head trip [in every key]

I'd like to meet:

Everyone [all the time], though more specifically: the most highly evolved of the most highly evolved. And even more specifically: a worthy adversary. One whose adversity blackens the sky, pours down like hail, and quakes the earth underfoot. One who will force me, under pain of death, into greater focus and depth that I might grow into what I must: a fig tree [in the jungle]; bearing good fruit in every season of the year, so long as the good lord bless the sunshine and rain. Be it immaturity, or delusion, that one [such as I] require an enemy, to distract from my [real] adversary?

Directed by Ingrid K Brooker

Music:

Babatunde Lea once said, “Music is a metaphor for life.” I can’t agree more. I love good music of any type, everything from Gregorian chant to freestyle rap. Let me elaborate: by good, I mean honest. You don’t necessarily have to be a great musician to make great music. If you’re saying something with your voice or instrument, and you are actually feeling it with everything that you are, down to your core, beyond all the superficial stuff, beyond what’s on the surface in your conscious mind, even beyond what you can’t really express in your subconscious mind, if you say something and it’s coming from your soul, or your heart and you can feel it, chances are you can make somebody else feel it too. It doesn’t have to be perfect, or technical, or even musical in the traditional sense. It doesn’t have to be planned out or written on a lead sheet. You just have to say what you feel to the best of your ability as honestly, I repeat, as honestly as you can. Of course technical knowledge and ability can help you speak more fluently, and help you express more elaborate or complicated things, but you don’t need all of that per se. All you need is to know what you are feeling in your insides. If that feeling, whatever it may be, is real you will keep playing something until what is inside is resonating out of you. It may take twenty years of practicing in your bedroom until it finally comes out and you can say it honestly to someone else. That’s why sometimes you have to hold tight to your emotions and remember what it is that makes you alive. Sometimes you just don’t know how to say how you feel. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to emote such a strong feeling. But that’s why music is such a beautiful art form. Because sometimes all you need is one chord and one well placed note to make everybody’s head explode. When it’s honest and it comes from your core you can be average Joe on the street corner that makes an empty bucket or a hollow block of wood sound like a symphony. I’ve heard stuff like that and can’t really fathom it even though I’m seeing how it’s done right in front of me. I have a lot of friends who are musicians that I’ve played with, and they all have their own opinions about what good music is. One says that metalcore isn’t really heavy metal because it’s not pure and the vocals don’t have the right aesthetic. One says that heavy metal isn’t really music; it’s just a bunch of angry kids making noise and beating themselves up. One doesn’t accept anything but degenerative rap. I’d say that they are all right, but also that they are all missing the point because each is an elitist music snob. Nothing in music is pure because every style of music is an amalgamation of various sounds that came before it. Metal may be loud and noisy but it’s also overflowing with raw emotion. And if you only listen to shallow sounds that degrade your own culture, you haven’t really lived. If you’re going to be a rapper and pride yourself on the nontonal, inharmonic (albeit rhythmically complex), improvised rhymes that come out of your mouth, you had better say something potent that moves people deeply. Don’t just bloviate nonsense in the most metaphorically subtle way possible, say something honest that is actually meaningful to you and the audience! It’s not impossible! I know that I’m talking mad shit about my good friends, who are all great musicians in their own right, but all I’m trying to say is that music is much more than whatever your opinion of it may be. It’s too beautiful and deep to be categorized, too great to be defiled by hype and pomposity on so called “Music Television” and American Idol, too sacred not to be disseminated freely on bit torrents, file sharing sites, and guitar tab instructional sites, too valuable to be bought or sold for any amount of money, too priceless to be hindered by copyright laws and politics, and too ancient to be trivialized. Now I’m not trying to promote piracy, I’ve got more cd’s than anybody I know, but everyone is guilty of downloading illegal mp3’s. I’m just angry that all the great guitar tab sites are being systematically shut down by the MPA. It’s a crime against humanity! And did you know that you can’t even sing “Happy Birthday to You” in public without first getting a license from ASCAP and being legally obligated to pay royalties to the owner of the copyright? It’s kind of ridiculous. Music isn’t about who sells the most records, who wins the most awards and accolades, which guitarist can play the fastest or the slowest or with all eight fingers and two thumbs, who has the most diamonds in his grill, or “Wow! That guy is really neat! He plays three saxophones at once! He must have an incredible lung capacity!” It’s not about any of that. Music is about what moves you on the inside. It is living and breathing just like you and me. It can change the whole world just like it can change your individual mood. Everyone has heard a sound that they can relate to, that shook them to the core. And if nothing so far has moved you, you probably have something very important of your own to say. But I doubt there is anyone like that, at least not in this generation. Music is sacred to me. Not because I’m a musician or a music lover. Not because I’m still a novice and haven’t learned my ii/V/I’s in every form and key. Not even because I’ve realized that my neglected Les Paul is actually my soul incarnate, like the katana to a samurai practicing Bushido. Music is sacred to me because it actually saved my life. I can honestly say that I would be dead right now if I never heard those old recordings of Hendrix and Page and countless others. Before I picked up the guitar my life was desolate and destitute. I was a lost soul who was so depressed I despised my own existence. I was completely numb to the multitude of love and blessings from my family and few real friends, in a downward spiral of self-loathing and self-destruction. Then, somehow, by divine intervention, I was changed. I heard those old songs and they moved me. They shook me to the bone. They revitalized my essence and ignited a fire that cannot be extinguished. I bought cd’s and started watching documentaries on TV about Clapton, Hendrix, Iommi and others, and I could relate to them. They were just like me: shy, introverted, emotional, depressed, and struggling with the cards that life dealt them. My best friend bought an electric guitar, and I was over at his house every day after school. A friend of his would come over and teach us Metallica riffs. It was only a matter of time before I had my own six-string. I begged my parents every day for a few months. They weren’t sure if I was serious about it, but I was determined. They bought me a cheap Squire Strat & amp combo from the overpriced local music shop. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was finally free. I found a positive direction. I now had a purpose that was also the most powerful catharsis in the universe. I had something to say, because I felt so much inside, yet the meaning was something totally ineffable. But I was not relying on words alone as the means of expression. I still have many dreams and goals musically. I want to learn how to improvise over Giant Steps, and master a book of Celtic folk songs for solo acoustic, and other such things to varying effects. But these are all just stepping stones on the journey of becoming a decent musician. My true goal is to say something honestly that resonates not only in myself, but with someone else. I wish to share these emotions too inexplicable to be put in words. I want to move just one person as I have been moved by so many others that came before me. This is my passion. This is my soul of wood and wire, dented and dinged, tortured and deprived, speaking the only truth I truly know before God and anyone who chooses not to plug their ears.

Movies:

I like documentaries on most topics, anime, foreign films, Akira Kurosawa’s stuff, Kill Bill, The Shawshank Redemption, instructional guitar DVD’s, Stranger Than Fiction, 300, The Prestige, comedies, kids movies, Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, and classics of every sort. Taking part in making movies is really fun too.

Television:

Many of my compatriots complain that television is completely base. In some ways their speak reminds me of the old philosophers, debating what is in fact noble, and what is in fact base. To me, it is a wondrous medium, as noble as it is base, and as enlightening and informing as it is mere distraction or entertainment. Indeed, one of the older means of mass information, disinformation, propaganda, and promotion of capital. But too, a very sobering reflection of humanity if not completely dismissed as detritus.

Books:

I live by the wise words of Charles Richard Campbell, “There is an end to your life, but there’s no end to knowledge!”

Heroes: