• Song - Band - Album


• Punkrocker - Teddybears - Soft Machine


• Outsiders - Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better


• Free Four - Pink Floyd - Obscured By Clouds


• 125 Mph - New Model Army - Thunder and Consolation


• Who Was In My Room Last Night? - Butthole Surfers - Independent Worm Saloon


• Still In Hollywood - Concrete Blonde - Concrete Blonde


• Coast to Coast - The Jesus and Mary Chain - Automatic


• Rain Will Fall - I Mother Earth - Dig


• Godzilla - Blue Oyster Cult - On Flame With Rock And Roll


• Industrial Disease - Dire Straits - Love Over Gold


• Wind Him Up - Saga - Worlds Apart


• Pressure - Skindred - Babylon


• Way Down Now - World Party - Goodbye Jumbo


• In The Meantime - Spacehog - Resident Alien


• Lunatic Fringe - Red Rider - As Far As Siam

Sometimes it's fun to just write

And have nothing matter at all

I have been enjoying blogging. Have received some nice words about my prose and the questions I pose. But once in a while you forget that what you're doing, and taking for granted, can be taken away from you.

My good friend just found out his pop had a stroke and is now kind of just cascading downward into oblivion. My friend is taking it well, he had his own massive, chest cracking heart-attack and is actually one of the coolest, most laid back and unflappable dudes I know. It's amazing what perspective will bring into your world. He has an incredibly wise and dry sense of humor that is to be honored. I'm glad he's my friend.

Just saying that and then hearing what he's going through makes me pause. I've just started "living" again and have been through a lot on the personal side. Many classic challenges have been thrown at me. But I have to say that death and health have not been part of it. Very lucky i guess.

So, now when I look at and do things I'm taking a new perspective. I've gotten very good at letting things go, moving on, being aloof and unattached. It's a defense mechanism that becomes a habit that becomes you as you grow up moving every 18 months around the world. Friends "die" all the time. In the sense that you knew them for 18 months, invested in them and then they were gone forever. I've had thousands of friends "die" throughout my life.

The other part is I've always been the one moving around throughout my life, life wasn't moving. I've noticed sitting still for 17 years that it's very much the other way. So watching friendships slowly come and go, seeing friends go through hell, seeing my friends watch me go through hell and watching real life situations unfold slowly, over time, is very new to me.

So my friend who's father is in jeopardy is a new friend. We've bonded quickly, as usual for me and things are cool I've been to more concerts with him than I have in the past 10 years combined and we share cds and dvds and talk metal all the time and i get a good feeling we'll bump into each other at some point, somewhere in Wilmington. It's pretty fucking cool and something I've been seeking since I left my wife. A guy friend I can just hang out with and be myself. Talk about geeky guy things and not have to worry if the chick that hears us talking is ever going to talk to me because I'm a goof. It's just nice.

The difference in this "friend building" as I call it is that I'm taking it slow and for the long haul. I'm not trying to figure him out right now or let him know all about me right away. There's no need. In the past I had to do that because I had only 18 months to try and build a life-time friendship that runs the gamut. It's taken me up until now to start breaking that habit and be less intense about people. I'm learning that life moves, you don't. My therapist is really working with me on inter-personal intercations that are easy on both me and the other person. It's kind of nice. He's also asking me to recognize and acknowledge loss.

Well with my new metal friend I'm kind of, in the moment, doing both. He literally just called me and said "you always think you're prepared for something like this, but how can you be when even the experts don't know what to do. And even though I have the authority to pull the plug I know that if I had waited one more minute to do so he might have recovered."

Wow.

See, having been away from family longer than not. Having only three lifetime friends, who are all over the country and not here and having never had to be somewhere to deal with problems. In fact, I had the opportunity to leave problems behind and start over. This is all new to me. I'm glad my friend is modeling this for me. He's obviously upset but is also handling the whole thing with aplomb. That's what perspective will do for you. I hope I can be the same way. I have no idea, I've never been tested.

I'm hoping that when I am I can be like my friend and stay strong and level for others. Be their rock and have them know i've been given a gift for composure in horrible times. I just hope I can get it to be that way and not cold, removed and uncaring. That's where I am now. I have not figured out how to warm this skill up. It's not cozy at all. My friend is making it cozy. Probably because he had the heart condition that just about did him in working to his advantage where I have a more "well that's life" attitude. Not cool.

