2010 has been very strange.  At the beginning of the year, I was still on blogging hiatus, so it took a while to get back up to speed.  Springtime was crazy, with lots of great musical endeavors and memorable trips.  By the summer, both my life and this blog went into overdrive, when I really started writing again, and found my full stride while sharing a bit too much about my childhood.  Suddenly it was October, which is the month of my birth, but this year was also the month of my stepdad’s death, which has sent everything into a tailspin since then.  A surreal trip to Yakima for the funeral was followed by multiple trips to Seattle, both for gigs and for family functions.

There were some standout moments from this last year that didn’t manage to make it into the blog, for various reasons.  For example, here’s a video of a particularly interesting recording session that I was lucky enough to be involved with, albeit in a small way.  A local singer-songwriter, who is also a friend, put the word out on SocialNetwork that she wanted to create a cacaphony of 50 pianos, all playing an F chord at the same time.  I jumped at the chance.  She rented a piano showroom downtown, and my friend and I (and forty eight or so other people) joined in to participate.  I brought my camera to capture a bit of the action.

Another memorable moment from this last year was Trek in the Park.  This theater group gets together every year to re-create a famous episode from the original Star Trek television series.  This year’s was Space Seed, in which we meet the infamous character Khan (who returned in the movie The Wrath of Khan).  It was a very well-done production, with live music and everything. . .and it was all free of charge.  Here’s the climactic fight sequence between Kirk and Khan.

IrishBand released our self-titled EP this year, as well as an amazing animated video that a friend created for us.  I would post that here, but our band name is very unusual, hence the pseudonym.  To celebrate, we went to Port Townsend, Washington (the hometown of three of the band members, and an adopted home away from home for the rest of us) to play a CD release party and catch the Rhododendron Festival and parade and everything.  It’s always a huge party weekend for PT, and this year was the tenth reunion for PT High School, which included Violinist and a bunch of other friends, so I actually went to the reunion barbecue in Chetzemoka Park during the afternoon, since I knew so many of the people there.  (God forbid that I actually go to any of my own class reunions; I haven’t yet.)  I also performed in the parade, in disguise, as an honorary member of Nanda.  I’m the guy with the Mexican wrestling mask, playing the bass, miming along to the dance music that was blaring from the speakers in the back of the truck.

I had the opportunity to see the Oregon Symphony perform many times this last year, with some pretty big-name performers.  Violinists Midori and Hilary Hahn, violinist Pinchas Zukerman and his cellist wife Amanda Forsyth (who, incidentally, gave a cello master class at the Old Church that afternoon, which I also attended, even though I’m far from being a cello master) who performed Brahms’s Double Concerto together, and a number of others.  This month, I have a ticket for pianist Emanuel Ax’s concert, which I’m very much looking forward to.  Yo-Yo Ma performed here a month or so ago, but his concert was sold out in the spring, only a few weeks after tickets went on sale.  Curses.

So it’s been a good year, overall, but I’m really hoping that 2011 is better, or less confusing at the very least.  I have lofty goals for the upcoming year, which include finding a job, finding love and a real relationship, taking care of some things that have been dogging me for a while now, and producing more CD’s.  I have a bit of news on the music front, actually.  A friend of mine hurt her arms a year ago, and has since been unable to play the piano, but that hasn’t stopped her from singing, or from writing lyrics and melodies, or from having tons of ideas.  She e-mailed me at some point to ask what people in her position do in the music business.  I told her I don’t know about ‘the music business’, but I’d love to give the songs a listen, and that maybe I could put music to them.  She sent me some mp3′s, and I instantly felt like I knew where the songs should go.  They felt familiar without being predictable, which is always a good sign.  That was about two months ago, and we already have five or six collaborations in the works.  Pretty awesome and exciting.

In other news, December is the fourth anniversary of this blog, so it seems appropriate to have a little birthday party, no?  Come on, let’s have some sis-boom-bah.

