Engines Come and Go

Spring break draws to a close. Not really ready to return to labor. I feel like I could just sit in bed, messing around with Ableton Live and reading books, moving my legs as the rays of the afternoon sun swung through my window. Maybe go for the occasional swim if I felt like it. But of course that's not the way of the world. This is not really a good thing; time goes on, and I run into trouble if my mind doesn't keep pace.

Speaking of Ableton Live, though, I've finally been able to work out how to do some rudimentary loops on it. I spent the first half of this last week trying to put together super-minimalist MIDI drum and bass tracks for Monica's "This Song," for The New Thing (that's what Miguel, Monica and I are currently referring to it as--I sort of want to call it Day of the Condor, but who the hell cares about band names anyway?). The end product turned out to be a rather somber, Cocteau Twins- or Jesus and Mary Chain-like beat, but sounding more like it had come off of one of William Basinski's old tapes due to the gratuitous low-pass filters and reverb I tacked on. (To be honest, the filters weren't exactly a hit with M&M.) The actual tracks took about 20 minutes (literally, in the case of the verse drum track) to make, but 2 whole days to revise; I suppose that's the problem with programming. And I still come up with ideas for things to add on to it, but I really need to work on stuff for other songs.

The main problem I'm having is that I have no idea if what I'm doing is any good; unlike guitar and bass, whereas I have enough experience in playing and listening to usually tell immediately if I'm doing something out of place, I've never done this before. And all M&M will say are, "it's alright," and, "I didn't expect it to be so heavy"; certainly I took the melancholy little acoustic song Monica wrote, and dragged it into some suffocatingly dark corner typically reserved for bands like Portishead, or something. Good Lord, I wish someone would just tell me how to make something that sounds good.

(Speaking of which, I've been listening to a lot of them lately, and the Youtube video of their recent stripped-down performance of "Wandering Star"--along with The Durutti Column, and Slowdive, as always, has been a big influence in the way I've been thinking about/playing guitar for The New Thing.)

Finished Chris Adrian's tome, The Children's Hospital, today to a soundtrack of The Notwist and Aphex Twin. How could one describe that book--except as "harrowing"? I'm still trying to figure out what it all means; right now, my best guess is that it's at least partially about the burdens and connections people make to each other and the world at large, and how in certain ways they can become condemnations and curses. Was that why Pickie was called the "abomination"; was that why the adults had to die? I know I should probably re-read it, but I also know I'll probably never have time to; damn thing's 615 pages long. Read the book on Maria's recommendation. Still need to discuss it with her.

Went to hang out with Jess in Georgetown with John and Sterling last night. First off: Georgetown is the preppiest place I have ever seen. Being that I went to Lawrenceville, frequently roamed Princeton, and am now at Johns Hopkins, that's saying a whole fucking lot. Everyone I saw wandering on or near Georgetown campus looked like they had plenty of money, extended wardrobes, impeccable taste and cultural experience, and other things that make you (if you were the spiteful type), wish they'd trip and fall face-first into a sludge puddle. When I was at Lawrenceville, I might not've thought twice about it, but now that I've lurked in Baltimore for a few years, it came as a bit of a shock.

Also, Georgetown kids like basketball. There were entire billboards in Jess' dorm dedicated to basketball news. Basketball's bigger at Georgetown than lacrosse is at Hopkins. That's ridiculous. I'd failed to realize that college sports could be that big anywhere. That's what being at JHU does to you, I suppose. In any case, the thing I found most interesting about Georgetown basketball was that their team name--the Hoyas--translates, roughly, as the Whats.

I didn't notice before, but it seemed to me this time around that atmosphere extended to the general populace of DC as well, or maybe it was just around the Georgetown neighborhood: everyone seemed to carry themselves in a self-important way, was talking on their cell phone, or seemed like they had places to be, things to do, significant tasks to accomplish. Some of the kids I see prowling Charles Village on the weekend evenings have that look about them, but they're always hopelessly out of place in Baltimore.