My point in starting off heavy like this is to remind myself out loud and in public (via this blog) that I am just awakening. This person "Patrick" has never existed before. I kind of like hiim. I hope he keeps developing into the person that most represents those that I have admired the most in my life. Always wondering how they could be so cool, level headed, comfortable and engaging. I like that I can write now. I never could. Didn't have the patience or the focus. I like that I can go have fun and still do work. I like that I can kill myself working and then go have fun. I'm digging all of this. I like being calm and having a quiet mind. I love listening to music all day and taking naps and watching my fish. I like that I just made dried flowers for the first time and pruned my roses and am getting all "domestic". I like my hardwood floors and that it was I that revealed them and the paint on the walls and the plans for the room.

I like that I can live alone now and know that I "own" this fucking joint. It's my space and I can fill it with me.

I like my office and my skill and my sense of humor. I like people and like to care and like to be noble and chivalrous. I like all of this.

I love metal, I love arguing, I love making fun of people and being made fun of. I'm really kind of digging things.

I love that everything that matters most doesn't matter at all. Materialistically speaking.

I think that's why I like writing this way. For the first time in my life I'm documenting things that don't matter. They're in my head, they're my feelings, opinions, diatribes and awareness. I think that this journaling that my shrink asked me to do is working. It's helping me stay in the moment and recognize gain and loss. It's showing me how to be me. When you write your thoughts and want them to be organized and flow so that an audience can keep in step and enjoy or question your logic it really makes you get your mind's ducks in a row. Now all of a sudden, slowly, I'm starting to figure out who I am. I am actively, with every blog entry, introducing me to me and I don't want that to stop. I don't want to take it for granted. I don't want it to matter. Nothing should. It should just be enjoyed and acknowledged and filed and then you move on and enjoy the next thing.

That's not to say there shouldn't be a plan or back up plan or tactics for the unexpected. See my metal friend on that one. But you can't live in the past/future the whole time. You need to learn from and plan for accordingly, but when your life was all of either then things just kind of blow by and you think you're moving through the world when it's quite the other way. Kind of like when we all thought that the sun moved around us. And then we hung, stoned and set people on fire for saying otherwise.

I can't find the words to say just how beautiful life is. Man oh man, it's brilliant. Even the ugly is beautiful.

| patrick |

Creativity versus Inhibition

Does one cause the other?

Yes.

Creativity is an active attempt to get what you're hiding inside expressed to the world in a palatable way. So that you can validate yourself and have a forum for expressing your deepest, subconsciousness. Something that is usually tucked away all nice and neat. Conversely, inhibition is a method for parking and protecting your personal thoughts in a "safe" environ only causing more fertile thoughts that must get out.

We're social creatures. We must interact. We have cultural taboos, do's n don'ts, etiquette and rules for engagement. A lot of times there is no way to get your feeling or thought through all of these conventions for interaction. Well, creativity is one way and I believe that creative people are some of the most inhibited and rail against themselves and the inhibited are some of the most creative crippled by their own reality regarding other's feelings.

I digress well, so let's, shall we?

Consider, if you will what creativity is. It's an inner expression of one's desire to put their mark on the world. I think it's very powerful in men since we can't create life. Hey women, don't misunderstand my statement. I did not say there was a difference in creative ability, but I won't apologize for saying we have more drive. Creativity is our ONLY way to contribute. You guys can create life. Wow. An inner expression to put a mark on the world, make a difference, create something new. We're social creatures so a safe assumption is that this is at a societal or at least community level. Recognition, validation whatever. Well society is defined by culture. Culture is what makes us human as it is our "natural" defense against the world and it is our life. So creativity, especially from an artistic point is one's summary of their mind, body, heart and soul. Powerful stuff and relevant only to the culture within which it was created.

What do I mean?

Like or dislike can only occur if understanding and world view are in synch. How can a piece of art, like something Sagmeister might do, really bother a culture that knows nothing about this "art". It can't. They can comment on it, but have it bother them? No way. And I mean bother at the core of you.

That being said, one can study and learn about a new culture by first examine their art. Because art or creativity is the window to all four facets of one's being you can get a good snapshot of what makes that culture tick. Especially if you can study all of the works of art en masse. You're seeing into their world view and through it. Not just discovering it.

So this is why I think that creativity and inhibition, strange bedfellows they may be, go hand in hand.

