lost my job last week. i don't care to go in to the details of when or why, but suffice to say that it was truly silly and i've never been apart of something so absurd before. i harbor no hard feelings, though. I enjoyed working there.  in any case, i've been steadily searching for a new job. quite a few exciting prospects. In the meantime, I'm back to working at the soup/salad/wrap cart downtown that i worked at last summer. so much fun. just can't do this forever -- here's to hoping something good comes along quickly!

2) Paper Brain is back in the studio, this time at Klickitat Band Camp, an awesome and beautiful studio in our own neighborhood. This will be our second album, the first to be released on the Union Records. Last night was our first night and most of it was spent setting up and dialing in tones. We did a few takes on a couple of songs, but I'm not terribly thrilled about them. I was really tired and don't think I played as well as I could. But I'll listen to them again today with fresh, rested ears, and see how I feel about them then. In the mean time, stay posted to paperbrain.net for a recording diary, maintained this time around by Jeni.

3) Muchas Gracias finally opened a restaurant in Portland. Everyone go!

1) I've been having dizzy spells the last few days. They come and go at random, some times they are really bad, some times they are very minor. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I go through phases like this from time to time. It always passes, but it's terribly unenjoyable when I have to deal with it. It started yesterday at work when I was reading the paper. It just sort of snapped and I had this overwhelming sensation that I was going to fall over, pass out, and throw up. My heart started to race because I don't remember having a dizzy spell that bad for several months, and I managed to stumble out of the cafe and paced back and forth on the sidewalk for about five minutes taking deep breaths. It eventually subsided, but since then I'll have a few short, minor dizzy spells ever few hours.

I've never bothered to see a doctor about this because it always just seemed like isolated incidents. But now I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with me because I go through this a couple of times a year. My suspicion is that it is linked to my recent diet and stress/anxiety levels. I've been eating very poorly, if at all, lately due in large part to a certain amount of overwhelming stress regarding several aspects of my personal and professional life. It's been simply a matter of scraping by lately, clawing my way through days that I so desperately want to end the moment that I wake up. I haven't been healthy, haven't been exercising, and have generally been entertaining unhealthy habits in lieu of healthy ones. This is something that I need to change starting right now. I need to return to my regular gym habits, return to eating better and my plans to further improve my diet and relationship to food, return to riding my bike to work instead of driving, and return to surrounding myself with positive people and positive projects. I really have no one to blame for my general sense of feeling ill than myself. I'll report back in a couple of weeks to see how things have improved.

2) It's haircut time, i think. thinking of going short. I've been enjoying the long-ish (at least by my standards) "band hair" for about a year now, and I think I want to see how it feels to go short. Additionally, as I have discussed with a few friends in the past, I'm a firm believer that memories get locked in to aspects of our body. That is I believe that the energy that comes from our feelings (immaterial) gets stored in our physical being (material), and that affects our present state.  Where my hair comes in to this is that I believe the stress I've succumbed to over the last several months is still locked in me, and no matter how much mental and emotional energy I put in to pulling myself out of it, a certain element of it will always remain.

Think of each hair on your head as a timeline of your recent life. What time of year was it when what is now the tip of your hair sprang forth from your head? What were you going through then? what were you feeling? Where you sad or happy? Stressed or relaxed? Broken hearted or in love? All of the energy (positive or negative) that comes from those feelings that you felt at that time are stored in that part of your hair. It serves as a perpetual reminder to your soul of how you felt then. It affects you still.  How are you feeling right now? That energy is stored in the other end of your hair, just beneath your scalp. And imagine all of the feelings and energies you felt between the time it took you to grow your hair this long, and know that all of that is stored in your body. Your body remembers.

In this sense, I've felt a great deal of anxiety and sadness over the last several months (as well as a certain degree of happiness. It hasn't been all grey skies!), and so that negativity is stored in my hair and body and is perpetually carried around and reminding my soul of how it felt to hurt. When you cut your hair off, then, you release those memories from that part of your body, and you can start anew. A clean slate. New memories are stored, new reminders made. The one time in my life when I tested this theory, I saw a dramatic improvement in my psyche over the next few weeks. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, but I like to believe that this type of body-energy-spirit relationship is real. So we'll see in the next couple of weeks if I go back to the short cut.

