100 Straight Miles

I drove 100 straight miles today on the Ohio turnpike. 100 straight miles, no turns, no hills or no valleys in the roadway. The plains of pasture-land blended with blue skies, fluffy clouds and the graying horizon. This is what pure consciousness must feel like.

Grandeur without measure, glory beyond belief, 100 miles of straightness. The road was quiet. I barely passed a car or truck the entire trip. At times I was lost in the void of what is real. My wife and daughter both asleep. 100 straight miles of quiet. This is what pure consciousness must feel like.

I dreamed of walking 100 straight miles. Just myself, my breath, my feet and a journey without need of discovery. What would it be like to walk 100 straight miles in quiet? A walking meditation with no purpose, only to experience. This is what pure consciousness must feel like.

These thoughts, however obscure, ran throughout my head. My journey has changed in life. I needed to ask myself some questions. Those are always the hardest ones to answer. Sometimes you just don’t know. Then again sometimes you need to answer those questions.

I walk.

I am giving myself the month of March to go for walks, lots of them.

Turntable vs. Digital Algorithm in The Sky

Thursday morning at around 3:00am I am awake , yet again not able to sleep. I grab my iPad and start browsing, trying to connect myself to something of interest. Truth be told not much but sleep interests me 3am.

I hyperlink my way on to a page about record players. Note: to anyone who may be under that age of 29 reading this: a record player (a.k.a. turntable is the proper name) is what came before mp3, cd’s, tape decks but after live musicians and sheet music. A turntable plays big black vinyl discs with grooves that produce analogue sound waves. Not the flicker of sounds produced by zeroes and one (a.k.a.) analogue single converted by a computer then compressed into a digital sound wave as to be re-dubbed as digital music.

Torn, between yesterday and today, I love the convenience of all things digital. I miss the quality and stillness of the physical item. The idea alone of not having to find a place to keep a collection of, well...anything is great. Be it records, books or better yet photo negatives, put them all on hard drives and let me pull it up through a computer search when needed.

There I sit with iPad in hand complaining to myself about quality of digital vs real. For years now I keep thinking about getting a turntable. Then the question comes up, what selections of musics are worthy enough for me to repurchase them on vinyl? In the late eighties I walked into a used record store and sold my vinyl collections of LP’s, numbering somewhere over three hundred, to be traded in for cash so I could turn around and re-buy a lot of the same music on cd’s.

First, let me select music “worthy” for re-purchase. Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites performed by Yo Yo Ma, definitely first choice. Next, would have to be “The Right of Strings” by Clarke, Di Meola and Ponty. There is not a week that goes by that I do not listen to those two selections of music. I do feel that I should own the entire Beatles collection on vinyl but will probably not purchase them. “Born to Run” by Springsteen, U2's “Joshua Tree”, “Hejira” by Joni Mitchell would be a definite purchase and some Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco for my wife would be a must.

The next question I ask myself, would I sit to appreciate the music? If the quality is better I should take the time to enjoy the listening experience. If it's only background music to fill up the silent space in rooms that does not deem itself to be worthy. Could I see myself sitting in a chair sipping Pinot Noir listening to the complete Cello Suites? Yes.

I need to find out who sells turntables and where I can get good quality vinyl. No problem there, type my question into the search engine box and hyperlink my way towards purchase.

While writing up this rant I am listening to Pandora (internet radio). Note: to anyone over the age 39: Pandora works like this: you select a favorite artist (currently, for me, its Elvis Costello). Then the digital algorithm in the sky goes on to play the artist of your choosing and pairs it with other similar artists, which you may like. If you like the selection you give it the thumbs up or if you wish to never hear that particular song again you give it the thumbs downs.

This is where things get maddening for me, I do not want a machine or an algorithm making decisions for me. What is the experience of music if you have no control over what is coming next? The real problem is that I love Pandora and the decisions it makes for me.

I lost the connection of falling in love with music that I felt in my youth.

Going into a record store and browsing the aisles of albums listening to what is playing on the store turntable; that is how to discover new music, while waiting for the tattoo hot chick behind the counter to come over and recommend something new for you. That is how you get into new music. Not by an algorithm in the cloud preselecting music for you.

Music is to be discovered, not stumbled upon.

Definitely getting a turntable.

Strange days indeed...

Friday 4AM

4am. Can't sleep. Decide to get up out of bed and write something. Laid in bed thinking about different rants that I could write about, after getting out of bed and setting up a writing corner by the fireplace I can no longer remember what to rant about. The fleeting muse is a mystery to me. She opens herself up to you in moments of drifting consciousness and leaves in wakeful moments of clarity.

Reading “Life” by Keith Richards & James Fox. I like that Richards gives credit to his co-author of the book. Too many books are co-authored by ghostwriters. Why not give credit?

A couple of years back I used to have an e-mail relationship with a ghostwriter. She would give me tips and encourage me to write in different directions. I enjoyed that relationship, sorry that it drifted away.

