Music for Schmucks

What is less than a flash in a pan? A spark? In this metaphor, what causes the flash? Is it a grease fire? Is it oxygen suddenly being allowed into an enclosed space which has burned away its available store of it? In either of these scenarios, where would a spark come from? Maybe I’m delving too deeply into the logistics of the metaphor. Let’s say a spark is a significant step down from the flash. What would be smaller than the spark? What would be the next step down? A pop? A sizzle? Even that seems too much to describe what I’m thinking of, considering the size of the pan. Maybe a little bit of a hiss. The things I hope would make a permanent dent in the pan create little more than a noticeable change in the temperature for a brief second. If that.

If we do what we do because we love it, does that predicate that somebody else will love it also? Will the love we feel for what we do be enough of a thing for someone else to love, even if what we’re doing is not? The example that comes to mind is Steve Carell’s character in Dinner for Schmucks. His passion for creating dioramas featuring taxidermied mice is creepy and odd, but his love for his characters and their “lives” is enough to make it endearing and sweet. It makes you sad to see him sweep all his hard work into the trash, not because we care about the mice or their remains, but because we know how much effort and care he put into making them what they are in their afterlife. I hope my music can be at least as endearing as a bunch of dead mice.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OPINION: What Would Bernie Do?

In the last two days a small transformation has taken place. I have been reading a lot of public commentary on the American presidential primaries. I've seen a lot of people get really mad at each other for their opinions. I wrote some of my best stuff on a Bernie Sanders thread that seems to have been since deleted. It's a shame, because I wanted to copy my wise words and paste them here. What I learned from that exchange, and my passion for my responses, was that keeping calm and not descending into insults and blaming leads to much clearer, truer statements. Also, when I remove much of my opinion from it and stick to facts what I say has a lot more power. I have often read over things I have written, sometimes years ago, and I find myself cringing at some of the things I chose to write. There may be a few nuggets of wisdom in there, but I typically don't even finish the sentence of truth before I've gone and added something that makes my face and palm meet. I
Read more

Music 104B Final Project

Image
David Coutant 12 October 2016 The Echo (Los Angeles) Poster Children / State to State / Batwings Catwings Instrumentation used: two guitars, bass, drums (supplemented with drum machine) and vocals. The first band, Batwings Catwings played simple 4/4 and 6/8 rhythms with a lot of barre chords and power. The guitars both played lead, sometimes taking turns doing solos, sometimes playing dual leads a la the Allman Brothers Band. Guitarists Ray Santillan III and Jeffrey Byron play Rickenbacker and Fender guitars with a distorted rock sound. Bassist Cindy Sukrattanawong played a Precision Bass, and she had a solid, clean sound. Drummer Clay Johnson, who formed the band in 2009, plays a standard acoustic kit of probably 7 pieces. The music was high-energy and precise. The vocals of lead singer Dana Poblete were less precise, but she sounded good for the music. The second band of the night was local group State to State. They opened with a swirly, ambient sound that became the song
Read more

The Back Room

I've got a building bug. The success of the chair has given me a certain amount of confidence in my ability to achieve a goal that I've set for myself. Those square pieces of wood were stacked in that back room for months, just sitting there, mocking me, saying, "you don't know what to do with us. You're going to screw it all up. You don't even know the first step of making a chair." And they were partially right. But it turns out I DO know the first step of making a chair, or making anything, and the first thing you make is a plan. Damn, starting to get clever again. Since I really like my chair, despite its flaws, I'm excited about my next big project, which is to enclose the back porch. Now, there was once a patio off of the dining room and hallway, and that had a roof over it, and many years ago somebody enclosed it. I'm not entirely sure how they did it, but it's got painted plywood on the outside and fake-wood paneling on the in
Read more