I swear I will catch up. It’s inevitable. Especially because I have not been making videos at all lately.
First, we have one of my experiments in gratuitous mellowness :
I love this piece. Definitely one of my better ones. I love how it manages to be relaxing and funky at the same time. It’s very relaxing without being totally dull. Relaxing for people who need a lot of stimulation to relax.
I have fond memories of going to sleep listening to Metallica when I was a teen. Somehow, I found the power and aggression inherent in heavy metal soothing. I suppose it externalized my own feelings as a hormone soaked teenager.
I was ready for the horniness. But I was not ready for the feelings of aggression and rage. Someone should tell boys on the cusp of puberty that one of the things to watch out for is that you may get way, way madder than you ever have before. You might go from being a pretty peaceful kid to wanting to smack people who contradict you into next week.
It happened to me.
And now, I talk about nerds like me :
That was my first and last experiment with arm’s length camera work. It was tiring, it was awkward, and the results didn’t look good. It did avoid the “severed head” problem I got when I recorded with the tablet on my chest, but it was not remotely worth it and it still made me look amazingly lazy.
Which I am. But there’s no need to make it that obvious.
Next up, more music, this time with the added bonus of a really lazy title :
Like a lot of creative types, I hate coming up with titles. That’s why the titles of my pieces are so random. I will use the first usable thing that pops into my head. This tune seemed pleasantly thoughtful to me. Hence the title.
Hence, the title. I must say, that’s pretty damned good too. Another mellow yet funky tune. Perhaps that’s my calling.
And yup. Still more music.
Also pretty darn good. I am too hard on my own music. The main melodic element, once it shows up, is a tad rough, so it is not as good as the previous too. But still, not bad.
Once more, I am sleepy for no good reason today. I got plenty of sleep. Most of it with the CPAP on. But still… I am le tired. There has to be a way to get out ahead of this sleep thing an enjoy the rare luxury of being sleepy when I want to be sleepy and alert when I want to be alert.
Preferably, an answer that does not involve a whole lot of Diet Coke.
And now, for those of you who don’t like music, there’s music.
Erf. The music is kind rough (I know what I was going for and I did not succeed) and those slides are going by WAY too fast. I was trying to match the slide changes to the beat of the song, which is fine, but the song is faster than the slides should go, and I should have used half as many slides and changed them half as often.
Oh well, they can’t all be gems[1].
Continuing our theme, we have yet another piece of music, along with an apology.
I was going to say that the apology was unnecessary and I am too hard on myself, but no, that was not a great piece of music. I probably should not have elaborately apologized for it, but still. Not one of my best.
I still haven’t made that goddamned other thing work. Grr.
And now, the music… of my voice!
Glad I finally (eventually) got this bit of thinking out of my head. It has been in there for a long time. I have had the phrase “dynamic input” floating around in my head connected to that idea for years now.
So in a way, it really is a choice. Not the kind you make consciously, but the kind that nevertheless ends up being foundational to who we are and who we become. At some point in our early childhood development, we develop a preference between abstract thinking and concrete realism, between thinking things through or going with our gut, between deep processing or realtime reaction. And those choices determine whether we are a chess champion or captain of the football team.
Another talk and it’s a big one :
It’s the day before I started at Kwantlen. The person talking in this vid seems like a fond acquaintance now. I recognize him, I remember being him, but I don’t feel close to him any more.
Life is so much better now, and the nearly two months that have passed since I made that video seem like a dozen lifetimes. I am quite confident in my ability to handle Kwantlen, and I have had my academic acumen confirmed by two exams, so I am happy. I still risk being a victim of my own absentminded cluelessness and my courses are not super easy (which is good because it keeps me from getting bored) but I am, overall, a happy camper.
We finish our journey on the other side of Day 1.
You can see that I am already feeling more confident. The Big Event had happened, I was still there, I had survived not one but two boring first-day syllabus reading classes. and I was ready to relax.
And, thank goodness, I still have not been asked to actually work with others. I am getting used to the group discussion thing, and while I still say things that are too weird and/or original and/or unusual for people, I am very slowly learning to not take it so seriously, and to not going around thinking everything is my fault.
So people don’t “get” me. So what? That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.
I am just more than the average person, even the average college student, can handle.
I will talk to you nice people, who take the time to understand me, and I love you for it, tomorrow.
- Productions!↵