I recently had a funny, but very self revealing experience... no, nothing sexual... while mixing a song I reached for some eq to improve the sonics of a certain track, but instead of  putting it on the intended track I  slapped it across a muted neighbor track... really sharp move on my part.... I started to mess with it to see if I can make a money shot out of a (to put it mildly) less than exciting track. You know, the old "let's polish a turd", "fix it in the mix", do whatever it takes to make it shine, go Beatles on it if I had to.... ok this particual eq doesn't work, let's try another one, a more expensive one. Hmmmmm.. this snare is fighting me, a freakin james dean of a snare.... I just splashed it with 10dB worth of 5k and it still sounds kinda muffled... Maybe if I cut a little 400Hz... ohhhhh.. that's better.... yeah, it's coming along nicely. And there I go... doing my thing, poking it, squeezing it, painting it, polishing, caressing.. you name it.... And I actually start to feel good about myself... yeah baby, this is going to sound just great.. I hope they're ready for me at the next grammies! A bandmember, whose music I'm performing my delicate surgery on, sitting next to me starts to agree vocally... oh yeah, it sounds much better now than it did before, you know it really bothered me before, but I didn't wanna say anything... I knew you were gonna do the right thing... engineEAR!... that's why we're paying you the big bucks. .. much punchier now....     But then reality strikes... Hmmmm... something's wrong here... didn't I just slap some eq across this track... you know.. 5 minutes ago, the one that added the sparkle, the oomph, the "silk"... fuck... it's on the muted track... so... I guess I never actually improved this snare..... riiiight... check...damn... the snare still sounds like somebody farted authoratitively in the walk-in closet of an apartment next door.... OK, now I feel like a fucking tool... I usually try carefully not to call myself nasty names, you know not to abuse myself..... cause it's an addictive habit...  and I'm a compulsive person... but this one just does it, you fucking special olympics material, you!... Should I tell what we just did the other guy? Hmmm..... He'll just feel stoopid like I just did... but hey, maybe the fucker learns something from it ...like not to listen with your fucking eyes... you don't eat soup with a freakin toothpick, do you?.... so I tell the guy... you know, wrap it up nicely and season it with humor and selfirony....seinfeld would be impressed... the guy laughs... yeah, I'm a funny fucker, I know... life goes on... or does it...... just like that?

Sometimes we can be so superficial and out of sync with reality, that we let our mind paint ourself a picture we want to see, a mere reflection of our thought and knowledge and past experience, a vague superficial substitute for reality, a description, a theory, a reflection of our emotional state or a reaction to it... and so on.... And it's a powerful thing, it works... how do I know? I just experienced it... so how can I not know it? Do you know now too? Now that I told you? ...Sorry, no you don't... you're just taking my word for it and I could be a compulsive liar, or a friend of someone whos cat you recently run over...

So what I learned from this is that I need to improve my state of awareness to function properly... to be zen... what a beautiful word... too bad new age nutcases made a joke out of it by throwing it around, prostituting it for a casual label...
So zen like state of awareness is what I should be striving for...I need to constantly observe the nature of my thought  to be capable of spotting my moments of weakness, where my mind, my knowledge starts to ignore reality and paints me a nice Tarantino movie instead... featuring me... and Uma Thurman...and Quentin....maybe some mexicans.... with all the usual sex, violence and clever ending!

And if it helps me make better music... I'm happy

Matej