Travels of the Summer

Whales. Whales everywhere.

Well, I'll be leaving for the Motherland on Monday evening: Azores. The occasion: my uncle's wedding. He's asked me to be the DJ at his party. What that entails has yet to manifest itself to me. I love the Azores. My aunt and uncle will be there, my other uncle, and my grandmother. I'm pretty excited to spend my two weeks there. It's Europe so anything goes.... within reason. The Azores is a very beautiful, almost tropical, paradise lost in the middle of the Atlantic formed by volcanoes. There are banana trees, pineapples, passion fruits, flowers; it's a tropical paradise, really. Sure leaving my friends for a couple weeks is a little unnerving but I'll have my laptop and internet, no doubt. I'll frequently update my blog with pictures, thoughts, and experiences while in the Azores as much a possible. Hopefully my blog readers will find my travels interesting and, hopefully, humorous. The Azores has always been where my heart has been. I get there and it's a breath of fresh air full of opportunities, late nights with family, and an overall relaxed experience. I'm nervous, however, to be the DJ at a wedding. I don't wanna be that annoying bro who mispronounces names, plays the electric slide, and annoys everyone with the choice of music. At any rate, most of the time spent in the Azores will be on beaches, with family, shopping, and walking around. It's been almost 5 years since I've last visited the Azores. Hopefully with my new found maturity (laughable) and cultural know-how from my previous travels to Italy, Lisbon, Madrid, and London, I'll be able to appreciate my time away from home before college punches me in the face. The Azores will be fun, for sure. I hope you all will enjoy reading about my time there. Pictures are sure to accompany the posts. Any comments or ideas of things for me to do while in the Azores, feel free to leave a comment.

- Andrew

The Creative Mind Block

It’s one o’clock in the morning. I’m sitting on my couch with my guitar in my arms. I’m staring blankly at the pitch black abyss surrounding my windows. Strumming one dissonant chord after another. Nothing is making any sense, musically. One chord to another, my guitar sounds like a crying baby deer. “Why can’t I just make this song happen?” I keep thinking to myself. After strumming a bit more, I realize this is quickly going nowhere. So, I go to my iTunes for inspiration. Track after track plays and I’m still not feeling creative.

Why does this always happen at the most frustrating times? This musical creative mind block is something I’ve been experiencing off and on for a month or so. I’ll sit down, strum two chords, think of a melody and put the guitar down realizing it’s going nowhere. I’m sure fellow musicians will attest to the frustration this block causes. It’s a feeling of meaninglessness, helplessness, and creative insecurity. When this block occurs, I feel less like a musician and more like a layman trying to construct a song.

After thinking about this phenomenon for a while, I realize that it might be caused by my utter dislike for pop music and it’s form. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge/solo, chorus, out. <--- Typical pop musical format. Now, deep down inside, I’ve forced myself to write crappy pop love songs simply because I wanted to. I’ve forced myself to write all kind of music as well. But this time, it’s a bit more difficult.

I’ve actually gotten over this mental creative block recently. But I still realize that the musical inspiration is generally lacking. I no long can listen to music and get inspired. I find myself striving to write music that is generally unheard of, out-of-the-box, or just strange in general. Whenever I’m with fellow musicians, writing music is always easier. Perhaps it’s the energy in the air, the chemistry, and the creative flow of ideas. All I know is that when I’m playing with another person, I find myself in a state of emotionally creative bliss. Everything seems to work: I find the right notes at the right time, and the music is all that matters to me at that point in time.

I’ve had times where I’ll sit down alone and churn out an entire album in a zombielike state. Where it would’ve taken me 3 hours to create a musical work, I would have created an entire album when I’m is this mood. Now, this state of mind is rare and I wish I could have it all the time. (If anyone wants to hear proof of this, leave your email in the comments area or something and I’ll send you the album.)

Music is strange. One person’s hated genre is another’s favorite. I write music according to my own personal tastes. There is so much music that I want to hear that I can’t because it isn’t created yet. I make the music I want to hear. Perhaps that is why I can’t sit down and write a song every time I pick up the guitar. Oh well. If any fellow musicians read this, I’d like them to write about their own experiences of this mental musical block and what you did to get over it. Maybe it’ll help me get over this block. It’s good for you guys and for me. Good for you because you get to listen to more of my music. Good for me because I get to make music and keep on doing what I love. Thanks for reading this even if you can’t relate.

