Psy Dubstep Trance?!

So I've been getting really into the Dubstep sound, the dark and Grimey UK dance music that has been blowing up the past couple years. This, along with Psytrance, should keep dance music interesting for at least the next couple years. So I had an idea, what about mashing up Dubstep with Psytrance? They are almost polar opposites in terms of production approach, but their tempo range is the same (Dubstep being just a couple ticks slower on average), so I figured it would be an easy proposition to lay a couple tracks over each other. In short, wow! What a cool/complex sound they create together! I haven't heard of anyone doing this before, but I wouldn't be surprised if it catches on with DJs, and ultimately producers may start creating tracks that are the spirtual children of both Psytrance and Dubstep.

Still moving forward with my DVD production despite the troubles mentioned in my last post. I've decided on a name for the disc: Adventures in the Rainbow Vortex. I'm having trouble deciding on music content for the disc, if any. If I use commercial music, I'll have to first get permission, and I'd probably pay them something for every copy I sell. Ideally I'd like to team up with a Psytrance label looking for some extra promotion.

personal emotional crap

today sucks. I'm still confused over the whirlwind of the past few days. My emotions were tugged tired, to the edge, and i felt like i had no choice in my actions. I felt like I was suffocating as I was faced with the reality of my only option...I lost a best friend. How did it happen? Like many things in the Universe, Love has simple mechanisms, but very complex interactions. I could write a book on it. In fact, in the amount of time I've spent in disorder from this dissonant situation, and never really getting anywhere with it, I could have made a lot of awesome stuff to help the world.
So I tried to distract myself with recording some VJing. I have a big gig tomorrow night so I planned on recording a live set tonight and playing back the render tomorrow night when i want to take a break. My computer crashed 30 minutes into recording a live set, rendering the whole thing unsaved. This happens a lot when i'm trying to record. I think it is bugs in the Arkaos event recorder. Pretty frustrating, which makes me wish i simply had a way to record my output to a DVD recorder or a camcorder. Good thing I have so much money. Ha. Money. Very funny.
I think today is just crapped, and I shouldn't try to do anything lest I want to get myself killed.

done

I've finished my anthology disc. Whew.
Now I'm excited to make some totally fresh jams.

I'm looking forward to this next week- I will be working on a giant moon mirror array out in the desert- a contraption that amplifies moonlight and observes potential health benefits. On Tuesday apparently the Discovery Channel will be out there for an event open to the public. Whoah.
It will be a nice little vacation, and I'll get paid for it!

semblance of a good home

After spending the past two months feeling out of my element living on the North Side of Tucson (the land of cars, consumerism and rich retired folk), I have finally moved back downtown into a nice little place with a really nice rent $. I bought a cheap bike with a sweet basket on the front, and I also got a job as a server at a restaurant on, you guessed it, North Side! That plus some other projects in the pipeline should keep me plenty busy until I wander around again next summer. The weather here is gorgeous now, good energy around, plenty of fun, Beautiful times!

five things i love in my life right now

1. Kombucha tea
2. Hand drumming
3. Psy-dubby jams
4. Distracting people
5. Sun time in a cooling air

I just finished watching Zeitgeist: The Movie. (go to site to download the torrent or watch it in a web browser). Wow. What a heavy movie...Truth...put clearly....at least I think it is truth...I do believe it is more true than the information the government regularly gives us. At any rate, even if half of this movie is true, we're due for a revolution. Please watch it and decide for yourself.

I've been spending my time recently living like a professional VJ, except I haven't been making any money with it...whoops. Its actually pretty amazing how many positions I have applied for in the past month, all of which have been shot down. Am I on some kind of national do-not-hire list? Who knows. I even applied to 2 dishwashing jobs and a gas station clerk position today. Yeah, thats how desperate it has become. Not that I don't enjoy spending my time on personal pursuits, I'm just not good at making money with my personal pursuits...On a related note, maybe a revolution is occurring, one that causes a breakdown of currency as we know it in today's world. I feel the possibility on many levels. Whatever happens, I'm not stressed about it. Things tend to work out as they should.

Power up!

This will probably be my last post before Burning Man; In the next three days it all comes together, and it is feeling great! I'm scheduled to VJ at the Opulent Temple Wednesday for the White party, and Saturday late night. I can only begin to imagine what this experience off the grid will bring, but everything inside of me is foretelling of great things! I just need to keep love close to me, and all will unfold in beauty.

