the culling

There is a certain discipline in only following 999 accounts. Any more and you can’t really be invested in everyone’s accounts/lives. So if there’s a new account I want to follow, one must be culled. Is there a criteria? I’d imagine some might wonder. It could be any number of things on a given day, which might have been a completely different set of parameters from the previous time……100% positive I’m undiagnosed — things. 

I always feel good after a cull. It’s like a spring cleaning —assessing what’s important to you, or what holds your interests….Do any of these accounts still serve their intended purposes? Do any of these accounts still hold my interest? Am I still sated? 

Folks should cull in real life. It’s incredibly freeing.

six

" A plague on both your houses!"

Six words thrown together by William Shakespeare but would carry the weight and emotional gravity of those words spoken. for centuries....how much of what we say and do in life will carry on for centuries? Just think, in the time of Shakespeare, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed. Sir Francis Drake completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. The Spanish Armada was defeated and the renowned East India Treading Company was established. Four separate pandemics of the Plague.....and yet, here we are all these years later and his words still fall so deeply....

"Though art more lovely and more temperate...."

I've always been in love with writers....

matter matters

I keep telling myself to write more, and then forgetting....and not as a vanity project but just because I used to always write in my youth...for no one in particular, to everyone at once....i'm actually quite reserved by nature....i just exist and observe....a mere passenger on this ride called life....

i spent my young years looking up at the sky as night with my dad...i had so many questions...he never made up answers to appease me...he would straight out tell me he didn't know...and he'd say the same thing about a lot of other stuff in life....he didn't know either way....

when i step back and really take a look at life, this planet, the creatures and earthlings that inhabit it, i am more and more humbled the older I get....which is why for me, personally, i feel this desire to shout out at the top of my lungs - THIS! THIS ALBUM WAS EVERYTHING! Because it amazes me so....audio poetry....art....sound...song...a piece of something was made by earthlings and its vibrations circled round the globe and resonated with x amount of people....and it doesn't matter is x = 1...i cant sit there and say i've made anything that affected another earthling....ok, well, i made some cool ceramic art in Mr Birch's class 11th grade and my parents still have all that shit in their curio cabinets like it was Waterford crystal....

all the talk of vibrations of sound circumventing the world isn't new age hippie talk, i mean, sound vibrations and frequencies is science.....it makes all the sense in the world if your frequency is not aligned with something, someone.....so when i see clusters of frequencies aligning, that's just a beautiful thing to me...

i saw this Instagramer, im just going to call them that for lack of a better word, but they had made this lovely digital art drawings of these cool rabbit like creatures holding different albums that the artist said were important to them.....art begets further art.....

and all that's going on while we are orbiting a dying star that's propelling through space as ridiculously fast speeds in just our teeny tiny corner of the galaxy.....the little stuff matters to me.....meanwhile, there us is koel bird calling loudly outside my window....

ten sixty two sandman

 I briefly saw this headline today on some reel but had no time to read more about it...looked it up online and it was from an old Guardian article last July regarding a study about cognitive function between early risers and night owls...no surprise to me really....and not because by nature i fall in the latter category,  but because it's still at night...it's quiet....that's why I have always preferred it....

there is something so intoxicating about the quiet.....in my youth i'd sometimes choose jazz...it was a time to discover davis and coltrane....you could check out the cassette tapes from the library....i'd just sit with the lights turned off and the curtains wide open and let the brilliant rays of moonshine cast their beacons across my space.....i felt closer to the moon....i have davis playing.....bitches brew....i don't understand what's happening.....but i feel it and the moons rays envelope their selves around me...it was hot that summer, with santa anas blowing...these frenetic notes coming at me like a swarm of cicadas, blinded by the headlight of the moon, the trumpets reflecting the heat the santa ana winds bring....

i couldn't have taken that album that way in the daytime...the morning would be out of the question....some nights it was jazz...some nights it would be gershwin....my dad was into ordering these time life cd boxed sets...gershwin, nat king cole, bing crosby, mozart, beethovan, bach, rachmaninov, the platters, ccr, tina turner.......it was a treasure trove of things to listen to at night...no judgement...i love depeche mode...i love the cure...i loved modern english....but i also loved chopin...i would play the righteous brothers over and over again.....the night didn't judge...

there's so many distractions today, so much noise.....kids are under an enormous amount of pressure not just from school but from a super heightened social construct that's amplified by social media.....they need music more than ever......

that's it. end of story.

