Category: autobiography

Nostalgia Chronicles: Gen Y

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It’s a hot day, and it isn’t helped by the thirty-five pounds of books in your backpack. You walk steadily away from the chaos that is the end of the school day; the swarms of cars and kids move steadily behind you, and the quiet of the deserted streets sets in, interrupted only by the occasional quip from one of your walking companions. One by one the friends of mutual direction peel off, and you’re by yourself, walking through the empty suburbs to your house. There’s never enough trees, and you begin to accumulate a layer of sweat under your…

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Jealousy among artists

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At the age of 36 I’ve been involved for multiple years with several big artistic “scenes,” including authors of various genres, classical musicians (particularly guitarists), flamenco musicians, and peripherally visual arts scenes such as comic artists. In all of these, there is a character flaw that seems to occur at much higher levels than the background (and I have personal points of comparison – I’ve been lots of other things besides an artist). That flaw is jealousy. Artists are insanely jealous of one another. The worst is probably in the visual arts, but certain music scenes are simply intolerable once…

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My Pool is a Swamp!

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Lessons in Social Endorsements and Services So this week was interesting. I went out to my pool on Sunday, hoping to do a little swimming since it was 100 degrees (and I have a foot injury that makes running a bit difficult at the moment), and saw that my pool had turned green, and was just short of the opacity of pea soup. I went down to the water, frustration burning my throat like the first drag on a clove cigarette, and retrieved my chlorine floater. Not a tab or pellet was to be seen. I dusted off my test…

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Your Friends Are Not Your Audience

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Why you shouldn’t expect friends and family to support your art. We’re playing a show this Saturday at Club Fred. It’s only five bucks to get in and we’re playing all night. I used to throw out this line nigh on every week back when I was 19-21 and gigging in rock bands regularly. After that it was different venues, more friendly to my classical and flamenco stuff, but the pitch was always the same, as were the responses, which something like this: Awesome! I’ll totally try to be there. My girlfriend/boyfriend loves that kind of music! It’s so cool…

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Nostalgia Chronicles, part 3: Moving?

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Another year, another room Where you hang a few things on the walls It’s just where you call home for now, Until it’s time to take them down and move on. -David Gold, from “To long life in the Limbo Union” Woods 4: The Green Album The act of moving, and by that I mean changing your home from one location to another, is usually not looked back upon fondly. This is for good reason, as moving can involve hours of physical labor, tedious organizing, and frantic cleaning in an attempt to recover one’s security deposit. Having moved some five times…

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Nostalgia Chronicles Part 2: Super Mex Cantina

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Continuing my series on nostalgia, which for me is a feeling akin to a flashback, only packed with emotion and often consisting of highly condensed time, I thought I might speak about a place that was near and dear to my heart, rather than a piece of intellectual property. That place is Super Mex, a Mexican restaurant and bar at Sunset and Pecos in the city of Las Vegas. I say that the place “is” Super Mex because, even though it has been re-worked by the owner and is no longer known by that name, the memory and reality of…

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Nostalgia Chronicles, Part 1: Berserk

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Nostalgia… For me, nostalgia is always an interesting phenomenon, like the sudden influx of déjà vu and yet clear and tangible. My memories, when I slip into them rather than merely draw upon them for some piece of information, are akin to a waking dream. I can see myself where I was, smell the smells around me, and even feel part of the emotions that I felt when the memory was made. When I am overcome with the images and words of the past, I call it nostalgia. It’s an intense experience, and can create feelings undulating between extreme pain…

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