Dare to Decide

In a recent post you may recall I referred to "Les Miserables" as a "pinnacle of effluvium". "Effluvium" is a word whose meaning is obscure even to me. Upon relating a humorous anecdote in which I read the plural form, "Effluvia" later on in M. Hugo's work, my wife informed me of a detail which had evaded my notice: she pointed out that the expression would be better phrased, "pinnacle of effluvia".

This provoked me to speculation. The word "effluvium" is esoteric enough that I could simply regard "pinnacle of effluvium" in its phonetic sense alone; for the unititiated, it accomplishes its dark purpose. However, the phrase "pinnacle of x" is rarely, if ever, used with a plain-vanilla singular noun; plural is more the order of the day. In addition, it is often used in conjunction with a nouned adjective, e.g. "superfluity", "vivaciousness"; hence my lowered vigilance towards the singular. You (and I mean you) would never say, "That pinnacle of car". You might however, express it thus: "That pinnacle of cars", or better still, "That pinnacle of carhood".

In truth, "effluvia" is nearly as unsuitable as "effluvium", providing me with scant impetus to alter the post.

Not a title that rolls off the tongue. In requiring a pause between each word, it is even less apt than "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia". After watching this intriguing chronicle of the times, I have begun to question whether I do indeed want to move to Wyoming. Appearances would suggest that Wyoming consists entirely of cow-boys, cow-girls, and additional sundry cow-people. The cry goes round Thermopolis, "Psmith has encountered an obstacle. He is merely among those present."

To tell the truth, I like California. I like the trees and fields. Not the busy, pushy cities so much; or the sacharine suburbs, maybe, but still. You know.

Defense
A pitifully withered, senseless skin
I scourge your back to show that
Mine is whole

When we were young
We had dreams
We fought for things

But
You
Can't

Live like that
So I crucified you
I have become your death
And in three days you'll rise and I will die

Freedom is sour
It's all I can do to wash the taste out
If I can feel it why
Can't I actualize correctly?

It'll come out wrong
It'll track inconstant
Fall back on recurrence
Freedom is sour

This is the other "Freedom is sour" song. I looked at the original lyrics sheet I wrote on and realized that there was more to it than I remembered. I think I can also assume that it was the second incarnation, having looked at it.

A really interesting thing I discovered was that I used an extreme version of a technique I use regularly: writing a song and then stripping out phrases until I have a new song that I like. In its original form, it was about trying to write Christian songs. Pared down about half, it broadened its scope, the individual phrases took on more meaning, and it began to say more about life in general than just the narrow band of experiences that even I spend only a small part of my time engaged in.

If I can feel what I want to say, why does it come out wrong? If I can just see what I should be and how I should act, why can't I get it to end up that way? Something gets lost in the translation from my heart to my hand. This is far from being the most poignant issue in my life right now, but it still certainly strikes a chord with me. It seems like no matter how many things I get right, there's a colossal divide/mistake in my life. I can't fix things, they are broken beyond real repair. It's like my life is a plate that has a big crack in it. I can glue it back together, polish it until it shines, but it's never going to look right.

In my first band, I had a colossally inadequate Peavey Basic 40 full-range practice amp that I used for bass, even in shows. It was never loud enough, and coupled with my cheap off-brand bass it brought me no end of embarrassment. In the hope of getting the required volume level on my stringent budget, I had a speaker out jack installed and bought (for $75) the ugliest 15" cab ever conceived (it was not covered in carpet or tolex or anything -- just plywood). This led to even further humiliation, although it did solve the volume problem.

A year later, my friend Danny traded in a Les Paul for a full bass rig so he could play bass in our then-current band, Till We Have Faces. It consisted of a Fender Standard Jazz Bass '92, a fossilized Peavey Mark III head, and a monstrous Crate Bass Cabinet featuring a 15", a 12" and a 10". This last was so large it could not fit into my car (by contrast, my 4x12" Fender cab fit easily), and could not be reasonably lifted by one person. He decided bass was not for him, and sold me the whole rig for $600.

Skip ahead to a year or so ago. I had always felt the equipment I owned was at least sufficient. The bass rig, though unwieldy, was certainly loud. But I realized, as I started to think about joining bands again, that the equipment I had was not going to make any good impressions (this began, unfortunately, with an embarrassing, feedback laden practice session where I failed to gain anyone's respect). I started upgrading the components of my musical entourage, one by one.