So anyway, on to the Best Of.  Here are the lists of what I consider to the best entries BFS&T has to offer from this past year, which naturally includes a list of the most interesting dreams, as well.  Enjoy!

THE ENTRIES:

SteamCon – the steampunk convention in Seattle in which PolishCellist and I played, and had a total blast doing so

tragedy – the death of Stepdad

struggle – the early aftermath of the death of Stepdad

sitting here thinking about the Holocaust – one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on the radio

folk festival fun – Portland Folk Festival, starring IrishBand, Dan Bern, Roll Out Cowboy, etc.

I’m kind of an a-hole – see for yourself

birthday present – prostitute schmostitute

the unicorn code – love it, learn it, LIVE IT

no one’s laughing – a peek into our family dynamics

déja vu – what it feels like, and a friend who claims to never have experienced one

the truth is out there – interesting UFO story, I promise

it’s not for shaving – Occam’s Razor, and how it applies to recording music

what if it is? – a very memorable and touching moment from the show Six Feet Under

THE CHILDHOOD STORIES:

shuttlecock

love and curiosity

he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

the final innocent tryst

synchronicity

THE DREAMS:

lights, camera, dream

festival dream

shape shifters

inimitable and imitable

subconscious and libido

this needs a name

frozen

Just in case this wasn’t enough for your insatiable appetite for blog entries, here’s the Best of BFS&T 2009 entry, for your gluttonous pleasure.

Thanks for being here and reading all this, and for supporting this blog for such a long time now.  I really appreciate it.  I hope we all have an excellent New Year’s Eve, and Day, and that 2011 allows us to learn, and to grow, and to change for the better, a little bit each day.

Happy New Year!

I just realized that in my blog hiatus I had forgotten to share some pictures and stories from a few weeks ago, when the Portland Folk Festival was happening here in town.  IrishBand played a sweat-drenched set that the reviewer from WeeklyAlternativeNewspaper favorably compared to a “grange hall punk show” that was “a fine balance of exactitude and slop,” which sounds about right.  That’s pretty much our modus operandi.   Our friend Dr. Something from Crappy Indie Music was there, and she sketched us, as well as the other two bands who played that night.  Totally amazing!  (I’m the one with the accordion, by the way.)  She seems to have a thing for our rhythm section, and who can blame her?  They’re strapping young lads, as you can see.  I love the way she made each of us look like our real selves, particularly Drummer and Violinist.

That was one of the most rockin’ and fun shows we’ve ever had, quite honestly, and certainly one of the sweatiest.  My tie was still damp the next morning.

Another cool thing about that night of the Folk Festival was that a couple of us got the opportunity to see a tremendous new documentary called Roll Out, Cowboy, which is about Chris Sand, a.k.a. Sandman the Rappin’ Cowboy.  It’s a very well done, sympathetic, and touching story about his interesting, bucolic, and somewhat disparate life.  I got to meet the filmmaker, Elizabeth, at the screening, who returned the favor by coming to our show later that evening.  Next time she’s in town, she said, she’d like to do a short interview film about us.  Naturally, we’re going to jump at that opportunity.

I don’t quite remember the chronology of everything, since in addition to all this, I had a ton of other things happening, including a huge birthday party for at least four friends and a gig/birthday party all in the same weekend, so it’s a bit of a blur.  Be that as it may, I’m gonna give it a shot.  My friend John and I got to see Sea of Bees downtown at Backspace, and we both kinda fell in love with them.  I particularly fell in love with the lead guitarist, who was a beautiful blonde girl, and a very cool and tasteful guitarist to boot, which is always nice.  Their show was great and very ‘low-fi’, but the CD is very polished and tight in a way that the show was not.  Both incarnations are excellent, and I highly recommend either or both.