3) My beloved Portland Trailblazer's season comes to an end tonight. They missed the playoffs as I suspected they would. It was an exciting season, for certain, and I'm looking forward to next year when Greg Oden joins the crew. Brandon Roy has exceeded everyone's expectations (aside from his own, I'm sure), and I can't help but feel very hopeful for the future. It's been a long road for us true Blazer fans having dealt with the bullshit of the Jail Blazer years. I'm very sad that I was unable to go to any home games this year, but if there is any silver lining in this, it is that my appetite to see the Blazers live again has only grown stronger. Here is an awesome series of reverse alley-oops from Monday's game against the Grizzlies. It is conducted by two of my favorite younger players on the team, Sergio Rodriguez and Travis Outlaw:

4) Just found out today my old roommate and friend Tim Crabtree is moving back to Portland in a month. He called and left me a message and he sounded really excited. Without going in to details, I will simply say that it has not only been far too long since I've spoken with Tim, but it's been even longer since I've heard him sound as happy as he did on my voice mail. I'm truly truly excited for him to get back to town. He was a good friend. I want to hear every story he has to tell.

5) I started a twitter page. Why? I don't fucking know. Matt told me to.

6) I have my first solo show coming up in a couple of weeks. Excitement levels are high.

There is exactly a 36% chance that you will be alone for the rest of your life. There is empirical scientific data to support this.

I guess I should find comfort in this, but the world seems to be crumbling in areas I had forgotten they could crumble in. Don't know if this is like a snake shedding its skin, or like a giant ice shelf the size of manhattan falling in to the sea. One of these brings good things; the other does not.

I feel like I just got dropped off in the middle of the woods with no sense of direction, and really no immediate survival instinct. Just want to find a tree and sit under it until the plants grow over me. Just want to sleep.

It is with great shame that I must confess that I have never taken the time to really give Billy Bragg's music a listen. But I've long been familiar with his politics, and I always admire an artist who isn't afraid to infuse their socio-political ideology into their craft. It is in this sense that I admire Billy Bragg a great deal, despite having listened to fewer than ten of his songs.

He notably chose to remove his songs from his myspace page in the past because he felt the terms and conditions of MySpace were suggesting that any content a user (or in his case, the music owned by a musician) uploads to the site then becomes, in effect, the property of MySpace and they are then free to use it as they will. His protest contributed to a widespread response against MySpace's terms and conditions and they were subsequently changed.
More recently, I have read (around the internet) that he had spoken at SXSW about the difficulty artists face in making a living as musicians in the internet age. I was glancing through last Saturday's New York Times when I came across an editorially written by Billy Bragg about this very subject, entitled The Royalty Scam.

To paraphrase what I gleaned from the article, Bragg asserts (and I agree with him, though I still see other benefits to having a MySpace page for my music) that these websites, such as MySpace, which allow users to upload their music are benefiting from this content (vis-a-vis advertising revenue) which encourages more viewers and users to come to MySpace (e.g.) to listen to bands' music, and are doing so without paying the artists any royalties.

I'll let Bragg complete this point:

The claim that sites such as MySpace and Bebo are doing us a favor by promoting our work is disingenuous. Radio stations also promote our work, but they pay us a royalty that recognizes our contribution to their business. Why should that not apply to the Internet, too?

This is an idea that I had never really given much consideration to in the past, but I must say that after reading this, I agree. Again, I see other benefits to having my music on MySpace, namely the immediate accessibility for and to fans, old and new. MySpace has allowed by of my bands to expand its fan base and form new connections and gain valuable resources which has led to much growth. There is an amazing grassroots aesthetic for lower-tier independent bands, or bands signed to small indie labels, and it's just convenient to have access to such a wide range of resources within just a few clicks.

However, this does not negate Bragg's point: these websites are benefiting from having other artists' work as free and feature content accessible to anyone, with or without an account. This brings me to a couple of points I want to raise:

1) While the benefit to this may be miniscule in scope for one or two small-time music acts (I'll use my bands an an example), when you look at smaller acts as a collective whole, that's still an exorbitant amount of viewers and visitors that are confronted with advertising (which is where these websites really make their money). In fact, on MySpace, advertisements are the very first thing on the page. Just look at Paper Brain's MySpace page if you don't believe me. We don't have TOO many daily visitors, but each of them are exposed to the ads, and at some point, someone will click on one of those ads. Multiply this by god knows how many bands are on MySpace who have one of these someone's.

