The Alex Blues

One of my son Jesse’s gamer friends, Alex, recently asked him to write a blues piece. And Jesse, always up for a musical challenge, did so–hence, the aptly named Alex Blues, courtesy of JB Proof music.

Jesse has been experimenting with jazz and blues: chord structures, improv, syncopation, and all that beautifully blurry stuff. I appreciate watching the creative and educational process, particularly in seeing a kid self-propel through the endless sea of music that has not yet been written, finding his own hither-to undiscovered gems and yet-unnamed seahorses as he sails along.

Unrelated side note: have we reached the time in human history when the proverbial pig is flying? I think so. More on that later, but not during this post.

If you have a moment, check out his collection so far at Youtube, written under the name of JB Proof (not the proverbial flying pig, but Jesse). Subscribe and leave a comment–creatives always appreciate the encouragement. I’m not entirely clear on his songwriting name. JB for his initials, obviously, but proof… perhaps proof that he’s alive, creative, has keyboard and will travel? Dunno.

The proof is out there, to borrow from Mulder and Scully.

These songs are just Jesse, a Mac, a midi keyboard, an audio interface, some JBL speakers, and Logic Pro. I probably need to invest some money at Spitfire and buy him some new collections of samples to harness to that keyboard (particularly brass), but good samples are expensive…

In other creative news, I’m just about done with a new book, clocking in at about 200,000 words. Epic fantasy, of course, but reasonably light-hearted. In comparison to my other epic fantasy books, this one is in between the serious Hawk and His Boy series and the comedic Fury Clock, but somewhat closer to Fury Clock.

The new book has a definite plot ending, but the overall story is positioned perfectly for endless sequels. That said, I might publish the initial 200,000 words in five episodes of around 40,000 words apiece (and make them as cheap as possible at 99 cents each, as well as enrolled in Kindle Unlimited); this would be in order to set up an ongoing approach of adding additional episodes. Writing a 40,000 word episode or novella is a lot easier than writing a 200,000 gravestone.

Anyway, still pondering that approach.

In other news, I have come to the almost spiritual realization that bacon is a sublime food. It is the perfect combination of salt, sweet, texture, aroma and seductive visual appeal. Why didn’t I realize this when I was young? I have wasted so many years.

I recently noticed in one of those fleeting, drive-by-news clips that there’s a (sorely misguided) movement in England to ban bacon. Perhaps due to an odd love of pigs and wanting to see them frolicking in fields as opposed to frolicking on your plate? At any rate, this worries me for the future of England. The little rainy island with cramped roads has given the world so much: Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, Shakespeare, Monty Python, the Magna Carta, Drake and other assorted explorers, William Wilberforce, a wider appreciation for tea (which I don’t appreciate myself, but my wife does, so I’ll honor England on her behalf), clotted cream, and Stonehenge.

To sum up the current situation: celebrate England’s past, look with grave concern on her current bacon perspective, tell your Aunt Edna about my books, and listen to some more JB Proof music.

And if anyone has a new comedic fiction book they can honestly recommend to me, I would love that. Nothing with millionaire or billionaire in the title, please. In my modest and incredibly humble opinion, the vast majority of the titles in Amazon’s humor bestseller list do not seem to be humor. Does humor even exist anymore?

Vanity of vanities

The thesis statement of the book of Ecclesiastes is the second verse of chapter one, in which the author remarks “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” He goes on to make the point that everything repeats itself. The sun comes up, goes down, and then returns and does the same the very next day. The rivers run to the sea, but the sea is never full. The wind blows to the north, to the south, going round and round forever.

He goes on to say that there’s nothing new; everything has been done before and will be repeated and done again.

A generation comes and a generation goes… there is no remembrance of former things by those who come after. That’s certainly a sobering thought. It reminds me of Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.” He wrote it in 1817, practically antique and ancient from our modern, refined and digitally enlightened sensibilities, but I suspect he was wiser than most of our pontificating prognosticators. Not suspect. Know.

