so my attempts of looking for work has again gone sour or at least somewhat. it seems that for the past month all i've been doing is sharpening the knives so to speak. i feel it's pretty important to get some of my finished work printed out and ready to be shared with a professor and some of my colleagues. i plan on meeting some professors up at the university of portland and chew the fat. i feel pretty confident with what i've achieved so far as a self taught composer, or at least with the amount of material i've conjured up. but i would really like to make a good first impression. i just really want to know where my work can possibly take me. i'm sure it'll be a formal meeting with little fireworks and a dash of realization of what school might be like for me...or if it's even for me period. but i feel that the cantata i finished "lost industrians" chour and instruments will do good for starters. it'll be funny if the professor i meet will be the same age as me. but it's a goddamn good thing still a romantic at heart who prefers to be moved emotionally by sound with a dash of conceptualized ingenuity. i'm pretty sure that my perspectives will show in my wild personality which can either annoy the privileged few or the unlucky many. in all honesty though, i really don't prefer to start with a concept. i'm sure some of my readers already know my rhetoric but that shit comes later. concepts to me anyway, provide a bit of a booster when your carriage is stuck in the mud. it can usually comes down to the selection of timbres (instruments), or knowing when a risk is not risk enough. jesus, half the time i start with just the notes! i'm not bagging conceptional (avantgarde) music per say (well maybe a little) but there's definitely room for everybody on the dance floor right? wrong. sometimes i think there's only room for the well connected and the well financed. perhaps those are the folks who tend to hover around the punch bowl looking at me like i need to go get a fucking drink. i just hope it's spiked. i'll pour a pint of whiskey and quart of laxatives in it. you can set a whole party on fire that way. perhaps we'll begin to see the light after we've left the stalls, beginning to ponder that the light down the tunnel might not be who get's to the bathroom first but that it'll be ok to take some chances and do something that's truly extraordinary. hopefully there can be something to get our minds off relating things to this or that. i tire of labels. but let's not forget the dreams we had as children, remember recess? when things were appearing out of nowhere and over the hopscotch? i still remember being alone pretending i was with a bunch of midgets playing time bandits. good ol' days.
looks like it's time to get my battered ass a job. i will of course be temping as to keep focusing on my music and save every penny i can before college. i spent yesterday with my sister, bother-in-law and little nephew named zan. he's a cute little bugger, he's a tough guy too. he'll stand a good chance at the 2020 superbowl if our society lasts that long which by the way has set a prime example at all the commercials which were displayed. yeah, pretty lame. all the swirly computer graphics started to make me depressed and sea sick but whatever, it's the same as it ever was eh mr. byrne? so yes, it's job time. lame but maybe fun. uhm, it's going to be funny though. it'll be just like getting food stamps minus the children and confused breeders. of course let's not forget that they'll be the chair from 1982 under the spotlight and the lines will be very, very long. perhaps not as long as my ding dong tapping the cup which contains my urin sample but a test of my lacking sobriety and down spiraling ways. i think this time i'd rather be a dishwasher, well maybe. i did that line of work before and it's kinda fun. all the plates of unfinished food rushing across the counter, the waitresses asses dancing between the isles, maybe some tips and a pack of ciggs but i think this time it'll be diffrent. they'll be empty plates due to a sagging economy, the hosts will be all gay men wishing me for a sailor and the tips will be yesterdays dinner. i can hear the lovley couple talking now. (camera pans) "oh, lets take it home and freeze it!" she'll say. "oh, no it'll be fine in the fridge!" he'd say pounding his fist on the table.
after all the pining and pawing, the hemming and hawing, lost industrians is finally finished. jesus, this piece took forever. ya know how some things get done quickly and some forever? well i think i might of reached something in between and down-under: crocodile dundee down under that is and i'll get back to that later. i just sometimes felt that the piece never wanted to be left alone. it just kept nagging at me all morning and nagging at me all night. i obviously needed some closure here. i mean i've been working on this hunk of junk before, during and after my separation with the ol'lady. fuck, i think i started hammering away on it around september or october. anyway, the gator is dead so to speak. i'm just left with the finished idea and i've yet had the chance to skin the bastard. the skinning part is working on the layout (manuscript positioning), final mix (sound), and last but not least getting it printed, folded and center stapled. it's a lot of work when you don't have a crew doing it for you while a gaffer dashes across the street to pick up a couple of slurpee's once in while but there ya have it: dead, gone, kaput, end of the line. but what i'm trying to say here about crocodile dundee is a mere comparison of being someone lost among a new los angeles: the digital universe. i'm still grasping to catch up with everybody else and we've got to realize when too much technology is too much technology. what about the human element? i adore classical instrumentation, i still think it's endless but jesus christ! it always comes done to two things like folks who need an idea or grand concept first in order to create and those who just using thier feelings, instinct and hearing first. i'm not a fan of the great concept or idea and i'm sure some of my beloved readers understand this. but it's much like moses arriving back from his great acid trip and just standing there in frustration observing his minions still worshiping a golden calf. we all know the real reason we're here is to tell people to get ready for a new age. but will his new age forget about crippled symmetry, about how flaws make us who me are or are we just going to assimilate cause you shit heads can't stop breading! yes, yes i will have my differences and among my minions will be of course my enemies. but that's the comparison see? me and crocodile dundee walking down the streets of portland with me holding a stainless steel mixing bowl filled with boiling hot water and a bag of cocaine thinking it'll help someones sinuses. and the aussie holding a boomerang and a dead kangaroo. if you've seen the goddamn movie i think you'd know what i'm trying to explain here and that is i don't have a fucken clue. home is very, very far away.
