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What Am I Doing Now? (June 2020)

June 23, 2020 · Leave a Comment

I kept the /now page stuck in January 2020 for months. I was reluctant to update things as that January time capsule quickly transformed into novelty. Have you seen those videos where the woman talks to her future self, visiting the past from only two months ahead? It feels like that when I look at the plans I laid out last January. If my past self only knew what was in store and how those bold plans went right in the bin.

Rather than give an overview of the past six months (which would be daunting), I’ll keep this in the present. I believe that’s what /now is about, anyway. So here’s what is happening now:

Work:
• I was hired by a pair of businesses to create original theme music and audio logos for their content marketing. That’s what we call a ‘side gig,’ and I happily accept those in this time of professional challenges. It would be cool to do more of this, and I created a simple landing page explaining what I offer.
• I was a featured speaker for the Giants of Video online summit. I gave an hour-long presentation on sourcing music for video and the various legal considerations that appear when syncing music with visual content.
• I also guested on the Spot Lyte On… podcast. Host Lawrence Peryer and I intended to talk about music business matters but instead quickly veered into a fun and casual conversation about fandom and loving music. I got somewhat nostalgic, which is rare for me.
• There were two new 8D Industries releases over the past couple of months: San Mateo’s Deepstaria and Monta At Odds’ Zen Diagram. Both are excellent (OK, I’m biased, but I wouldn’t put them out if I didn’t believe they were) and available as ‘name your price’ on Bandcamp.
• Newsletters are tough. I’ve shipped 17 ‘episodes’ of Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care and took my first break this past weekend. I wasn’t happy about skipping the weekend, but now I’m glad I did it. It’s a reset — what do I want this newsletter to be, and where do I want it to go? I have ideas. Subscribe here if you’re curious. 
• The licensing and sync industry joined the rest of the music world in slowing down for COVID-time. Things are revving back up as we all get (kinda) used to how things will be functioning for at least the rest of the year. I’m focusing on 8DSync through the summer, making up for lost time and aggressively pushing our current roster. I look forward to immersing myself in music publishing once again.

Personal:
• I spent the last month helping my mom buy a house. She closed yesterday. It’s next door. That’s a good thing — quite wonderful, really. She’s going to love lake life, especially if we keep having sunrises like this one.
• Caroline got another memoir offer and hasn’t even finished the one she’s presently co-writing. That’s amazing — she’s well on her way to a career as a professional memoir co-writer (if she’s not there already). I’m super-proud of her.
• I saw a tornado. And we were visited by coyotes.
• I’m experimenting with increasing my effectiveness (not productivity, thanks). Following Twitter advice from Craig Mod (now deleted, as I guess he deletes tweets after a couple of weeks), I’m no longer checking email or looking at any websites until the morning passes. That includes any news. For the most part, I don’t look at any news sites throughout the day. It’s interesting how the most essential and meaningful news stories still find their way to me while the outrage-of-the-day stories are invisible. And I’m removing myself from Facebook sometime soon — I can’t take that company anymore, and I’m embarrassed I didn’t make this move before. I’m currently figuring out how to go about it — instant cold turkey or gradual retreat. I’m open to any advice.
• I’m all in on Roam Research. Finding a way to digitally replicate Ryan Holiday’s index card system was my ‘white whale’ for the past two years. After trying many different apps and techniques — Notion, DevonThink, Ulysses, many others — and getting almost there but not entirely, I stumbled upon Roam. Immediately I realized Roam is the perfect tool for this digital commonplace book/index card system. Huzzah! Bonus: I’m also using Roam as my task manager and daily journal and starting to implement it as a CRM tool. I will soon be able to eliminate 3 or 4 other apps (including a couple that have subscription plans) and get the same functionality in a single app. (This seems like it should go under ‘Work,’ but this change has more dramatically improved my personal life.)