Thai people can be very blunt, like the Dutch...especially family...you'll immediately know when you've gained weight, lost weight, look haggard (just biked 16km hard), look withered (just woke), look dry (I don't even want to know in what context), look old, look like a crazy person (wearing a poncho), look like a ghost (haven't seen me in awhile), look like a witch that doesn't own a comb - you get the picture. 

I used to hate it so much growing up. It's hard enough being a teenager and like everyone wants to point out you have a zit on your face throughout the day, as if you didn't notice. I mean it's cruel! But I learned over many, many, many years that it's just a generational thing a generation was brought up thinking was a way of showing affection...as if to say, I love you and that's why I want to point out the zit so you don't go around public having an unperfect face. They mean well. 

As I've gotten older, I've learned to actually appreciate the bluntness at times....you don't have to figure out what someone means when they say something....that said, someone told me after listening to the last podcast that I shouldn't include the story about my son pranking his granny....that maybe it looks like I'm a bad mom...and I figured I'd address this publicly because maybe people go through similar things and need to hear this...

I know what kind of mom I am and my kid knows what kind of mom I am and the people of flesh and blood around us know what kind of a mom I am. That's it. End of story.

Don't spend your time worrying what other people think of you - and certainly don't spend your time worrying about what other people think of me! I can't stress this enough to everyone - the people who know you, know you. The people that got you, are the people that got you. The ones that find you and stick with you are the ones that matter. We've only got so much time here so I think it makes much better sense to use that time wisely. Have character, have empathy, have a good moral compass, have integrity, and you will find that it will get you far in life (and it really doesn't take a lot of work).

the good ol' days

 Over the weekend my son had this photography course he went on with pro Canon photographers, and I thought he didn't want mom hovering so I decided to walk the park...i went off trail to look for monitor lizards and owls...it was a glorious day.....we get so caught up in this modern world with gadgets and flashy distractions...having worked with SEN kids for 7 years I see often how sight and sound can be so overstimulating - and they are right. Just in the grocery store the other day with music blaring and a woman with a mic and a mini amp and a butcher yelling out orders, I too, felt overstimulated.....just too much sound....I found out in the park where it's mostly birdsong, my thoughts seem more articulate...my mind wanders more...ideas pop in my head...creativity flows.....

after my kid was done with his course, we decided to rent bikes and bike the park bike course.....im not usually a competitive person unless its trivia games or racing against my son in any form.....so i rode hard....and it was at about the 16km/10mile mark that I wanted to puke, and always immediately playing into irrational fears, I thought I was having a heart attack because I know people are nauseous prior to one....i looked at my steps tracker....I'd walked about 10 miles, and then rode hard 10 miles....and i didn't hydrate.....so literally recovering from being dumb...

i took a book to read at the park...a book I've read a million times.....ok more like 20, but some passages over and over.....i see so many comments on Library Instagram where people ask why people keep a library at home....isn't it just pretention? if you already read it are you ever going to read it again? i keep books i love, because I'm in love with the language...im in love with the words...how they meet together...how they hang, how they fall....

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

When I was growing up, so many bands name-checked writers, poets, artists they loved. The lyrics they wrote reflected how well read many were....when you think of how young a band like Depeche Mode was when they started and look at the depth of the lyrics, it's quite astounding...even rap from that time period was deep....it seems hard to deny that over the last two decades a shift has been made where young folks growing up don't read as much anymore, and I feel that alone affects art as a whole, because you can hear it in music....lots of great beats, yes....lots of great lyrics? no....people write relatable lyrics and that's wonderful when so many people can relate...TS is one of the biggest artists ever and sells a lot of music and is obviously relatable to so many people, BUT it's a different kind of poetry though, right?.....There's poets, and then there's Ginsberg.....I'm glad both exist in the Cosmos for everyone.....You have TS, but then you have The Cure...

