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| Everything's Too Big September 28th, 2005 -- Motivation is one of the biggest battles I fight. I imagine I'm not alone on that one. I wonder if one of the problems is that most of us are little fish in a big humongous pond. We all have fairly specialized jobs where we do what is in many ways very insignificant things, but our small contributions end up forming together to make a very significant thing, our economy. For instance, I teach guitar. My dad sells wicker. My mom teaches English to seventh-graders. My wife used to, before we had kids, tell people where to find stuff in the library. Those are all important jobs, but it's hard to imagine that anyone's life depends on any of them. For instance, I used to work at a church as the praise band and orchestra director. When I left I was replaced with . . . . no one. That makes you feel good about yourself and the effort you spent there. But, I wonder if it's always been this way. Maybe it was easier to be motivated about what you were doing if you lived a few hundred years ago, and if you didn't plant seed, take care of it, and harvest it, you and your family members would die. That kind of thing probably gets you going in the morning. But, also, it seems that the opposite can be true as well. I've noticed that some of the most motivated people are working in extremely insignificant yet highly specialized fields. The difference is that they are important to those fields, enormous fish in their tiny ponds, so they feel like they're important, even if they're not. So, motivation tends to be a product of the feeling of importance in the work you do, that you're accomplishing something significant with all of your pencil pushing and middle-managing. I thought about how important my particular role in life is. Like, say, what happens if I just give up my job and stop working? We'd lose our house, but we'd find somewhere else to stay. We would probably move into a homeless shelter and then eventually into some kind of charitable housing project. It might not be nice, but we'd get foods stamps and welfare and medicaid, and we'd still have our car, since it's paid for. We wouldn't be able to buy really nice things, but we have plenty of nice things right now, and if we don't sell them, our lives would be pretty much the same, except we wouldn't live in quite as nice of a house and I wouldn't have to work. Is my family going to starve to death or be destitute? No. Not even close. So, what it boils down to is that I'm working so we can live in a house instead of a crappy apartment. To me, that's not a whole lot of motivation. So, enter, self-delusion. Like I wrote a little farther down on this page, sometimes denying reality is a good thing. In order to be motivated, I need to pretend that the world will simply fall apart if I don't teach another kid how to play "Iron Man" or "Smoke on the Water". Or maybe I can pretend that what I do is significantly different than what other people are doing, and I have to fight to keep my unique voice. That's why I'm proposing that we in the band consider some artsy and ridiculous name for our genre of music. I've thought about "progressive pop", but that just doesn't sound ridiculous enough. So, I'm going with . . . . KLEZMETAL!!!! Catchy, eh? Keith |
| The Downside of Innovation September 21st, 2005 -- I think art of the twentieth century was pretty terrible. High art, at least, was nearly non-existant. Dance, visual art, music composition, were all terrible. The only area where there was any kind of interesting work done was in the field of film, but really, film was just an evolution of theater, which was itself an amalgamation of literature and visual art, and it's hard to make the case that film of the twentieth century improved much upon Shakespeare or the Sistine Chapel. I think the twentieth century's creative forces went wholly into not art, but science. In science, we had enormous gains, from nuclear energy, to rocket-powered flight to the moon, to Pong. Art, I believe, has viewed this success and has incorporated one of it's foremost elements, innovation, into its ethos. Unfortunately, innovation is not always a good thing. Let's look at one specific example where innovation is almost always a bad thing -- suicide. Now, before I get into this, and before I get emails from people telling me how insensitive I am, I want you to know that I don't come to this subject as an impartial observer that has never been touched by this. Off the top of my head, I can think of three friends, one relative, and about seven associates that have committed suicide, and about four more who have "attempted" it. It's an evil, selfish, unthinking practice in most cases, and each one of those suicides ruined or nearly ruined the lives of those closest to them. But, if you're going to commit suicide, use traditional methods -- shotguns, high buildings, hanging, or a running car in a garage. These are all quick and painless. Probably the best way is the running car, because you just slowly fall asleep and never wake up, and there's no horrible mess for your relatives to clean up. It's only for the determined suicider, though, because you have to be conscious of what you're doing for a decent amount of time before you fall asleep. If you have any doubts, then you'll probably change your mind before the fumes start taking effect. Quickest is definitely the shotgun, but it's a nasty, nasty ordeal to deal with afterwards. This is probably good if you even have slight doubts about what you're doing. This is recommended for people that are offing themselves mostly for revenge or for other impulsive reasons. If you hate your mom, for instance, you can shotgun yourself