Compliments...

Sometimes I do get compliments. Of a kind.

I have been working on more instrumental mini-Moog music. It's a totally engulfing, a totally obsessive flow activity for me. I can get lost for hours creating sounds. It's sort of a long-form meditation in sound; generating and soaking myself deeply in waves of sound. There is no great point, or objective, or reason, except to occupy my mind and my time, and to create something that didn't exist before in the world. I am doing it just because I can.  "Art for Art's Sake."

I am not changing the world, but the process is changing me.

It is pretty exciting to be working with an instrument, the mini-Moog, something that I never played before, so different from guitar, which I have played for most of my life. Puts me in a different zone. Everything is new, foreign. I think of music differently, I hear things I haven't heard before.

I have been driven in this direction by the lockdown, by long hours "sheltering in place." At the moment, playing music with our band seems like a distant memory, and a shimmering, shaky mirage out there in the future. So, I am left to my own devices.

Is any of this work good, or worthy? I don't know. I am not really judging the work. Except, "Does it sound good to me?" I am "just doing it." Creating sounds that appeal to my own aesthetic tastes. Constructing sounds that seem to work together.

My long-time partner listened to some tracks.  She seems a bit bemused by my detour, side-project, rabbit-hole, strange, solitary obsession.  Here comes the compliment:

"You are a gnarly goat, but sometimes beauty comes out of you."

Hah! I'll take it. I mean, it's almost better than a Grammy!

The a.m. soundtrack - Ofra Gaza's "Kirya."  (1992). An Israeli singer. Middle Eastern sounds married to a modern Pop/Rock production. American Producer Don Was, Iggy Pop guests on one track. A fruitful mashup of sounds. World music, foreign, exotic,  mysterious, with a solid, well-produced modern backing. Very moody & atmospheric. The words, I don't really know what the words mean, but the sounds are old and new world fabulous.