"If only tonight we could sleep In a bed made of flowers If only tonight we could fall In a deathless spell

If only tonight we could slide Into deep black water And breathe And breathe

Then an angel would come With burning eyes like stars And bury us deep In his velvet arms

And the rain would cry As our faces slipped away And the rain would cry Don't let it end Don't let it end"

So my pal Anuj is a music fan but he's like more down for the technical and music aspect of appreciation and I was like, yeah, I dig that too but realized only recently that I'm a huge fan of words and mood/energy....

long story short, I think that's why I don't listen to a lot of new music and stick with the old...and that's kind of a copout too....so I've been listening to more new music....

so after unintentionally wrecking my body, I was held up in bed yesterday ill from the dehydration....i forgot it was like 100 degrees F/35 degrees C that day....like I said, dumb...

I highly suggest watching the film The Lost Children.....more that some sensational footage pieced together of recent events to make a buck, the film was actually told in a compelling way because it reflects beautifully on the struggles between Columbia's miliary and indigenous people that would have to join together to search for 4 missing children lost in the Amazon after the plane they were riding in crashed killing all adult on board but sparing the children - one as young as 11 months. They survived 40 days. Highly recommend this film.

Desmond is off on holiday with his family the next three weeks, and as we gear up for the holidays I'm going to take some time and recut some older episodes. 23 episodes in, I'd like to think Desmond and I got better with the production of the podcast. We had zero experience. He was the audio and sound guy for the high school and my best friend. Been winging it as we go along. I don't want my lack of technical abilities to take away from good conversations with good folk. Plus I have OCD. and probably a control freak when it comes to something I'm doing. I understand George Lucas a lot more now. 

If you made it this far, you are AMAZING. I'm truly humbled.

I'm a fan of organic connections

Today, I decided I would combine all episode's of every podcast into one podcast to avoid confusion. Whereas I wanted to separate them before because I grappled with language and subject matter, I just decided I would click the explicit content button and I've done my part. And I've been learning about RSS feeds today. I am not a fan of the digital things needed to be done. Mad props to all those that suffer through it.

I'm working on this other homage to Kevin Kerslake. Kevin was a huge inspiration to me as a photographer because I liked how his earlier music videos made me feel watching them....there was something about the over saturation of colors that drew me in. Here's the backstory of why....
One day a 10,000 Maniacs song popped in my head. I thought to myself, I haven't actually seen a 10,000 Maniacs reel or post, nor one for Natalie Merchant. I wasn't what you would call a huge fan, but I liked them enough and thought they made solid songs.....so I thought, I'll throw up some videos and leave some breadcrumbs for the kiddies to find. I learned a few things that day. 1) Instagram only lets you upload 29 seconds of a music video before it gets flagged. 2) The record labels seem to be decidedly erasing music video directors from history. How can I make such a bold statement? When I was younger, every music video on MTV and VH1 gave you facts with each video. This is the band. This is the song. This is the album. This is record label. This is the director.  So we always knew who was directing what. We had favorites. Not only do the videos on YouTube and Vevo no longer have the directors names, it's really freaking hard to find ANYWHERE. Even IMDB doesn't list everything. So I felt like doing a series to highlight some of my favorite directors, just because. I learned things too when putting it together. Music rabbit holes are so fun to go down....and it beats most of the stuff on the news these days....
I decided that I am going to recut the older episodes too....the reason for this is that I don't want the lack of my abilities to take away from a great conversation with an esteemed guest. When I started this podcast a couple of months ago, I knew ZERO, jack $hit, as my dad would say, about podcasting. Truth be told, I hadn't even listened to a podcast aside from one that I guested on, and it didn't really count in my opinion because it was my pal so it was like just listening to a conversation. People told me to go listen to some and I said that now I didn't want to because what if it tainted me doing whatever I felt like doing naturally? But man, in the beginning, bless all my pals that came on, because it was brutal. Just absolute lack of experience on my part. I clicked the wrong mic, my mic bled through, I thumped everywhere. Plus, at the time, Riverside didn't have proper editing of the podcast in app.....so we had to pull everything out, reassemble it elsewhere, edit sound, then download and reupload back into Riverside to then edit. And it sucked. And its a wonder Desmond and I are still pals because I have learned I am a control freak when it comes to how I want something I see in my head. He's the best. For a math(s) dude. But Riverside now has upgraded their editing capabilities a bit....it's still pretty basic....you can mute people individually now whereas you couldn't do that in app before. There is not a single editing ability for video, which is fine. Like 90% of the internet looks like it's through a filter now.....We're keeping it real, haha, though not by choice! Every one is always recommending different companies to record my podcast, but if you haven't figured me out yet, I'm incredibly loyal and I stick with whatever I'm happy with....doesn't need to be the best....I'm a little DIY, why shouldn't the podcast be? Plus the folks there are SOOOO patient and cool with me despite me not knowing what I was doing.
Example: I contact them and ask them why Riverside episode I'm editing keeps crashing. The tech dude asks for the code for the episode and I give it to him and he's like, Um, what are there like 200 cuts? You have 200 individual cuts from this episode. And I was like, Yeah and I'm only a quarter of the way through! He's like, Lisa, did you watch any of the videos on how to edit that we provided? I said to him, You're the kinda guy that reads the IKEA instructions, huh? He said, yes. Then he patiently told me how to do it and I immediately contacted Desmond to tell him I had been doing it all wrong. I think he told me he knew and tried to tell me. But I'm STUBBORN as f*ck. Worst trait. Anyone that's ever been with me will tell you I'm stubborn as f*ck.  It's like I always have to try stuff myself and fail for me to understand why it failed.
Having written all this, I feel like I should start writing more again......I used to write a lot.....and then marriage....later a baby.....life.....if anything, the pandemic reminded me to prioritize.....that includes doing the little things that make you happy......

