Mountain Filming

Having learned a great deal from the colossal number of mistakes made in the first music video (like rendering the visuals blurry in an attempt to get my camera designed for documentaries to shoot like a Zack Snyder film), I've been chomping at the bit to get back at it and capture scenes with better focus, coherence and skill. To start, I began looking into what Steven Spielberg learned at film school, and started taking 'classes', if you will, from a variety of reputable online sources like RocketJump.

Great day for filming. Terrible sans sunscreen.

So, in taking my filmography education to new heights, I thought I'd do the same with my next music video for the song entitled Invictus. It was disappointing at first, finding the setting much warmer, brighter, and generally more pleasant than what what the screenplay calls for. A stroke of misfortune augmented by getting burnt to a crisp and nearly falling to my death multiple times, the last time only being avoided by a fortuitous tuft of grass I was able to grab onto mere moments before being hurled down a steep ridge.

Despite all these momentary setbacks and near-death experiences the plot for the story being written with these beats and scenes unexpectedly ended up requiring a brighter, happier set of angles in order to contrast with the real meat and substance of what I'm hoping to convey. And wouldn't you know it? Not two days after initial filming, a huge snow storm came and completely covered the same area that had just been filmed, appropriately blanketed with a towering sheet of gloomy clouds and darkened skies.

One of several happy moments where I nearly died.

Now the new, even more hazardous plan is to return to location as soon as possible to capture the refreshed scenery that so perfectly depicts a contrast to the first set of captures, and get some fun new scenes of hanging precariously without ropes from precipices with a damaged right shoulder and arms whose strength is generally not up to the task. It promises to be exciting adventure, to say the least, even if the film proves to be spotty at most.

Will he stand triumphant, or crumpled in a heap of his own gore?

In the mean time I've found myself working more on the three songs I'm locked into, and I've been hired by a Bowie-Tribute band! That wants to tour Germany! No seriously, get this- I had an old bandmix profile set up like, five years ago. It's a shoddy little site barely anyone has heard of and at the time my puerile brain thought it would be a monthly jackpot of gig-producers. Little did I know the site (which I can no longer access, btw, I have no idea what's still on my profile), was merely saving up the half decade of silence to enable me to work a bunch of goofy old men who've all been in the business for 30+ years and are intent on actually making some decent money in the process. I got a call from one of these gentlemen who had somehow stumbled on my archaic profile (I didn't know what he was talking about at first, it had been so long) and he asked me to join them in the above-mentioned adventures. Well, how could I refuse? So here I am now, a background vocalist, saxophone player and videographer for one of the most tight-sounding groups I've ever performed with. Never thought I would utter this unthinkable phrase, but- thank you bandmix. Thank you.

"Oh BAAABYLON, oh BAAABYLON we biiid thee farewellll....we're going to the mountains of Prooovo slash hellll"

Now we'll have to see what all these exact angles look like in a snowy wasteland where I can't hear potential predators coming and will fall several times more easily! Woohoo...

Leaving BYU

Decisions have been made, papers filed, rooms cleaned, jobs acquired, and now the time to move on is finally at my doorstep.

I've regretted the decision to come here in many instances, but these past two years have perhaps given me the most cause to reconsider my choice, as I've found myself pressured by increasingly difficult cultural tides. However, being unable at first to articulate my doubts, to convince myself that I wasn't merely being weak, I was persuaded over and over again to stay despite my reservations. 

When reason finally came to and awoke my senses to the greater personal perils of staying, I was still hesitant. Unsurprisingly, I found counsel from those urging me to stay gave me even more reason to leave. Some, incensed that I would even consider leaving to begin with, would go so far as to say, "Maybe you're not worthy of the honor of attending this school." Perhaps they're right. Rather than embrace what I found disagreeable here, I started coming up with my own version of the ninety-five theses. I could've worked harder in certain classes that in no way reflected or fed into my career goals, but I didn't (though admittedly that's my own fault). What's worse, I've even gone so far as to subvert the personal philosophies of a number of fellow students both within and without my major, persuading them that disobeying a select number of school rules (such as beard-prohibition) and failure to embody localized ideals of perfection does not bear any eternal consequence. 

At about this point, many ask, "Why not leave then? You don't have to be at this school." And you know what? They're right.

There's a misleading philosophy that's taken root in the hearts and minds of a number of my church-going fellows, a belief that attendance at BYU is so strongly correlated to finding eternal marriage and creating a family in accordance with doctrinal discipline that failure to attend here and acquire a degree (or a spouse) is tantamount to damnation, a permanent blocking from all that matters most in the orthodox LDS perspective. What a tragedy this becomes for those who had better opportunities elsewhere, when the opposite of that deceitful thought is demonstrably true virtually everywhere the saints live in the world. What a tragedy for those who graduate from here unmarried, feeling endless despondency because of an ideological misdirect, despite the great success they've accomplished for themselves.

