Forays of Music

The human body's relationship to itself is, as the saying goes, a sticky wicket. Over the last few weeks I've been coping with depression. Well, not so much "coping" but "surviving." This has been a nasty episode.

I think it may be affecting what's going on with me health-wise. I've become very reactive to food. At first I thought it might have been a problem with not eating enough. Naturally I overdid it. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way.

Some problems could be related to my new glasses. Yet I don't think that explains the sometime light-headedness I've been experiencing, and most of those have been on-going from before the change. It doesn't help that I have no medical insurance at all, plus I've got medical and loan bills as it is now.

Yech. Praying for some improvement.

i'm an artist. a lot of artists go through depression episodes. i'm in the middle of one right now.

very much related to my prior posts. in fact, it's almost the exact same thing. but i've come to see things a bit more clearly now. this, however, has made some events terribly difficult to deal with--leading to the depression i'm in.

( assorted quasi-sordid details )

so i've been basically paralyzed the last couple of days. which really sucks. work isn't providing the recuperative effects it can sometimes have. i'm....lost.
blargh.

maybe i just need to get over myself.
maybe i'm blowing this out of proportion.
maybe i'm delusional.
At this point, I just don't know.

Karma is one of those things which, on the face of it, is kinda fantastic: that our world, and what we experience, is a function of what we put into it. By doing the right thing, i.e. the good thing, we create a good world which we inhabit, therefore our life is good. By doing the wrong thing, i.e. the bad thing, we create a bad world which we inhabit, therefore our life is bad.

Yet upon reflection and a bit of knowledge of our minds & brains, it holds up quite well. Our life experience--what we see, feel, touch, taste and smell--is inherently a function of our senses being interpreted by our brain. If we do a wrong thing, then by extension our minds will be colored by those thoughts, which would affect how we perceive the world, therefore our world has changed. Even though the empirical world hasn't changed, our experience of it has, therefore the world from our unique viewpoint has also changed. Put out bad things, get bad things.

Now lately I've been in a bad place mentally. However, over the last couple weeks I've been slowly working my way back to "normalcy." Today, that normalcy was upset by a proverbial activated grenade getting tossed into my lap. Now it must be said that I don't mean this event(s) have been/will be strong enough to send me on a short one-way trip down to What Dreams May Come. Thankfully, it's not that bad. However, it is bad enough that it certainly affects my thoughts. But karma may play a role here.

Many years ago I did some things which I'm not proud of. What's happened to me lately reminds me somewhat of that time. Now I'm seeing it from the other side--I'm seeing and feeling what I imagine the other party felt at the time. And it hurts. Hurts badly. I think this may be paying my karmic dues for something I did a long time ago.

Then again, this could also be me projecting onto something else for things I did and/or didn't do. Psychology is a wonderful thing. Humans have an enormous capacity to protect their minds, even if it means self-delusional behavior and thinking.

Anyway, I'm in an ill mood. I'm betting this is just a mood and not a means of life.

Because it would be really funny if he was a part of this...

<a href="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/04/1719212>Company Makes Paper Out of Wombat Poo</a>.

The Real Adventures of Zetaman is a web video project I'm a part of.

'Twas much fun to work on.

Sometimes it just takes an emotional vomit to get over bad vibes. Singing tonight provided that outlet...a good thing.

Reminiscing afterwards was a trip through memory lane, yet also kinda re-fed my fire to get out of my own fucking way and just do shit. Hearing stories of talented people--arguably more talented than I--choosing to do things in their life which aren't an expression of their art/talent was... well, mind-blowing in some ways. I at least have kept my artiste properly fed and watered. Granted, growing up I only wrote choral music and such, and now almost the reverse is true: very rarely do I write for choirs. But I've got something percolating in my brain now that I need to get out. It should be fun.

What is it with artists and their depression thing? It's like a drug.

It wasn't something I'd get growing up, but more and more lately I've been feeling the lows when they hit. Today was certainly one of those days. Heck, it was almost one of those weekends.

Making decisions around this time is hard. I know that I'm not thinking my clearest at the moment. Thankfully what I've been thinking about doesn't require any _new_ decisions--just acting on decisions already made. But that can be difficult when you're depressed. Thankfully I'm not a drinker, otherwise I'd drink myself to oblivion. And I don't eat my way to happiness, either.

Crap. Sleeptime is here.

I've got a bug to start a band now. Reading The Indie Band Survival Guide has got my internal motor running. Now I just need to find the other folks in the band. I have a line on a bassist, and Genevieve may or may not play guitar--I don't know, I haven't approached her about that yet. Anyway, it's a thought.

Went to Guitar Center today to pick up some claves & egg shakers for a choir gig I have Monday @ Milwaukie Lutheran Church (7:30pm, 3810 SE Lake Rd). While I was there I took a look at the keyboard offerings as I'd want to grab a new keyboard: playing live, you want to be as portable as you can get. Wow. Technology has come a long way in the 5+ years I've been out of the keyboard-shopping arena. Now to get $1700 so I can get the one I want. =)

One of the realities of a film composer is you gotta have good sounding stuff. In today's world, you can make that Hollywood sound from your home studio. It's pretty simple, really:

Have about $10,000 to purchase licenses for the best sample libraries available.

I want to be film composer, and I think I have the chops to do it. I'm just running into that stumbling block where I don't have $10k idling somewhere for me to spend on software. It's really rather frustrating, knowing that my tools are holding me back.

Well, actually it's not _entirely_ that. I need to make more connections, and hopefully things like The Composer Collective will help me get there. But I think in order to use that service with the most benefit, I need to have good sounds. Blargh!