happy accidents

I realize I hate uploading stuff to several different social medias, because I simply hate social media....so therein lies the problem because I want people to listen to what I think is a chill and rad conversation, but the idea of promoting it makes me cringe. My peeps are always giving rad suggestions for growth and I'm like, if people find us, they find us. 

That said, I've been busy in my personal life...my kid started a new school, I'm looking after my 80 year old mum....its important to prioritize!

For the latest episode, it was a literally a spontaneous spur of the moment thing....my dear friend Anuj, who runs the nearly million-strong Legends of Music IG account, told me he was going to do a celebratory post for the 17th anniversary of Glasvegas' song "Daddy's Gone". I said, rad, but you should try and get some footage from James' awesome wife, Molly, because she's a photographer (like her dad!) and I know she's had some awesome footage from recent shows that had me tearing up where the crowd is singing along...and it goes to shows how after all these years, the songs still resonate with so many....I then said, to make it even better, I'll ask James if he's down to maybe answer a few questions you might have and you can add that to your post.

What was supposed to be a 10-15 minute conversation ended up being an almost 2 hour one (thanks, Molly, for letting us borrow him so long!) and we were able to cut an episode from it....and i think it's one of our best yet......I already got as message this morning asking about the bonus content....

All our podcasts our unscripted....it's really a go with the flow thing....but usually, I always start by asking about that musical journey people take and we pull a lot of that conversation over to the bonus content....but because we did it a different way, we didn't really go down those rabbit holes.....that just means we have to have James back on again so we can properly go down the rabbit holes. 

And maybe Desmond will be awake next time.

humbled

I don't understand how we have hit over 500K views on Instagram. That's crazy! And we've hit over 4K followers in just a couple of months so thank you for everyone finding us and sticking around. It's super humbling!

cringey gamer

Just an update, from the heart. This past week and a half has been one of those times in life - for me - where I can feel it's time to pause, and reflect. A death is a big thing to walk beside, and a life is often a curious discovery of experiences different from our own. How does one measure ones life? I suppose that's different for everyone as well. But yes, I paused and took some time reflecting, because that seemed important to me.

Life is such a glorious thing. Standing akin to death, I became more acutely aware of life. And I'm kind of obsessed with life anyway and nature and birds and bugs......so by acutely more aware, I mean i was looking at trees and wondering what was their lore? How long had some of these old-timers been here? What had they seem of this odd fellow earthling that calls itself man? I found myself literally placing open palm against tree trunks nicely and saying, "hello".  Looking up at them and watching them interact with elements and other earthlings that found shelter or rest in its open arms.....and while I've always love Joyce Kilmer, I suddenly felt "Trees" much deeper. 

I came home the other day and my 80 year old mother and my son told me of adventures they had that day. They sat and told me all the silly things that happened, where they went to eat, people they encountered. My face muscles hurt from the big smile I had as they both animatedly retold their viewpoints. I said to myself, yeah, soak this for a bit. Soak it as long as you need......because time is always fleeting.....a podcast can pause for a bit.....live life, I said to myself. Sometimes you don't feel like talking, you might feel like writing...where you can't quite as easily fumble over what you want to say...clearly and hopefully articulately....

