I Just Had Laser Eye Surgery

My Pal Jonathan Says This Makes Me Post-Human. Deb Says I Look Like A Drugged Out Housewife

I think the whole thing is incredible .... bizarre indeed .... and amazing. In just 2 3/4 hours I went from sporting a serious astigmatism in my left eye and a milder one in my right to 20/15 vision with no astigmatism in either eye.

As I've told others the weirdest part of the whole process is the computer generated voice that announces through the wavefront intralase process. "Paitent Stacia Carr, right eye, blah blah astigmatism, estimated time for procedure 1 minute 25 seconds" - the laser then fires up - and the cheering squad of surgeon, optometrist and technicians starts in "look into to light, look straight into the light, look into the light ..." and then the computer voice chimes in and continues the count down "50 seconds remaining", cheerleaders continue "keep looking into the light, the center of the light, look into the light ....", computer says "46 seconds remaining"..... and this goes on until the computer finally declares "procedure complete".

We live in interesting times.

If You Only Had 6 Weeks Left To Live What Would You Do?

It's the classic question, right? If you *knew* your life was going to end how would you live what was left of it .... and the movie opens and we sense courage, impending despair and the resilience to push it aside and *live*.

Well as any buddhist will point out to you - we are all dying - one day at a time - with or without the expiration date in hand - we all know we are going to die. Whether we choose to face it and let that fact influence us or not is another proposition altogether.

Maybe it's Chris Whitley's death that stirred this up in me. Something clicked when I learned he'd passed - like a combination lock - I knew it was time. Time for what? Time to push away a layer that sits between me and my heart - time to be one with myself in such a way that there is no hesitation - no fumbling around the fear of what others think and how I think they perceive me. There is *no time* for any of that - I'm dying day by day and those worries aren't worth the time I have left.

I go out - probably once every 2 weeks - sometimes once a week - by myself - to dance. Dancing is probably one of my five favorite things to do in the world. When I am dancing I feel like not only am I alive but I am expressing what is inside me so completely and effortlessly that my life is complete. I could die on that dance floor with the dignity of knowing I'd lived out one of my heart's desires.

So why not every day lived like I'm on that sacred dance floor? Why not every day from the heart no matter how small the gesture or exchange? Why not life as the most important dance of all - the one that teaches us that in the end the only thing we can follow is our hearts and the more space we put in between ourselves and our hearts the more needless suffering, anguish and waste of *our time* here on the planet.

Chris Whitley 1960-2005

This man and his music touched my life in a way that only a handful of artists have; I am grateful to have known him and am quite sure that his music will live on in the hearts and souls of many. May he rest in peace.

Sometimes It Pays To Live In The Bay Area

I spent 3+ hours driving back to Millbrae from Sacramento yesterday afternoon. Left my folks place in Sac around 1:45pm hit University Ave. in Berkeley around 3:17pm and sat in traffic all the way across the bridge. The estimated time from Berkeley to SFO Airport was 85 minutes according to one of those new weird LCD arrival time signs hanging out on the freeways around the Bay Area. Got home and rushed through a shower, changed and headed back into the city to pick up my pal Erik as we'd made plans to go to my electronic music teacher's concert. He plays with a group called Som'ma - they blend traditional Persian music played live with electronics and they have a dancer who performs with them.

Sometimes it pays to live in the Bay Area .... only in a densely populated urban area could you roll up into a show like this on a Saturday night. It took place at an art/performance space in Sausalito called Cobalt Sun. The interior of the space was incredible - it was set up for direct visual projections on two walls and from the ceiling around the periphery of the space hung beautiful sheer fabrics serving as ancillary projection surfaces creating a 3 dimensional effect.

The music was incredible - I'll let it speak for itself - here are some audio clips and the dancing was inspirational!

And speaking of dancing - went out Thursday night and hit Louder Than Bombs at StudioZ. It was a night of Brit Pop featuring The Smiths and Morrisey. The floor at StudioZ just like Johnny Marr's guitar playing is *made* for dancing. Visuals by DJ Golden were a gas - there was footage from Smith's concerts, "vintage" MTV with Downtown Julie Brown hosting interspersed with James Dean movies. Too much fun!