To use myself as an example I have great fear over executing an illustration every time I am assigned one. I will grout tile, prune shrubs, get a manicure before I'll sit down and start work. Even though, every time, I execute well and have something very nice. It's never not happened. But I go fetal every time I sit down to put pen to paper. Why is that? This nagging question is what caused me to write this essay.

I believe it's me somehow getting myself into a safe spot, a "happy place" that feels protected and secure. So that I can then create unfettered. If I was not inhibited I couldn't do such a public work. Too many distractions, too many opinions, too many options. But by shutting down I am able to focus on the task at hand and be very selfish. And there it is. Creativity is selfish. It should be since it's the summary/snap shot of your view on culture from every part of your being.

The opposite works this way: inhibition can stifle ones ability to express themselves socially. But, art, for whatever reason has long been a place that all is possible, all is acceptable and all is validated or justified because it's supposed to e odd or those that do it are odd. So inhibited folks have a default outlet for their commentary on culture and society and it's credible.

I believe this means anyone can be creative. It's just the fear or the unknown that's holding them back. Use this outlet of expression to get your commentary out there. In whatever form: art, buildings, molecules, new ideas, politics. Just be creative.

Or if you are always out there and in the public's eye or always in social situations and need privacy retreat into yourself and hide within the wonderful imagination you've been blessed with and get re-inspired.

| patrick |

Red Fish, Blue Fish

An easy way to slow things down and grow some brain matter.

I have to think a lot and love to over think. My mind races more often than not and I am constantly stimulated: TV, radio, iTunes, people, cell phone and of course coffee. There's really no content free zone because even when I unplug I'm exercising and that too is stimulation.

So I've tried another approach and it is wonderful.

Fish.

I've always had them in my life when I can, but they were pets then. Now they're more than that: medication, art, conversation, relaxation and meditation. More importantly I think they're even a good energy thing for feng shui (sp?). I'm sure I have the tank in the wrong part of the house, but it's 110 gallons, weighs a cool half-ton and it's staying right where it is.

I work out of my house and that's a tough row to hoe when you need/must separate personal and business lives. My first smart move was to shove all of my business stuff into my smallest room and get it out of sight. Good move, that was. The second thing I did was set up a sanctuary in my house. This is neutral ground and it is fertile ground. Fertile Ground is what I call my think tank also. I am a bullshit artist and nothing's more fertile than that. So it's a nice place to sit and stew.

This sanctuary is also a personal playground where I can play my bass guitar, relax with coffee and a copy of Wired Magazine or look out the window or....

Watch my fish.

I have a big African tank. 20 cichlids from Lake Malawi of varying colors from bright white albino to azure crusted marble. Awesome fish. And you can tell they're looking at you. I think that if they could, they would formulate a way to eat me and take over the house. That's how intently they stare at you.

Well I have a circa 1950 split-level and you can see this tank from any floor and even when you're pulling up into the neighborhood. It's quite impressive. It brings calm. It's in the Fertile Ground of my domain and it is all that is necessary for peace. I can sit there for recreation, relaxation and meditation. Or I can go there to be inspired, clear my mind for new ideas or just sketch to get loose. Putting this tank into my home/office was the single best thing I've done for myself and my clients other than purchasing this kick-ass G5 dual-core behemoth of a work station I have.

Having an aquarium in your house or office is a wonderful diversion and it's healthy. And having living things around that are maintained and thriving bring a certain natural energy back into the more dead world of indoors. Surround it with plants and it is not a sink-hole but a geyser for pure amber energy.

Mine was professionally installed by Jamie from AJB Aquatics and it rules. He suggested many of the design features that now enthrall me and the tank is a work of art as a whole, never mind the cool fish in there that he, again, recommended. He intuitively knew what I was trying to accomplish with a respite and felt that harmony and lively energy were the key to my need for distraction, but calculated distraction. So we decided to go fresh water but make it look like a reef tank. It's clean. The fish are all from the same African lake so there is a harmonious relationship there. The tank still has a masculine quality as there are constant territorial battles but those are even very graceful and quite engaging. Jamie set the whole thing up and maintains it twice a month. He even shows up with a surprise fish every now and then and they are incredible. I have never seen some of these.