I have recordings I haven't yet released and people lined up to record and everyone of them is simply so awesome. Desmond is awesome. Anuj is awesome. Surround yourself with good people whose AOE (area of affect) casts warm, vibrant energy around you. (That's my cringey gaming reference, but its applicable.)

unsteady

Just an update that this week's episode will probably be a bit late, and it's not due to any of the rad people who've agreed to come on as a guest, but because the mother of my dear friend has just passed, and coming off a being quite ill the previous week, I've been short on time....and the last thing I ever want to do is rush out a production for the sake of just putting something out.....but producer/intern/magician/sound guy/math dude, Desmond might throw up some previously unreleased "shorts"....

I leave you all with a beautiful quote that I would attribute to Mike Rick, who wrote the screenplay for the wonderful film, Finding Forrester, staring Rob Brown, Sean Connery, Anna Paquin, F. Murray Abraham and Busta Rhymes. I mean, the film is GORGEOUS. Gorgeous language. Gorgeous feels. 

In the film, Sean Connery's character, William Forrester (with many believing Mike Rick wrote it modeled after J.D. Salinger who wrote Catcher in the Rye. Forrester writes,

"The rest of those who have gone before us,

cannot steady the unrest of those to follow."

pure gold

I'm so excited to bring you guys not only my talk with Dr. Robert Allan aka Rab Allan of Glasvegas for this week's episode.....but equally exciting is our new dedicated pages with bonus content for each episode for anyone to dive down rabbit holes.

UPDATE: 13:44 GMT YouTube hit me with a bunch of copyright violations for using Glasvegas music, totally my fault...I thought you got 15 seconds as a freebie before it flagged you, but I was wrong. I may take down the video and re-upload without the music.

SECOND UPDATE: My kid has informed me I need to be more mindful of the camera because my head is not straight. I loathe the camera. That said, don't blame Desmond for choppy editing...that's me and that's just inexperience.....I'm winging it.....I didn't ever plan on using video but everyone including my kid said I should - but that makes it harder to hide the edits....like it wouldn't be for a pro....but obviously, this is just an idea I had less than two months ago and here we are - episode 5! For the record, I'm editing out pauses, any random "whoas" from me, odd sounds....since it's a friendly conversation more than some interview with a random person, people can forget they are being recorded and mention personal stuff so I usually take that out....but that's all i'm editing....this whole thing is so DIY.....but look at all these rad people who knew that going in and came on the podcast anyway....pure gold....xxLV

probably why i roll tank

I just wanted to leave a quick note to apologize for the delays in releasing my awesome interview with Grammy Award nominated drummer,  Jake Najor. It's my bad - I didn't pay attention to the input for the mic when I started recording, naively assuming it would just automatically pick the good mic.....but it went with the mic with my headphones....which I love, and can't seem to replace (I have an unwanted collection now) though they are falling apart and apparently have a lousy mic. My recording sounded muffled.

The good folks at Riverside gave it a look, Desmond, my producer/magician spent free moments that he had over the course of a week to try and fix it as best he could. I then had this idea that since all the audio tracks were recorded separate, I could just read the transcript and re-record mine since Jake's and Desmond's audios were perfect - because, well, they are professionals! So I recorded it and slid it in to replace my original audio. It sounded perfect! Desmond worked hard....again! and for free! But I hated the new version. 

I decided to talk to Jake and tell him what happened. I said we could go with the new recording and no one would know, but I would know and I didn't like it because it didn't feel authentic. I told Desmond I'd rather have a podcast with annoying audio issues over one that wasn't authentic. Jake, of course, was so rad and so awesome and fully got how I was feeling and so he was down to have another chat....but he had to fly to a gig first. So although I recorded Jake 2nd, he's been pushed back to EP4.  

This meant I could push up my episode with my long time friend, Alex Nylund. I've known Alex since I was 13 and he was the person who I shared all the new music I was discovering with. He was also my neighbor, so we had lots of walks home from school sharing the Walkman headphones, listening to the latest tapes we got. He was the only other person I knew at the time who'd heard of or even liked bands like Depeche Mode or The Smiths. And that's the cool thing about people that dig music....it doesn't change.....unfortunately, I've thrice now did something weird with the mic and Desmond is currently working on it.....it's a wonder he continues to help!

I hope you enjoy the episode! xx LV