What I Did Not Know About Erik Satie

Just loading a Satie playlist into Rhapsody and came across a few facts about the man that explain a great deal about him. Namely that he was self taught and committed to a life of poverty thus "removing his art from the unconscious confinements of class and the corruptible influences of popular acceptance".

Satie's music resonated with me the first time I ever heard it which if I remember correctly was in Mike Gibbs's arranging for small ensemble class at Berklee. Mike was a visiting teacher in residence and I was elated to have the opportunity to work with someone who was working on the outside of the school.

I'm quite certain Mike had us listen to Trois Gymnopedies No. 3 in class - this was one of those musical experiences that I will never forget. There I was sitting in class at a school who's allegiances to complex harmonic structures as barometer for musical worthiness was oppressive listening to a piece of work that is seemingly so simple and yet conveys so much. It was a moment in which I felt I'd won - I'd won by trusting my instincts about music and not giving them over to the intellect and pressure to think like the rest of the be-bop gestapo. Mike Gibbs was a big deal and there he was turning us onto music it felt natural to claim as mine, part of my lineage as the musician I knew myself to be.

Little did I know that Satie'd never spent too much time in school and quite consciously removed himself from situations that would exert their own agendas on his own creative process.

Here's the Rhapsody blurb on Satie:

"Few composers deserve the phrase "ahead of his time" more than the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925). Ideologically committed to a life of poverty, the composer removed his art from the unconscious confinements of class and the corruptible influences of popular acceptance. Though he did study briefly at the Conservatoire de Musique et de Declamation, Satie was primarily self-taught, a luxury that freed him to explore ideas as he found them. As a result, he broke with convention to such an extent as to become the conceptual godfather of the twentieth century's Avant-Garde movement. In an environment where Impressionism and Wagnerism ruled, Satie injected his work with dry, ironic wit and deceptively simplistic progressions. Yet underneath his seemingly casual whimsy lie crisp conceptual models explored with such discipline as to become vaguely spiritual. "Trois Gymnopedies," one of his most well-known works, depicts ancient Greek gymnastic exercises. "Vexations," made famous by a John Cage performance, consists of 152 notes and is to be played 840 times -- a process which lasts over eighteen hours. Godfather of the Avant-Garde, indeed."

Cut Your Hand While Trying To Open A Bottle Of Olive Oil. Ask Me How!

Yeah - I did it. Fucking bottle still isn't opened. Motherfucker. Had to saute my spinach with butter.

Just got news from my friend Guillaume in Paris who says:

"Cars are burning but our great state is going to pay for them. As usual. The debate is on about inner cities and education and security. I think the media once again are glad to emphasize the troubles. But don’t worry it’s fine."

What are we going to do about the media?

Kay, quick post ..... I have an idea for a name for the project Erik and I are working on.

Ready ......

Sunrise On The Sarangeti

The New Stone Age

If I'm gonna be confessing my hopeless affections for Leave It To Beaver and Frankie Goes To Hollywood all in one post I might as well follow it up with an admission regarding Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark.

Now before we get started just put all of your memories of John Hughes movies aside. That also goes for when we talk about the Psychedelic Furs who all too often get lumped into that whole string of thoughts and memories. I fucking love the Furs and if you need to know what to listen to beyond goddamned 'Pretty In Pink' you know who to call.

Moving right along ....

I think it could be argued that OMD's Dazzleships, Architecture and Morality and Organization (all released between 1980-1983) were not only some of the best electronic pop records made in their day but listened to now are still completely relevant.

If I was challenged to a gun fight over electronic music my weapon of choice is Brian Eno. But let's leave well enough alone - this is a post about love.

