friEND

 I think somewhere in Ecclesiastes it says “There is a time to plant and a time to uproot / A time to try really hard to make friends as an adult male and a time to give up.”  I’ve reached that point and I’m honestly not even sad about it.  Giving up trying to get this impossible brass ring has freed me of the stress and sadness of pining for what I don’t have.  It’s not happening and barring a miracle, it’s not going to happen so stop wishing and being sad that (e.g.) you don’t have antlers and get on with your life and enjoy the things you do have.

For decades I tried all kinds of things to make adult male friends.  I felt lonely because I didn’t have any and everything you read says how important it is to have a support system of peers.  So I studied what I call “friend theory” and would try to do the suggested exercises.  I would try to strike up conversations with guys at church or at my kids events and these other men would recognize that I’m “other” and remove themselves from the conversation*.  I’ve gone to men’s Bible studies for years at a time**, trying to talk to other men, and it eventually left me feeling worse because I could see other guys connecting with each other but I was still on the outside.  Well, I thought, maybe it didn’t work because I’m a music guy and “friend theory” says that relationships are built on x-number of shared experiences.  So for over five years I tried a dad/jam band, which at times was enjoyable as a pastime but musically left me unfulfilled because I can’t find anyone who likes the music that I love (or is even tolerant of it***) and so this year have decided to let that go as well.****  I get much more enjoyment from playing by myself along to a recording of songs I love than I do with playing music with other guys of songs that leave me tepid or worse.

For the past few months I’ve been content to just be.  I don’t have much, if any, inclination to try to build friendships and I even struggle to maintain the few relationships I do have.  There’s a guy I’ve known for a long time (who might be the only one reading this) who is back in the dating game so he’s radio silence.  And I totally get it.  Maybe that friendship will rekindle at some point but right now he’s busy with more important things and I’m extremely happy that he seems to have finally found a good woman.  I’m part of a FB group about one type of music that I love and was surprised to find that another guy in that group lives in my city (actually in the neighborhood next to me).  We met for coffee last weekend for about ninety minutes and it was nice to talk a little with someone who was at least familiar with the bands I like.  Maybe I would have been stoked a few years back but in 2024 I feel like it was just okay and that getting together again is more a feeling like I should than that I want to.  But it’s not a negative, just a lack of urging.

If this sounds like I’m depressed, I’m not.  I’ve been there before many times and this is not there.  I’m just… content to float downstream, I guess.  I’m tired of being tired from expending energy in this matter and so I’m letting go.  And it’s very liberating!

 

 

* I should mention that my personality type is INFJ, less than 1% of males.  “Oooo, an exotic and valuable unicorn!”  Nope, it means I don’t fit in.  Period.

** In fact I’m getting ready to head to one held at my work in a few minutes… and have been trying to decide if it’s time to call this one quits as well.  Six months in and nothing other than a little bit of small talk with one of the similarly-aged guys at the cafeteria.

*** The one except is having met “Mike the drummer”.  Although our musical tastes are different  he’s usually willing to try playing about anything that isn’t too complicated.  Of course I love prog music so there’s that.  But Mike is someone who would give you the shirt off his back and I’m glad to have him as part of my life.

**** Except it’s never that easy.  After 3+ months Mike (see above) wants to continue so I agreed for the sake of being a friend.  I’m setting my expectations uber-low and not spending much free time practicing.  I’ll just show up and wing it and hopefully not sing any Lynyrd Skynyrd songs.

 

 

The Most Invisiblester

I truly am invisible.  

 

I was recently part of a volunteer band where a video was being made. The first problem is that I play bass and non-musicians ignore this instrument. I'm only half joking.  

 

The strangest thing, though, was that they did six pass-throughs with three camera people each time moving around the band and getting close-ups and medium shots of the singers and band members. There were plenty of times where I watched a camera operator get right up into the drummers kit or park in front of the guitarist but, you guessed it, there was not a single time when any of the camera operators even pointed their camera at me, let alone came over for a shot like they were taking of the other musicians. Three people whose literal job it is to capture images of the moment completely ignored me not once but six different times, like I absolutely didn't exist! I wasn't hiding or hiding behind anyone, just standing there playing my instrument like everyone else. 

 

Normally I kind of laugh off my ability to be unseen but I’m having a difficult time shaking this one off.

 

 

1/15/2024 Update: It lasted a couple of days and now I'm over it.  The video was released today and it actually made me laugh. Do you know the part in Monster's Inc where the two main characters (I don't remember their names) watch a TV commercial and every time the green guy is about to get some camera time he gets blocked by something? That's exactly how the video was.  It was amazing!  Multiple times I would be behind someone and the camera would be moving and just when I would emerge from behind a singer they would cut to a different view.  Or the light was such that you could see my body but my entire head was in total darkness.  It was crazy funny!  But at least I was turned up in the mix and you could (gasp) hear the bass!  Most of the time it was louder than even the keys and the drums... a very unusual (and not very good) mix.