2) Take this point and expand it to more widely known bands who get thousands of hits each day on their MySpace page. Let's just use Radiohead as an example: at the time of this writing, they have had nearly 20,000 unique song plays today. I'm no statistics junkie, but I'd venture a guess that they had about, at a minimum, 10,000 visitors today. Imagine how much money MySpace makes daily in advertising revenue from Radiohead's MySpace page alone. And does Radiohead see a dime of that from MySpace and the folks at NewsCorp.? Nope. Not even close. And why not? As Bragg points out in his editorial, radio stations pay artists royalties for using their music because the radio stations are making money by using artists' music to draw listeners who then are exposed to advertisements in very much the same way that MySpace and it's ilk are doing. Something seems amiss...

The question then is what do we do about it? Unfortunately, I don't have much of an answer. For me, I feel very conflicted. Perhaps the benefits that I speak of are merely an illusion -- or as Bragg says, disingenuous. Afterall bands existed and succeeded on just as small of a scale as they are now well before MySpace came along. Perhaps the MySpace dillema has made it even worse for artists by flooding the market, so to speak, with a particular commodity (in this case, music) which has made it more difficult for the most "well-deserving" artists to obtain the attention of the people they mean and need to to help them succeed. Indeed, it would seem that I am in a one-sided relationship with MySpace afterall, and not the symbiotic one that I have been led to believe (though much fault and naiveity of my own.) But again -- what do I do about it? While I'm now more aware of this exploitation and denial of rights by MySpace, I don't quite feel exploited just yet. Perhaps its a mild indifference, but I just don't see myself bowing out just yet. But I'm an idealist more than a pragmatist (not to an extreme, though...), so I wouldn't be surprised to see myself removing myself from this machine, because, really, it isn't right. Whenever anyone benefits financially from the inclusion and use of an artist's work, that artist should be compensated in tangible and real terms, not in vague and empty promises of the benefits that comes from exposure to new fans and influencial people -- a promise which, given the current climate, is a very unlikely outcome for the vast majority of artists who choose to participate in this system.

To read the rest of Billy Bragg's editorial, The Royalty Scam, simply jump on over to it at NYTimes.com

sorta...

i've opened up shop at another blog which will be used only as a source of documenting the numerous creative projects that I find myself involved in (cooking, building, drawing, writing, music, etc etc etc). That is called Make/Break and it can be located at http://mb.destructo.org. Enjoy.

This here blog will continue to be used for my overemotional, hypersensitive, spoiled 20-something whiney bullshit. (surely, i jest. i'll get back to talking about normal stuff soon.)

thank you.

they do. it seems lately that few of my plans actually ever come to fruition. it's been a season of disappointment and discontent and it doesn't seem to be fading. spring has always signaled a changing of modes for me, but this year its different. the sun's more familiar, but the cold snap has yet to fade. it just lingers and i'm watching these bikes roll by on the street and i just can't seem to get one of my own. i really hate this. i'm not happy. 

something is happening. i can't explain it, really. something is happening. i'm moving again. something deep inside is moving. i heard a song last night that i had heard before, but never actually heard before. that is to say that though my ears had received its waves, my heart, before last night, had not.

it's been dancing through my brain all day, it's simple melody, but what strikes me the most are the lyrics. they are spiritual in nature, though veiled and mildly esoteric. personally, i do not experience my spirituality through religion, so i could not directly connect with some of the content of the religious references in the song. but my spirituality is strong and it is felt through love (for people, places, things, moments, sounds, etc), and it is on this level that the song struck me. i don't think that the song is a religious song, necessarily, but a song celebrating the majesty of spirituality. this is something i needed.

i had forgotten what it felt like to celebrate the majesty of my love for life, and my love for myself. someone told me recently that i was "wonderful at living." these are important words and they struck me. they chipped very small cracks in to the callus i had been involuntarily building over the last several months. it was important for me to be reminded that i am, as i have always known, wonderful at living. that i was, in their words "good at life, and full of it."

now this song... this song found its way in to those cracks and planted a seed that blossomed quite quickly. i sat in my room alone and quite last night until 5:00 AM. When I awoke 5 hours later, I felt lighter. Not happier, mind you, but less heavy. Something happened in my sleep that removed a stress from my shoulders.