Writing has always been integral to me. As I move forward in this year much more time is dedicated to long journal entries. Much of last year was also dedicated to this, for some reason I did not share much of it. My journals from last year are in no way reflected on the blog. I may try to dig up some of that stuff and share it with you. I have a nice essay on “Faith & Creativity” that I think you might enjoy.

Back to “Life” by Richards, damn he writes great about playing guitar. He hits the emotion of what it is like to be intertwined with an instrument better than anybody else I have read. What is most surprising to me is that the reason I pick up the book in the first place was because it was listed on the best of business books by Wired magazine.

Everything happens in music first. If you want to be ahead of the game on marketing, advertising, branding and most importantly creativity start by studying the music business.

I have based my entire photography career on what I have learned as a musician. There is just something about the balance between extreme commitment (wood-shedding) to your craft and the ability to go out on stage and earn your audience.

Last thing ~ If you haven’t check out my wife's blog in awhile be sure to give it a look. She has been creating some killer stuff… (HERE)

Creative Non Fiction ~ Until the next death, Big Blue

Standing outside on the sidewalk on Wallace Street. Just walked out of the big blue funeral home. Directly in front of me is the church where I attended preschool. Hated that place. Who hates preschool? I did. Mean old lady teacher, still gives me flash backs of her yelling at us.

For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the funeral home that I just walked out of. Big Blue on Wallace Street is all I can ever remember calling it.

I have walked in and out of this place well over a 100 times. That is a lot of time spent in the house of death. It’s the family funeral home. My Grandfather was one of thirteen kids. They created quite a lot of offspring, in turn lots of deaths throughout the years. Top that off with the fact that I was an altar boy for St. Michaels Church right down the road from big blue. A couple times a month I would be standing next to Father John holding the smelly smoking incense as he recited the rosary for the mourners. More often than not it was someone who was somehow related to me.

Today I was at big blue paying my respects to Mrs. Waterston. I knew Mrs. Waterston my whole life and never new her first name. It was always “Hi Mrs. Waterston” followed by a hug and kiss on the cheek. A kind lady, she will be missed.

Mrs. Waterston is Jimmy's mother, my best friend from elementary school. This was the first time I have seen Jimmy in over twenty years, at his mother funeral.

Jimmy and I did not have much to say to each other besides the general niceties about our lives. “Kids?” and “Yes, two boys and a girl.” “You?”, "One girl. She is four, five this January.” Next I would have asked how his mother was doing but that topic of conversation was no more. He asked about my parents. I said goodbye to Jimmy then proceeded to kneel at the casket and say a prayer for his mother and to thank her for all the cinnamon toast that she made us.

It's nice seeing your first best friend, even if you have nothing to talk about. Talking, that should not have been a problem for us. We never did have much to talk about even as kids. Jimmy was smart and bad at sports. Me, I was not interested in school and getting better at sports every day. No big childhood break up; one day I went to the ballfield and he went to the library and that was that.

There would be one more time that Jimmy would come into my life before the death of his mother. Right after college we were both dating sisters at the same time without either one of us knowing it. My sister was here in Pittsburgh and his sister was studying at Penn State. The sisters did not turn out well for either of us, especially me.

So here I stand on Wallace Street, outside on the sidewalk in front of the big blue funeral home across the street from my preschool after having a short and slightly awkward conversation with my childhood friend at his mother's funeral viewing.

The street is dirty, littered with garbage day. My car is parked between two pickup trucks that are filled with junk they must have collected on trash day. You know those trucks that drive around picking up broken lawn mowers and old TV’s that no longer work? Those types of trucks.

I sit in my car and think about the fact that the only time I come back to this town is to go to the big blue funeral home. Nobody ever gets married here, they only seem to die. How odd is that?

Drove past the elementary school. Still the same but with a new playground. Drove past the ballfield that I spent the majority of my childhood at. It’s a mess. The basketball backboard is torn down. Two big metal polls are left standing where backboards used to be hung. The ballfield is over grown and the batting cage has been removed. My childhood ballpark is now a ghost town and is no field of dreams.

Drove my old paper route to see what has become of the place. Houses condemned, abandoned or just not kept up. This is why people only die here, I think to myself. There is no life left.

Drove past Jimmy's house on 10th street. Big yellow house with a For Sale sign in the front lawn. All I could think to myself was 'Good luck unloading that Jimmy.'

I had one of those moments where I could see the eight year old in me playing in that yard, climbing that big tree that still stands in the backyard.

I loved the town that I grew up in. It was old world. Everyone was Italian, we were all Catholic, and even the non-Catholic seemed catholic to me. We listened to Bruce Springsteen, drank iced tea out of paper cartons. I delivered newspapers to old ladies who would give me cookies and to old men who would let me sip the wine they made in barrels in their garages.

Today I am 41, Mrs. Waterston died at 77. I never even knew her fist name, never even thought about it until I started writing this.

Until the next death, Big Blue.