John and I also made it a point to catch the inimitable Dan Bern on Misssissippi Street, doing a set of his childrens’ songs, after which we kidnapped him and took him to the food carts a bit farther on Mississippi to catch up and talk.  John got sushi, while Dan and I opted for some deliciousness from Native Bowl. I don’t know if you remember this or not (and due to the blogging hiatus, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t), I got the opportunity to play with Dan when he was in town about six months ago, thanks in a large part to John.  I played accordion and sang harmonies, until one of my accordion straps broke (which made it unplayable), so I set it down and turned around to jump behind the piano instead.  Here’s a blurry picture; the blob in front with the guitar is Dan, and the blob sitting at the piano is me.  I think this picture was taken during the song “God Said No”, which I thought was particularly beautiful that night.

Anyway.

Another huge highlight of the festival was Matt Keating, a guy with whom I was not previously familiar, although he had appeared on John’s old radio show (which has since found a new lease on life in podcast form, thanks to the up-and-coming KZME) once or twice a few years back, so the two of them were friends already.  John and I arrived at the Jade Lounge at the appointed time, to find that we and Matt’s family were the only ones in attendance.  The bartender told us that they had pushed back the performance by an hour, so the group of us decided to eat dinner and hang out together.  With lots of other families, this would have been awkward at best, but Matt’s family is so outgoing and fun that we felt completely welcome and at ease.  After a while, we somewhat hilariously split off by gender; Matt, John and I discussed music and things at our own table, and Matt’s female family members talked about whatever ‘girly’ stuff they talked about.   :)

Matt was scheduled to be on John’s newer radio show later that night, and since we’d all had such a great time at dinner, John proposed that I bring my accordion to the station and accompany Matt, despite having only heard the three songs I’d heard at his gig.  Matt was game to let me sit in, and showing up with an instrument and improvising is a hobby of mine, so I was excited too.  It turned out great, and Matt even invited me to play a show with him later that week, with a guitarist friend of his, John Vecchiarelli (who is an amazing and talented songwriter in his own right) on snare drum, and me on accordion.  Matt called our impromptu band Freedom Tickler, which is just plain brilliant.

See what happens when I don’t blog for a while?  It’s not that I haven’t had things to write about, I just haven’t felt like writing, and I haven’t had two spare seconds to rub together in order to process all the things that have been happening.

In other news, keep your eyes on this space for the short film in which my friend Danielle and I acted.  It should be edited and available for viewing (and hopefully for sharing) within the next week or so.  I’m really excited to see that.

I saw this on Craigslist and thought it was extremely insightful (and well-written), so I wanted to share it here to spread the word and to save it for posterity, since CL postings only stay up for a week.

There was a large party in NW on Saturday night. I was talking to two friends I hadn’t seen in over a year, when you came up and starting throwing the charmer moves. You had one of those family names that were at one point male, but are now usually female, like Ashley (but not Ashley) – and you felt the need to interject a few defensive sentiments about it, even though no one was ridiculing you. Then you introduced yourself to me, held on to my hand a little too long, and really started with the praise.

“You’re so beautiful! So radiant!”  So this! So that!

You were at least fifteen years older than me, and this level of come-on was too much, so I inched closer to my friend. You remained on the porch, dramatically telling everyone about your likes and interests. “I am an actor!” you declared. Obviously, not a great one. “I love theatre! I love Shakespeare! I have studied Shakespearian theatre!” You never mentioned anywhere you actually studied or any show you’d actually participated in, and I knew that you were lying. You asked me my feelings about Shakespeare, and whether I had studied anywhere.

“I have a master’s in literature,” I said. “I’ve read a fair amount of Shakespeare.” For emphasis, I recited a few sonnet lines.  Meanwhile, my friends got up off their bench and went inside, saying they’d meet me momentarily. You sat down where they had been sitting, moved way the heck over to one end, and extended your arm in an invitational gesture. I kept standing, moving closer to the door.

“Well,” I said – and reached for the handle.

“Listen,” you said. “I have a question for you.”

I turned around. You were trying to pin me with your eyes.

“Do you know what the two greatest discoveries of science are?” you said.

“Uh,” I said. “I think that’s probably somewhat subjective.”

