Regarding our Project 2025...
With regard to the current music situation: What is the intent? What is the goal?
Before any of these questions can be addressed, I need to lay out what I face on a weekly basis:
Thursdays: up at 9am, work from 11am to 2pm, 2 hr break, then work from 4pm, to 8pm. Come home, Lili makes dinner (or we go out if we can swing it), then an hour or two of TV while I massage Lili's feet. Crash at around midnight.
Fridays: up at 7:30, work from 9am to 2:30pm, 2.5 hr break, then work from 5pm to 8pm. Come home, Lili makes dinner (or we go out if we can swing it), then an hour or two of TV while I massage Lili's feet. Crash at around midnight.
Saturdays: spend the day recharging batteries, taking care of household chores, dealing with paperwork etc. Work from 4pm to 8:30pm. Come home, Lili makes dinner (or we go out if we can swing it), then an hour or two of TV while I massage Lili's feet. Crash at around midnight.
Sundays: work from 11am to 2pm, then hightail it to Wallingford for APA pool league. Get home at between 9pm and 10pm, figure out what we're doing for dinner, then a little TV while I massage Lili's feet. Crash at around midnight.
Mondays: up at 7:30, work from 9am to 5pm. Come home, take care of personal stuff, Lili makes dinner (or we go out if we can swing it), then an hour or two of TV while I massage Lili's feet. Crash at around midnight.
Tuesdays & Wednesdays are my weekend. Recharge batteries, household chores, run errands, quality time with Lili, and whatever else needs to be attended to.
Lather rinse repeat.
I get to take little to no vacation time because living in Connectcut is expensive & between SocSec and day job I only bring in about 6k a month, Lili does not work (clinical depression, PTSD among other issues) so SocSec is her only income, and since my work income is hourly (tipped minimum wage) I can't afford to take any time off. In our current situation, we are just barely making ends meet.
I turned 70 last September, and I have about a quarter of a tank left before I crash and burn. I'll be lucky to make it to 80, and I have no idea how much longer I can keep this up. Some looming health problems (leaky heart valve, high hemoglobin, vision deterioration, herniated disc affecting left arm nerve bundles, among other things) are likely to get worse, not better, in the coming years.
So I have to again ask, with regard to the music situation: What is the intent? What is the goal?
I spent the past 3-4 years working on Suspicious Residue with Chris and Mark. Mark, in particular, had to get his frustrations with the whole MAGA thing off his chest. I am politically aligned with him, so I was in. Chris, in a period of significant personal transition, cranked out a bunch of really compelling music beds which Mark used as a jumping off point and I did my production thing to pull together a 3 song set of tunes that we were, and are, proud of. Top notch quality. I did the videos for two of them, also top notch quality (especially taking into the account the fact that we had ZERO budget). All of this took a good deal of time and effort to pull off.
Although personally satisfying, for all of the time and effort we put into it, our impact on the world was and is negligible.
It would seem we are now embarking on a new initiative, with a new player. At the moment, the approach seems to be scattershot - as in "Let's take things we've already done and repurpose them." Not much attention is being paid to what is being attempted, or why it is being attempted ... only that the attempt MUST be made and it MUST be made now.
There is much excitement around this new endeavor, and I am getting indications this is now a new project - our Project 2025 - into which I am now being called to make a not insignificant contribution of time and effort.
I don't, on principle, have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is: I have yet to be sold on why I should make the commitment. I have yet to hear a clear articulation of the intent and the goal of this project. And until such time as we can get our schedules to mesh and we can have a serious discussion regarding goals and intentions - the WHY of what we are doing - I am at loggerheads.
Don't get me wrong - yes, I do want to participate. And I know I bring a lot to the table with regard to production skills. But until I have a strong sense of what it is that we intend to achive here, and how we intend to achieve it (as I did with One Fell Swoop, Sister Sun, New England, Too Dimensional, and Suspicious Residue) and what each participant is looking to achieve in this partnership, I am hedging a bit.
Thanks for reading. Hope to talk with you all soon.
-t
Here's one of my favorite pieces of writing about musicians, bands, and the music business, written by Robert Fripp back in 1979. It may be a bit heady, but to me it makes a lot of sense. Food for thought.
ONE
1 One can work within any structure.
2 Once one works within any structure, some structures are more efficient
than others.
3 There is no structure which is universally appropriate.
4 Commitment to an aim within an inappropriate structure will give rise to
the creation of an appropriate structure.
5 Apathy (i.e. passive commitment) within an appropriate structure, will
effect its collapse.
6 Dogmatic attachment to the supposed merits of a particular structure
hinders the search for an appropriate structure.
7 There will be difficulty defining the appropriate structure because it
will be always mobile, i.e. in process.
TWO
8 There should be no difficulty in defining aim.
9 The appropriate structure will recognise structures outside itself.
10 The appropriate structure can work within any large structure.
11 Once the appropriate structure can work within any large structure,
some larger structure are more efficient than others.
12 There is no larger structure which is universally appropriate.
13 Commitment to an aim by an appropriate structure within a larger,
inappropriate structure will give rise to a large, appropriate structure.
14 The quantitative structure is affected by qualitative action.
THREE
15 Qualitative action is not bound by number.
16 Any small unit committed to qualitative action can affect radical
change on a scale outside its quantitative measure.
17 Quantitative action works by violence and breeds reaction.
18 Qualitative action works works by example and invites reciprocation.
19 Reciprocation between independent structures is a framework of
interacting units, which is itself a structure.
20 Any appropriate structure of interacting units can work within any
other structure of interacting units.
21 Once this is so, some structures of interacting units are more efficient
than others.