music: Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon
It is less curious and more sombering that money is the gauge by which we measure worth. Everything, it seems, has a monetary value. It’s our adaptive system that is able to measure and quantify everything from the availability of food we eat (apples: $.89/lb) to the intangible value on one-of-a-kind collectible items (priceless) to the importance of one’s work (doctors make more money than garbagemen, who incidently make more money than teachers). Money is precious-there is no doubt about it. We’ve been turning in our hamster wheels since we were old enough to walk because of the need to accumulate this stuff in order to maintain the ability to keep running on our rodent treadmills a little longer.
For the first time in my life I’m making money to the point where it accumulates. Money has afforded me a home and assured me of food on a daily basis, and I can’t take that for granted. This excess of money has directly informed my life experiences (see travels), and even afforded me some small luxuries in the meantime, and for all that I’m eternally thankful. However, money has its price. The price of course is not measurable in a monetary sense, because if it were I’d imagine some grand calculus would just deduct that price from the money I do receive. Instead, we pay for our money in time.
This is not the place to get into the evils of a system that requires you to work for it in order to eat. Suffice it to say that the lack of basic survival value bestowed to anyone living in the developed world is upsetting. But this is the place — the time rather — to slip into a quarterlife crisis of a reasonably high degree: the one most precious resource given to us as living beings costs nothing, is being used at an alarming rate, is non-renewable (short of the invention of the flux capacitor), and is being seized from me.
What gives? It’s been a horribly discouraging weekend time-wise, and a rough couple of days mental health-wise. Friday was payday (read: some sort of palty compensation for choosing to spend my time in a way that causes my physical and mental health to suffer, restricts my personal freedom, and is sometimes downright unpleasant). I came home exhausted, laid down to take a nap, and woke up at 4:30am, completely missing out on what plans I had. Saturday’s plans also fell by the wayside, so I spent the day on modern-living upkeep and grinding through stacks of paper for work. The red grading pen was ablaze until about 1am, when I decided to treat myself to a couple hours of unconsciousness before pounding paper again on Sunday. The weekend was spent either working or sleeping because I was so exhausted from working. The crazy part is that I like my job, but weekends like this one call into question the overall worth of this work I’m doing. I believe in it, yes, but when it cuts into time that should be mine everything falls apart. Time is something I need to be selfish with, or more selfish with at least. It hasn’t been three weeks and I’ve once again lost myself. I would have less problems giving my money to work instead of my weekends Which, come to think of, I do anyway.
Aesop Rock weighs in on the issue.
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This summer I took a dayhike up the Na Pali coast on the island of Kaua’i. The traditional dayhike route keeps people close to the ocean coast and reveals spectacular views of the Pacific, the reefs below, and Na Pali’s cliffs. After making good time to the first beach on the trail I decided to take a side trip because I had the time. I made the push inland and followed a poorly marked trail up one of the valleys towards a remote waterfall. At that point in the day I was the only hiker out there. The jungle was dripping from the morning’s rain, and everything smelled of ripe guava and coconut. Foliage was pretty dense, and besides the trail and river at the valley’s center there weren’t many indications of human use. After about 30 minutes or so of serious hiking the trail opened up into a shaded bamboo grove, and perched on top of a rock in the middle of the grove, almost crouching like an animal, was a thin, incredibly tanned man. He was shirtless and shoeless, his eyes twinkled, and his beard was enormous. He smiled placidly and greeted me with an aloha, asking for food and pakalolo. I was dumbfounded. I gave him a granola bar, and tried to get my bearings, thinking I’d just stumbled into a faerie tale. After about a minute of what I thought would be appropriate small talk I pushed on towards the waterfall, head spinning. The bamboo grove disappeared behind me, jungle proper resumed, and I was left wondering whether I hallucinated the whole thing. I made it up the the waterfall eventually (and an incredible waterfall it was…) and between swimming and hiking thought of a million things I would have liked to say to the man/elf back in the bamboo grove. I got my chance-on the way back I passed through the bamboo grove, still no other humans in sight, and he was perched exactly where I left him. We dined on cheese and pita and shared stories. He said his name was “Yahveh,” and he’s been living out in the jungle for over three years, subsisting on wild fruits (over 12 varieties, he says) and the kindness of strangers. He said he hadn’t been out of the jungle in 8 months. I asked him what he did with all the time he had, and he didn’t answer as much as hold his hands up and look around.
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I left Yahveh and the jungles of the Na Pali coast with a new understanding of wealth and time, one which is haunting me tonight as I sit in Boston at the end of an absolutely miserable weekend. Yahveh, of course, is a rarity, an anomaly, an extreme case. But I realize: could I be on the other end of that spectrum? Have I sold my one most precious nonrenewable resource out to the system that keeps me docile and obedient and too obligated and exhausted to do anything for myself anymore?