Well the tank is the crown jewel and center piece of my house. It's done several things:

• focused my personal routine
• Created a sanctuary for a break from routine
• Improved my brainstorming sessions
• Gave me the focal point for designing the rest of my house
• Created a gathering place for friends
• 30 percent less television consumed
• Great place to start the day with coffee
• A living sculpture

That's it right there... a living sculpture. It always undulates, moves, is dynamic with currents and fish skitting about. It's a tangible three dimensional piece of art.

That is what has caused the major drop in TV consumption on my part. I've read more books, sat still longer and have sketched more than ever. Plus my bass guitar was set next to it as a display piece since I never play it. Guess what? As stated earlier I'm playing that again. Talk about cause and effect.

I know it seems like I'm contradicting myself here as I state that I need the uncontent but then turn around and say how it inspires me to create. Well I must remind you that my house is my office is my house. It's a vicious circle so this calming area is going to agitate me into action sometimes.

Would I do a tank at just an office? Absolutely. These fish are cool and the tank is an awesome ecosystem that is fun to watch

It means a lot to me and I'm glad I have it. Sometimes it's good to have uncontent around you when you develop content for a living and nothing says nothing more than something that has nothing in it that can talk to you. Or rub up on you. Or have to go outside to poop. As the famous song from the immortal Finding Nemo stated: "Just Keep Swimming!".

I'm going to be putting an in-wall tank into my home theater room and it's going to be a concept piece that focuses on nothing but albino fish and stark contrasts of white and blue. It should be pretty cool.

| patrick |

So you want to know how to design?

Well here's one simple thing to consider.

I'm tweaking my logo today and trying to get everything in just the right place, visually for the eye and technically for the composition. There is often a conflict between the two. Consider my current profile image. I am trying to get it just right because it is going to drive my whole campaign at this point. I dig it and want to have it around for a bit. So I need to make sure it is correct.

Well as I was working on it I ended up in a tug-of-war at the pixel level; and I mean the space of 10 pixels. And this is what made me hop over to this computer and write this entry. Important stuff to share.

In design speak the battle I'm waging right now is referred to as a "Near Tangency" which is where two lines, or tangents, sit right on top of each other.

This causes a vibration between art elements, confines them and kills any dimensionality that you might be trying to achieve.

You must watch out for these at all costs. It's the illustration equivalent to "widows" and/or "orphans" in typography. The three of them can bring any good piece of design or artwork down.

And the general public never notices.

It's an interesting phenomena what goes on in "good" design. We noodle and nitpick and tweak and nudge (sounds sexy, eh?).

But it's because we know, we've been trained and our eyes are tuned to these things. Not because the general public sees it or would even know what was happening.

So we slave and sweat and stress over these pixel level issues. Why? Because we love pain and we love our job and most importantly we're professionals. Did you ever wonder why a piece of art, a logo or an advertisement just resonates at a high level with you? Well it's because this discipline is imposed every time, by those that care. It's proven that leaving open white space, not having lines step on one another exactly, violating borders, using silence and having people look into the composition of a head shot matter. It's been mastered for years and passed on orally and through archived works to every one of us.

I just received some of my old comic strips I drew for school papers when I was a kid. Conceptually they were pretty cool and my drawing style was rudimentary at best. But all of us that ever drew growing up were in the same place. What makes us good now is training, experience and paying attention. Those comic strips were brutish renderings that left nothing to the imagination and had no compositional qualities at all. My mom loved them, the school published them and I presented them to the chair of the art department who bashed them. First lesson.

Being creative is cool, but you must BE creative at every level of the piece you're working on and be sure that every element and the placement of those elements make perfect sense. Sometimes mathematically when you're dealing with perspective. Wow.

If you want to create or like to understand why something just really speaks to you it's because of the craftsman behind the work. We artists claim that we don't like logic and hate details but the more I blog the more I'm learning that I actually obsess and strive to achieve these very things I can't seem to live with day-to-day.

Interesting huh?

That in itself is a near tangency. I get too close to my denial or get too into my obsessive nature and either way I can risk "certification"!

So back to this image and where I am. If you look closely the two flames at the top of the head are kissing the nexus of the barbs and the stars. They're all converging on the same point, flattening out the composition. I want the barbs to be under the star, which in turn should be under the flames. The burning brain should be above everything floating there. Well, the first three elements aren't quite right because of the convergence.

I was moving the flames down one pixel at a time and then two things occurred: first they started to look like horns. I want edge, not evil. Second the flame shots that shoot below the ears landed right on the red lines that mark the center of the star's legs.