And out of nowhere, you underwent the trademark I-Am-A-Wife-Beater Jekyll/Hyde transformation, and you started shouting at me.
“You think that science is subjective?” you yelled. “Can’t you even recognize the truth? You can’t even admit the truth?”

“You appear to be angry,” I said. This obviously made you more angry, as you started shouting even louder.

“All of you women and your high and mighty shit – I am educated! I know what I’m talking about! You can’t even look at the truth! You won’t see the truth!” And then you launched into a sentence that I doubt I’ll correctly replicate (and I doubt you could, either) – but it went something like this: “The spherical unity of the nature of humanity must absolutely be subjected to universal correctness.”

Then, you started – is it challenging? – me. “Define universal correctness!” you yelled at me. “Define universal!”

“Hm,” I said. “I think I’d rather not engage the anger.”

Meanwhile, your very out-of-context and loud shouting had attracted the attention of two girls down the porch stairs, and another one of my friends came up to us on the porch and stationed herself in front of you, more or less between us.  “What’s up?” she said.  So you started shouting at her.

“Can you accept universal truths?!” you shouted.

“Um,” she said. “I don’t know.”

It was at this point that you reached into the box of Coors Light sitting on the bench next to you, took out a beer, shook it, and proceeded to cover my friend and the two girls at the bottom of the porch with beer. Ironically, the one person who had pissed you off – me – was far enough to your side so that you missed me completely, and wound up soaking the one person who hadn’t been talking to you at all.

Luckily, you’d come to a generally drama-free group. Now that the finality of your stupid action occurred to you, you were temporarily stunned into silence, and my friend held up the hem of her shirt, looked at you, and said, “Look at this. Look at what you did.”

You started yelling again, and she interrupted you.

“Look again. Look at this. Look at what you did. Look around. Why did you do this?”

Surprisingly, you actually did look, this time. There was a long silence. Then, still holding on to the hem of her shirt, she said, “Now, apologize.”

There was another long silence. Finally, you cupped your hands in front of you like Oliver Twist, and in the most sarcastic tone you could manage, said, “I’m sorry.” But then you didn’t say anything further. You got up, and then defeated, you left, probably to continue scouring the city for prey.

—

I feel for women who encounter men like this, and don’t recognize the patterns of abusive behavior. It’s always the same, and the great thing about alcohol is that one gets to see the Ugly Faces of Drunks long before one ever would in a regular social situation. Ashley, the second you opened your insecure mouth and actually thought you could start an argument over something as ridiculous as the “Two Greatest Discoveries of Science”, you morphed in front of my eyes, from a human into a thing – a lab rat – a situation to be studied and analyzed for further emphasis. See Abnormal Psychology section 4. Put the rat in the maze and see how agitated it gets when it isn’t sure which route to take. Shock it whenever it pets a white rabbit. Look – it’s fulfilling the characteristics for eventual violent relationships.

The thing is, I know you – and based on my very profession – I’ve read works by my students that, terms and years apart, repeat the same systematic patterns that eventually led to broken bones and black eyes. Ashley, I had a student hold up a hand to a thick black scar that disappeared underneath her eyebrow, and say, “My ex-husband. He didn’t like the beer I got, so he broke one of the bottles on my face.”

My grandfather always said, “Beware of charmers. Charmers are liars.”  And they are. They are predators and their women are prey. They seek women who need to be validated – usually intelligent but insecure; usually with a history of a nurturing, caretaking role – ones that are willing to forgive. And it always starts the same, and ends the same. Oh, Ashley.  You’re not only a thing, you’re a thing that’s a statistic! Here are the combined stories of maybe fifteen students out of over one thousand, who lived this life.  Sound like yours?

Shower her with flowers, gifts, compliments. All eyes on you, girl. You are the central star in the sky, you are the light of his life and fire of his loins, you are with somebody who cares enough to shower you with flowers. And you buy it – the compliments, the flattery – you don’t see why being the only thing in someone’s world is ultimately destructive, and you don’t see that pretty words and pretty things mean nothing. Instead, you’re finally the one that has the attention – *his* attention.