Consumption:
• As a form of de-stress, before bed, I’m catching up on the fiction — mostly science fiction — that I probably should have read when I was younger. I read the Foundation trilogy (just in time for this, I guess), which I enjoyed, but not blown away like some famous people were. I’m checking out Philip K. Dick — reading Time Out of Joint right now, which is amusing and good. I finished Consider Phlebus and had a lot of fun with it. I’ll continue that series. I also read some non-science fiction from a sci-fi author: Ray Bradbury’s Green Shadows, White Whale. It’s excellent and hilarious. 
• In the mornings, I am concurrently reading non-fiction: Tiny Habits, The Longing For Less, and Stillness Is The Key are recent ones. Right now, I’m into So You Want To Talk About Race and plan to follow that with other recommended books about this mess we’re in (and that we’ve been in since the country’s founding).
• I can’t believe I didn’t see Wild Strawberries until last week. Fantastic — I can’t stop thinking about it. I recently rewatched Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and it’s still my favorite film of the last couple of years. And we started The Bureau and just finished the second season. The series has us completely hooked. Other than those, there’s not a whole lot on the TV and film list. I’m reading a lot more these days, and the 8:30 PM sunsets have us enjoying lake life rather than watching TV in the evenings.

Connect:
• Right now, you can follow and message me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or micro.blog. Or you can reach out through this page. I’m always happy to hear from others floating around in this convoluted world. 

Filed Under: From The Notebook Tagged With: 8DSync, Craig Mod, Email Newsletters, Giants of Video, Lyte, Monta At Odds, now, Podcast, Reading, Roam Research, Ryan Holiday, San Mateo

The Seven Book Challenge

October 15, 2019 · Leave a Comment

You’ve probably seen this floating around on social media: “Post seven books you love, one book per day, no explanations, no reviews, just covers. Each day you will ask a friend to take up the challenge.” I was challenged before and participated on Twitter. Since then I’ve been challenged a few more times, so I thought I’d make it into a blog post. Here are my seven books:

I do want to give a quick explanation. Yes, these are books I love, but I also chose the books that had the most significant impact. I read most of these as a teenager or in my early 20s. All of these books changed the way I looked at the world in some way. Someone (I can’t find the reference) called these types of books ‘earthquake books’ because they shake your foundation. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them all — I bet the Industrial Culture Handbook hasn’t aged well — but these books perfectly lined up with my age and what I was pondering at the time. These books are a window into what shaped me.

And books continue to shape. I was an avid reader the first 25 years of my life, but let it go as my eyesight worsened.1 I suffer from an eye condition called keratoconus. And I never warmed up to audiobooks — I don’t retain information through listening as I do with reading. About three years ago, thanks to improvements in available contact lenses and apps like Marvin for the iPad, I picked up the habit again. It wasn’t easy to get back on the book train — out of practice, I was a slow reader at first — but now I’m catching up on all the recommendations I’ve gathered over the years.

The seven books above are quite different than what I read now, but make sense in context. Presently I’m finishing Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and Ryan Holiday’s new one, Stillness Is The Key, is on deck. I update my recent reads in this blog’s /now section.

Speaking of Ryan Holiday, his article How To Read More — A Lot More is a classic. It helped inspire me when I started reading again and was frustrated by my slow speed.

And check out the podcast 3 Books, which is all about impactful books. Ryan Holiday is the guest on a recent episode. And Seth Godin was a guest a while back — I’ve heard Seth on a lot of podcasts, and this is my favorite of all his appearances.

PS – Oh, right — I’m supposed to challenge someone in return. I challenge you. Please reveal a book that impacted your life in the comments. I need new recommendations!

PPS – I’ll be attending MondoNYC in New York this Thursday and Friday. If you plan to be there, too, hit me up.

Filed Under: Items of Note Tagged With: Book Recommendations, Keratoconus, Podcast, Ryan Holiday, Seth Godin, Ted Chiang

A Punk-Rock Gut Punch

December 28, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Another dispatch from out in the sticks. Howdy. Proverbial country road pictured above.

There’s a fantastic photo in NPR’s In Memoriam 2018: The Musicians We Lost. An emotive Glenn Branca is pictured in the center, and this is one of the best concert photos I’ve seen in a while. There’s so much energy there, like a jolt of Jolt. I assume Glenn is pictured in the midst of conducting his guitar-based ‘orchestra.’ 

The In Memoriam piece is striking, as these tend to be. There are a lot of special music folks we’ll be missing in 2019. For me, in addition to Branca, losing Mark E. Smith and Pete Shelley in one year is a punk rock gut-punch.

I don’t need another ‘favorite albums of 2018’ list — going through the ones I have bookmarked already could last well into next summer. I should be listening to 2019 music! But Austin Kleon, via his amazing blog (another inspiration for what I’m trying to do here), turned me onto a tantalizingly diverse ‘best of 2018’ list from music writer Ted Gioia.