On the increasing polarization of concsiousness

I've spent the past three days gathering video berries to ultimately be triggered for VJing. The whole process lead me to think about our intentions in interacting with the environment and how we seek out new things. I then related that to the trends in consciousness in our modern culture. The trend is that of a polarization in information consumption. In this day we have the ability to quickly find almost any information that the human race has collected. However, a large segment of our population has not moved into the paradigm of self-paced information consumption. Many people still rely on Television or print media as their main source of information consumption. This is being force-fed. The term 'waking up' that is being used in alternative culture implies to break free of the mass-consumption information streams, to stop being spoon-fed information from sources outside of ones unique intentions, and to actively search for information on an alternate path.
So, what we have now is people who are on the mass consumption path, and the people who are on alternate paths of information consumption, paths that are scouted out by one's own intentions. This polarization is becoming increasingly evident. For instance, a good blogger aquires their content not from the mass sources, but from independently-motivated searching and gathering.
As a society we can now search for any term that interests us and tune into any stream of information in order to create our own unique space of feeling and understanding. The question is, do you take advantage of that ability, and how far down the rabbit hole do you go? Those answers determine the side of the consciousness pole on which you sit.

The wave of consciousness coherence

I dont know how everything is happening, but my actions have been speaking only of love, and so far it is working. In my experience, It is possible to turn any unwanted situation around with a good dose of love, and with love any dream is made possible. Love all as if all are perfect beings.
It is easy for me to say these things right now because I am in love, a chemical reaction that saturates me. Its one of those feeelings that really is inexpressible.
Why is the feeling so powerful right now, after such a strange past few weeks? A week ago I was saying I no longer have a girlfriend. I took days to accept it and be satisfied with that reality, and then it all changed. My heart opened back up, wider than ever. I turned one of the worst situations I could feel into something full of growth and ecstatic moment. Two weeks ago I was convinced the world was going to hell. Now I feel like everything bright is flourishing and working out the way it is meant to be.
In strange days we live. Such a wave of chaotic and synchronic events.

Reminder to myself

I am OK.
The first couple weeks back in town have been dramatic. Once again in this life, I'm needing to look into my source to find comfort, stability, and a sense of direction to keep myself together. So far it has been good for me (tough love), but I have to admit moments when I feel loopy and lost.
I'm still not sure of what to say about where I'm standing other than the general statement that I am standing in the 'now'. I guess things will unfold how they were always supposed. The Universe is in a constant state of settling.
In the meantime, I'm sticking close to my art and the people around me that help sustain the good vibrations. I have a lot of space to feel in a way that is unmitigated. I guess I am overdue for some of that. This is just the beginning. The time that lies before me is a sea of potential waiting to be manifest.

Yoga FTW!

A good friend took me to a Yoga class tonight. Real, straight up yoga. I was a little anxious about it because I am not very flexible, but my fears subsided as soon as I walked into the room. It must have been the best thing I've done for myself in ages. I am really energized and feel great. All of my body and mind is in harmony, and this was just my first time! This is something I will be doing regularly from now on. Everyone, do yoga!

Most awesome monsoon ever

I'm in Epic cafe, watching the road, which has now become a raging river, make cars float off of the ground. Water is flooding into the cafe. Someone just told me to pick up my bag off the floor because the water is now coming into my corner. Oh, theres a trash can floating away. Bye bye garbage can. The thunder is shaking everything around. Everyone's really excited about being trapped in the cafe. Its funny how i came into the cafe just a minute before it really started. THe same thing happened the last time I went to the cafe a few days ago. A storm came in and knocked out the power to the whole side of the street, and everyone is the cafe was just hanging out in complete dark. This place is officially my sanctuary during the monsoons.
I hope hubcap found a place to stay dry.

Grocery shopping at the calories to price ratio

When I'm shopping for food, I'm focused on two things. First is, obviously, acheiving a balance in nurtient and carbohydrate/fat/protein content. The second focus is on the calories to price ratio. If you're not careful (especially at the natural foods grocers), you can end up buying a lot of things in the 100:1 area (100 calories per dollar) that also don't have any special nutrient content. My goal is generally to average a 600:1 ratio. This is nearly impossible if you go around the isles only picking up prepackaged foods, but there are options, such as potato chips, that are in that value range. The place where value really shines is in the bulk section, where one can find deals upwards of 1000:1. However, most of these foods are carbohydrate-rich grains. Two things that you undoubtedly pay a higher price are meat-based proteins and nutrient-rich vegetables. This can be offset with vegetarian proteins such as beans and nuts and careful selection of the right vegetables. The good news is that we don't need as many grams of protein as we do carbohydrates. For instance, 2 cans of tuna fish can be had for $2, and while is only about 300 calories, it is a day's worth of protein.
Being a conscious shopper can help one be healthy while still only spending under $5 a day on food.

