Let’s try a rare late-night edition of Wise Madness. I should be on my way home from Rockwood Music Hall now but the show I planned on going to was canceled because a band member got COVID-19. I had an interview for a teaching job yesterday. It went well and I have a video interview coming up. They need someone ASAP, my guess is that it’s because they need people that are vaccinated. That’s me! I hope it works out. I’ll keep you in the loop.
It’s been a weird week for Gord’s Gold. I thought I had the songs chosen by Saturday. Then I got a few new songs that I needed to fit in. I spent hours on Sunday getting things to work out. I like to have 56 minutes of music, 55 is acceptable, 57 too much, I can’t say everything I need to say in three minutes. That’s not the only issue. I have to divide the show into four sets, or four sets and one single. Each set can’t be too long, but more importantly they need to have a proper flow and cohesion. I finally found the right sequencing and discovered that two of the sets worked out better than I planned; something tied the set together that I didn’t notice at first. The connections might be tenuous, one started with a song called Chattanooga and ended with an artist that was born in Chattanooga. I was getting ready to record the set I got in a text conversation with a friend that just went to Chattanooga. These things happen. That’s the kind of thing that convinces people that Facebook is listening into their conversation. No, coincidences happen. When you talk about pickles and then see an ad for Vlasic it doesn’t mean that your computer overheard you. It means that you noticed the Vlasic ad, this time because you were taking about pickles. You don’t notice most of the ads.
I built a new recording studio yesterday. I started recording in the afternoon but then it got noisy, and I had to stop. When I went back to recording late at night it was still too noisy; neighbors were playing music and God knows what the people in the apartment above me were doing. That’s what prompted me to build my studio. First, I took my computer into my bedroom which is somewhat quieter than the living room. Then came the construction. I covered myself, the computer, and my microphone with my comforter and recorded under that. It was quite effective at eliminating the outside noises and was a totally dead room inside. That’s perfect for recording. I want to do an experiment, record a segment under the covers and the same segment without the comforter. Then send both files to people and ask which sounds better. I can’t figure out how to do a double blind, but a single blind is better than me judging myself when I know which is which.
I had a serious argument with a friend yesterday that is still bothering me. It was about vaccinations and COVID-19 precautions. I know many of you have this problem with relatives, but she is the only person I’m close to that won’t get vaccinated. I was upset enough to say that she was willing to kill people rather than get vaccinated and take precautions. I know that many of My Gentle Readers are thinking, “You are exactly right and have no reason to feel bad.” That’s not the issue, as my father always said, “You shouldn’t say it even though it’s true.” First off it isn’t quite true, what’s true is she is putting other people at risk of dying, not killing people. It really is different. Every time you drive a car you put people at risk. Things are not black & white, you are either killing people or you aren’t. Like most things it’s complicated and we have to do our best to balance competing interests. I think my friend is wrong, but she’s not malicious. She is not a terrible person. She’s also not stupid. She’s making the same kinds of bad decisions I often make to my own detriment. She doesn’t like the truth, so she doesn’t think it through. Most people do that. By confronting her so directly it doesn’t help her think it through, it makes her defensive and hardens are beliefs. I got judgmental because she was judgmental of someone else. I was triggered. I reacted emotionally, not rationally. We had just discussed that there are all these things where she disagreed with me but over time came about to my way of thinking, without me pressing her, just reminding her where I stand.
I’m watching the Yankees/Red Sox game and find myself inexplicably rooting for the hated Yankees. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I think that rooting for them will make them lose. If so, it’s working, they are losing 4-1.
Wise Madness 