while standing in her room, or do it someplace symbolic, like where you got beat up once when you were ten, which sent you spiralling down into your life of greasy hair and Iron Maiden. Jumping off of a high building would probably be the coolest, and most high buildings are in public view, so you could at least give some other people a little spectacle. But, as strange as it sounds, I bet it takes a good bit of courage to do it, because it's easy to be overcome with fear. Of course, the fear is the fear of dying, but who said suicide is a reasonable or logical thing to do? Hanging is probably more difficult, in that you have to be at least a little handy, and you need to make sure the rope is secure, or you might end up choking to death, which would suck. I know others who have "attempted" suicide, mostly by taking pills or slitting wrists. These, most of the time, aren't terribly sincere forms of suicide, they're just calls for help. However, what you do not want to do is to be an innovator in the field of suicide. Suicide has a long and storied history, and if you think you've found a new way to kill yourself, there's probably a good reason why no one has done it before. Take Richard Sumner, for instance. He was, tellingly, an artist and, three years ago, instead of "conforming" to the man and self-murdering in a traditional way, he handcuffed himself to a tree and threw the key just out of his reach. So, he likely starved for four or five days. And, according to the marks on the tree and the position of the handcuffs, he, through extended pain and torture, realized the value of tradition and tried to get out. They found his skeleton in April of this year. In art, we're always told that if something is new and shiny it is therefore good. This is not an artistic position, but a scientific one. In science, if you find a way to make a microchip a little bit micro-er, then you've done something good. In art, though, if you find a way to make music with a tape player, but the music you make is crap (or, Musique Crapè), then you've done nothing to add to the art of the world, you've simply been clever. I say this because I've finally written an actual, real song using my guitar techno technique. We started working on it last night, and I think it's going to be big. Why did it take me almost a year to go from figuring out the technique to writing a song using it? It's because I wanted to explore the possibilities, to see it's potential as an artistic expression, not just cravenly throw it out to a crowd because it was new and shiny. As a result, I hope that I'm adding something worthy or being called art, and not just a goofy new technique. I think you guys are going to like it. Keith |
| The Big Time September 17th, 2005 -- Alright, we're officially a workin' band. We're working for free, but that's beside the point. We played out in TR at the Leopard Forest Coffee Company, and it was cool. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the sound setup was, and how quickly we were able to set up and by how many people were there (probably about forty or so.) So, a good time was had by all. They asked us to come back and play again, and when we do I'm going to make sure we play a long enough set that it's worth coming out to, and I'll make sure we play on time. Should be fun. Check out the music page and listen to 3/4ths of our set, and see for yourself. But, more importantly, I feel like we have our foot in the door. The most important step in any journey is the first step, and all that. We've been practicing so long that it's easy to forget the whole point of the band is to get out in front of people and give them a good time, so it was nice to be reminded of that. So, the ball's rolling, we're floating like butterflies and stinging like bees, the horse is drinking, the man has learned how to fish, the eagle has landed, and the sun is rising. I can't think of any more trite phrases, so I'll leave it at that. Later, folks, Keith |
| The Good Aspects of Ignoring Reality September 6th, 2005 -- Last week, when I heard about all of the looting and raping and shooting going on in Louisiana, my first thought was that there are going to be a lot of new racists this year. For a lot of people, this is the first time they've seen how a black community responds to a crisis, and it arnt a purdy sight. You could almost feel the hate growing, the contempt for those who shoot their rescuers, for local hired rescuers that will only help women in exchange for sexual favors, or for policemen who steal from those they're supposed to protect. The hate just presents itself, and it's too tempting to abstain from it. We love to hate other people. It just feels good to think that you're better than others, that your morality or intelligence or virility or whatever it is that you use to judge a person's worth is so much higher or better or stronger than another person's. It feels good to be special. Unfortunately, it doesn't feel that great to consciously hate someone. Conscious hate is consuming, it's poisonous, it's life-oppressing, and just no fun at all. To make our hate palatable, we launder it through other mediums. We hate things, or ideas, or cultures, or races, but, when faced with someone who is representative of that thing or idea, we delude ourselves and say that we like them just fine. I used to see those bumper stickers that said "hate is not a family value." I don't see them very often nowadays. They were popular during Bill Clinton's tenure as president, and I guess those people scraped them off their cars once GW became president, and they at least subconciously realized that they hated him, and they thought their hate really was a good thing. This person, I think, has found out that not