I'm convinced it was this song. Now, this song, though immensly beautiful, would not hold as much meaning as it does for me were it not heard in the emotional context of my life that it was. I've been struggling to find any lasting meaning in my days. The last several months have been a patchwork of various inspirations, but nothing permanent. Several ups and downs. Yesterday I was occupied and busy, running to and fro, and then I settled in a space with a special human being who knows my heart better than any others, and though there were dark spots inside of my soul, there were stars flickering around my eyes and theirs. I felt safe and mildly confident about the prospect of continuing my forward movement.

Then the song. It reminded me that I have a lot of love in my life. And that is my spirituality. And it is strong. This may be another temporary patch of confidence, and that would be fine. Because for tonight, at this moment, I stand alone and feel safe with that.
i miss you so.  i feel as beautiful as how i see you.

i used to feel happier, more stable, certain and secure. and i've forgotten what it feels like to have those feelings be so ambient and assumed. now it would be an incredible thing to feel those again. i would notice. they wouldn't be givens anymore, they would be accomplishments. it's amazing what a deep effect simply glancing over my shoulder can have on me. reading old words, visually dissecting old photographs. a whole wealth of memories and emotions bottled up in a picture, or a letter, or something left in between the sheets of my bed. the scar tissue is thin.

nothing ever gets sorted out, nothing ever becomes clear. we all just find our way back to the same good shit and the same bad shit that we've done before. life isn't linear, it isn't even cyclical. life is just us trapped in our own little orb and we're bouncing around to and fro aimlessly, somtimes hitting the same points again, but at different speeds and having picked up different things along the way. it's random, and it can't be predicted. we have certain trajectories that we can anticipate, but it ends there. it ends there, friends. there are no answers. no crystal ball. just an endless string of questions that would be so much fucking easier to figure out if you only had a fistfull of love. a fistfull of love.

i unclench; i am empty.

lazy eyes wont drag you out of bed
so fuck your day job, you wont need it when you're dead
it's best to lay under the covers with a pillow holding up your head

so call your mother, remind her you're okay
but, you're not a child now; your youth has gone away
though the innocence of being young will never, ever lead you astray

i dreamt of a fire burning in a stranger's eyes
an ignited passion, his black heart learned to fly
but he drank it all away, and he gave up just before he died

so i'll strike up a drum beat -- one you've all heard before.
and chalk it up to failure. tell me, ma, what's the score?
it's been thinking it over and over and over and still don't know what i am here for

and i still remember how it felt to love you
because i'm still there. tell me, babe, where are you?
you put me in your pocket, but no amount of time will make it come untrue

i wrote you a letter and buried it in the sky
just beneath the top of the bottom of the inside of your eyes
and all it said was "thank you, love. you were and you still are my greatest prize."

let there be no mistake, no misunderstanding: these are trying times, though my feet move forward. but that doesn't stop the wishes from fighting to escape my brain. pragmatism, my last pillar of strength, dies slowly. but surely so, it dies.

but not really. almost 12:00.

i'm really at a loss lately. i feel extremely vulnurable and out of control and it frustrates me to no end. i had a long talk tonight with one of my very good friends about all kinds of wonderful things, and it was special because we're both experiencing similar emotional struggles at the moment, so we're able to pool our collective loathing for our respective circumstances and try to troubleshoot the dillemas. granted, we've been doing this now for a good four weeks or more, and haven't really gotten anywhere tangible. but we UNDERSTAND it all a lot better now, which is a step in the right direction i suppose.

i have a lot i need to do to keep my mind occupied:
clean my room
reorganize my room a bit
get going on the stop motion animation
continue working on the quilt
continue writing new songs
record new album
spend more time with friends
on and on

problem is that whenever i start to do any of these things, my mind always finds its way back to the one place it shouldn't be. it's a struggle people.

but we realized something tonight. THIS is not the way we want our lives to be. THIS is not how things are supposed to be. so why do we do it? we have reasons. all good ones. but at some point you have to decide: when do you stop putting your hand on the stove even though you know it'll burn you ever time? it's hard. it's a struggle. it's late.

If you're not gonna dance
if you're not gonna dance
If you're not gonna dance
Get your ass off the floor
Get your ass off the floor
Get your ass off the floor floor floor floor floor
People like you are what the balcony's made for
People like you are what the balcony's made for
You better learn to shake that ass boy
You better learn to shake that ass
While it's still young
(ohhhhhh, i love you, Murder City Devils)

i've got a big project coming up in a couple of weeks that i'm really excited about. i will divuldge ZERO details until it is complete. but it will be great.