I was led on by this same undercurrent of young adult thought in the church and came directly to this school, not for a moment considering opportunities left and right, dotted all along the east coast that would have better suited my goals, my personal culture, and frankly- my doctrinal espousal to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

You see, BYU is a fine school. It's an institution of repute because its teachers are excellent, its coursework most often rigorous and rewarding, its culture unique, its degrees positively life-altering. Despite my complaints, I can hardly say that the teachers at the music school are unqualified or less than exemplary. Ray Smith is arguably the best teacher I've had the privilege of working under in my entire life. Dr. Saville is a teacher whose class and discipline is a force that often without words compels those around him to reach higher standards. These are rare and exceptional qualities in teachers, and I'd be a liar if I said that I'm not loathe in parting with the school to also be leaving these extraordinary gentlemen and women. I've wept openly with them at the prospect of losing them as teachers.  

I say all this because ultimately it's not the school itself I struggle with or against. It's a small fraction of my own people. A select few of my fellow mormons and their accompanying culture that defies the doctrine I believe in. That culture bears the mark of, among other things, a relentless insistence that all around integrate. I refused. And while normally this isn't an issue (I'm terrible at conforming, mostly for neurological reasons), here it became a hotly debated matter for a few. With some, arguably the majority in my circles, firmly taking my side and defending me while others have, mostly without going out of their way, made my life a little less than comfortable. I found myself having a weird reputation as a philanthropic rogue, who while basically a good person was also a lost soul. And because my religion and my schooling here are often uncomfortably interconnected, this rather awkward social development began to interfere with my academic life. I don't think this would be a severe problem for most people, but this sort of thing exacerbates my struggles with aspergers to a degree that is painfully difficult to cope with.

People know this and some leaders have asked me to fight on. The call to soldier on despite the fact resounds strongly with me. A lot of people with aspergers are babied, molly-coddled and patronized the majority of their lives. That ease of living that comes from giving up hope in progression is a lifestyle I feel nothing short of the purest hatred for and I have for the most part resisted the attempts of a very select few to goose-step me into that lumpen sack of regressing humanity. Leaving in a way feels like surrendering to that idea, which is in no small part why I stayed here three years longer than I wanted to. But, having spent the majority of the past year studying out the sources of my problems and identifying other options as equally positive routes towards education and career-development, I realize now that that isn't the case. 

I am soldiering on. My departure won't be one back to family, safety, seclusion, a disability check, or any free rides. The work I've selected is challenging and rewarding, the education trying. Leaving isn't moving from work to dawdling, but rather a removal of uniquely detrimental social entanglements from my pursuit of higher education and hard work. 

So it's a bittersweet thing, for sure. But I expect in the end the bitter will pale in comparison to the sweet. 

A Child Dreams of Flying

New Track- A Child Dreams of Flying.

I feel like this track deserves some explanation, because it's clearly not as cleanly cut as the others. My mission this year is to produce as much music as possible, to write as though writing bears the same brutish tendency to chain its victims that meth does. So rather than spend countless hours editing and practicing each piece to near perfection, I'm contented to work on a song for a few days max and then move on to the next thing.

Music, as with all acquirable skills, is like a tree. It can become huge, but only gradually.

Now that might seem counter-intuitive, and in the present marketplace it certainly is. People have had their palates for music shaped in much the same way the porn industry has so masterfully and asshatedly skewed man's vision of what an ideal woman is- nothing more than a brainless set of perfectly symmetrical curves exaggerated by photoshop and airbrushed to perfection by similar software. We're constantly fed the same thing every meal, brainwashed into believing it represents the ideal and many casually accept that ideal as fact. Though admittedly, I undergo a similar process when I listen to my own music over and over. I suppose the main difference is I don't have to be told whether or not it passes a series of tests required to enjoy it.

You'll like what we TELL you to like, you hear? -Music Intelligentsia

To sum up, my music will inevitably sound a bit rough over the course of the next year, with few if any exceptions. And honestly, I'm looking forward to that.

Invictus

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."


That up there is arguably William Henley's most valuable literary contribution to society. And it has absolutely nothing to do with my music.

From unconquerable prose to unconquerable bed head, Henley was the definition of a man's man. 

But the inspirational word that so aptly summarizes this gem of poetry does. Years ago, almost a decade now, I was visiting with two friends of mine. One of them was in dire straits, and our mutual pal, a well-respected theologian-to-be, asked her to consider and remember this phrase: 'Color me invictus.' You see life at the time had been heaping up on her in ways that would be overwhelming to most anyone. Crushing even. My friend insightfully pointed out then that sometimes when life is seemingly going to pulverize us with the sheer force of its weight, the only choice is to stubbornly fight and declare 'I will not yield!'

I was in awe at the time, both at my young friend's precociousness and at the power of those words laced with ancient Latin, translated into the word- unconquer. There's a force in language that English can't claim any exclusive rights to, and occasionally when I explore and dabble in other languages I'll be singularly impressed by a moment like this, in ways that English can't quite seem to duplicate.

The cult of the new rarely values what's past, assuming the future always holds the greatest value. I doubt nuke victims agree. 

So it was fitting in my eyes years later, to rearrange those words and their usage into my own prose as I explored things that are deeply personal to me, that I have no intention of ever sharing with anyone except a very few people. I say that partially because the notions in here are extremely private and I'd rather not have them out for public speculation. I've done that in the past, and it's never led to anything good. The other part is hopefully a less selfish one, in that I think art is best served in such a way that encourages self-reflection and careful thought. Ideally, to me, if a person sees art without knowing precisely what it means, perhaps they'll consider and recognize what it means to them. It's an exploration I personally believe to be one of the most valuable, and least sought for.