Glad to be here, too

[runagate]

I really appreciate your sharing your experiences. It is hard to stay rational while confronting irrational hate. It makes you start to wonder about yourself. It makes me wonder when anyone uses a form of the word supreme when they refer to themselves.

Like Diana Ross. I always harbored my doubts...

For some strange reason that made me think of the old In Living Color sketch where Little Richard is complaining about Elvis, "if he's the King of Rock then what does that make me!?..." pause, dawning realization... "Oh, shut up!"

Now I rreally want to jam with Little Richard!

Hmm, I wonder if anyone's ever made a recording of the entire numerical permutations in the Sefir Yetzirah?  It's been about a decade since I read it but I seem to recall someone calculating that even the "short" version would take 30 straight hours... to "recite" "mentally"... perhaps no one says it aloud, or it's subvocalized like dihr-ing (hmm I have no idea how to spell "dikr" and even less idea how you'd give it a present perfect tense in English... it's been far long since I've slept as you might gather from the 10,000 words I eructed into the ooBlog the last couple days...

I thought I'd catch up on some ooTrayicious listening now that I seem to have returned to the fold but so far I've just ended up listening to your songs, ravasb, and those little vignettes of jopy's, over and over.  I guess I've been playing this acoustic nylon-string guitar my gf left here far too much inbetween everything else to really absorb new music.  Guitars are something that my mysterious musically-oriented genes or whatever it is don't allow me to just efortlessly b.s. my way through and I have to practice to get a part I've written down pat... but I'd forgotten something since I last toyed with one:  even nylon strings eventually slice up your fingertip pads

ravasb, do you play any instruments or are you a purely digital composer?  I'm always intrigued by what exactly someone is using to make music that I enjoy.

[ravasb]

Runagate,

I started off with the clarinet, which is just what a pudgy kid with thick glasses needed to be a complete chick magnet. A little Bennie Goodman around the campfire was not exactly the aphrodysiac I had hoped it would be. I eventually became lead clarinet in a demolition punk band called Token Toby and the Jewboys.

I picked up sax, though thought about giving it up on the day I first heard Charlie Parker. I stuck with it until I gave it to an addict friend, hoping it would redirect his energies. He traded it for a bag of rocks.

When I was thirty one, I decided to learn how to play guitar, something I had literally dreamed of doing. I was by far the oldest student my teacher had. He would almost look relieved to see me. I never asked to learn to play Smoke on the Water. I figured that someday I would be an old man kicking myself for never learning. I love playing. My primary audience the nursery school of my synagogue.

I took up bass recently, which probably fits by personality better. I learned, though, that mediocre bass players get more gigs than really good guitar players.


The computer has been a real gift. I can finally get the sounds and voices out of my head and into the universe. I feel much better.