And usually, the first slip-up is accidental, or non-physical. He says something utterly disrespectful and tasteless, out of nowhere. One of my friends was with a guy for four weeks, and one day they were watching TV, when he said, “You know, all you’re good for is sex.” When she was late for work, he started throwing cold glasses of water on her face in the morning. And it STILL took her another two months to leave him.

Or he throws something and in the process, it just *happens* to hit you. A vase. A porcelain doll. Immediately he apologizes, he’s just got X and Y stressing him out at work, you know how much he loves you, yada yada. You think it was a random event but lady, there are no random events. Everything goes back to wonderful-cookies-and-puppies for a while.

And then one day, just when you’ve adjusted, you iron the wrong dress shirt or misplace the ballpoint pen, and he explodes, and strikes you, or pushes you. It’s brief, and when the color comes back to his eyes, he apologizes profusely.  It’ll never happen again; just the one time. And by this point, you’ve been with this guy long enough so that he’s a longtime boyfriend, fiance, or even husband, so you forgive this event because you feel that you have to. You tread on eggshells. It was your fault, after all.  You’re the one who misplaced the ballpoint pen. You’re always giving him a hard time when he’s had a hard day.  Hell, you couldn’t even remember what kind of beer he liked, that’s why he hurt you!  So for several months everything readjusts, and when you’ve finally convinced yourself that it was just The One Time, it happens again.

Of course, there are other issues he gradually develops.  He hates himself, woman, and he wants you to hate yourself as much as he hates himself every moment of every day. He hates you talking to your family and friends, and he’s usually distant and angry, so you start spending less time with your mom on the phone, less time with your friends on your days off. If you come home late, he accuses you of running around, even though you’re way too scared of him to consider it.

So anyway, one of two things happens. Either the man succeeds in damaging the woman’s self-confidence so thoroughly that she essentially becomes a thing and a statistic, a shell – or she eventually realizes that the guy is a horror and takes off.

That’s you, Ashley. And the second that your eyes became swollen with rage over nothing, I saw my students’ stories written across your face. At heart, you are a weakling, and you couldn’t very well perform an act of physical violence without being beaten to a pulp by the men who actually lived at the house. So, you did the next best thing appropriate for an insecure dumbass; you attacked – with beer! And then, drunk and dumb, you sat there blinking.

You aren’t most men, Ashley. Most men, at the very least, aren’t violently-inclined Frankensteins, and in my experience, most are just good, everyday folk. And it’s true that there are plenty of abusive women out there. However, if a man resorts to fisticuffs, he’s likely to cause more damage. I’m under 100 pounds. I can no more physically battle an average 150-pound guy than he can hope to get pregnant someday. Unless, of course, your balancing tool of choice is a Colt 45.

Ashley, I wanted to tell you that I pity you. Pathetic – a man nearly my father’s age so insecure about himself, that he has to argue over large, irrelevant issues to feel like he’s not the loser that he knows he is. And I hope that more women out there can see the warning signs long before they turn into a pattern of abuse. When it starts becoming angry, observe it.  See how it struggles to find the entrance in the little cardboard maze. Remember. . .nothing that comes out of its mouth has any relevance to anything at all, because that thing hates itself for being the thing it is.

You, Ashley. A middle aged child, too broken to ever be fixed, and doomed to keep missing your connections.

Well.

This is the infamous Super Bowl Sunday, and I for one could not care less about that.  In fact, if it wasn’t for Twitter, I wouldn’t have known that today is the day.   That’s how little I follow sports.

I know what I said a couple of weeks ago about how ‘the hiatus is over’ and all that, but life seems to have gone into overdrive since then, and I haven’t had two minutes to rub together to write anything new.

Two weekends ago, I went to Waldport, Oregon to spend the weekend with a childhood friend whose job is about to end, which will force him to move away from that pretty little town.  (Photos to come, as soon as I get the chance to go through them.)