even that is true. Some would argue otherwise, though, and not without making a few good points. As for me, I'm starting to realize that my own Personal Worth Barometer is deeply flawed, and it's probably best if I don't hate anything. To do this, I kind of have to ignore reality sometimes. I was reminded of this after reading Racial Reality And The New Orleans Nightmare, an article by Steve Sailer, a thought-provoking and interesting author who is absolutely fearless in the face of political correctness. He strikes down social taboos with his articles about race like I strike down hours in my day with my finding of websites about cooking with 7-up. But, does looking down on blacks make the world a better place? Is the world better off if we are convinced that black people are too stupid to govern themselves? No, of course not. Well, why? Because, well, people deserve a chance to prove us wrong. Fighting against a widely held stereotype is like walking upstream. Those individual drops of water might not be heavy, but man, put them together into a few millions gallons and propel them downhill, and it gets hard to go against the flow. To make things worse, if you are better than your stereotype it's not a battle that you fight once, it's a battle that you have to constantly, unrelentingly fight, and your reward is not success, but merely the chance to be seen as a normal human being. After a while, though, it's just easier to accept that you really are the stupid, backwards, undisciplined redneck/ghetto monkey/spic/etc. that people say you are. And just like how our legal system is founded on the idea that it's better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted, it's better to give the benefit of a doubt to those who don't deserve it than to unjustly discriminate against an "upstreamer". If you have to choose between ignoring reality in the hopes of making a better one, or to face reality and make it worse, I choose ignorance. **************** In Wind-Ups news, SHOW!!!! Keith |
| Innovative Artists/Beer Salesmen, and Assorted Other Stuff September 2nd, 2005 -- A friend of mine was telling me once why he hated playing bars, "you're basically there to sell beer." It's true. The bands that bar owners like are the bands that have drinkers for fans. That's the reason why you see cover bands that play party rock, and not classical string quartets or, I don't know, avant-garde papier-mache puppet ragtime troupes being asked to play at your local Buds 'n' Suds. Every bar, be it art bar, strip bar, or frat bar, makes its money from alcohol sales. Considering your average alcoholic drink contains a couple of ounces of alcohol, and five or six ounces of anything from ice cream to sardines, and that they charge you four dollars for it, it's easy to see that it's a pretty high profit item. Item 2. We're playing an open mic thing on September 10th, it's free and details are here. Item 3. Katrina. What a terrible thing, and I don't feel like I have any sort of gravitas to express that appropriately. The thing I hate to see, besides all of the first generation tragedy (the flooding, the death, the hunger, etc.) is the opportunism and naked myopia displayed by finger-pointers. I guess it's the old saying of "give a man a hammer and every problem becomes a nail". If you hate someone (Bush, liberals, God, the US, etc.) enough, you become so obsessed that you can't come to terms with the fact that there are problems that may very well have nothing to do with your object of hatred. An interesting response to this kind of thinking is this, in response to the rumor that there was some big gay thing planned to occur on the day the hurricane hit, and Katrina was God's punishment. While I agree with his reasons to refute it, the last point is the one of interest to me: Lastly, if I may vent a bit, I find it shameful, given the massive destruction, loss of innocent life, and ongoing hardships suffered by the hundreds of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina, that any self-appointed spokesperson for God would have the nerve to suggest that these people in any sense deserved their fate. Natural disasters happen all the time, and Katrina was certainly not the first hurricane to strike the southern United States this season. By what logic, and by what right, does any human being arbitrarily declare that this natural disaster was a punishment meted out upon sinners by God? Actually, David, if you had paid attention in Sunday school, you would have learned that everyone deserves punishment like this and worse for the things we've done, and for the state we're in. The fact that we haven't all had to undergo this is a product of grace and mercy, not of justice. You could say it's unfair that some get the bad stuff and others don't, but by definition mercy and grace are unfair. If it's fair, it ain't mercy, and if it's mercy, it ain't fair. We can weep for these people, but we should also count our blessings that it hasn't happened to us. ******************** On that cheery note, again, we have a show coming up in a little over a week. It's free and it's short, so come out, we may have some tattoos to give away (and some others to sell.) Have a great week, Upwinders, Keith |
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Older posts can be found here.
Write Keith at keith@thewind-ups.com Also, if you're looking for a guitar teacher in Greenville, visit keithgroover.com to find out more about the Guitar Studio of Keith Groover. Keith has taught more than 4,000 guitar lessons on the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass guitar to students in the Greenville, Taylors, Simpsonville, Greer, and Travelers Rest areas. |
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