Penny Dreadful

i would say that a person could create a lot of strange connections between parts of my life & paint a pretty weird picture, but in thinking about things lately, i feel so blessed that i have the wife (and family) that i do. i love this unpretentious town, i like the freedom (and responsibility) that being unplugged from the 'corporate world' has provided, and it is indeed nice to truly live the american way.

that said, i've been messing around with the guitar more lately. i've never been a fan of guitar (and those who have had to hear my play could probably say the guitar has never been much of a fan of me), but this week i had a little extra free time & was able to learn some rudimentary versions of the following songs:

Erasure:
- always
- phantom bride
- a little respect
- i love saturday
- blue savannah
- la gloria
- joan
- chorus
- freedom

Train:
- Calling All Angels

Killers:
- All These Things That I've Done

Feist:
- 1234

Rilo Kiley:
- The Frug

and a handful of old 'pop standards' (Moon River, Cheek to Cheek, etc).

my wife also let me watch DepecheMode: Live In Paris one night, and an 80's new wave compilation DVD the next. was great ...

i've also begun to get back into the swing of things with original material. it has been incredibly difficult to find the time (and mental space!) to do so ... i suppose it is something any artist with children/other responsibilities has to deal with ... and when you're untalented (but lucky when it comes to putting things together) like me, you can't simply fall back on skill ... i HAVE to have a calm environment (late night, hang out in the desert or on a beach, etc) to allow the ideas to flow.
were i skilled (cole porter, for example), i could just hammer out structurally sound songs and sound-good lyrics despite distraction ...
but then again, i don't think he was faced with quite the same obligations.

i kind of wish i'd fallen into a different genre when i was younger ... i truly appreciate my little "maybury" lifestyle, but if i were to let it influence my writing, i might be more 'christian contemporary' or country or something. argh ...

got that Feist song in my head ... 1234

... and it's distracting me from writing new music.

i practiced violin last night in the kitchen ... (we have a 2-floor 'cathedral ceiling' kitchen & the acoustics are amazing!) ...
and the weather has been inspiring yet in-the-way (the power went out as i was firing up the machines this morning) ... i think i'm being pushed by my own little Florestan and Eusebius into working on acoustic/organic stuff ...

spent the night obsessing over some of the non-hollywood work of Crispin Glover, and the day watching my daughter coo "ohhhhhh" with a concerned look in her eyes ...

i wonder what she thinks about ?

Projects Completed

finished the dyed emotions website today, and completed the 'super flashlight' (included UV and IR bulbs for nature and video experiments) last night. also made some small adjustments to arnpoe.com.

am still having problems getting the compressed video for "Let's Get Lizzie High" to remain synced with the audio, so the version currently up on YouTube is weird.

started violin lessons (from a book) yesterday ...
and sometime a couple days ago, i finished my remix of Test Shot Starfish's "Autopilot". It's not cliche'-cool and danceable like most of the other entries, but i was actually proud of about 90% of it. when more time frees up, i think i might make a dance version too. just to fit in ...

green glass

i dreamt i was being X-rayed by a dental technician for stomach cancer.
i also dreamt there were two kangaroos - not nice clean ones like you see on television, but real animals ... musky smell, ticks & all ... in the room that was formerly my office. they were both standing near the window, peering outside, concerned.

icing the topiary penguin.

it's early in the morning.
i cannot sleep.
i've got energy that needs to escape, but i feel myself creeping into a depression ...
though generally fall brings the end of my relationships for the year, this year i'm feeling anxious about music. i was on a really nice high (manic) for the past couple weeks, and was working many hours a day on setting up the dyed emotions promotion, websites, refining the label & the business structure for the whole thing ...
a few times i got a little off track.

channeled the energy into the arnpoe page ...

had spent the past couple weeks on dE and lost key records ...
now it's my time ...

the new look is going to be art-nouveau ... at least a little.
it is the direction the solo album will take ... is taking ...
a way to divert some of the ghosts that are haunting me away from dE3 (don't want to stink up that album with my own weird vibes) ...

for years the FKK project was my outlet for 'thinking outside the box' ...
that's how Tek3 got 'Lets Get Lizzie High', how dE got 'Simply Saying', 'Wilderness Tomb', and 'Radio Static' ... not that any of those works were particularly bizarre (actually, they were all quite plain & ordinary) ...
over time, i've turned into a pop-monster ...
nothing against pop music, but i found myself writing with particular goals in mind ... a far cry from the old material (where i'd often hit 'record' and start playing and mumbling until something started to form) ...

so this new album is sort of an in-between point ...
there are definitely some goals ... i've got some direction ...
but i'm not aiming to sell it as much as i'm aiming to get some of this ... (?) ... out of my head.

aimless ... words ... like this ...