Kleon titles his post ‘The Agony of List-Making’ and expresses a frustration with making public recommendations under the scrutiny of the internet mob. Gioia eases his own misgivings by presenting his list alphabetically, not allowing any title to receive a crown above any other. Kleon highlights this quote from Gioia’s list post:

Like any music lover, I enjoy sharing my favorite music with others. But in the last few years, a different motivation has spurred me. I believe that the system of music discovery is broken in the current day. There is more music recorded than ever before, but it is almost impossible for listeners to find the best new recordings …

I believe we are entering another era of music discovery, as listeners experience playlist fatigue and blogs continue to lose sway. These personalized lists, from close friends and selected ones from respected total strangers — chefs, movie directors, music writers, etc. — will hold the real power. Recommendations like these have always been the truest source of discovery. But we — as music fans rather than casual listeners — lost our way for a bit as streaming took hold, fascinated by algorithmic playlists and unlimited access.

Optimistically, these personal interactions of recommendation foster more intimate relationships with our music. On the other hand, this could all be my imagination as friends have been recommending music online since those early-90s message boards. But I do feel like there’s a dissatisfaction with playlist culture and how it’s pushed on us by certain platforms. This is a reason I switched from Spotify to Apple Music, something I’ll write about in the future. And this dissatisfaction will grow as playlists and platform features bow further to corporate influence. I used to wonder why Bandcamp didn’t have a playlisting feature — now I get it.

In other news, Big Shot Magazine kindly asked for a 2018 recap and I delivered a few reflections. I mainly talk about the launch of 8D Industries but I also touch on curbing the news diet, a recurring topic around these parts. The Ryan Holiday quote in the piece should be mentally taped above every screen at home, whether it’s a TV or a laptop:

Perhaps it’s time we realize that consuming more news about the world around us is not the way to improve it (or ourselves), personally or politically.

Holiday has written a few articles on why we should abstain from breaking news. They’re all worth a read. 

I’d also like to point out that I meant to refer to the long album version of “Bunny’s Dream” as a favorite song of the year. The video edit embedded in the article doesn’t quite have the majesty or the sprawl and, like many unsuccessful edits, feels rushed in comparison to the original. 

A question I posed to my social media friends: will people be playing Paul Hardcastle like they were playing Prince on NYE 1998? Of course, this is meant as a joke but I know I gave some DJs an idea for a midnight song on Monday. Please report back if you took the bait.

Filed Under: From The Notebook Tagged With: Austin Kleon, Best-Of Lists, Buzzocks, Q-Burns Abstract Message, Ryan Holiday, Streaming, The Fall, Thinking About Music

What Am I Doing Now? (June 2018 Recap)