Thoughts on Language and Perception

I've recently been reading two literary works off and on throughout the summer. One is Huxley's "Doors of Perception" and the other is Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist". Before I get into how both books are similar in their views on language and perception, I'll provide some slight background on both works.
In "Doors of Perception", Huxley recounts an experience he has while under the influence of mescaline. He has auditory and visual hallucinations, his perception is shifted, etc. In Coelho's "The Alchemist", an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago meets an old king while in Morocco with his sheep. The king teaches him about life and how a person's "Personal Legend" can be realized. The king tells the boy that "when someone truly needs, wants, and believes in something, the universe conspires with him to make sure he gets it." The boy's Personal Legend is to go to Egypt and see the Pyramids where he will find a treasure. Along the way he meets alchemists, crosses the desert, and falls in love about 30 times (as a young man should).
Now that the background is out of the way, I will begin to explain what this post is all about. In "Doors", Huxley speaks of how written and read language is terribly inefficient in relaying experiences. He basically tells the reader that writing about experiences will never allow the reader to truly understand the significance of an experience or situation. Huxley believes that written language is never as useful as the unwritten language of the Human Experience. (MIND=BLOWN)
In "The Alchemist", Santiago learns about the Language of the World. The following passage takes place when Santiago is reading into omens and meditating while crossing the desert: "Things have to be transmitted (by God in the form of omens) because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words and wind up forgetting about the Language of the World."
I think the point both authors are trying to make is that personal experience, not written word, is much more essential to life than reading about experiences. This is more pertinent today than ever before. Watching television all day will never substitute the physical experience of being somewhere, meeting somebody, or learning something new through experience. Of course books and television have helped society become culturally richer and more dynamic. However, are we becoming dependent on these mediums to experience the world for us? Should we just revel in the escapism books, television, movies, and video games give us? I don’t think so. I’ve been to many places and experienced many things. Reading about a bullfight in a Hemingway novel is radically different than actually sitting in La Plaza de Toros, hearing the bull’s pants, seeing the bright crimson blood, and hearing the crowd shout “OLE!” with each pass of the bull. Hemingway would have merely written, “The bull panted. It bled. A lot. People were shouting”. Does this mean Hemingway’s experience of the bullfight was any different than mine? I wouldn’t know. I’m not Ernest Hemingway. I have, however, experienced a bullfight in Madrid and, to me, it was unlike any experience I’ve ever read about. In fact, I don’t think anybody can accurately convey a complete experience of a bullfight in written form no matter how descriptive the language is. At any rate, the human mind is only capable of perceiving so much from descriptive written language.
Huxley’s psychedelic experience and Santiago’s realization of how the universe communicates are essentially the same adventure. Santiago learns to perceive the world around him differently. He learns that the Language of the World is neither spoken nor written. It is felt. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Language of the World according to Coelho and Huxley is essentially the same thing. It is a statement that the human mind is capable of many things. However, perceiving through written and spoken language is not one of them.
I’ve heard “the book is better than the movie”, and vice versa, many times. Is it that the reader is better at perceiving the story any better than the person who saw the movie? No. It simply means that the reader’s perception of the story is different than the movie-goer’s. Seeing a film is not quite the same as reading the novelization. In active reading, the mind is creating it’s own experience through the written word. The viewer of the movie is simply an observer of the director’s experience and perception of the story. The world is full of varying opinions, different thinking and learning patterns, and altered perceptions of things. As responsible human minds, it is up to us to see things in an altered manner; not always through the use of drugs. One can alter one’s mind through varying mediums: meditation, sleep deprivation, caffeine, what have you. In order to truly be accurate perceivers of the human experience all around us, we must remember that we are not alone in this experience. We are all connected through the Language of the World. Written and spoken words simply cannot stimulate one’s ability to perceive this experience. Human beings need to be stimulated to experience and perceive. Humans must experience things for themselves. We cannot let ourselves be enslaved by the false idea that reading and watching can substitute being physically, mentally, and emotionally engaged in an experience. Books conjure up emotions and images in the mind. However, can we truly experience the story until we’ve actually lived it? Can we accurately say “Don’t go back to help your friend! Pick up the knife and kill Jason!”? Unless one has actually been in the situation where a deranged serial killer is about to take your friend’s life, and one has to make the choice between helping your friend and killing the serial killer, the movie-viewer cannot say these things veraciously. I’ve begun to rant. The point is, don’t think just because you tell an "awesome" story, that everyone is going to react the same way that you did when you experienced the situation. Spoken and written language will never substitute the physical, mental, and emotional act of perceiving an experience. “So, we were all hanging out watching Twilight at Becky's house and Jacob took his shirt off. Becky started laughing so hard and then she kicked me in the face! I laughed! It was like SSOO funny!" "..... okay." "You just had to have been there”. You shouldn’t have taken up that much of my time.