Dreamtime

The Dreamtime festival was a blast, totally energizing! Serendipity was a common theme- things seemed to manifest themselves as needed. I VJ'd for 3 nights in a row, total of over 10 hours, definitely one of the biggest crowds I have had the opportunity to VJ for. I drank lots of complimentary Kombucha and Yerba Mate which both kept me well and awake for the duration. Speaking of which, I don't know why I'm so awake right now. I should be sleeping. I hardely got any sleep this weekend!
At any rate, I'm back in Tucson now. We met a Tucson friend at the festival who was looking for riders, so we felt like it was the best thing to do. It feels really good to be back here with all of my new experience and perspective. I love the Tucson smell and air, and we're justin time for the monsoon season. Joy! I'm not going to fool around here with things that drain my energy without contributing to growth. I'm going to strip any drama and surround myself with people who share common ideas and goals. I had some great conversation with Life, our rideshare buddy, on the 15 hour ride home this morning. We are on the same level with a lot of really abstract concepts and had a good session of making sense of it by connecting it all together. Big jump in synchronous energy these days! Now, this week, reflection, writing, sketching, outlining... Back to the dojo to flesh out some of this mass of inspiration

Last night I happened upon an experimental electronic music/video series called Frequencee Mind Control. It represents the best of whats going on underground all over the country with this new generation of digital artists. I had the pleasure of meeting and seeing the work of VJ Movax, who makes a lot of generative visualizations by using Processing to analyze and react to the audio signal. Got me really excited, and he has an equal excitment for all things involving VJing these days. Hopefully I have convinced him to VJ with us at Dreamtime next week! That will help give me some slack as we are short on VJ talent at the event. Also special props to Drayn, who had a really solid performance and engaging sound. One of the members jammed out on a MIDI keyboard to create most of the drum beats for the set. Humanized electronic beats yum! As a whole the scene here in CO is pretty heavily influenced by breakcore, but it also embraces the more spacious melodic side of IDM/glitch music. Great to see it flourishing!

Denver!!

Yeah, I'm in Denver. We got in at 6am and had no idea what we were doing. We first decided that we needed to store some of our gear so we could wander and orient ourselves with the city. Luckily there were short term lockers, so we stowed our packs and found the nearest wifi signal to look for a place to stay. We wandered around the 16th street mall, a pedestrian strip with lots of shops and people. We found some homeless people, one of which offered us food and advice on city living without money. One of our new street kid friends followed us around while we found the Hostel we are now staying at, The Melbourne. Good place, $16 a night per bed, full kitchen, full bathrooms, lots of nice people passing through. In general, my first 6 hours in Denver have been very pleasant.
Backtracking a couple days, we spent Tuesday-Thursday in Omaha, NE, couchsurfing at Hotel Frank, which is a misleading name because its not really a hotel. Its just a big party house with 8 tenants and a constant stream of couchsurfers passing through Omaha. The day we left there were 6 more people arriving. They sure know how to make travelers feel like special guests.

On Monday we spent the day exploring Stillwater, MN while we spent the night at Heather's grandparent's house. Very nice little town with a classic charm. The town center is best summed up as a bunch of antique stores, cafes, art galleries and candy stores (plus a bitchin co-op!) at the edge of the St. Croix river.

Whew, ok, i think i'm caught up on the basic points. Hopefully i'll have more time later to write some more about the details.

applied epiphanies

The theme this summer is turning out to be different than i imagined, but in a beautiful, life-changing way. I'm currently rendering a 5 minute VJ session i just played. The amount of progress I have made with my VJing style has been nothing short of astounding. I am convinced that few have developed such a configuration, and no one has happened upon the exact stye I am discovering. I'm creating a standard for my patches, and as a result I am starting to really work it into my brain in a way that is becoming natural in execution. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it is all complete fun and I will get there as long as I continue to dedicate myself. It is somewhat unexpected that I would be spending so much time VJing. I had originally been prepared to focus on creating music on this journey. While I have been capturing a bunch of good field recordings with my Edirol r-09, I have been doing very little in the way of composition.