August 1, 2018 · 1 Comment

  • This month’s theme was motivation, or how to get it back or track. After weeks of eye complaints and restraints, and back-to-back travel from Nashville to Edinburgh, it was a challenge to rediscover my productivity mojo. I spent way too much time rearranging my Omnifocus set-up, thinking about morning routines, and optimizing for capturing a deep work mindset. The first couple weeks felt like slo-mo, a lot of running in place, not getting much accomplished. Of course, the secret is to dive in — perfect Omnifocus set-up be damned — and start. I’m finally at a solid daily clip, which is good as I’ve decided on some ambitious goals over the next few months.
  • Related to my motivation pit, current events (especially here in the US) have me down. I know I’m not alone in how this affects the work mood. Some of my peers talk about moving to another country, but I think a better solution is to create my own (mental) country. Distance me from the news, outside influences, current events — build a creative utopia of my mind. Focus on making things to make the world better. I can’t do my best work and be helpful if I’m curled up in a ball worrying about the state of things. I had already done this to a degree (this article by Ryan Holiday is an inspiration) but there was some leakage, especially from Twitter. David Moldawer says Twitter turned his phone into a ‘depression machine’ and I can relate. Though I’m not leaving social media (but tempted, see Jaron Lanier), I’ve decided to treat it as a one-way street. I’m posting, but I’m not reading. If you @ me, I’ll look and probably reply, but that’s as far as my interaction goes. And no more social media apps on my phone or tablet. Not in my country.
  • On the other hand, I’ve rediscovered Day One and Pocket and have enrolled in the subscription plans offered by both. Pocket has added highlighting on mobile devices (please add this to the browser version soon!) which makes noting and cataloging sections of interest in articles a breeze. Then I can shoot those articles into Day One, add the highlighted text and appropriate tags, and I’ve got fodder for blog posts or future reference material. I’ve also started journaling daily in Day One as paper journaling was a personal bust. I really wanted to make a paper journal work, but I find more inspiration in an electronic platform (and I start each entry with a photograph of that morning’s sunrise over our lake, which motivates) and writing by hand only reminds me how awful my handwriting is. Even I have problems deciphering my scrawl. I’m happy with this set-up, and am even moving my digital commonplace book out of DEVONthink and into Day One (no slight intended on DEVONthink … it’s a terrific Evernote alternative that I’ll use primarily for business purposes here on out).
  • The Timucua Arts Foundation and its White House concert venue are Orlando treasures, and I wish your town had them, too. Combine with local arts collective Civic Minded 5 and our city is regularly treated to mind-expanding music in a beautiful live setting. The Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Zeena Parkins performances were recent, legendary treats — and this month brought the Paal Nilssen-Love Large Unit all the way from Scandinavia to deliver an incredibly intense set of explorer jazz. The stage at the White House is small and intimate, which made this unit seem larger than it already was: two drummers (creating a lovely stereo field), two bass players (alternating between stand-up and electric bass), an accordionist, a brass section that included tuba, trumpet, trombone, and three saxophones (with occasional switches to clarinet and flute), a guitarist (percussive, noisy, great), and an electronics/laptop dude who stepped in front to manically conduct the band at one point. It was as impressive as it sounds. Any time there’s a Civic Minded 5 promoted show at the Timucua White House, it’s a mandatory event.
  • I reconnected with Dave Tomaselli, whose Statra label I used to promote at 8DPromo. He’s now working with Paperchain, a technology company worth checking out. There’s a promise in their model of tracking and advancing royalties, and I’m even more intrigued by an imagined future of automated royalty calculation and payout to artists, creating a solution for labels that are allergic to and unreliable with accounting (which is like 98% of them).
  • My client Buddhist Army released the vinyl 12” version of Arthur Landing’s Spring Collection EP this month and it’s making some waves. Gilles Peterson played a track on his 6Music show, and Test Pressing published a quick interview with Arthur’s Landing founder Steven Hall.
  • What I Read This Month:

    Rework

  • What I Watched This Month:

    Bombshell: The Hedy Lamar Story
    Logan
    Silence
    Dunkirk
    A Quiet Place
    The Terror

  • What I Listened To This Month:

    IF Music Presents You Need This: An Introduction To Black Saint & Soul Note
    Arp – Zebra
    King Tubby & Prince Jammy – Ghetto Dub
    Kamasi Washington – Heaven & Earth
    Agitation Free – 2nd
    SQÜRL – Paterson (Original Score)
    Alessandro Cortini – AVANTI
    Melody’s Echo Chamber – Bon Voyage
    Skee Mask – Compro
    Technicolor Paradise: Rhum Rhapsodies & Other Exotic Delights

  • A Few Other Things I Enjoyed This Month:

    Poppinuts 001 – Eno
    Synthedelia: Psychedelic Electronic Music in the 1960s
    Djs Having Assistants Picking Tracks For Them Is A Dangerous Move
    Inside Vaporwave’s Floppy Disk Micro-Boom
    How Did A Major Label Manage To Lose A John Coltrane Record?
    A Brief History Of Our Addiction To Loudness
    Detroit is Techno City, and Techno is Black
    Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics Explained
    Speak & Spell: The Toy That Talked Back
    Legendary Experimental Composer Jon Hassell Is Still Dreaming Up New Worlds
    The Futuro House: Spaceship Living On Earth
    The Legacy of Conny Plank
    Has 2018 Killed The Pop Star?
    How Headphones Changed the World
    Remembering The Engineer Who Created Rock’s Unmistakable Fuzz
    Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore
    How David Bowie Invented Ziggy Stardust
    No Hope, No Fear: Industrial Music In Zagreb

Filed Under: From The Notebook Tagged With: Buddhist Army, David Moldawer, Jaron Lanier, Movie Recommendations, Music Recommendations, now, Ryan Holiday

What Am I Doing Now? (January 2018 Recap)