When the time came for me to start looking for bands, I realized that I would not be taken seriously with the ancient, ugly, and enormous bass rig that I had. I also realized that I was taking up a huge amount of space in my parents' garage with something I would never use. I took it up to San Jose with the intention of trading it in. I got (unsurprisingly) a fairly small amount of trade-in for it, but it was just sufficient for half of a Bag End 2x10". I was not at first impressed with the sound, but its small size (it had to have been a tenth of the volume of my previous rig) and name-recognition convinced me it was a good buy. I determined that I could find a head later on.

After a number of purchases and sales, all the while trying out different gear and reading a lot of Harmony Central reviews, I got a hold of an Eden WT405 Time Traveler. This is also a diminuitive unit -- roughly 3"H x 12"D x 13"W. But in spite of their smaller size, the superior quality of the Eden head and Bag End cabinet made for not a downgrade from the previous rig, but an increase in sound quality and volume. I thought for a while of getting a second Bag End cabinet, to take full advantage of the 2ohms minimum output of the amp; but I don't even come close to using the power available now, so I don't really see that happening.

All the facts I own
Point to something else
For their meaning, for instance

"Watch you walk
Like sunset in a bottle"

She is a word
In particular
That I reference for everything

What I want it to mean.

I have been unable to think of a useful literary term
That is completely able to describe the emptiness I'm left with

You're all a bunch of deictics

Knowledge and feelings are very deceptive. I have a recording of this that I may upload later. I was crying by the end of the recording. Life, meaning, happiness are so utterly beyond my grasp. Everything depends on context. >sigh<

A "deictic" is a part of speech (like "those" or "she") that gets its meaning from context. So, saying "Those aren't really the ones I want ..." changes its meaning depending on the sentences around it. And if you change those, its meaning changes as well.

When I say, "all the facts I own point to something else for their meaning" I am mourning that I can't attain any certainty. Everything depends on something I can't quite work out.

"She is a word, in particular, that I reference for everything". Somehow, the answer of "who am I with" or "who do I want" pivots all the other definitions in my life.

This, like many songs I've written, is one that I am mostly unable to reproduce now in its original form. I can listen to it on the recording, but for the life of me I can neither remember how I did it, nor summon the precise emotional framework that made it possible.

I found this comment on an article about the NSA collecting call data. Totally hilarious.

A film critic who can use "Capraesque"
In a sentence, but cannot for shame define it
Their religion feels the weight of His message
And cannot face acquaintances
With His criticism hanging over their heads

Optimist, 90 minutes fast paced and end with a kiss
Devalue the narrow
Because your fat ideology won't fit in.
Watch yourself before you use that word again.

"Capraesque" refers to the films of Frank Capra: light but preachy, colorful characters and a happy ending. I draw this in parallel to the hypocrisy of the pharisees; or by extension, a religious attitude that is (you guessed it) overly preachy but light on real responsibility (somehow the greedy escape unscathed), tries to make life into a hometown / mom-and-apple-pie / best-of-all-worlds, and always has a whitewashed hollywood ending. Jesus criticizes their mode of life and they can't just let it lie ... it threatens them. "Devalue the narrow because your fat ideology won't fit in." Haha. I think that stands on its own. I couldn't explain it any better than it already is.

I guess the "cannot define it" / "watch yourself before you use that word again" refers to a misconception as to what true religion is. The pharisees had a clear idea of what they thought religion was supposed to be, but Christ turned it on its head. Watch out for overconfidence.

If it's spring, why is the water so cold (repeated a few times)
Why does ambition take the form of self-acceptance?
Why can't I breathe here? Why is love so (can't remember)
Why is hate so comfortable?
Freedom is sour. It's all I can do to wash the taste out.

Ok, let's start with the first line: if it's spring, why is the water so cold? This line featured prominently in another song. I can't remember now which one was written first, but the other one was a mess ... stuff I felt passionately about mixed in with things I had chosen merely for their interesting turns of phrase or imagery. And too many ideas at once. It also borrowed a little too much from Ezra Pound for me to feel comfortable propounding it as my own work.

This line is kind of a lament: it's supposed to be the springtime of my life, but everything seems so hollow. Nothing seems to work as it should. The answer should be obvious: the water in mountain streams is cold in spring because it is fed primarily by melting snow. To look for the source of the emptiness, you have to look further back ... and perhaps wait for spring to have passed. This might be somehow tied in to the delay of wisdom ("I wish I knew what I know now when I was younger"). Utter futility.

