. . .I was in the shower just long enough to lather up with soap when the entire shower fixture came apart and water sprayed everywhere and anywhere but from the shower head. The third visit from a plumber in as many weeks, from the last days of December up to today, we have had a water main replaced, a tankless water heater repaired, and a shower/bathtub combination fixture sutured back together, potentially costing us upwards of fifteen thousand dollars. Today’s suture was free, because by now we are “friends and family” cardholding members of a local plumbing conglomerate, but if we really want to FIX IT, and permanently, we’re going to have to cough up some money.
Most of my morning and into the afternoon, before the plumber came to fix the sink, was spent at the mastering studio of Specialized Mastering putting the finishing touches on the new single from Project MA. That was glorious, as usual, and, as Dana White worked his magic on my mixes we talked music shop for three hours. I came away with a song and its instrumental counterpart ready for prime time. I’m so excited to share it with the world.
We had pizza tonight with a lovely drum line parent and her kids who were all very excited that we had in tow the young man who filmed the documentary chronicling last year’s drum line season, which took my wife’s high school indoor percussion ensemble to Nationals for the very first time, and which was captured in all it’s glory by this young documentarian. He was a little bit of a rock star in this household. He played video games cheerfully with two middle school kids and their elder high school sister, and everyone was extremely happy, even the household dogs.
My son, last night, on a flight to Ontario, California, experiences extreme turbulence as the plane flies through impassable high winds, causing panic, screams, and apparently vomit from a number of passengers, at which point the pilot redirects the plane to LAX of all places, where it safely lands, and where the boy is picked up by a friend who will drive him all the way to Riverside, California, where he kind of lives now, and drums. His mother asks him, were you afraid? He says, no, just annoyed. Apparently he and his seat mate had a good laugh together about the hysteria on the plane. Where did my son learn to be so fearless? Not from me. I would have pissed myself. I am grateful beyond words that he is safe.
I don’t know why I went back, because yesterday after streaming the first track from Ethel Cain’s new album, “Perverts,” I was thinking, who in their right mind would listen to this entire track, let alone the entire album? Well, apparently, I would. It’s 10:30 on a Friday night, and, a little bit buzzed, having abandoned dry January pretty enthusiastically, I am writing the conclusion of this blog entry streaming Ethel Cain’s new album, which is terrible in the most captivating of ways. It’s the best bad music I have heard in a long time. She’s lovely, her singing is lovely, her lyrics are deep and deeply disturbing, spooky. She writes good songs, but this album contains an assortment of tunes that are twelve minutes long and longer that consist of mostly ambient noises, quiet distorted spoken word, and drones. The opening track begins with a lo-fi hymn and devolves into a ten minute quiet noise-scape. This is not a toe-tapper by any stretch of the imagination, and I marvel at the guts it takes to open a critically anticipated album with such nonsense, I mean, experimentation. Nevertheless, I’m hearing it again, twice within 24 hours, and I continue to listen all the way through. This should really count as today’s meditation practice, which I missed today, unfortunately, because of the shower mishap, calling the plumber, rushing off to the mastering studio, returning to wait for the plumber, and then the evening pizza affair. If not meditation, exactly, this is a record to bring one into an altered state, and I’m there.
michael jarmer 