I continue to experience all sorts of technological hurdles with Ableton and Time code/synch. At the same time, my understanding of Native Instruments Kontakt has been growing at exponential rates. This has been good so far, but it very much feels like I am doing IT work again. This sort is the help desk kind where you struggle to find the root of the problem, while somehow it works one day, but not the other. This is my setup right now. Held together with a lot of duct tape and coat hangers.
While many technological errors are totally unforeseen, and you certainly can’t plan for things, this very much made me insular for a time again, and it was hard to open Ableton each day, just to keep my own personal commitment. I kept at it though, much like I used to with the 9 to 5. but I certainly did not feel progress. This continued me to me being more insular, and the downward spiral begins.
This got me thinking, what was stopping me. Or better said, what was preventing me from attacking each morning with enthusiasm that I was doing something I loved. After a period of time, one word sprang to mind.
Inertia
To quote Google :
“Inertia is the natural tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion and objects at rest to stay at rest, unless a force causes its velocity to change. It is one of the fundamental principles in classical physics, and is described by Isaac Newton in his first law of motion.”
For me, I am talking about the 2nd one.
Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest, unless a force is acted upon them.
When I was a kid, like many of us, I was told I could be anything I wanted to be. For me since about the middle of high school had always been music. Music was it. It made sense. The fact that it makes sense to me is still mind boggling, but that is another post for another day.
I practiced dutifully everyday. Survived high school while learning theory & history, along with a few other instruments including bass guitar. I did not actually buy a bass until my second year at Indiana. I did not meet Penelope — the bass I still play today, over 20 years later — until my mid-twenties. It was also during high school that my first introduction to multi-track recording, MIDI, and synthesis as well. The original ‘duct tape’ studio was:
An Apple IIe with their Basic 8 channel MIDI program
A Yamaha DX 7
An older Roland DDD-1 Drum Machine
A Fostex 4 track tape machine
This culminated in a medley of “Phantom of the Opera” with a few Music Honors Students, the full student choir, multiple music directors, and 1 or 2 live instrumentalists, but memory is foggy on that part honestly. Dean Nagy was kind to say, it reminded him of seeing it originally on Broadway. In truth it was probably not close at all, but as usual with my work it was earnest.
Even when I managed to get into Indiana, which is a pretty decent music school, my family was always very much “safe degree”, so you can get a “safe job”. It was mentioned often, certainly not directly, but in passing ways, such as;; “How will you pay your bills playing music?”, “You know you will never be a rock star”,, “Music is hard, are you sure you want to do that?” [edit: Sorry, this is not meant to be a ‘my family sucks post’]. This lead to me changing majors to English, so much for safe, but they thought I would be a teacher, so they shut up.
It is not just our families though. We here it day in and day out in comments when we share with others. The snide jokes. the off hand comments. This works its way into you after some time. It creates a virtual weight as well. This weight keeps us in this state of rest. It prevents us from taking up martial arts, from learning to paint, trying new foods, to sometimes even just putting down the game controller.
We give it a voice in our head; “I can’t do ……” or “I can’t be ……”. We make excuses as well; “It’s hard”, “People will laugh”,, “There are already so many others doing this.”, worse, we say out loud “I can’t” This gets worse when you are a parent, because while you are telling your kids to be what they want, you are announcing to the world, that this s something you won’t/ can’t/ etc do. Kids listen to the things you expect the least sometimes.
This is the all a part of the Inertia I am trying to share. The self imposed quicksand of doubt that we throw ourselves into. This has been the inertia that I struggle to overcome with everyday. This was the Inertia, that I may have finally recognized, and finally gotten angry enough at it, that I have applied force.
I have been working on my film score demo reel, and learning as much as I can as fast as I can about the Industry. There is still a mountain of books, and 3 courses waiting for me to complete as well, but for me life experience has always been the toughest teacher, so….
the movie industry, films, theater, and all of it take a long time to produce and make and everything, so to channel my creative energy in a forward direction, I am creating my own film to score with my youngest daughter. It will involve a lot of legos, and the quality of the movie I am sure will be a solid C at best, but it should be an honest 20 or so minutes (I hope) of film, that needs a real score, and allows me to develop themes and honest melodies.
While it has only been 4 to 5 honest days of work on the film at this point, I am wildly at work, and Inertia seems to be held at bay.
For some reason I know that I will find my path as long as I keep going with “Penelope”. Things have always made more sense with her, than without. When I make sure to work with her first thing in the morning, the remainder of the day could be shit, but I still feel a sense of accomplishment. Even on those days I described at the beginning of the post with non stop technological hurdles.
I want all of us to find their “Penelope”.
P.S. The name wasn't a deliberate reference to The Odyssey, but there still seems to be a psychic connection between me, the bass, and the tale of Odysseus.