I'm in Minnesota right now at Heather's Dad's house. They are all at a family picnic. I opted out because I ate some lactose earlier and it seriously threw my insides out of wack. In general since I have been in this town my eating habits have been less than adequate for my sensitive system. I really can't wait to get to a natural foods store and put my body back in harmony. Other than that, this portion o fthe trip has been pretty neat. I feel like I understand how/why Heather is the way she is after spending some time with her family. I spent 4th of July at the family's cabin by a lake, and we all piled onto a couple boats and watched fireworks. Boats are relaxing.

The last leg of the trip seems to be solidifying. In a few days we will be off to Omaha, NE. We are using couchsurfing.com to find some people to stay with for a night or two there, and then we will be on our way to Denver CO. From there we hope to get a ride out to the Dreamtime festival in Paonia, where we will spend 4 or 5 days camping there. I will be VJing and Heather is volunteering, so we won't have to pay tickets, and I might even get paid a little if I do a good job. From there we will head to San Diego to breathe in some nice beach air and see a couple friends. I'm really excited for that, they are always great for deep conversation and overall chillage.

Oh, yeah. Its my birthday today. Quarter-century old. Definitely time to be moving at high velocity.

trouble in the air

the past 24 hours have been pretty intense. The bus ride went as expected - twelve hours on a greyhound isn't much to write home about. I did manage to get about 4 hours of sleep on it, which is good I guess. We arrived in Columbus at 7:30am. Steve and Beth picked us up and we had a tasty breakfast at Waffle House while we caught up on our musings. From there it kind of went downhill. I found out that I am deathly allergic to their 2 cats. I tried to ignore it at first, then I tried to pretend like it would be OK. I took a Zyrtec and hoped that would solve the problem, and it kind of did, at least a little bit. By mid-afternoon I actually had a good 3 hour chunk of VJing where I had a slight epiphany about the ability to mix the opacity of effects instances, and the subsequent implications for controlled feedback. Much light was seen. It forced me to take a walk to shake off my excited energy. Steve had some work to do, so Hubs and I went with Beth to a coffee shop where a design group was meeting to discuss creative projects to help raise awareness of issues in the community. Good times, but by then I was realizing how much of an effect the cat dander/misc. allergens were having on my airways. I was having trouble breathing because of inflammation/constriction. So, I ultimately sent up tent in their backyard to camp for the night and probably the rest of the weekend, which is where I sit now. What another crazy day.

Dense space-time

For good reason, It has been awhile since an update. I've been really busy, running around everywhere! Yesterday I got my first tattoo courtesy of my good friend Bruce Gulick. Last week I attended Gaian Mind, a 4 day Festival on a Spiritual Sanctuary/campground, Four Quarters, in South Central PA. It was totally awesome; I found 1000 other like-minded people to build a temporary community and space in which to celebrate all that is special to us. Highlights included a Sweatlodge, VJing and meeting/seeing lots of other talented VJs, dancing in both the Psytrance and Downtempo stages, workshops discussing topics such as sustainable living and the Mayan Calandar, and most of all, connecting with so many kind and interesting souls through every step. The festival as a whole has re-energized, refocused, and refueled my motivation to continue on this path I take.
Today is a turning point in my Journey. Tonight we take a bus to Columbus, OH to stay with the Project Ruori before continuing towards Minnesota to meet Hubcap's family.

more doomy doom

SO, I'm at the Emergency room...again. This time, Heather broke her arm. We were riding my parents' bikes and she used the brakes and just kinda flew off the bike onto the pavement. I blame the bike; the brakes are all rusted up and they stick down in the clamped position. She wasn't expecting such a sudden stop. At any rate, I'm in the waiting room, and she's probably getting X-rays. The funny thing was that we were talking about going to the hospital BEFORE we ended up going on the fateful bike ride. She has been feeling kinda sick and probably has caught the same infection bug that I have been recovering from. Hopefully she'll get an antibiotic for that while we are here. All I hope for is that we're both well for the Solstice festival- Gaian Mind. We've already paid $280 for the tickets and a meal plan, so theres no going back.Speaking of, I'm hoping I'll get a chance to VJ at the festival. I've been workign on a new bank inspiring by the beach and the ocean. We are ride-sharing up to Four Quarters with a VJ we met through tribe.net. He seems to have a good visual style. I look forward to journeying with him and exchanging style techniques.
Weather here has been pretty poor this week. Overcast everyday and lots of drizzles. On Tuesday we met some random kids who had jsut graduated high school and partied with them at their beach house. Heather played beer pong for the first time, and we won! Overall it was silly, but thats what the Dewey experience is all about.
Heather has been taking lots of pictures - hundreds! I need to set up a flickr account so I can easily share some of my favorites.