Mine was basically a last-minute decision to go with Sterling and John (the suddenly dismal weather on Friday had taken a lot of the incentive out of me); we hitched a late-afternoon MARC into the capitol, switched to metro, and finally took a Georgetown shuttle to the campus. While we were on the shuttle, some kids ahead of us were talking loudly about getting drunk. Georgetown's campus is rather mazelike; a couple of times the walk from the shuttle stop to Jess' dorm took us through alleyways pinched between buildings, and across tiny quasi-courtyards, fenced in by dorms, that seemed to only exist because nothing had been built in their spaces. In the freezing rain, those courtyards seemed staggeringly out of place between the rather upscale DC avenues, almost like little pockets of postapocalypse blooming secretly in the outer cosmopolis of the university's surrounding area. After meeting up with Jess, we went out for some (expensive, as I had anticipated) Thai; I contacted Wamiq and Deal to no avail; we went to the liquor store where the others fussed over cheap wines and champagnes and I looked quite bored; we returned to Jess' room; Jess and Sterling went to walk some dog; a kid named Greg, who looks (and acts) a lot like Sam M. from Hopkins, showed up and invited John and I to check out his friend JB's radio show at the Georgetown studio; we walked there, Jess' roommate and Greg's girlfriend Rachel, of the recent knee surgery and rather timid and distracted voice, joining us; we met and hung out with JB, who was French and spun dance remixes with precision; John tried for about 15 minutes to open the bottle of wine he had brought, because he'd forgotten to bring a corkscrew. Jess and Sterling arrived; we left, John talking shop with JB along the way; Sterling and I picked up coffee to go with the Irish whiskey and creme liqueur; we returned to Jess' room, mixed, left again for Jess' friends' birthday party.

Party itself was already crowded when we showed up, and only got more so as the night progressed. A girl I had never met, who had the second-most ridiculous grin I have ever seen (the first being Nick's girl Judy's), called me by my full name as soon as we walked in; after I had recovered from the surprise, she introduced herself as Emma, whom I remember Diamond talking about from a few weeks earlier. She said she recognized me from Facebook, which was somewhat disturbing; maybe listing my (sort of) middle name makes me more memorable? She turned out to be rather interesting to talk to; we had one of those long, formally casual, nothing-conversations later, about allergies I think, and I'm not really sure what else, other than it was a lot of talk and very little speaking.

I think I offended her at one point by questioning whether she would still support the Georgetown Hoyas if they weren't actually good; damn it, how am I supposed to show respect for other people's enthusiasm about college sports, if I don't give two shits about college sports itself? At least with religion, you see enough flak in the media to be somewhat forewarned of the perils of challenging others' beliefs. In any case, I wonder how she and Diamond are doing.

I must confess that the two-drink rule was decidedly broken last night, though not by a lot; I didn't keep count, but between the mixers and the champagne I probably had 3-4 drinks. It brought me to the very edge of being drunk, but didn't do me much good; all that happened was my head started to feel dense, I became too lazy to continue attempting to dance to the feeble iPod speakers (summarily drowned out by the crush of conversation in the tiny room), and couldn't really bring myself to do much besides sit in a chair with my mind blank for the last hour or so of the party. Actually, my mind wasn't quite blank; I started wondering when the hell we could possibly get out of there. Maybe it was just the fuzzy navel; sugar and alcohol are a terrible combination. Honestly speaking, though, my alcohol tolerance has probably dropped to negative levels in the past two months; should be very few problems getting back to the two-drink rule. I hope.

After the party, Jess and Sterling went back to Jess' room, but John and I got stuck wandering around with a few Georgetown kids for another hour or so. They couldn't figure out where we would be crashing. Brian was trying to get Jess (another one, whom John had been dancing with) to let John crash in her room. She didn't like the idea, but the infuriating part was neither of them would just talk straight and get it over with; Brian kept trying to be funny, and Jess kept diverting the topic to nothing in particular, and it was all so full of bullshit I had to restrain myself from saying, look, just get us in this fucking building, if Jess and Sterling want to bar us from the room then fine, what the fuck ever, we'll find a couch in the lounge and crash there. Never mind that they didn't seem to consider me present during the whole conversation--if John crashed at Jess's, where was I going to go?--in fact, I felt strangely comfortable with that, because it would've taken more energy than I had to be effectively present in that particular situation. In the end, Jess left with her friend, Brian got us past security and into the dorm, John and I banged on Jess' door until she got out of bed and let us in, and we went to sleep in her roommates' beds (they weren't in them). It was freezing in Rachel's bed, where I slept, and sometime during the night the fire alarm went off in a tinny distant shriek; but I was too sleepy to decide whether it was real or just a dream, and didn't get up.

Today, not much to tell. Went for some diner food, stopped by the liquor store yet again, and came back to Baltimore.

At least I managed to get out of Baltimore once during spring break; to be honest, though, I hadn't been that out of my element in a while. Just not my type of scene, just not my type of people, I suppose. Though I wonder if either "my type of scene" or "my type of people" exist. Untrue; the latter does, though they are probably resistant to becoming part of any sort of scene. I guess parties just aren't that great if you don't know most of the people there.

Nothing I didn't know already, though, right?

The things I don't know I can never seem to learn; the things I do know I can never seem to escape.