Now a story about teenage adoration. I saw OMD live at Freeborn Hall at UC Davis in 1986 and demonstrated my love for them in the form of a bedsheet I'd pilfered from my mom's linen closet and spray painted "OMD WE LOVE YOU" with some leftover paint used for my highschool marching band's homecoming float. During the concert my friends and I deftly raised the sheet, eventually it got dropped and kicked around by the audience making its way to the front of the stage. OMD's Andy McCluskey picked it up and said something about this being a very dirty sheet and took it backstage with him. I was elated.

2 Things

I rarely talk about geek related stuff on this blog but I need to vent:

I HATE ADODB

It's a database abstraction layer that's "supposed" to make my life easier and it seems that the only thing it does is create more work for me. For some reason when I use the 'getArray' function to munge my data result set it creates a multi-dimensional array that has two identical arrays for every single row of data. This is not helpful.

ELUVIUM MAKES BEAUTIFUL MUSIC I WISH I'D MADE

Go have a listen - - - file under gorgeous, moody, keyboards, sparse, atmospheric, the type of music I'd like to hear while walking along a moor in England, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Boards Of Canada, etc.. My friend Aprilfish lists their latest release 'Lambent Material' as one of the best records of 2005.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood Took Me To The Boss

Okay - I love Frankie - always have - always will. Halle Pinzone, my best pal when I was 11 years old, and I worshipped Frankie right after the meetings for our Leave It To Beaver fan club adjourned. I am *not* kidding. We'd spin a copy of the double disc'd Welcome To The Pleasuredome I borrowed from my older teenage neighbor who I'm quite sure reveled in the notion that he'd loaned a record with more homo erotic references than you could shake a stick at to a couple of young girls. We, of course, had no clue we were listening to men who preferred, well men, we were in love with the Frankies.

But the really funny thing is I have Frankie to thank for my somewhat reluctant yet undeniable love of Bruce Springsteen. The infamous 'Welcome To The Pleasuredome' contains a cover of The Boss's Born To Run and when I finally got over Springsteen's icon status and realized what an amazing and thoughtful writer and performer he is it was the Frankie cover that led me down the path to The River and Nebraska.

The Weekend Wrap

Trance documentaries from Sherpa Country, Indonesia and Australia

I saw these with my friend Ben, who wants to make zombie movies. The films were show at Oddball Films space - a warehouse-type place *filled* with film. The documentaries are rarely screened depicting rituals involving strange feats all geared towards bringing peace and prosperity to the communities in which they were being performed. We left after watching some guy in Indonesia poke himself in the eye with a knife. Ben had a weak stomach

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Really quite good and worth watching. Jeffery Wright has a role - BONUS!

Manny And Lo

If you've not seen - very cute - and sweet - John Lurie did the soundtrack and the film features an incredibly young Scarlett Johansen.

Installed Reason 3.0

Prep work for making music with Erik - had a copy of it procured through a torrent - it contained bin files - had to then procure a copy of Toast inorder to mount them and do the install. Woo hoo.

Erik and I sat around my house and listened to music.

Yoga

Clairvoyant School

And baked some delicata squash - - - does anyone know how to eat this stuff?

John Lurie

I love this man ...... if you haven't go listen to 'Bob The Bob' off of The Lounge Lizards "Voice Of Chunk" find it, listen to it and then you will know. Then you will know. John took the sax back from the clutches of the be-bop gestapo and safely shepherded it through the No-Wave era. His sense and ability to express beauty through the horn is unparalleled.

He is my friend.

the way my mind works - the sounds in my head

so much flashing around in my mind these last few days .... trying to focus on work's been a losing proposition.

i just kicked off a new playlist (zero 7's 'Warm Sounds') and as i did i realized that so much of the strife i used to experience on a day to day basis making my way in the world really had a lot to do with how i chose to use my mind. pure and simple.

to be 'blessed' with an analytical mind is to have tools at one's disposal to make one's self crazy.

i think i remember my dad telling me to 'not think so much' or 'to let things go' when i was a little girl. i resented being told to stop using my mind. the analytical mind was my secret weapon - at least in my head - i could explore things that would never so clearly reveal themselves in the reality outside of my mind's eye. conclusions, possibilities, rationals, the future - they all seemed so far from my grasp why not hole up inside my head and play them out myself.