The rest is fairly straightforward, except for "Freedom is sour, it's all I can do to wash the taste out." This line formed the core of another song, "Freedom" from the same period (again, I'm not sure which came first). This was not a bad song, but the song itself said nothing further than this line and I got tired of it after a while. It says, hey, freedom is great, but what have I done with it? It's all I can do to forget the damage I've done (or maybe, who I am) in my freedom (a rough equivalent; it's less about moral license than about identity).

Don't be fooled. I thought I knew a little bit about the plot of this monstrosity. A vague familiarity with the musical production, and the synopses provided by friends lent me a tragic overconfidence. Imagine the sting of hubris when I completed the first "Book"

(as a sideline, each "Book" contains a number of chapters, and "Books" are contained themselves in a "Part"; as I browsed through the table of contents, I was shocked to discover not a reasonable or modest 2 or 3 "Parts", but somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen. Although no stranger to the gargantuan literary output of authors in the age of magazine serials, I still found it difficult to maintain my studied and precise composure)

only to discover that none of the principal characters were introduced or even mentioned. In fact, with respectful deference to M. Hugo's artistic license, my cursory knowledge of "Les Miserables" in the birds-eye view would lead me to suggest that absolutely nothing in this entire "Book" had anything whatsoever to do with the plot.

In my younger days, I made a similar attempt to attain the summit of this pinnacle of effluvium. I was halted by the seeming lack of progress in the first chapter. Imagine my horror upon discovering that the sweltering doldrums which constitute this work's "beginning" (an appelation applied with some doubt) extended not through the first chapter, but through the entire first book (and possibly, beyond)!

It might be added, that I enjoyed the section immensely nonetheless. I would suggest to M. Hugo that this section be posthumously spun-off into another series ... "Les Miserables Adventures"? "More Les Miserables"?

My phone is a Blackberry 7230. I purchased it used on eBay for about $30. They normally go for upwards of $60, but I bought one sold "AS-IS! UNTESTED" ... it was missing a battery, which I purchased, and it worked fine.

It isn't quite as good of a PDA in some ways as my previous device, the non-phone Treo 90. It doesn't have a memory card slot, it has a smaller storage space, it is slower, the programs are not always as good, etc.

That being said -- not only is it nice to have my phone and PDA rolled into one, but also to have the phone and PDA parts actually work pretty well together (as was NOT the case in the XDA I owned at an earlier date). The NIV Bible program I use is not as fast, robust, or user friendly as my 5-translation program on the Treo, but it is sufficient. The Blackberry also has a backlit keyboard (always a plus) and the eBook reader I have for it is functional, if not exceptional. The battery life is not great, but at least it's comparable to my PDA, and better than my previous phone.

As to my service, you may be surprised to discover that I pay only $8 a month. How do I manage that, you may well ask! T-Mobile has a prepaid plan where you can purchase minutes once for a whole year. The minimum for a year term is $100. For this you get 1000 minutes, or roughly 85 minutes a month. The number costs nothing to keep, as long as you have a renewed balance. For my minimal amount of cell phone use, this is an excellent plan.

So far, I have read these books on my phone: "The Scarlet Pimpernel", three entries in the "Psmith" series by P.G. Wodehouse, several short stories, "Kim" by Rudyard Kipling, and "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. I am currently reading "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo.

I had a practice on Saturday for the band I've recently joined, Stand Your Ground. Afterwards I spent a few minutes working on the lyrics for one of the songs. I was surprised to find that the process was somewhat nostalgic; I've written hundreds of songs in the last ten years, but the experience was one I hadn't felt since one vaguely recalled evening working on songs for Spaceman Spiff. What's the difference? Here was a process in motion: words were required to keep the machinery of the band going.

In almost every other case, I've started with something that I wanted to say or express; or, similarly, Danny or someone else would bring a composition to the table. It was definitely a different feeling. In some ways it was pleasant, with more of a feeling of accomplishment. And yet, part of me couldn't help feeling that it didn't mean as much.

I just ordered a custom 4x10 cabinet. Into this I will place the disembodied (or rather, disem--um--cabineted) Ultimate Chorus amp I have already purchased. This I will hook up to the bottom two speakers, after which I will place a board closing the bottom section, and giving me a place to put my THD Hot Plate and other items. Add my Fender Class A all tube head to the mix, and this should be a pretty good setup.