IrishBand has a friend who’s creating an animated video for one of our songs, and it’s tremendous!  It should be done within a couple of weeks, and then I’ll be able to share it here.  It’s been quite a process, and very exciting to watch it all come together.  We needed to create an ‘intro’ section for it (you’ll see what I mean) that featured the sound of the band setting up their instruments and tuning up and whatnot.  Since two of the band members are busy in school, we weren’t able to schedule a rehearsal, so I set up the instruments (drums, bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and cello played up high to simulate a violin) in my living room and recorded them using one microphone to simulate a camera person walking in and recording us that way.  (Photos to come, once I have a chance to go through them.)

I spent last weekend in Seattle to see a pipe organ concert at my brother’s church and to celebrate BabyNiece’s first birthday.  It was really fun, and super cute, and a bit stressful all at the same time.  (Photos to come, as soon as I get the chance to go through them.)  I drove back late Saturday night so that I could attend the Oregon Symphony the next afternoon.  They were featuring Jean-Philippe Collard performing Ravel’s beautiful Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which I love and didn’t want to miss.  (Extra-special thanks to Kelly V. for making it possible for me and my companion to go!)  Hmm. . .’companion’ makes it sound like I’m gay, which I’m not.  For the record, my companion was a girl.

Anyway.

I couldn’t find a video of Collard playing the Left Hand, but here’s one of  him playing a similar piece by Ravel, for solo piano.

It was an incredible and beautiful show.  The orchestra started with a piece by Thomas Adés called “Powder Her Face”, which was very colorful and enchanting.  Next up was the Ravel concerto, followed by Gustav Holst’s “Egdon Heath” and one of the lesser-known Mozart symphonies, number thirty four.   The Ravel was the only piece either of us (and I daresay the majority of the audience, as well) was familiar with.  I love the way the conductor, Carlos, Kalmar, chooses music for his programs.  This is the second one I’ve seen so far this season, and he likes to blend the familiar with the unfamiliar in an intriguing way.

Speaking of the Oregon Symphony, next season promises to be world-class.  Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Hillary Hahn, Emmanuel Ax, Lang Lang. . .and that’s not even close to a complete list.  We are in for a treat multiple treats!

I had the opportunity to play with two nationally-known songwriters this week, in the same venue, on different days.  The first was Tony Furtado (a friend with whom I play fairly regularly) and the second was Dan Bern, who I had just met earlier in the day, when I helped my friend John by engineering and sort of co-hosting a podcast for KZME Radio called Hello Cruel World.  This was the second time I’ve had the opportunity to do that, the first being a couple weeks prior, when we interviewed an excellent new songwriter from Seattle named Tamara Power-Drutis.  Anyway, we were talking with Dan about the times we’ve seen him in concert.  John mentioned to Dan that I play accordion and multiple other things, and Dan asked if I know his music.  “Yes, I do,” I answered.  He asked, “Do you want to come play at the show tonight?”  “Absolutely!”

This picture was taken during the song God Said No.

So yeah, between the multiple out-of-town trips, the stellar gigs, the birthday parties and the nights out, it’s been quite a fun couple of weeks.  Now I’m off to meet a friend for dinner, and tomorrow I’ll be mixing some more songs for IrishBand.

I’m off of blogging hiatus, but we’ll see how long it takes before I have time to write again.  I don’t imagine it’ll be this long.

In no particular order (Actually, they’re in reverse chronological order):

veni, vedi, vici

not quite there yet

Ethiopian wedding

Hydrox

George Harrison

beach trip

halfway through

the mental game of music

synchronicity

still don’t smoke

quite a group

lovely day in Seattle

Amen

happy as we are, thank you

Silver Falls

Port Townsend trip

dream girl

non-nostalgic nostalgia

wedding, play, garden, hike, learning

Of Yakima and Feces

the Oriental Chicken

Catherine Burton (Bunton?), R.I.P.

Oceanside

mona lisa

lots of big musical news, and links galore

a very coherent narrative

what if it is?

apples and bananas

cello scrotum

by way of example

flirtation versus pedantry

communication breakdown

Enjoy!