the only problem with this scenario is that the physical world involves time - time for things to play themselves out, time for nature to take its course, time for people to evolve and act on their own accord. my mental understanding of how things could or should be held very little water on the earthly plane where in a sense - time rules. people, situations, energies and dynamics unfold over time in ways that are not easily predictable.

it took me a long time to understand and accept this. all along the way i inadvertently created a mountain of frustration and confusion for myself. "why?" was a question all too often asked. "why?" were things happening in a way that i couldn't make any sense of. it was perplexing and an opportunity i took to go into mass self judgement which only amplified my frustrations.

i don't know how much of my life i enjoyed while i chose to use my mind this way - i reckon on the one hand i loved the secret playland of my head and relished in the notion that i had the capacity to sort it all out upstairs. there was pride and sense of access to a world no one else was privy to - my own private idaho. pleasure and joy on the physical plane was a troubling proposition ..... i wasn't living in present time and i couldn't accept that much as my analytical mind might like to believe it had the answers to everything there were simply things that i didn't know and wouldn't learn until i decided to leave the grist mill inside my cranium and live out my life here on the planet.

now i can, do and more often than not just turn the analyzer knob to 'off' and smile.

'By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens.'

so to continue the riff on 'adaptation' dialog ..... i want to explore this statement.

it puts the idea of just being who i am into a context that works for me.

my life is far from normal while it may appear as such on the outside. i've never been one to overtly rebel or act out for the sole purpose of gaining attention. i am propelled to find ways to make my life more interesting and engaging for me. i'd rather be hanging off a cliff by a fingernail than bored. that said, i am not purely a thrill seeker. i love peace and solitude so much so that sometimes i worry that i inadvertently isolate myself.

but maybe, just maybe, all i am doing is what i am designed to do. where that design eminates from i won't get into today. but if i continue along this path without judgement or fear perhaps something large and magnificent happens. what that is? who knows.

my friend ben and i were talking about something related to this idea one evening over drinks at the hotel utah. he said something like "who knows, maybe you're part of a micro wave.". he wasn't talking about the kitchen appliance. his point was that it's hard to see from where we stand as individuals what we are a part of on a larger scale, just like laroche's flowers, "And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives?"

some may argue that the larger scale perspective is merely a fabrication. but point is, its tough to see a greater context for your life while you're living it. perhaps when it comes down to it, as laroche says "the only barometer you have is your heart."

my heart's doing that thing again

maybe it was reading more lines from 'adaptation' ... maybe it's that lately i've been turning off the analytical part of my brain and working things from a different place .... maybe it's the excitement of starting to work on music again .... maybe it's just the beauty of the fall season.

more quotes from chris cooper's character in 'adaptation':

John Laroche: "Point is, what's so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There's a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way."

it's easy to get gooey over the idea laroche explores with regard to the flowers and the insects as soul mates by design - but i think the real key here is this bit 'By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart.'

"that's how much fuck fish"

i love that line delivered by chris cooper in the movie 'adaptation'.

there's something about the sentiment - he was done - patently - with a love - an obsession - a frame of reference - a way of being.

the beauty of his flexibility to embrace and disengage from something all with the same degree of enthusiasm completely enchants me. it really points, at least to me, to the idea of a center, that which is still, and preferences come and go, while the center remains.

cooper's character, john laroche goes on to explain a few things to meryl streep's character, susan orlean:

John Laroche: You know why I like plants?
Susan Orlean: Nuh uh.
John Laroche: Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.

this is most definitely what i hope to continue to do in my life.

we are going to make music and i'm drinking tea

erik and i are going to work on a music project together.

2 saxophones, a laptop, and some vox ..... or at least that's the beginning

i bought the laptop today

i am cutting back on my coffee consumption and replacing it with tea

i never thought i'd see the day i brewed myself a cup of 'lemon lift'. i used to tell my old nervemeter bandmate, will, that tea was for pussies. he liked chamomile.