February 1, 2018 · Leave a Comment

  • In addition to strengthening a daily journal habit that began a couple of years back, I’ve decided to plunge into Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman’s The Daily Stoic Journal, accompanied by a reading from The Daily Stoic. I’ve been casually studying Stoicism (indeed, taking part in what’s become a resurgence), fascinated by its intersections with Buddhist teachings. The most profound learning comes from action or reflection, so Holiday’s prompts to journal on these philosophical teachings are themselves an encouragement to dive in further.
  • This leads to a change in my morning routine. This month I’m experimenting with waking by 6:30 AM and quickly making a cup of strong tea (usually a teaspoon each of green tea, black tea, ginger, and MCT oil). I then read the day’s entry from The Daily Stoic and meditate for 20 minutes. After my quiet meditation, I journal in The Daily Stoic Journal, write at least a page about what’s on my mind in my blank journal, and then plan out my day in the Panda Planner (something else new I’m trying out). Then it’s coffee time, light breakfast, and the start of my workday. So far so good, and I’ll report back if this routine changes in the next months. (update: the Panda Planner is a great idea, and it might be perfect for you, but it turns out it doesn’t quite fit into my routine.)
  • Speaking of meditation, I highly recommend Kevin Rose’s Oak app. It’s free and useful for meditators at any level, though I still recommend Headspace if you’re just getting started. After using Headspace for a few years and becoming comfortable with meditation, I find that Oak’s unguided meditation feature is perfect for my needs. I’m enjoying the app’s breathing exercises, too.
  • I started 100 days of Seth Godin’s The Marketing Seminar. This is my second time through this program. The first time I didn’t finish as I got sidelined by things that needed attention in my personal life, and overlap with my intense four weeks in altMBA (which deserved 100% of my attention). Now that I’m fully focused, The Marketing Seminar is impactful, and I’m having a great time and learning a ton. It’s making me a better writer, too, as it’s kindly pressuring me to write all the time. (I highly recommend The Marketing Seminar and altMBA … feel free to contact me if you have questions about either.)
  • As part of a goal to ramp up a writing practice, I’m going to try my hand at writing record reviews (or short essays about records I’m listening to). Maybe this will also give some virtual ink, and a shiny new search result to a few overlooked album releases as I’ll be focusing on the mostly unrecognized. Here’s my first effort.
  • This month I spoke to a copyright class at Full Sail University and sat on a couple of panels at this year’s Music Placement Conference. Both were terrific and fun experiences, and I enjoyed talking with (and hopefully inspiring with encouragement) the students, songwriters, and music industry types I encountered. I’m aiming to do more speaking and panel appearances throughout the year.
  • My friend (and fellow altMBA alumnus) Dean Caravelis interviewed me for his fantastic Outrageously Remarkable blog. It’s a straight transcript, so I come off a bit ranty and stumble through frequent run-on sentences, but I believe this conveys the enthusiasm and excitement I feel when I talk about these subjects. I also don’t think I’ve ever publicly told that Mike Watt story.
  • What I Read This Month:

    Start With Why
    Perennial Seller
    The Accidental Creative

  • What I Watched This Month:

    I, Claudius
    Wormwood
    The Florida Project
    A Ghost Story (loved it)
    The Disaster Artist
    Call Me By Your Name

  • What I Listened To This Month:

    Art Feynman – Near Negative
    The Gentleman Lovers – Permanently Midnight
    Hiroshi Yoshimura – Music for Nine Postcards
    Ebo Taylor And The Pelikans
    Goran Kajfes Tropiques – Enso
    F ingers – Awkwardly Blissing Out
    Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection of Music From the Arab World

  • A Few Other Things I Enjoyed This Month:

    How to Be a Responsible Music Fan in the Age of Streaming
    Jaron Lanier on The Ezra Klein Show
    See With Your Ears: Spielberg And Sound Design
    Another Green World: How Japanese Ambient Music Found a New Audience
    How Kraftwerk’s Classic Album Computer World Has Changed People’s Lives
    Legend of the Fall: Mark E Smith Kept Swinging to the End

Filed Under: From The Notebook Tagged With: altMBA, Book Recommendations, Full Sail University, Meditation, Movie Recommendations, Music Recommendations, now, Ryan Holiday, Seth Godin, Stoicism

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8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

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