Undercrypt

Today I accepted that the guiding philosophy of my life was flawed. Incomplete. Outdated.

That philosophy was this:

Don’t get hit by a bus.

The idea is that if you get hit by a bus, you weren’t paying attention. You get hit by a Camaro running a red light at 70 mph, hey, not your fault. You get hit by the big thing doing 20 as it pulls away from the curb, maybe you should have seen that one coming, eh?

I realize now that, while the basic premise holds up well enough, there are indeed situations when you could get hit by a bus regardless of your best efforts. Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Greyhound driver sneezes when he’s changing lanes, boom. Not your fault. You live on a busy intersection, bus swerves wildly to get out of the way of a rushing fire truck and careens into your living room, smash. Not your fault. Waiting at the bus stop at the bottom of the hill, bus hits the ice patch, splat. Not your fault. (Well, you really should have seen that last one coming, but still.) The essential problem with my bus philosophy is this: You’re not the one driving the bus, and at some point you have to sleep. The bus can find you. The bus will find you. Oh yes… the bus will find you.

So, my new philosophy of life, in which I attempt to encapsulate the lessons of my old philosophy while discarding its flaws, is this:

Don’t live in the valley below the dam.

The two recent eclipses made a nice frame for the big events and transitions that happened in the middle of the year.  Reactions and observations in no particular order:

CONvergence was a lot of fun, but I need to do things a bit differently next year. I had music panels three of the four days, and I ended up spending too much time hauling my keyboard rig to and from the hotel since I wasn’t comfortable leaving all of my gear sitting in the parking lot. Must have a hotel room next year.

The new music panels at Harmonic CONvergence were a blast. I hope those come back next year (and get some more promotion). The song I wrote for the 24 Hour Songwriting Challenge was based on the awesome suggestion “My Pet Rust Monster” and is probably as close to filk as I’m likely to get.

I’d like to figure out how to take the music I’m writing for Audio Wanderer and perform it live in a way that doesn’t involve pressing the play button on prerecorded tracks.

Voluntary Nightmare is on hiatus with everyone’s schedules filled up, and there are no definite plans for any more performances.

I’m in the process of bringing all of my music-making to the Mac world, and I’m loving it. It’ll be interesting comparing the sound of the new podcasts with the ones that are already out there.

I need to put some more thought into connecting my music to video of some sort.

In the meantime, more podcasts. And music for a play, about which more later.