What do I do? Well now I'm going to play with scale and moving smaller elements until I get what I want. I like the relationship between all of the elements and their sizes so scaling is going to be at the pixel level too. It's tight, but it will work.

Every professional illustration or logo I've done has had this problem. They can be overcome you just have to be more clever than your mouse!

Hope this helps.

| patrick |

Do you really know marketing?

If so, there is a 12 step program available in the trunk of my OldsmoBuick that could change your life.

What do I mean?

Why am I addressing this?

Well it's simple, but not obvious. If it was obvious we'd all be fine. Us "marketers".

We make a living by helping others get their message out there into the market: clearly, concisely and powerfully to the point. We are great at honing, noodling, improving and provoking. We can create incredible stuff. And we can come up with very inventive ways for breaking the mold, busting a trend, being heard in the cacophony and catching the eye of the jaded, blinder-wearing, tunnel visioned blindly odd average consumer.

No one can deny it and we have the client book, portfolio of work and industry credibility to prove it. We've been elected to lead/represent our peers, have won juried awards and have caused children to rise up and wield their crayons as weapons. We inspire all and we see that our work is doing what we thought it should. It personifies us and is us and because it's from the heart is authentic and well intended. It..Is...Us! So it should represent!

Whoah! Time out! Seriously, take a deep breath....and....hold it.

I've picked up some sage advice from varied and colorful folk through my career. One was "you can only have two of three things from me, if you want me to help: good, fast or cheap. Pick two. You pick any two and you can't have the third". Wow. Great advice. Well here's the two relevant things I've picked up lately that will really work into this "marketing" article.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." And worse? "Expectations are resentments under construction!" How's that for true wisdom?

Now the point of the lecture (I'm sorry, blog). As marketers we have grand and well-meaning intentions to have any work we do literally represent us. Further, the expectations that we put on our work is incredible. It must always speak for us, show others what we do and land us our next big gig!

Hmmph. Resentments under construction? Absolutely. In fact I bet every one of you that has made it this far into this entry has literally hated your career at one point or another. Just like me. There's that resentment.

So here's the irony.

We know our work is good and representative of our capabilities but we forget one thing....every client we've ever had felt the same way! "Well these blue widgets I make are everything I offer to the market. Can't these blue widgets be my ad campaign?" We argue no and break into our tried and true effort to get a clear communication and integrated marketing campaign out there for Blue Widget, Inc. And it works. But we do something that is the "magic bean" of marketing.

We put a....

Call to action in the piece or series or video or spot. We ask for business.

And of course it's successful and we're proud of it and we put it in our portfolio and it MUST represent us.

Well duh. Not happening.

We never begin at the beginning for ourselves and put a call to action out there. We never ask for work. We don't sign our work, we don't put a link to our site at the bottom of a site we just designed. We don't make a big stink over anything like that. We just hope to get a chance to show off our work to the next potential client and hope they like it.

We don't market ourselves.We don't ask for the work. We don't put it out there that we need work, want work or should be the one's helping "you" improve. We forget that people need to know who we are and what we do.

This is very critical in our industry. People just don't get what we're capable of. My parents have been around me the entire time I've been a creative. Going on 27 years now....and they still don't really understand what I do for a living. So how should the market know?

I learned this because I sent out a newsletter to 1,400 businesses in the area and I got some responses. The coolest being an invitation to be on a panel that will do Q&A to an audience that is there learning about marketing.

The gentleman that asked me to participate received this newsletter and called me immediately.

Why?

To ask what is it that I do?

He told me what he thought it was and I confirmed. But the fact that he's known me going on 5 years now and never contacted me before cause a big, pregnant pause in the ongoing battle between my ego and id. My mind went idle.

So I asked my dearest friend of all about this and she said that we forget to remind people that we're looking for work or looking for a job or need a project or want to help. We forget to market ourselves.

We forget the call to action.

Isn't irony incredible?

| patrick |

Swedish Death Metal collides with Mathematics

Now that's my cup of tea: Meshuggah on an all-nighter.

All right. So you thought you were getting comfortable in this little fever pitched cartel of voluminous rhetoric and PW banter.

Guess again!

Here we go on a freeform journey through my mind relating to how things can be turned inside out and upside down. In fact turned off to be turned on.

I said it on my web site's "Project Rescue" page: "Which box and what's for lunch?"

