I had a good night’s sleep, but I woke up early and couldn’t get back there–so I got up. I saw my son off to school, I was on the meditation cushion by 8:15, and after that I made myself a pretty decent breakfast. And no, I am not suddenly since yesterday a “single” man, but rather, I had an appointment at a mastering studio this morning at 10:00 to put the finishing touches on my most recent “single” music release, another two songs for the Project MA record. It took much longer than it normally would, about 4 hours this morning, only because the engineering was punctuated by long-ass bouts of simply shooting the shit with the engineer. It’s like my mastering engineer and I both have no one to talk to–so when we work together, we talk a lot. Mostly about music. And then music. After which, our favorite topic of discussion is music. I imagine that, given his job, he has many more opportunities to “talk shop,” as they say. Nevertheless, he still seems to have a lot to say to me. And I to him. I don’t know if I could do the math–how much of the time we were actually working on the music as opposed to talking around and about the music. It is fortunate for me that this engineer charges by the song and not the hour–otherwise I would be suspicious. But at some point, talking about talking about music, or talking about listening with others to music for the pure enjoyment of it, I confess to him that I feel sometimes (accurately, I think) that I don’t have very many people who I can sit in a room with where the only expectation is that we listen together to some album and share that experience, you know, the way people do with television. When I was a kid, (no internet, and cable television in its infancy) I had a number of friends who would convene for the express purpose of listening to music. It was lovely. At any rate, I started kvetching about musician friends of mine who do not actively listen to music. Drives me crazy. I know I’ve written about this before. It circles back around for me every once in a while, especially when I am reminded about how seldomly I do a thing that I love in one of those rare moments when I get to do a thing that I love. Musicians who don’t listen to music are as bad as writers who don’t read. It makes no sense. I suppose it might be possible, if music is all you do professionally, and it begins to feel like a job, that you might not want to “continue working” off the clock. But I don’t buy that. Or at least, philosophically, I’m against it. As soon as playing music professionally started to feel like an obligation or a chore, or something I was “clocking in” to do, I would hope that I would try to recapture the joy by finding some other work. I would hate for working at music to kill music for me. I rehearsed tonight on the drums with the cover band that I play in–and that’s work–I mean, it’s music I wouldn’t play unless it paid me a little bit of money on a regular basis. But my love of music is in no danger, as far as I can tell, from me playing in a cover band. I’ll continue doing it as long as it remains safe to do so, emotionally, creatively, socially, psychologically, as long as my original love and joy with music, playing it and listening to it, is not compromised. I think Dana, my mastering engineer, is likewise safe. He works with music every day. I imagine he works often with music he doesn’t like. And yet, he still loves listening. He still loves talking about listening. He’s squarely on my team. I’m wrapping up this entry late and I’m tired. Thank you for reading my little rant.
michael jarmer 