(revised update)
On warm, not-too-windy days, i make my way to Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park. Drum circles, dogs, pot, free spirits (or semi-free, or longing to be free)...i set out my ukulele case and play - the most laid-back busker around, living my greatest artistic challenge. When i arrived in SF two years ago, i considered myself a storyteller/essayist/poet, with music a spice for my main course. Within a few months, i realized that if i were going to impact this world, music had to lead the way. Now i have eighty songs. I thought i was close to being ready a year ago, but this brutal process has had me cutting songs i thought were the heart and soul of my show. It can be heart-rending, dismissing a baby. I've rejected crowd-pleasers that were personal favorites. OUCH (i've got enough confidence [or arrogance] to think that my rejects need to be better than the ones others keep). There's one holdout left, from that first batch of songs i wrote in Florida. I keep rooting for that one. As for my technical skill, in practice i almost sound talented. Under the glare of lights and stage fright, that can fall apart (a simple smile can throw me). But my fingerwork and writing have taken leaps (i recently created song with no repeated chord progressions, something that would have blown my little mind a year ago).
I've still not performed the full concert for an audience, but my half-hour sets are firecrackers. I get amazing, humbling feedback. Half my songs are bawdy bard, 25% folk troubadour, and 25% burning blues. I'm insane enough to think i can kill any crowd. I'm at the point where i could crush virtually any open mic performance, but force myself to give newer songs a chance, even if i know they won't make the cut.
I got my first paying gig six months ago, at a cabaret that's since closed down. The money was a relative pittance, but oh the giddy elation as i biked home that night. I was always their opening act, and never failed to grab an audience tight.
It's time to make a living.
Here's the set list.
-Treesexual
-Superhero Song
-If You See Kay
-Naked Song
-Crappy Trails
-Poop Song
-Pupus-Aria
-Ballad of Violet and Tsutomu
-Every Child
-Poverty Blues
-Happy Holy
-Dong Song
-Smiling Blues
-F.M. Blues
-Going Ape
-Raw Dog Blues
-Dolphin
-Monkey Butt Dance
-Composition in D
-Sexy Bitch
(4-song banjolele set)
-Black Bart the PO8
-Belladonna Tofana
-Symmetrical
-Sam Hall
-Toss 'Em!
-Kill the Blues
-The First Festivus Miracle
-Hug Song
-Sexy Fuckers
(covers)
-Stupid Girls
-Californication
-1491
(specialty songs)
-Not-Dyin' Sci-Fyin' Blues
-Boogey Boogey Boogey
-Jefferson Blues
-Jesus vs. Santa
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Thursday, February 20, 2020
"Everything Bad is Good for You"
(How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter)
-by steven johnson
2005
How often does a book challenge, nay change, the way you look at the world? Few of us seek such change...we're drawn to books the way we're drawn to people, choosing those who reinforce what we want to believe.
I thought i was a cutting-edge progressive. This book exposed me as a crusty conservative: "Damned TV...reality shows and thirteen CSIs! Infernal video games, stripping our youth of their social skills and conditioning them to hyper-violence! Go read a book, go outside!" Yes, that was me. And while those positions aren't entirely wrong (most reality shows worship at the altar of cutthroat narcissism, and too many shows and games desensitize us to violence), the larger charge of TV and video dumbing our culture down couldn't be more wrong. The opposite has taken place over the past fifty years - average IQs have been climbing at a steady rate. Johnson makes a compelling case that the single greatest cause is the genre-shifting leaps of complexity in TV plots and video games. The average show forty years ago involved a single plot moving forward to its own resolution. Today, we ingest cornucopias of subplots and co-plots that resolve over the course of a season (or many seasons). "Reduced attention spans"? Steven thinks not. The first video game? Pong. Now, they require weeks of intense problem-solving to master. Human brains constantly seek challenge, and the marketplace obeys that mandate, or its product dies. As for social skills, you could easily argue that books are more crippling than video games, which force players to problem-solve (and prioritize, and long-term strategize) with other online humyns. And surprise, hyper-violent games are a minority among the most successful games ever.
But wait - there's more! Reality shows force you to constantly evaluate contestants' emotional IQs, to project who will succeed or fail. In doing so, we sharpen our own social skills. And the "degradation" of politics in the TV age, where style (or looks) triumph over substance? Johnson takes the opposite view - that we now have an intimacy with politicians we were heretofore denied, which allows us to assess their emotional skills. In the era of sound bites, much is lost...but much is gained. Johnson asks whether nixon lost to kennedy not because he was ugly or nervous, but because the glare of lights revealed something intuitively untrustworthy. I'm not ready to swallow that one fully, but it's a question worth asking. The lincoln/douglas debates showed prodigious mental agility and decisiveness...yet also revealed nothing about how the candidates might run a meeting or resolve a dispute.