up and down with the sick

the past four days have been a battle with infection. It made its way into my lungs, and last night it also became apparent it was causing an ear infection. The pain from that got so bad I had to rush to the hospital this morning. The Doc gave me antibiotic, vicodin, and eye drops for suspected pink eye. Hopefully within 4 days I'll be rid of this.
Between resting, I've found enough energy to play with some music and get out at least a little bit. We biked to Rehoboth the other day and played some skeeball on the boardwalk. Multiple people approached us about our hair, which I have redone to a vibrant swirl of green and blue. Pictures will be here eventually.

Dewey Beach

I've been feeling pretty heavy the past couple days. By that I mean I've been sick with something since I've been at the beach house, so I have plenty of time to sit around, think, dream, and feel the weight of my life as it stands. At first I thought I had a sinus infection, which may be true, but it isn't that simple. This morning I woke up with my eyes covered in gooey gunk as if I had conjunctivitis. There was also one other time I got a strange eye affliction, within the span of 15 minutes my eye went from completely normal to caked over with gunk to the point where I could not open it. I think it was some sort of autoimmune funkiness.
What that said, the beach is nice, and if there is any good time to get sick, it is now because I don't have any obligations for awhile.

in teh Delaware

Yesterday I woke up outside on the porch of my sister's apartment. I was allergic to something in her house, probably the excessive amount of pet dander. As the sun lightened the sky, lazy clouds unveiled their shapes, birds sang all around, and distant traffic built up to a consistent din. Then I fell asleep again and woke up some hours later when my sleeping bag became heated from the Sun. We spent the morning playing with my sister's roommate's Flavia machine, and Heather realized she had the ability to make a good omelet. My sister was nice enough to let us borrow one of her cars for the day, so we took a trip to center city. After getting really irritated with city traffic, we stopped at South street and walked from 12th St. to the Riverfront. We also visited the Rodin Museum (the guy who created the 'Thinker' sculpture). My sister has in a relaly nice mood and offered to make us dinner, so we obliged, and it was damn good too. Then we decided to end our stint in Philly and drove down to my parent's house in DE. All was well at first. Heather met them and we talked for awhile. The trouble started when it came time to go to sleep. More allergic reactions. Yay. My eyes burned and became red and inflamed, my lungs closed up, and my nose was dripping and stingy. I took an emergency Zyrtec, and then finally I fell into a drug induced slumber outside on the screen porch.

56 hours of bussing.

The bus trip was greusome and fun, an exercise in patience. Next time I take a bus trip that far, I'll be taking a break somewhere in the middle. We were thinking of stopping in Columbus, OH on our way to MN in July to visit the Project Ruori crew, one of my favorites from the Electro-Music regulars.

So, we got into Philly and made our way over to Vytear's residence, and everything from that point until now has been a blur of complete fun. In between the relentless audio-visual-social bombardment that is Electro-Music 2007, there was lots of greasy chinese food, The Dark Crystal, preparations for my own audio-visual set, and walking around the city and forest with Heather.

I think my set went well enough, I only heard good things about it. I also heard very positive things about my visuals for other artists. I think I one-upped my Vytear video performance over last year.

If all that wasn't enough to make me tired, I was woken up by Heather last night telling me she needed my help. She walks me into the bathroom where I saw pools of blood everywhere- the sink, the floor, the toilet, bathtub, walls...all covered in blood. If anyone had seen that, the first thing they would say is "Where's the dead body?". Luckily, it wasn't death, but still pretty scary. Her lip piercing had started bleeding and wasn't coagulating properly. It must have been 25 minutes before the blood flow stopped. By the end her skin was a pale grey, she almost fainted, and I spent 2 hours cleaning Jason's bathroom.

At any rate, I've had enough excitement for a little while. Today is for reflection, rest, and dinner with my sister.

First Post

This blog has been set up to chronicle my adventures into the vast unknown. Where does this adventure start, and when does it end? Well, lets say it starts NOW. It ends when I say "I'm done. I'm tired of wandering and exploring. Give me a job and rent to pay."
I'm not going to hold back with this blog. Lots of pictures, lots of sounds. Sound will be playing a very large role in this journey. I am going to be stretching my definitions of music and sound as art, and I will be sharing these pieces as I go.
For now, the preparations are still under way, but in 12 days, everything should be in place, and I will be on a bus to Philadelphia.