I love other cultures. Especially when they take something on like death metal. It causes you to reexamine what you've been enjoying passively for a while. Maybe not death metal in your particular case, but you know what I mean.

So...Death metal, another culture, environmental forces acting on daily psyche and a unique world view on doom. Remember death metal's beauty is it's active embracing of death and the afterlife and what causes it. Too many people deny death and what it's impact has on their decision making process and ultimately their world view.

First let's examine Sepultura briefly before we get back to this incredible Swedish force. This Sepultura discussion will give a good "control group" to my theory.

Sepultura is a Brazilian death metal band. Many of their influences for creative inspiration come from Portugal, the rain forest, sprawl and indigenous folk. Their doom world view is very concerned with eco-bio-governmental-revolution and mutation. But their Portuguese background gives them a little European bent while the coolest part of their musical offering is tribal: influenced by the indigenous tribes that surround them. This is what I'm talking about. THEY SEE THE SPACE BETWEEN THE STARS NOT THE STARS FOR THEIR ZODIAC, c'mon now how's that for "which box?"

So when I listen to them while I work I tend to get aggressive and organic I take on their dual-binary-dynamic world view (think of the yin-yang symbol, that's the visual). This gives my work a looseness and "left-field" approach that is quite appealing. Their Euro-electronic instrumentation and delivery help me lock into the digital domain of my work space. Beautiful. So they allow me to be in the moment, get dirty and come up with a living work. Plus it's incredible when they use Portuguese language or have the local tribes play their instruments in their way. Now that's the real hook: they hand their instruments over to tribesmen that are still very close to how they've been for thousands of years and say "use this". An example of seeing things differently, which is key to creative, is just how they "use this". They play the strings up and down draggin the pick along the ribbed texture to get this awesome emmination that you would normally not expect. Of course they just tear the skins off the drums with their tribal rhythmically musical drumming. Mmm, mm that's some good stuff.

The result: to my benefit and yours is that I am reminded to use my tools differently. What I'll do is stop, pull out my sketch pad, scribble my images, crumble the paper, scan it in and then "degenerate" it to pixelated nothingness. Then take my Wacom tablet, draw on the computer with it using a stylus to get my natural brush strokes imitated and I've got something cool. If you look at my image gallery the Shaman is a result of doing work while listening to Sepultura.

Sepultura Doom World View: dual-binary-dynamic government/corporate bio-defamation organic-industrial disease mutation influence. Offset by indigenous ignorance, naivety and blissful shamanistic afterlife visions.

That's the "control" in this essay. So on to my point.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I don't like to get messy. Which is why I don't paint. The reason I love digital art is that you can stay clean. So the Sepultura in my life reminds me to get dirty. But the engine and drive comes from the silicon-solid-state reality of digital art, plus my German left-brain heritage is always there, in a low-rumble background noise trying to keep me straight. I think this is why i have a professional fetish for hanging out with engineers (for example: Scott, Mike and Ray). Stupid engineers, but they're right logic is cool and I've written essays about using logical progression to get to your end result. Not to mention I live for contrast. That's what makes me tick and that whole irony thing gives me the creative jolts I need.

This is where Meshuggah comes into play. They are a complete contrast to Sepultura and what I supposedly stand for/against; most likely deny. And that is the pure power and laser focused devastation that can occur if you embrace rigidity while wielding creative organic flow. Contrast.

Their doom world view is predicated on a few very rigid environmental influences: the Swedish socialistic government, the sun is missing or useless half of the year, they are/were in the shadow of the Soviet Union/Russia, they're in a homogeneous culture and they're very European.

This all adds up to a dual-binary-static reality that is very rigid and clinical. Their nature is frozen solid and invisible half of their lives, Sweden has the highest suicide rate for any industrialized country, their Socialistic form of government takes care of every need in a very bureaucratic fashion that is wrought with forms and papers and the band members are old enough to remember the Communist era of nuclear-mathematical-surgical-industrial-engineered death!

Meshuggah is a mathematically influenced group of musicians that look at quantum- and meta-physics in a very left-brained way to find their creative inspiration.

So how on earth does this band drive me bonkers creatively? To the point where I'm traveling through my own neurons on a manic sled of spiked cranial overloads? Surfing synaptic-al blooms of retinal-induced visions of undulating subconsciousness?

Easy!

