reinvention (dissonance)

For an individual such as myself, the road to transformation is a long and tedious one. Although I adapt well to changes in my environment, it takes eons for me to make the personal, more intimate changes necessary for me to grow and thrive into perpetuity.

I can sum it up like this: If I woke up tomorrow and everything was inside-out-- my room, my neighborhood, the city, the state, the nation, the world --I could go on without batting an eye. But if I woke up one morning and discovered I was in fact a giant insect (like Kafka's protagonist in Metamorphosis) then I figure it would take me some time to get used to it.

Sometime last year, I woke up and found that I was not whom I thought I'd been for at least the past five years. I was someone else entirely. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. Something had changed. I tried to chalk it up to the ravages of age, but after a while it became clear that this sudden shifting of shapes had nothing to do with outer appearances.

No, instead it was something inside of me that was either born or killed off.

I haven't the slightest clue as to what was the catalyst for such a startling revelation, but I can tell you this: all attempts to explain it here in this blog have been in vain. I've combed the sands of my mind and soul for the past year and cannot put my finger on the defining moment, the impetus for this sweeping renovation of my psyche. I thought I knew what it was, but I have been wrong.

So I tried to catch up to that feeling. I grew out my hair, let my beard thicken, lost some weight, changed a few habits, and conducted myself as if I were not the person whose blog you've been reading for who know how long.

It is comparable to a reptile shedding an old skin.


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I have embraced luck, as I detailed in my last blog entry.

So far it seems to be working. I can't say that I've had incredible fortunes befalling me since I decided to endorse the random postulates of pure chance, but then again shouldn't we all be suspect of any windfalls or rewards that seemingly appear without any reason? It smacks of the devil's work, the instant gratification that comes with the deal; the minute you sell your soul you begin to reap the benefits of that deal.

Well, I didn't sell my soul, so I didn't expect to win the Lotto or pick up a supermodel in a singles bar overnight. But I'm beginning to see the length of this new path I am traveling as the fog clears and the horizon line becomes more visible.

Accompanying this fresh journey into uncharted realms comes an entirely new accessory: control. For the first time in a great while, I feel like I have control over my life and the things in it. Not that I haven't had any control over my life up until recently; rather, I'd been too willing to relinquish control. Nowadays I don't ever entertain the idea of giving up the reins, and ironically it is functioning far smoother than my past attempts to steer and commandeer all those things over which I really have no control: other people, certain circumstances, genetics, transparent pecking orders, injustices, societal ills...

It's as if I have gained more control by accepting the fact that luck plays a far bigger role in the way our lives unfurl than if I'd kept hammering away at my preconceived notions of what is and what should be. The problem with hammering away is that I was a hypocrite, all too willing to say 'fuck it' and not accept responsibility for my actions after whining and moaning about how I am so responsible.

I was trying to have and also eat the proverbial cake.

If I have any advice to give anyone in any part of the world, it's this: make sure you're not trying to have it both ways. That more than anything is most surely the cause of your present misery and unhappiness. If you are trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, or trying to force two objects of equal mass to occupy the same space, you'd better stop right now because it ain't gonna happen.

No way.

You have to make the parts fit. You can't just jam it together artlessly, with no sense of decorum or harmony.

Dissonance is OK if you're a musician and your name happens to be Captain Beefheart or Phillip Glass or Glenn Branca or John Cage or Ornette Coleman. These talents understand noise, and can reproduce that noise at will. It seems random on the surface-- perhaps even a tad unlistenable --but it is tightly constructed and crafted. And if someone hears it and thinks it's a bunch of cacophony, then they have executed their work all too well.

Dissonance, however, is not OK if you are just an ordinary person living an ordinary life. And although I am a musician, I am not always a musician. Sometimes I pay bills or buy groceries. Sometimes I lay in bed with my cats and train them not to gnaw at the speaker wires connected to my stereo. Sometimes I am the funny uncle who plays with his niece and nephew even though he is tired and wants to relax.

In those situations, as well as a million others that occur daily, dissonance is the last quality I want to be present. But you cannot dispel dissonance with an edict or a command. It will not obey your orders, it will not do as you say.

As any musician with perfect pitch can tell you, the only way to get rid of dissonance is to tune your instrument.


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I've been out of tune, off-key, behind the beat and out of the pocket. There was static in the line and something wasn't grounded right. I kept picking up stray radio waves and transmissions.

So I replaced the old strings with new ones, and cleaned the dirt off the neck and the frets. I changed the cables and re-soldered the pickups. I tuned up but I had to let the strings stretch for a bit. After some time, when the strings were acclimated, I changed to an open D tuning and riffed for a while.

My friends bought me some new amplifiers. They sat down with me and showed me some of their songs. I showed them some of mine.

And now a year has passed and I'm finally ready to play out with a whole new repertoire under my arm.

I have been reinventing myself, and it took a lot of time that I didn't think I had the patience to mind. I am not done reinventing myself, of course, but that's OK because at least now I know what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

So, with all that out of the way, I only have one question on my mind now:

Any requests?