In an era when public schools have long been declining, how have IQs kept rising? There has to be an outside factor. Johnson points out that this cultural leap in smarts isn't affecting the visionaries, whose population percentage has remained constant, but rather the large mass in the middle of the curve. The people who watch TV and play games.
A brilliant offering, steven. Thank you for keeping us on our toes.
-by steven johnson
2005
How often does a book challenge, nay change, the way you look at the world? Few of us seek such change...we're drawn to books the way we're drawn to people, choosing those who reinforce what we want to believe.
I thought i was a cutting-edge progressive. This book exposed me as a crusty conservative: "Damned TV...reality shows and thirteen CSIs! Infernal video games, stripping our youth of their social skills and conditioning them to hyper-violence! Go read a book, go outside!" Yes, that was me. And while those positions aren't entirely wrong (most reality shows worship at the altar of cutthroat narcissism, and too many shows and games desensitize us to violence), the larger charge of TV and video dumbing our culture down couldn't be more wrong. The opposite has taken place over the past fifty years - average IQs have been climbing at a steady rate. Johnson makes a compelling case that the single greatest cause is the genre-shifting leaps of complexity in TV plots and video games. The average show forty years ago involved a single plot moving forward to its own resolution. Today, we ingest cornucopias of subplots and co-plots that resolve over the course of a season (or many seasons). "Reduced attention spans"? Steven thinks not. The first video game? Pong. Now, they require weeks of intense problem-solving to master. Human brains constantly seek challenge, and the marketplace obeys that mandate, or its product dies. As for social skills, you could easily argue that books are more crippling than video games, which force players to problem-solve (and prioritize, and long-term strategize) with other online humyns. And surprise, hyper-violent games are a minority among the most successful games ever.
But wait - there's more! Reality shows force you to constantly evaluate contestants' emotional IQs, to project who will succeed or fail. In doing so, we sharpen our own social skills. And the "degradation" of politics in the TV age, where style (or looks) triumph over substance? Johnson takes the opposite view - that we now have an intimacy with politicians we were heretofore denied, which allows us to assess their emotional skills. In the era of sound bites, much is lost...but much is gained. Johnson asks whether nixon lost to kennedy not because he was ugly or nervous, but because the glare of lights revealed something intuitively untrustworthy. I'm not ready to swallow that one fully, but it's a question worth asking. The lincoln/douglas debates showed prodigious mental agility and decisiveness...yet also revealed nothing about how the candidates might run a meeting or resolve a dispute.
In an era when public schools have long been declining, how have IQs kept rising? There has to be an outside factor. Johnson points out that this cultural leap in smarts isn't affecting the visionaries, whose population percentage has remained constant, but rather the large mass in the middle of the curve. The people who watch TV and play games.
A brilliant offering, steven. Thank you for keeping us on our toes.
Sunday, February 16, 2020
dear ant
Dear ant,
Just to perhaps take you out of your life a moment (and also because personal sharing brings us a step closer to sanity)...
Not having had romance in a couple years, i find my mind needs to fantasize every day. And i've never been able to fantasize about people i don't know, it has to be some real-world possibility.
Of course, some of those are people i should rationally NEVER get involved with...but then, i suspect that if we all counted on pure rationality, no one would come together, ever. While this is essentially true for most people, it feels particularly so for me. My perspectives and habits and capabilities are off the beaten path. One could actually get lost in the humor of how unmateable i am...
But i digress. I'll distract you with a description of a womyn of whom i dream, and how it would likely be an absolute calamity if anything came of it. She's a spoken-word artist i've known for two years. Very intelligent, but she hides it well. Her psychological walls and damage are prodigious - i sometimes think she would go insane if forced to maintain eye contact for sixty seconds. Yet occasionally, in performance, she's able to be brutally honest emotionally. I've always been attracted to her on a couple levels, and in some hypothetical world i could be amazing for her - the first person in her life who never lets her get away with shit.
She has a big heart, which is part of her problem. She could be a healing force of nature one day, but her damage (dysfunctional childhood) is so severe, it will be a decade or two before she's capable of real self-love.
On top of all that, she drinks a good deal.
So there are about seventeen reasons why she and i would be horrible.
Yet loneliness drives me to dream...it tears me apart so much that i don't know whether i'd be able to resist her. Occasionally, i open a little door to real conversation. Fortunately, she doesn't walk through.
Been so long since i've had romance, i'm reduced to hoping i'm soon dreaming of someone healthier for me...how sad, that one can feel almost resigned to one hopelessness or another.