The fourth of four points that I outlined as my quest for life some years ago is “spend time on what is important.” What is important is a relative term, I guess, but I’d like to refocus on things that are of primary importance. Spending time to make money is important in a sense, but it is of instrumental importance. On the back end of a weekend like this I can only hope that personal philosophy is feasible in this current frame of reality. Because regardless of what I think, hope, or believe, that clock which is marking time by my bed will ring in a few hours, dictating exactly how I will be using the time given to me.
music: Bootsy Collins- Back in the Day…Best of Bootsy
Acoustic guitar players have it easy. Their instrument is, well, their insturment. The piece of wood and steel that they hold in their hands is the beginning and the end of their technical quest for perfect tone and feel. How nice it must be.
Electric guitar players have a little more to consider. There is the instrument, which is undoubtedly a very important piece of the puzzle, but when you go electric you have a rig, a chain of boxes and cables and vacuum tubes that end in an amplifier of some kind and a speaker or two. There are a dizzying amount of options to consider. but if you somehow manage to own the right guitar, put the right boxes in the right order, and run them all into the right amplifier, life is sweet.
My rig has been developing over the past year or so. The big steps up have been purchasing the Gibson ES-335, and the Fender Super 210 amp. I’ve thrown a series of stompboxes in between the two, and more or less settled on a crybaby, two tubescreamers (one with extra boost on the low end, the other with gain and tone max’ed out), a flanger, and a compression sustainer. Until today. Today, as Peet said, is a special day, for the Q-Tron arrived in the mail. I’m now the funkiest one in town.
I can only describe this one as the box that makes the bubble sound. There are a host of other things it can do, but i’ve got it set to bubble, somewhere in between late ‘70’s Jerry Garcia, Bootsy, and that opening bass line to Chameleon (and not unlike a certain bass player on songs like Down with Disease and the breakdown to Free, although we are told he used the vintage mu-tron III). It’s the first box in the series right now, even before the crybaby, but I’m thinking of trying it in between the wah and the tubescreamers. Either way there are some interesting combinations to be had. Q-Tron + Flanger make for a cool sound, add distortion and things feed back in an unsatisfactory way until I step away from the amp a little. Semi-hollow guitars are a pain sometimes. I’m working on it.
For now I’m content with just the Q-tron. That bubble sound is the coolest.
So my rig is coming into its own, and my instrument in the larger sense is being revised and honed. A big piece will come next week when I take my guitar to a guy I jammed with a couple times, and we tinker with the electronics. Want more sweep in the mid-section? More headroom on the lead channel? A brighter clean tone? It’s all possible. Plus I can get the tubes checked; there’s been a rattling that indicates something is up. Then what? Replace the cheap tubescreamer with an original model, update the cables and connections, and mount all on a homemade pedal board. Maybe, just maybe a delay pedal.
Fine. Biosphere be rockin’. We’ve done some cleaning and rearranging down there, installed new christmas lights, and turned a section of wall into a chalkboard (aw naw, missa…). We’re playing with a sax and potentially a new keyboardist in the coming weeks. And now with the Q-tron, I get to make that funky bubble sound whenever I want. Acoustic will always have its place for me — it’s how I started playing — but now that I’ve gone electric and have built a halfway decent rig there is no going back.
music: Frank Zappa- Apostrophe
First Sunday of the school year: some serious planning and grading ahead. The Someday calls. Or maybe the Diesel. They say your second year is easier than your first, and in some respects I’d disagree: in my case I have second class to prepare, and one with very little precedent. But in other ways I agree: the first two days went much more smoothly than last year. I know most of the kids, I know what has to be done as far as setting a tone and climate before kids get comfortable enough to challenge it, I know the school and the surroundings. I, apparently, also have a reputation now.
In explaining some of the class policies and expectations last Friday, a kid raises his hand, and with a completely straight face asks: “so if we use the force to do our homework, is that considered cheating?” It was the first think I ever heard him say.
I only stumbled for half an eye-blink. “Only if you don’t use the Dark side of the Force.”
But my kids were working in unison, and half a step ahead. From the back of the room: “What if we’re conflicted, like Anakin in the third movie?” A good question, by all rights. I think that as long as they don’t turn into Darth Students we’ll all be ok.
My big poster of Yoda should be here some time this week. It will go up right over the board.
The new course I’m teaching seems to be the buzz class at school. Every junior and senior is coming to me demanding entrance to psychology, but I’m out of chairs and out of books. As it is there will be some pretty wild conversations in there-kids are already throwing stuff out from their own personal experience that are making other kids do double-takes. But everyone seems to be respectful and seems to listen. I’m most thankful for that.
So the school rollercoaster has finished climbing that big hill and is at the brink of swinging into a triple corkscrew. But when I ask about students’ pet peeves and get answers like “girls who act like they don’t like me when they know they already caught the fever” I know it’s going to be quite a year.
But not wtihout some preperation. Sundays still are swallowed by preparation for the torrent of ridiculousness to follow on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…if I ever get to the point where I can minimize the planning and grading to a couple hours after school during the week and keep weekends free I’ll really have the best job in the world. Someday.
