inquiry

> As with the astral larvae, they can be disintegrated with > sulfur powder.

Now there's a thought I didn't expect to have today!

> we gave > up

Ego tires even of itself, especially when other egos – let's call them Zuckeregos, shall we? – find lordly addictive ways to control it – even whilst basking in its own LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! faux glory.

And then there's how about-ness (see also: re-presentation) conceals genuine is-ness....

> I wish I had tawdry tales and scandalous stories to share, > but I do not

Aw, c'mon! Give us the three-dumpsters-prematurely-full story again! :–)

> but, speakers, turntables, all the stuff that goes into > that hobby; I can't afford it and I am almost glad I cannot > afford it, because it would be a waste.

By the time I could afford it, the seemingly-permanent-but-oh-how-wrong-we-were CD era was upon us, so now I've a bunch of spindles of those I've not physically accessed in, oh... has it really been at least a decade or two already? And the world somehow didn't end for not drowning in their content? And it turns out I mostly like the same dozen songs easily accessed on Youtube so long as I forget about having to click through and/or around advertising gimmickry.

> Here in Missouri, people like to play make-believe that > they live in the far Arctic tundra of Alaska when a > snowflake falls. They forget how to drive, they buy-out > entire grocery stores, stockpile food – full-on survival > prepper mentality. And then the shit melts as soon as > a sunbeam comes through the clouds and their “prepper > plans” are not useful, and the food goes bad, and just a > lot of over the top drama when they would otherwise know > (if they are from here, and used to varying weather) > that it is best to play it by ear, let the cards fall > where they may.

<mental notes>

:–)

Can't complain about the meteorological situation where we live. It's a nice distance south of where I grew up, which definitely takes some bite out of winter. But it's also dominated by proximity to a rather large (some might call it “great”...) lake in ways that I think approach “increased stability” for what I'm imagining (hey, I'm not some cute weather person...) to be its, um... energy momentum, i.e. its cool slows down/lessens heat increases whilst (different season) its warm slows down/lessens cold increases.

But it's definitely a very northern (for the United States) locale. I can't imagine living much further south. A place like Florida or Arizona would likely kill me. And, of course, when places like that are warm but not hot, people flock there, and that's even worse. :–)

(except for college “libertines”, of course.... <coughs>)

Super fun night, last. My wife helped me through some glum (hard to explain..), and got in a ton of music practice, which is extra important as I phase in the looper (three channel, actually). We're definitely going to either fall on our faces, or take a series of quantum leaps in our performance skills, as there are gobs of things that can go wrong when one person is operating such a device, and the other has no idea what sections/phrases they're capturing and/or when they're going to re-insert them into the flow. You either work that out in advance and always do it the same, or you become what I want to call more Miles Davies – a laid back openness/responsiveness.

And then there's shit like wanting to capture a phrase, but you botch the capture even as you're playing and singing, thus scrambling – without visibly losing composure – to erase the bad capture and be ready for another opportunity, which of course opens other less-than-ideal possibilities like losing one's place altogether, forgetting lyrics, playing a capture one forgot to erase from the previous song, etc.

The device's biggest shortcoming (although I suspect increasing experience will slowly mitigate it..) is not having a means to set two discrete volume levels – one for more rhythmic guitar work, and another for solo volume. Yes, of course there's a pedal. But say you've captured an eight bar section at normal performance volume. You want a solo to rise above that. So you increase the volume via the pedal. And that's fine. But you may want to capture another section in the same song, so you need to get the fucking level back to “rhythmic guitar level”... or you need to end the song with a little rhythmic guitar, which you don't want blaring away at solo level. But we're talking accomplishing this in real time, and the pedal is anything but a discrete-settings device, and focus upon it detracts from focus on other matters whose ignore-ance can lead to varieties of embarrassing disasters.

But oh my gosh, the dimension it adds when propitiously utilized!

But, again... whereas it likely wouldn't be too much trouble for just one performer, adding another that doesn't know what the pedal-operator is doing can be harrowing. How to communicate what was captured, when one is about to come into (re)play, etc.? I'm talking about with a headset microphone mostly permanently on (could mute my channel to talk, but that cheats the playing a bit... and if not understood the first time? try, try – and maybe fuck up – again...).

How to communicate, for example, “I'm about to start a copy of the music behind the second verse to solo to twice through” without talking?

So it seems we shall be learning a lot more about mutual improvisation.