13.

There was so much filler I could barely stand it. It was all filler, and no substance, so I wiped off my nose on my sleeve. My sleeve, even though it was wet with tears, reeked of something else, something far more vile. Yet despite this distraction, I continued to stare, to ponder. One comes to frightening conclusions when one ponders for too long, and in this particular instance I came to the frightening conclusion that I had no choice but to die. I would take pills, I'd take lots of pills, and I would lie on the floor and wait for somebody to find me. I guessed in terms of percentages. There was a twenty-four percent chance that somebody would find me before I was dead. There was a fifty-one percent chance that someone would find me within one or two days of my death. There was a twenty-five percent chance that somebody would find me in the next week or month, and a zero percent chance that I would never be found. I say zero because the term "never" of course implies a necessary infinity, and in infinity nothing is impossible. I could sense black forests and unearthly worms with sharp teeth. I could sense alien invasions, sparkling gunships floating through the air like flies in the summer, almost serene from a distance. But most of all I could sense only filler, only filler, only filler. In a Kissa in Nagasaki there are listeners, passionate listeners with great loves. In the Omo valley there is a young boy running on the backs of bulls, who themselves grunt and charge around, who want nothing but one moment of rest and a lap of water and a break from the bleeting sun. In kitchens, mothers clutch their children close, fearful of the sounds of sparkling gunships, wanting nothing more than to be the protector, dying for their own, noses at the future and musical gestures coursing through their blood. A mother's feet, which are sore from running forever, which crack their skin on painted pots, and a mother's hands, roasting coffee beans. In these moments I dream of eating pills, of losing myself in hallucinogens. Of drugging the humanity out of this, this imperfect brain. In these moments I bask in the beauty of the organism, the ticking scattered mess of people who will never know each other and who are all the same. Why do we study? Why do we study each other?

December 2006

December 2006
One of the most difficult things about making Logic was allowing ourselves to finish the album. Tracking had been completely at the end of May but we had since reached an impasse where as soon as one thing was satisfactory, something else was wrong. Vocals were done and redone. Mixes were made furiously late at night, only to be scrapped the next day. I processed every track through various plugins, ultimately deciding that everything sounded better without most of the effects. The album became our baby, our obsession, and while I didn't make it obvious to Spencer that I was thinking about it alot, I was, and I know he was too. Since we were so involved in the making of this album, it was almost impossible to send it to Northeastern Digital to get mastered.

It was also a huge step. I'd never recorded a full length album before and I'd never had anything mastered. When you send something to the mastering house, you're putting the final product in someone else's hands and you're saying "I've done the best I can do with the tracking and mixing of these songs, you make it sound like a unified whole."

Toby Moutnain, who mastered Logic, is a real mastering engineer. He's done a whole bunch of digital remasters for Bowie, Frank Zappa, and I believe he generally makes a living now doing classical mastering. I felt stupid sending him off our crappy little mixes, made for damn-near free in my TV room at home. It felt like cheating the system to be able to take something out of my house and have it play through Toby Mountain's expensive monitor set-up but that's exaclty what happened. I half expected to get a call from Northeastern Digital with the news that they simply couldn't work with our material but of course they wanted the 600 dollars...

I'm not sure the mastering was worth it. People like to champion the importance of mastering and I've seen it with my own eyes, but I think that money could have been better spent. We could've made better recordings if I had a little bit more freedom with my mic choices. Maybe if we'd bought some soundproofing materials or something, we could've cleaned things up a little.

As it stands, I'm more happy that we managed to finish than I am with the finished product itself. The music itself is almost inconsequential at this point. What's important is that Logic is a slice of a certain time of my life. I recorded that album to get over a girl...I was sad and I did what I was best at all day. I threw myself into something for the first time. I tried to make a statement. I'm hardly trying to minimize Spencer in all this but I can't tell you why he made the album. I guess he had to get the music out of him.

rainstorm

I kicked some water into the air, the rain kept pouring down.
There was a puddle, growing and morphing to match the contour and crevices that marked the pavement below my feet, testifying to the natural erosion and wear of countless past rainstorms like this one. I dug my toe into the puddle, my foot already having reached the point of saturation where I was no longer worried about where the water was in relation to my foot. I gave the water a good kick, sending it back into the air, only to disappear among the unremitting torrent.
I kicked and splashed, hoping my friends would see, my parents. I hoped my former elementary school teachers, police officers, and accountant would come and see me splashing in the street even as housewives slammed their windows to protect their furniture from this onslaught of vindicating liquid. I asked God for a clergyman, a servant of His word, to walk by just at the moment I tumbled into the road, rolling, splashing, and kicking in the inch-deep puddle, so as to catch a glimpse of my enjoyment of my modest but undeniably private beach.
The only thing I wanted more than death at that moment was to be witnessed, a voyeuristic perversion of desire. As my eyes rolled back into my head, I imagined a crowd of spectators, watching from buildings, nay, from a stadium, and I was the lone gladiator still standing, evoking the awe and pity of thousands.
My desire was fearsome, even to my own dark soul, but in practice I was spared moral consideration of any kind; no one was around, anywhere in sight. I assume they must have been shuttered in their homes, with their pets and children, clustered around the hearth.