They embody what I call "unmusic" and "anti-rhythm". They are logically manufactured industrial chaos. Chaos that has been put into an endless logical realm that defies logic. that's right it defies logic via chaotic ruminations about how a carbon based organism can create ethereal thoughts of nothingness so vast that it causes a "big bang' of colorful, living reality. This imagined neuro-reality of a simulated carbon life gets emulated in a simulacrum brought to life by silicon induced fertilization and mechanical rendering.

What?

Well their themes are un-reality that is cold but colorful. They present these thoughts in unmusic that has no harmony, chord progression or depth. It's flat distortion that uses unappealing sounds to create a truly engaging form of music. The anti-rhythm they employ thrives in off-beat percussion that repeats itself consistently by never having any sort of predictable rhythm. Combine these three elements and they have truly created beauty from the beast.

In summary a band like Meshuggah, playing in my headphones and penetrating my skull causes me to confront that which I hate most and turn it into a tool or weapon so that I can be even more lethal for my clients, creatively speaking. What is it that I hate?

Arbitrary rules imposed for an unknown reason by someone who doesn't get it and I have to bow down before the financial gods and accept this fate and punishment. This septic corporate colorless world of business is really my realm. It's where I thrive and by dwelling in the "beige" underbelly of the truly corporate I find my purchase. I personify the contrast I live for. I am that unreality in a logical environment and that is why I am successful. That is why I use color, gradients, violate borders, create negative space pathologically and then put something right back in like two-point perspective or grids that are math. In fact I'll even work in algebraic equations or technical terminology or reveal the underlying code.

That is why Meshuggah helps. Their relentless quest for the perfectly mathematical unmusic and anti-rhythm is absurd contrast. And boy it inspires the hell out of me. Never mind their lyrics and themes. That's another essay in itself. But their mastery of the English language is such that they can take us on jargon/lingo/idiom induced journeys.

Wow!

The result: to my benefit and yours is that I'm reminded to (here comes some extreme corporate jargon that is completely relevant) leverage the paradigm and synergistic confluence of organic creativity and clinical logic to come up with a whole new shift in one's image, message or collateral design.

Use the unart and the empty-thought world I make money in to inspire me.

Meshuggah's Doom World View: dual-binary-static arbitrary nature induced governmental/industrial sanitization of a frozen ecological nightmare that lasts 6 months every year while gerbil like people kill themselves in sanitary private ways.

"Which box?!" No, "Why boxes?" Why not plastic bags that you have to put over your head?

| patrick |

Recognizing loss offers humility

A slice of humble pie so that you can have your cake and eat too.

My therapist is a smart man. He's helping me to reprogram my brain. I'm learning that a brain isn't too dissimilar to how a hard drive works. You save templates on your hard drive so that you can quickly generate resumes, memos, these blogs or whatever. But sometimes the templates for interaction and reaction in your brain, just like the Word files that make up these templates for business documents, get corrupted. So he's helping me find the ones that are causing trouble and we're fixing them.

The one that is the hardest for me is my coping template regarding loss. I tend to get really manic and driven to move forward so that I don't have to recognize, deal with or even remember loss. It's a form of denial. Not a result of trauma, just a corrupted template for reaction. I'm not denying loss because it traumatizes me, I'm denying it so I can feel stronger. I'm being cocky and egotistical.

There's no humility.

And humility is a major component of what I would consider a man of character (he taught me that too, my quality list for character did not include humility). We're doing this so that I can recognize and control my mania. So I can slow down and focus and be even more lethal with my creative and more importantly, so that I can be less intense around others.

How did this mental template get corrupted? Well, I was an Army brat. That meant I moved every 18 months and experienced massive loss. And, when we got to our new place of residence I knew that I had a very short time to make friends, get my life going and be normal. Worrying about what just was got in the way and used precious time. So I just learned how to leave it behind. Good bye. The problem is it's permeated every part of my life now. And i've been through a lot the last two years and haven't really recognized it and it's been feeding my mania.

So now I'm practicing accepting and dealing with loss. How? Well here's the current one and I'm sharing it because it's very personal and extremely cool to me... and it's extremely fun.

But man it's bringing back a flood of memories I haven't shared with myself in a while.

I was in a punk band in High School: Die You Bum. Me and Mike and Mark. It was awesome. I yelled/sang/whatever and played a one-string bass. It was all I could handle. It was an awesome outlet for an awkward and dorky threesome that got more wedgies than girls in the hallowed halls of James I. O'Neill High School in Highland Falls, NY just outside the fortress that was West Point.