Back in my grim Chicago days, I wrote a song based on Shelley’s poem, used the same title, and my band The Autumn War included it in our regular lineup. Playing late night shows in smoke-filled bars, complete with floors sticky with beer and peopled with a wide assortment of characters, will certainly make you question the purpose of life. Almost get you in a so long and thanks for the all the fish mentality if you don’t watch out.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ecclesiastes is a fascinatingly dark book. It’s a book of shadows. However, it can be read in two different ways. If you’re philosophically a materialist (and, by that, I don’t mean a materialist in terms of being consumed with acquiring and owning stuff–material things) and believe that the material matter of the universe is all that exists, then you will find only darkness in Ecclesiastes.

However, you can read Ecclesiastes in a second way. If you’re a Christian, then it’s still a dark book of shadows, but you realize that the shadows exist because of the light. Obviously, that’s a metaphor, but it reflects the reality of physics. Makes me wonder which one is the metaphor… the philosophy of light and shadow, or the physics of light and shadow.

Anyway, that second kind of perspective makes all the difference. And that difference gives tremendous meaning and value to the endless rising and setting of the sun, the endless flow of water to the hungry sea, and the unending need for the eye to see and the ear to hear.

Thank God! That means I can write more stories and songs in good faith that there’s reason for them. Reason and need.

JB Proof

By the way, speaking of music, check out my fifteen-year-old’s ever-growing catalogue of instrumentals that he’s been writing and recording. All on his own!

The Script of our Life

I find myself returning to the question of free will versus predestination, or, if you must be theatrical about it, is the script of our life written by us or Someone else? That begs the subsequent question: if our script is written for us, do we have to perform it as written?

The fires down in Pacific Palisades and other parts of the Los Angeles area certainly weren’t imagined by anyone, other than the gloomy forecasters working for Cal Fire or various insurance companies or whichever crystal ball company out there that spends a little money on R&D or product testing. I mean, who would’ve written a script like that if you’re writing your own script?

I was recently discussing the fires with a co-worker who used to belong to a local volunteer fire company. He said that, when you enter a house fire, it is so unbelievably hot that all of your mind and body bands together and shouts “Run!” But, he went on to say, if you’re part of a team, the psychology of the team effect overpowers that voice and you soldier on.

That’s an interesting metaphor for life. Life isn’t usually as crazy and intense as a whatever-degree fire blowing up in your face. However, the net effect of life can sneak up on you and, before you know it, your body and mind are advising you to run. A strong marriage combined with a healthy relationship with God are your team in that scenario; that’s usually enough to overpower the advice to run.

Hang in there. Keep reading the script, because it’ll end well, particularly if you’ve got your eyes on God. Despite how dark or fiery it might be at the moment.

Speaking of scripts, I’m knee-deep in my secret script project. We’ve been working on this since around March/April of 2024. I’m not allowed to say what it is and who it’s for, but it should hopefully see the green-light of production day sometime in 2025. Hopefully. And then I’ll be free to talk about it. Fantastic project, but it is soaking up most of my limited free time that could be going to other writing projects (notably, a very light-hearted epic fantasy that I’ve been fiddling with for the last five years–almost done, but still needs some work; a humorous series of children’s stories set in modern America [inspired by Daniel Pinkwater’s writing]; a novella set in Tormay, post-Hawk and featuring one of the minor characters from that trilogy-this one’s probably about halfway finished).

What I am free to talk about, though, is Son #2’s music. His latest songs (written and recorded with JB Proof as his nom de guerre) are called Ever After and Leaving. They’re available mostly wherever music is available these days, but you can listen to them for free on Youtube. Pretty darn cool for a 15-year-old! He has about twenty songs out so far, and I’m fascinated by how his songwriting is evolving in terms of arrangement and structure.