finally had my first "rob" session from a six year hiatis. those times were of a failed marriage and deep seclusion. when i rode my bike down morrison with a flash light ready to hunt for addresses like a pizza delivery guy, michael knapp was in sudden view. "hey, dave!" and that was that. thank god i ran into him cause by the looks of it i would of been lost. i walked with him to the plaid pantry and waited outside like i was a minor waiting for someone to buy me a six-pack of hamms. he then led me to the building of a thousand chambers and i stood there completely stoned, unable to do anything while they were setting up. i mean i was in total shock and i completely forgot how to hook up a keyboard and get to work. by the end of it i seemed be unable to move to the other instruments cause i was just flat out totaly confused. it was great to meet adam from white rainbow for the second time and had a chance to play music with him (he's a total madman by the way) curtis layed on some great beats and was just orchestrating the shit. michael was warping a casio into a pretzel and the sounds comming out that fucken thing was unworldly. by and by it was pretty fun. but let's not forget good'ol tom blood. man, that guy is fucken crazy! he made me piss my pants at least a few times. i almost had to rush to my messenger bag to change my adult diapers he's so fucken crazy but where does he come up with all that weird ass dialog shit? him and curtis really play off each other really well when it comes to spoken word. it was unfortunate that kenneth scott rawls was unable to show up due to flu like symptoms but we made due. so as the lights dimmed down and the radio disconnected, we all began to part ways. as i was leaving i began to ponder on how i can teach the rest of them how to say my last name correctly. i wasn't in the mood to correct people that night due to the state of shock i was in. the stunned sensation led me to listen but i'm pretty sure they either think miklos is my middle name or their afraid of the extra four syllables. my middle name is reuben but how could they forget? curtis remembered, but the majority of the lot are english majors and i think they might of suffered some sort of amnesia but come on! my last name is not snyder, it's miklos-snyder damn it! it's sounds like a medical term of some sort, so when you see me on the street think disease, meeeeklos-sniiiider show some respect fellas! ha! even after the divorce i'm keep that name all the way to the grave bitches! now, what was adam's last name again? it's defiantly not rainbow.
jesus, so much work to do and so little time. things have been wasting away ever sense i stopped eating pot brownies. with crossings written for A Capella chorus (SSATB) i feel it would be best to divide the chorus into two sepatarte groups for stereo & polyphonic adventures. this will be very difficult to figure out. included will be some strange notations which i'll have to figue out on sibelius (not-so-bad music notation software). at the same time i'm finishing the layout for lost industrians. i'm very happy with this piece but as i continue my journey i find that the forms are getting more compressed, in other words smaller. things are going from nine minutes to about three or five. fuck people, it's about quality not quantity. i don't want to be stuck in a world of repetitious patterns. that shit is for drum circling hippies who wear hemp clothing and listen to peter tosh on a bumper stickered ghetto blaster. these are the folks who devour phil glass and think steve reich is the bomb. puke. i want some real stories, some real shit. think hard and play hard, bitches. not parading the party with a half filled champagne glass thinking warhol was the last stop. that's all i got to say about this network. i wanna keep it real like fred rogers and wear green striped cardigans. fuck big bird, he's the one in the drum circle hitting the skins thinking pot was intended for whales who work on Macintosh's. boy, am i burning bridges or what. losing friends and losing the march of dimes. who's going to take me seriously this time? john adams? i don't fucking think so, keep that shit in the fireplace. i'll keep playing with my crusty go-bots.
it looks like i have a lot of inspiration for some choral work. i met with my new found librettist michael knapp and it looks like he's the one for the job. it feels good to collaborate again. that shit is just the steam i need to move forward. i almost feel that the distance from my piano is both good and bad. lately i've found it difficult to get to the piano and work through my shit. it's not the fact that it's resting in a broken home, it's just an energy issue. so i was there this evening to work thinking heather was going to be at her newfound boyfriends house when all of a sudden she shows up and then 15 minutes later new dude shows up. i was uncomfortable at first but i got through it ok. i shook his hand and made some jokes before disappearing thinking that the time was now. he seems like a very nice guy and very calm at that. i'm happy heather has someone who's more sane and in control of himself. it in turn made me think inward stuck in reflection questioning myself and what kind of person i am. it's good to get it over with and meet the victor. that fucker can take all that shit, i just have to keep on rowing. jesus, alone again with music singing her same song very far away. stuck inside some grain elevator all alone and all knowing. a jettisoned valley with no lantern and no clear way out....gawd, i'm such a pussy. i just need to stop looking for a crossbeam in the celing.
