Long Weekend, New Music Coming Along, Election Week

The 5 days off was much needed. No major appliances or vehicles broke down, no family emergencies, and no injuries. So I’d say it was a successful fall break.

Of course the King Crimson show was the highlight. Still reeling from that one, and probably will be for some time. Halloween was pretty uneventful. My daughter came by to show off Celeste’s Halloween costume. I’m not totally sure about whether dogs care a less or not about wearing costumes, but I think the bigger they are the less excited they are to wear them. Celeste was donning her lion outfit, at least the head part of it. As soon as she got out of the car she shook and the head came flying off. The neighbors seemed to enjoy seeing her in it, though.

Friday I did some deep cleaning and also worked on some loop-based songs in the morning. I’ve got two different projects going on right now with music. One is me in the basement studio creating loops and noises with guitar, bass, analog synthesizer and digital keyboard. The other is some stuff I’m putting together on Bandlab, which is essentially what I used to do with Sony Acid Music. I dig through different sets of audio loops and build a song from scratch. I guess it’s a little easier this way since the loops are already there, it’s just up to you to assemble it into something worth listening to. I find this kind of creating rather meditative. I love creating the old fashioned way, but you’re a little more concerned with levels and mic placement and making sure everything is in tune. With the Bandlab stuff you can kind of just go in with a mood in mind and put that musical puzzle together without worrying about mics and levels.

Both offer something in the way of getting your brain in the game of creativity.

I might be releasing the more organic stuff as a suite, assembling the tracks into one long piece I’m tentatively calling Autumn Suite. I actually started the album art yesterday and I think it’ll be done in a day or two. Always excited to have my brain preoccupied with something like this. Gives me less time to obsess over other stuff, like a looming election day.

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Yes, tomorrow is election day 2024 in the US. I never thought there would be an election that I was more not looking forward to than 2020, but 2024 has got it beat. It just feels like a lose/lose situation to me. If one side wins then we’ll be in a cycle of denial, recounts, and more denial for months. Maybe we’ll even get another January 6th because of it.

If the other side wins we’re looking at absolute chaos with the Rights of certain groups in this country being taken away and targets being put on their backs for the next four years. Fear-mongering, revenge on those who disagree with their point-of-view, Christian Nationalists getting involved with how the Govt runs things, and just a total denial of facts and reality in lieu of “gut feelings” and Youtube experts telling people what they want to hear.

I’m just tired of the whole tribalism in this country. When I hear Steve Bannon(fresh out of prison) talking about the “old Republican Party” and the “new Republican Party” it makes me feel ill. If the new Republican party is what we’ve been seeing the last 8 years, please get back to the old one. There’s always been divisiveness when it came to politics, especially in a campaign cycle. You do the dirty tricks and dig up all the skeletons in closets and you throw plenty of mud. But in the end when voting is done and there’s a winner and loser, you just deal with it. People weren’t happy in 2016 with the results, but the “losers” still moved on and didn’t riot. Wasn’t the same story in 2020. If those “new Republicans” lose this year I don’t see it being any different than four years ago. Maybe even worse.

I’ll do my duty tomorrow, as I have in every election since 1992. It just feels like a hell of a lot more is at stake and both sides of the aisle have plenty of chaos lovers that will do what they can to muck up what we’ve had going on here for nearly 250 years.

So if you can vote, do it. I’m not going to tell you who you should vote for, but I certainly hope you’ve thought it out fully. Guy who talks about liking Hitler’s generals, Putin, and Kim Jong Un? Guy who’s going to be a dictator for just his first day in office, and jokes about journalists being shot? Or the lady that laughs funny.

See ya on the other side.