It was our "happy place". Well right when we hit our groove, which was the fall of '87 my dad got stationed to Heidelberg Germany and we were leaving in November. THAT SUCKED!!!! I hated it and I knew it was killing probably the coolest thing I'd ever been a part of at that point in my life. Ironically this high point occurred in probably the worst place I ever lived. I had a horrible social life there.

West Point Hard Core

mmmm

What a time. We listened to punk like crazy and thrash was just getting started with Slayer and Metallica and Voivod and Anthrax. Those guys were great musicians: we could only listen, not emulate. So punk it was. Not to mention punk is awfully fun to listen to and work to. I'm typing really fast right now.

I've attached the playlist at the end of this note. It's all of the songs I remember us talking about, listening to and even trying to cover.

It was the beginning of my illustration/design/creative career and I didn't even know it. We did our own album covers, concert posters, newsletters and such. We'd use the xerox machine to make "ransom" style announcements and newsletters. We'd use them to share tapes and bands and stay on top of what the next big punk/thrash/metal thing was going to be. How cool.

Well it's happening again and it's good. Here's why and it's my humility exercise:

Die You Bum is 20 years old this year. My exercise for recognizing massive loss and using it to diminish denial and mania to gain humility and focus and success is to put together a 20th Anniversary box set for me and the boys. It's going to be an 8 album box set. Our 6 studio albums, our 7th album will be a reunion session over a four-day weekend and then I'm going to do a mash-up 8th album mixing sounds on my Mac trying to get these tracks more ambient, trance like and powerful.

It's gratifying, hard work that is totally immersing me in an important loss that I haven't visited in a while.

Holy shit it's tough. I've cried more in the past couple of weeks missing the dudes and the music and the fun. Plus these songs bring back other memories: including smells, sounds and places. It's overwhelming.

I DID NOT REALIZE HOW OUT OF CONTROL MY LIFE REALLY IS AND WHAT IT MEANS TO REMEMBER THAT. When I get manic I think I can save the world and conquer any challenge. Very dangerous. It's at the molecular level. My atoms literally vibrate with the power of the universe. It's intense. I want to bottle it up and give it to the world. To bring peace and enlightenment and ascension. Talk about cocky. Well now I'm seeing how ridiculous that is. Nothing can be controlled and remembering that can take you places. Good places. You can actually rise up and make progress. Now that's power.

Or was. Thanks doc.

Now you know why my new agency is called Burning Brain.

All right here's the net result to date. I have a killer playlist that would be fun for you to hear. You can get all of these songs from iTunes and it would be fun for you. The lyrics are awesome, the music is fun and you can get a taste of what makes me tick.

Plus it's time for retro-punk to take off. The White Stripes really represent that. They are close to what I think we could have become. Because they really only use drum and guitar. Every now and then bass guitar. Very cool.

Enjoy:

• Institutionalized -- Suicidal Tendencies -- Suicidal Tendencies
• Black Coffee -- Black Flag -- Slip It In
• Van -- Descendents -- All
• Police Truck -- Dead Kennedys -- Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
• Skulls -- Misfits -- Collection
• Add It Up -- Violent Femmes -- Violent Femmes: Deluxe Edition
• Let The Day Begin -- Samhain -- November Coming Fire
• The Godfather -- Dag Nasty -- Wig Out At Denko's
• Beneath the Wheel -- D.R.I. -- Thrash Zone
• March of the S.O.D. -- S.O.D. -- S.O.D. Live At Budokan
• I'm the Man -- Anthrax -- I'm the Man
• Salad Days -- Minor Threat -- Salad Days - Single
• Yout' Juice -- Bad Brains -- Quickness
• We Care a Lot -- Faith No More -- Introduce Yourself
• Killing an Arab -- The Cure -- Boys Don't Cry
• You And Whose Army? -- Radiohead -- Amnesiac
• Seven Nation Army -- The White Stripes -- Elephant
• Dress Rehearsal -- Snapcase -- Bright Flashes
• 125 Mph -- New Model Army -- Thunder and Consolation
• Ocean Size -- Jane's Addiction -- Nothing's Shocking
• Should I Stay Or Should I Go? -- The Clash -- Combat Rock

| patrick |