Adventure; an activity that comprises (perceived) risky, dangerous or uncertain experiences. The term is often used in reference to physical activities that have some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing, and extreme sports. However, the term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.
OMG!! If you could the the macabre 1st and 2nd drafts of this article, you'd instantly unsubscribe! I poured out all manner of viscous, toxic shit, onto the screen. But upon rereading i realized that most of it was a combination of long- held insecurities-some personal and some born of life as an artist-, incoherent ramblings and a newborn bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
The term "adventure" has multiple meanings for me. most of those meaning are in hindsight. for instance, I love sharing stories of my time squatting in London,playing squat parties and doing loads of crazy substances, but when i go back to that time, in my mind, i remember that i also had my first nervous breakdown during that period. I played many many clubs over the years...and got paid very very little for almost all of them. I lived in NYC...4 months of which was spent sleeping on the A-train (trivia; it takes 2 1/2 hours to ride the A-train from the bronx to coney island. 2 1/2 trips is 6 hours of sleep). what does it mean? that in hindsight, things that don't kill us, end up being sugarcoated stories we wax nostalgic about.
I say this because I really need to say some things. or rather i feel that you should know some things. first is a quote from Erykah Badu;
"...I'm an artist...and I'msensitive about my shit..."
this quote is me in a nutshell. One of the biggest inspirations for Beatjazz was that i wanted to connect with people. as i learned more and more about electronic music and performance, i wanted to be able to shift a vibe on a dime! to just become raw emotion because i felt that, as with myself, that was what people wanted. I still feel that. creating whole sets of music from scratch is more than i ever thought I'd be able to do. It's as close to religious as i've ever felt! to look at a person and hear what you are playing, change...morph into something you didn't plan, because of that person...fucking magical!!! to walk into a gig with a laptop full of sounds and a head full of music is incredibly primal. you feel like merlin, twirling his wand in ever widening circles of light and stardust, filling a room with the magic of sound and raw emotion.
the drawback is that my emotions are so near the surface almost all the time. the feelings that swirl around me are potent and ever present. it's intoxicating and debilitating simultaneously. and its hard to compartmentalize,SO... its very easy to get emotional about things where it is unwarranted such as when i ask questions online or post songs or ask for feedback. I get emotionally invested in the potential discourse.
A new communication is happening. This is an exciting time for artists like myself. we no longer need labels or a parade of middlemen. we have social networks, and site analytics and paypal and open source...an explosion of options that change the nature of what art and life can be. we can create life-chitecture!
.I dream of being able to create tours based on where interesting and interested people are and not just big cities. Places like Barueri, Brazil where, because of technology, i know there are 198 distinct IP's that have downloaded my music! Sure, Rio or Sao Paoulo are great places(2 and 5 downloads respectively), but knowing that 198 people in this other place are vibing, makes me want to go there. to build relationships.
I want to create something. don't know exactly what. I want to morph this "thing" into something else. I don't know what "else" is though, so i ask questions along the way. i know it will have music elements and some geeky elements.beyond that, I am flexible so here is an idea.
I finally have and am learning to make use of Google Wave. Google wave is the next evolution of email and IM,with bits of social networking spliced in. basically, it incorprates many concepts of collaboration and communication and blends them into one easy to approach interface. there are widgets, gadgets, robots,and all manner of extensibility built right in. to me, this seems to be a perfect way of say, setting up a workshop with someone and having a means to work in realtime to pull all the resources together. I have 7 invitations left. If you would like to collaborate on a project with me, I will give you an invite. collaborate on what?! I don't know. it's a clean slate. lets see what we each bring to the table and what comes out of that.
In other news, I am manuevering back toward Berlin. I have had a fantastic time "visiting" America. My primary goal of imprinting myself onto my nieces mind has been achieved. I have a tentative show coming up in St Louis, MI on Dec 12th, and I will be flying to London the following weekend out of NYC, so i will work on doing a few shows that week in celebration of returning back to my new home, where i will proceed to celebrate some more! so, any suggestions of places that would dig having me play from between St louis, chicago and NYC from dec 13-19th, which is when i fly out, are appreciated. lets party! After which I will be in London and then Berlin by New Years Eve.
Also, I have posted the 2 new tracks that didnt work properly in the last newsletter, in the built in player of this newsletter, I really hope you dig them. let's do some crazy shit this year! holla,
Onyx
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