Music and magnificence

My second son has been writing and recording more music. His latest, Nowhere, just went live. He constantly amazes me with his creativity. Writing and recording music has been a constant in my life since the late 80s. I think one of the key beginnings of that arc was when I was on staff with Youth With a Mission in Lausanne, Switzerland. Several friends and I started a practice of writing birthday songs for whenever someone had a birthday. We usually just did rewrites of existing songs and then performed them during lunch or dinner, to the great embarrassment of the song’s object.

And things progressed from there, into my first two albums (acoustic folk with my good friend Lionel), the hard rock Autumn War years of playing in bars and random venues in the Chicago area, to the folk-protest of several albums I did back in California (precipitated by the rewrite of the Monterey County General Plan and all its attendant lunacy), to the more recent electronica of my Inflatable Hippies effort, as well as a Christmas carol album with completely rewritten melodies but traditional lyrics.

Creating music isn’t always the easiest thing. As compared to eating snacks and watching Netflix or any other number of rather pointless pursuits.

So, hats off to Jesse. You can find his music (13 songs so far) on Youtube, Amazon, Itunes, Spotify, Deezer, etc etc. Here’s a Youtube link to get you started. Nowhere, Stories and Circus Act are his newest songs.

Speaking of hats off, my brother Mike is currently coordinating planes and helicopters out of central North Carolina, in order to move supplies into flood-ravaged spots in the western part of that state. He’s a helicopter instructor at the JAARS base in Waxhaw and has been flying helicopter and fixed wing for decades.

Remember those parts of the East Coast in your prayers. It’s only the first of October.

World’s Last Night

I woke up this morning wondering about the world’s last night. It is bound to happen, sooner or later. The morning before that night, perhaps those alive on the planet at that time will wake up with business plans for investment (a five-year Treasury bill or buy some Berkshire Hathaway for the long haul) or sit down at breakfast to discuss taking the kids to Disneyland next month or consider the twinge in their hip and start thinking about scheduling an appointment for that ball-socket replacement they’ve been putting off for years.

One can only wonder. There’s no hard evidence that points to a specific date, let alone a specific century. All we have is the brutality of the fact that matter becomes more disorganized over time. And certain old scriptures that indicate thermodynamics and entropy have a master.

“In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye…”

Speaking of the world’s last night, the Democratic National Convention began yesterday, if you hadn’t noticed. Or if you were trying not to notice. It was a sound and an apparently joyous fury wrapped up in a great deal of wind. Chicago is not just a windy city, it IS the windy city, a thing I can attest to, having lived there for several years during and after grad school.

The first day of the convention ended on an odd visual note. After midnight, during that last night, President Biden emerged on stage to raucous cheers. He reminded me of an elderly circus bear, blinking and bewildered as to where life had brought him. Angry at his clown handlers and wistful for rest in some nearly forgotten forest (or New Jersey beach house).

Meanwhile, outside, cultural entropy exerted force on the minds of protesters and police alike. Purple-haired people of indeterminate determination screaming words that have lost their definitions. It felt like things were fraying. It feels like things are fraying. If I had to bet money, I don’t think we have a seamstress willing or capable to stitch these holes back together. At least, not a human one.

Holes. Everywhere holes. Someone or something has been nibbling holes in the fabric of this planet. Never mind Gaia BH1, brooding in its black hole darkness over a thousand light years away. Big holes, small holes, holes in the Middle East, holes in families, holes in the White House, holes in Eastern Europe, holes in the British Parliament and the tradition that began with the Magna Carta, holes in storytelling, holes in the already-empty pupils of world leaders as they genuflect at Davos, holes in the definitions of very common, simple words, holes in the minds of children. Which begs the question: what shines through all these new holes? Darkness or light?

In response, one side chants “The darkness shines in the light, and the light has not overcome it.”

The other side whispers “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

I hope and trust that the world’s last night is met by the world’s last knight. Otherwise…

For now, I’ll leave you with some Silence, written and recorded by my second son (who often appears to be the seventh son of a seventh son with his musical inclinations).

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