Another day on planet Earth.
love,
wrob
Not having had romance in a couple years, i find my mind needs to fantasize every day. And i've never been able to fantasize about people i don't know, it has to be some real-world possibility.
Of course, some of those are people i should rationally NEVER get involved with...but then, i suspect that if we all counted on pure rationality, no one would come together, ever. While this is essentially true for most people, it feels particularly so for me. My perspectives and habits and capabilities are off the beaten path. One could actually get lost in the humor of how unmateable i am...
But i digress. I'll distract you with a description of a womyn of whom i dream, and how it would likely be an absolute calamity if anything came of it. She's a spoken-word artist i've known for two years. Very intelligent, but she hides it well. Her psychological walls and damage are prodigious - i sometimes think she would go insane if forced to maintain eye contact for sixty seconds. Yet occasionally, in performance, she's able to be brutally honest emotionally. I've always been attracted to her on a couple levels, and in some hypothetical world i could be amazing for her - the first person in her life who never lets her get away with shit.
She has a big heart, which is part of her problem. She could be a healing force of nature one day, but her damage (dysfunctional childhood) is so severe, it will be a decade or two before she's capable of real self-love.
On top of all that, she drinks a good deal.
So there are about seventeen reasons why she and i would be horrible.
Yet loneliness drives me to dream...it tears me apart so much that i don't know whether i'd be able to resist her. Occasionally, i open a little door to real conversation. Fortunately, she doesn't walk through.
Been so long since i've had romance, i'm reduced to hoping i'm soon dreaming of someone healthier for me...how sad, that one can feel almost resigned to one hopelessness or another.
Another day on planet Earth.
love,
wrob
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
medical/dental
Law proposal: that each individual's total yearly medical/dental bill may not exceed the size of their previous year's tax return. If one got no tax return, all medical/dental work is free.
A stopgap on the way to a genuinely humane system - the only people it's going to affect are those in poverty. Isn't humanity ready for a society whose every policy ISN'T an act of violence against the poor?
Get the petitions. Call your congressperson.
A stopgap on the way to a genuinely humane system - the only people it's going to affect are those in poverty. Isn't humanity ready for a society whose every policy ISN'T an act of violence against the poor?
Get the petitions. Call your congressperson.
Friday, February 7, 2020
"Love"
2016-2018
-created by judd apatow, lesley arfin, paul rust
This Netflix series will keep you cringing from start to finish, with the exception of one season 2 flash of sanity in the midst of relentless neurosis.
The story of two would-be lovers in modern L.A. (rust and gillian jacobs) who are constantly self-imploding, "Love" dares give far more honesty than you'll probably be comfortable with. She's a sex/love/alcohol addict, he's woody allen minus the charm. The fatal flaw of the series is that you never root for these two to stay together - all you'll ever want to shout is "Neither of you are ready for any kind of functional intimacy! Try in another decade or two!" Apatow is onto something there, as that's far closer to ALL our stories than Hollywood usually comes. The only moment of healing comes in the single episode where they finally face the fact that he may be more incapable of self-love than she, despite her constant outbursts of self-sabotage.
Her roommate (claudia o'daugherty) provides the show's only likable character, and his worklife as on-set tutor for an impossible-yet-admirable child star (iris apatow) provides nice comic relief. The dialogue and ensemble acting are top notch.
Like the relationships it portrays, you'll love this show even though it never stops hurting you.
-created by judd apatow, lesley arfin, paul rust
This Netflix series will keep you cringing from start to finish, with the exception of one season 2 flash of sanity in the midst of relentless neurosis.
The story of two would-be lovers in modern L.A. (rust and gillian jacobs) who are constantly self-imploding, "Love" dares give far more honesty than you'll probably be comfortable with. She's a sex/love/alcohol addict, he's woody allen minus the charm. The fatal flaw of the series is that you never root for these two to stay together - all you'll ever want to shout is "Neither of you are ready for any kind of functional intimacy! Try in another decade or two!" Apatow is onto something there, as that's far closer to ALL our stories than Hollywood usually comes. The only moment of healing comes in the single episode where they finally face the fact that he may be more incapable of self-love than she, despite her constant outbursts of self-sabotage.
Her roommate (claudia o'daugherty) provides the show's only likable character, and his worklife as on-set tutor for an impossible-yet-admirable child star (iris apatow) provides nice comic relief. The dialogue and ensemble acting are top notch.
Like the relationships it portrays, you'll love this show even though it never stops hurting you.
Monday, February 3, 2020
Riptide 16
Two old crowd-pleasers, for my first time playing banjolele at Riptide (also, my first time playing french horn kazoo with banjolele). "Black Bart the PO8", and "Sam Hall".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyYsJ2wrz8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slyYsJ2wrz8
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