*mutters*...

There is no feeling in the world like loving someone and being loved in return.

After an initial flurry of activity, it looks like things have settled down to where I thought they'd be as far as popularity of the album: pretty close to the bottom. I love the people who chipped in and gave it a good start--that fact tells me my instincts were good and going this route _could_ be a money maker for me.

One thing I was hoping--and have yet to see--is the availability of the album would drive traffic to opdmedia.com and that people would start to visit on at least aweekly basis to pick up the new track. That has yet to materialize, but then again I shouldn't judge the effectiveness of this campaign from one week's release alone. I need to give it time to gestate.

Back to the daily grind tomorrow. *sighs*

Amazon provides popularity information for products on the product page itself, updated hourly. The highest rank I saw this weekend (and no, I wasn't checking every hour) was 88th within MP3 Albums. Today a 'ranking within category' opened up, and the highest I saw was #28 in the New Age group.

Now I'd say those are relatively high, especially for an unknown at least in the wide world of digital distribution. So it's either due to the efforts and hard-earned cash that my friends and family have plunked down which has pushed me to that ranking, or there's not a lot of product movement on the weekend. Regardless, I'm pretty darn happy--especially for something that didn't get wide promotion. Hell, it almost had no promotion.

I haven't decided yet if I'll plunk out volume II here soon. I'd like to release other things into the wild, if for no other reason than to kinda get my foot in the door--in particular I'd like to create a Film Music reel thing. It's exciting, and I look forward to seeing how things stack up financially-wise down the line. This probably won't be a tremendous cash generator, but hey: every bit helps. If I make $50 from it in a year, it's paid for itself.

I don't know if it's good or bad yet, but I've checked the Amazon sales rank for the album a couple times today. I don't think #88 is that bad of a rank, really, especially for a relative-unknown such as myself.

Then again, I don't know the kind of volume that Amazon gets on weekends. It could be that #s 1-87 sold two over the last hour and I only sold one. But hey--a sale is a sale, and I'm not going to turn that down.

A friend of mine asked me what made me decide to release this stuff now. It's partially financial--I could certainly use the income. But it's also partially, if not completely, motivational in nature. Now I want to write again, but I also want to write something that is "marketable." It's hard knowing exactly what people want. Feedback forms or means provide that info, but they're usually one-sided: you'll either get those people who don't want you to change at all, or those people who want you to go in a completely different direction. Artists continually change, and that's something that a lot of audiences don't understand. While they themselves change, it's a slow & gradual one that they don't "see" because they're right in the thick of it. Artists can provide a comfort zone--a means of re-connecting with youth (or perceived youth).

OK, diatribe over. It's either nap time or writing time...

I have to laugh. On Wednesday I said that the album would be out in about six weeks.

It's already on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001F8M716?ie=UTF8&cdPage=1&newContentID=Tx3RKFCBTJFU7Q5

And Lala:

http://www.lala.com/#album/2306124484406500543/

I guess I need to revamp the website now...

So I haven't written a darn thing here in .... gosh, several months. That's, like, years in Internet time.

In about a month and a half I'll have some music available for purchase from various online music stores. Heck, I can even list them:

iTunes
Amazon
Rhapsody
Napster
eMusic
GroupieTunes
Lala
Shockhound
Amie Street

Improv of the Week 1 is the first of a coming series of albums. Since mid-March, I've been recording a short improvised piano tune each week (Wednesdays, to be specific) and posting them on OPDMedia.com. I've gathered the first 12 into an album, which should be up on those stores in late October.

I think around that time I'll totally revamp my webpage. It's time to get going. No one is going to do this but me. I keep saying it, but doing it is an entirely different beast.

Back to work...

Life is interesting. And I mean it in the most heinous of fashions. The saying about the Chinese (?) insult of "may you have an interesting life" has certainly been true.

I jumped too soon. There's really nothing else to take from events over the last month or three. Sucks.

Tonight I went to a screening held by the Art Institute of Portland's Digital Film & Video Production Department of 13 student short films. Now admittedly, I did have a reason to go, and seeing it on a big screen was rather thrilling. Well, actually, not so much "seeing" it but "listening to it with eyes open." It's an entirely different experience when you're involved in the project than coming into something fresh.

None of the films shown were bad. Most of them were quite good. Yes, there were a few moments which were a little clunky, and quite a few times my eyebrows went up as the underscore cue just felt wrong. But there were also quite a few times where the score was absolutely right, and a couple of the shorts were beautiful or terrifying, appropriately so. There is hope for the artistic world after all.

It certainly raises the possibility of collaborating with the Institute in future projects. It would be a great way to pad out the reel.

A couple months ago I uploaded some "old" tracks of mine to a content distributor so that people could license them for use in various projects. ProductionTrax.com deals in music, SFX, stock footage and stock photos, primarily. I figured it wouldn't hurt to have the tracks there and available to purchase a license.

I was a little surprised the other day when I saw that I had a sale.

Granted, one sale in several weeks' time is nothing to write home about, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. It's a few scheckles that I would not have seen coming my way if I _hadn't_ uploaded tracks.

I'm going to keep feeding them new stuff as I write it. This could get interesting, and I hope it does.

My page there, if you're interested.

I had made plans to write up some crazy April Foolery story. Failed utterly in that regard.

After putting in a long weekend, tonight is obviously a refresh night as I essentially collapsed around 8:30pm. Has nothing to do with why I'm up again now. Stomach being weird and needy, I guess.

Back to the bed.