day 2: sunday 12.22.2002 you might wonder what happened to saturday–well, my family went down to west palm beach for part of the weekend to spend some time with my grandma and aunt and uncle, who live down there. we got back at 2pm today, and dave and i redid the drums on ‘so talk about it’, since we decided we weren’t happy with them. hopefully third time’s the charm! but i think we have a finished or near-finished product, anyway. then duty called and we had to go to a christmas party until 7. once all the weekend’s obligations were over with, we began to practice and record ‘hear this’, a song i wrote this summer, but haven’t played at any shows this year, since it’s rather long, and hard to nail the vocals on. ...

today, my brother david and i started recording songs for our new CD. i picked him up from gainesville on wednesday, and after a brief stop for some rock climbing action at a local gym, we came home and set up the studio. in our house there is one second-story room, which we call the bonus room. we cleaned this room out of every unnecessary object, and quickly set up drums, guitars, an amp, a PA, mic stands, a gigantic mixer (that can probably fly, it looks so sleek), our computer, etc… by the end of wednesday night we had what for all purposes looked to be a bona fide home recording studio. ...

…and as it turns out, real blankets have been the order of the most recent days. due to the cold (sub-50-degree…just a hair from freezing) temperatures and the fact that our heater likes to trip its circuit breaker without reason or warning at the onset of darkness, i’ve been spending most of my hours under the comfortable enfolding grace of my bed. now let’s make my writer’s craft(y/ &) intent transparent and force that into an analogy for what i really want to say: i wish with all my might that i was under a different kind of blanket right now–the kind that means the end is at hand, or in sight. a blanket that helpers throw over the shoulders of a disaster survivor to let him know he is safe and on the way home, for example. here’s another: the one that is worn like a cape around the skinny frame of the victor of a 26-mile battle. or, lastly: the linen wrapping (yes, christ’s shroud no less) that is the tape binding two souls for the first time as they begin their life’s journey thenceforth as one. ...

…and after two days of intense relaxation, i’m off. tomorrow i brave the ‘winter storm’ conditions and pray that my planes all go where and when they are supposed to. lord willing, i will be, fair weather or foul, beneath the blanket of floridian humidity in 18 hours. to all those not yet done with school, good luck.

one more thing left, and i am done. two finals under my belt, and one horrendous logic take-home exam with them, but still remains the hardest of all–my ontology paper. die, paper, die. still, in a matter of hours, whether done successfully or done having failed, done will i be. and then, it’s party time. the thing that’s been keeping me going this week is the thought of recording a CD this christmas–that’s right, i’m recording a CD with super-awesomex drummer david lipps. i’ve got about 12 or 13 songs written since i put out the Effortless ep, and it’s time those got recorded. no more shoddy dorm-room work, though–dav and i went all out and got a ton of top-notch recording gear. if all goes well and god is with us, we will be spending 8 hours a day playing and recording (and of course working out to remain the buff studs that we are), and emerge sometime in january with a set of professionally-done songs. that is exciting. ...

i am back in california for a week of final papers and final exams. i should be working on them right now, but my cursed laziness and procrastination prevents me. ah well. i recorded a song today. i could, theoretically, have recorded any as-of-yet unreleased jonathan lipps gem (and they are all gems, mind you), but i re-recorded ’escapism is fantasy’, which, if you are a regular blog reader, you will recognize from the 17th of last month. maybe it’s because the lyrics were heavy on my mind today. in any case, some of you i’m sure missed out on the song the last time i posted it, for one reason or another, or perhaps because my linking to it was not as helpful as possible. this time, then, i’ll try to make myself completely clear. the line after this sentence is a link to the song! ...

not to continue with the theme of my last post, but i’d just like to say that i took no less than five whole minutes to pick what to listen to just now. organized by artist and album, i have simply to use my optical mouse’s scroll button to view any segment of my cd collection. then, i have simply to use the left button three times to spin any desired virtual disc. these actions combined can take no more than 1.5 seconds, and yet, the decision takes five minutes. extraordinary. ...

i do believe that i am defined by my CD collection. first, there is the fact that i have a CD collection–most college students these days seem to owe their musical tastes to whatever mp3s they can get off kazaa. these people are like the mp3s themselves–tinny, with the tops and bottoms of the audio spectrum cut off. the sound is in-your-face, shallow, and lacking in life. there is the related fact that you download a song, a two-or-three-minute pick-me-up, in lieu of buying an entire album–the artist’s mind and soul for the space of months or years. offensive to me is the radio culture of ‘hits’, and the subsequent ignoring of the album in pursuit of the popular single. ...

i was sitting in the back of the room during cru tonight, listening to the speaker and trying to eat my quizno’s sub without making too much of a mess. unfortunately my requirement of taking the tomatoes off the sloppy TBG sandwich made this nearly impossible, and my antics must have drawn attention to myself, because a minute later i was singled out and called up front and the speaker was telling me about his daughter. people were laughing, but i had no clue what was going on, because i was still scooping some gooey guacamole off my hand-out and putting it in my mouth. don’t ask my why i chose to do this in front of a large group of people. i made the appropriate grunts of approval to the speaker’s comments and focused on the guac as he had some more fun at my expense. it was great. ...

the leonids of last night had nothing on the veritable storm of glittering, transient, dust daggers that was last year’s show. still, i was glad to give up a few hours of sleep and drive up to skyline in order to lie on a blanket on the top of a hill, watching the periodic larger-than-normal piece-of-space-crap become transcendentally something more for the blink of an eye. i’m sure someone, somewhere, has made an analogy between the human life and the brief glory of ultrafast burning dust, so i won’t bother. also, i’m not sure i would agree with it. ...