 

Rowin Fuzz Frenzy LN-322 - an inside look

 Maybe this is why I was surprised there were actual germanium resistors in the G-fuzz.  The Fuzz Frenzy sounds amazing and states that it offers "sounds of Vintage Germanium Analog fuzz" but when I cracked it open, there was no germanium.  Naughty, naughty rowin.  But like it said, it's still glorious fuzz tones galore!

Rowin G-Fuzz LEF-322 - an inside look

And so begins a new series where I show detailed photos of the insides of the (almost always budget) pedals I own.  I have no idea why I take apart my pedals and see what's in there.  I've tried many times to learn electronics and how circuits work and many times I have failed.

Here's the first pedal... a cheap Rowin G-Fuss germanium pedal.

 I was honestly surprised to actually see actual germanium transistors inside this $23 pedal (Motorola 2N404)!  It sounds fantastic... smooth and creamy and fuzzy.

99.9% Is Not Enough

My wife and I recently watched a testimony video where a guy enthusiastically spoke of his conversion for about thirty-five minutes.  And by “enthusiastic” I mean he maybe took three breaths during that thirty-five minutes.  It was a great and amazing testimony (Video here).  

But I’m not sure it was all that inspiring.  One of the things he said what that at one point he actually heard God say “Isaiah, I won’t accept just 99.9% from you.”  I’ve heard this from preachers before, that God wants ALL of us.  Every last piece of us should be willing to serve God in whatever way He wants.

I totally get it.  Jesus gave everything for us so we should be willing to give everything back. 

But I also don’t get it.  I mean, it’s obviously not a requirement for salvation, so what is it?  From his story and how he talked, I doubt this Saldivar guy ever did anything with less than 105%.  The apostle Paul was the same way, zealously persecuting the Church and then God whipped him around and he just as zealously pursued God’s way. 

What about the most of us who aren’t constantly exploding with energy at everything we do?  Or those of us who have been let down so consistently by people (including the church) that even trusting someone 25% is a big deal?  I’ve been increasing my trust in allowing God control over my life over these past decades, and while I trust Him more than any person, I’m still nowhere near even 80%.  So where does that leave me?

 

 

2022 Entertainment Roundup

It’s time once again to write a year-end round up for my own amusement.  Pardon me if I’m not scoring high on the excitement meter because I’m finding it difficult to be excited about anything lately.  The old They Might Be Giants lyric keeps going through my head: “Now it’s over, I’m dead and I haven’t done anything that I want / Or I’m still alive and there’s nothing I want to do.”  Them TMBG boys used to make some great albums…  Speaking of “used to”, two highly-cherished bands released albums in 2022 after (in one case) decades of silence and both were just kind of “meh”.  If my temperament was better then I might have found these albums as enjoyable as many others seem to have found them. 

One surprising new band that blew my socks of is Frost… in 2006.  Their Milliontown album was phenomenal, and their follow-up was almost as good.  Eight years later they released a disappointing collection of songs and in 2022, five years later, they released Day And Age.  I didn’t have high hopes and I wasn’t disappointed in my lack of enthusiasm.  It was a decent album but I haven’t found myself wanting to listen to it since it was released, meaning my score of 7 is probably spot on.

But five years between album releases ain’t nuthin!  How about fourteen?  Can it really have been fourteen years since King’s X released XV?  While this band’s first five albums rank them as one of my favorite bands of all time, everything after 1994’s Dogman have been inconsistent.  Some I liked, some grew on me, some don’t get much play.  It was not with much anticipation that I listened to Three Sides of One and it’s… decent.  Right now I have it at an 8 and it’s still in my vehicle, hoping that it will grow on me.

But fourteen years between album releases ain’t nuthin!  How about THIRTY ONE?!?!?  Yes, the original Chagall Guevara album came out in 1991 and I still listen to it now and then.  I tempered my hopes and backed their Kickstarted and waited.  And waited.  And so on.  Eventually the album came out and… well?  Two songs had been released before during the previous decades (and one of these was a cover), leaving a mere seven original songs.  Some of these are quite strong, but I can’t help feeling like I got the short end of the stick.  It gets a 7, being docked one point for being a glorified EP.

What else is there to complain about?  Hmmm… the much hyped Troika is pretty good (7) but not deserving of all the gushing people heaped on it.  I very much enjoyed stumbling upon Prehensile Tales by Pattern Seeking Animals (8), which is a variation of late-era Spock’s Beard with solid songwriting.  I’m looking forward to investigating their other two albums.  I finally listened to the first Knifeworld album (8) and found it unusual and interesting.  Shades by Ty Tabor (7.5) was nice, a bit better than his last album, to my ears at least. 

I also caught up on some older albums.  I tried Frosting on the Beater by The Posies a few years back and nothing happened.  Fortunately I tried again and found most of the songs thoroughly enjoyable, a solid 9!  Sometimes it’s not the music but where you are in life.  All Right Here by Sara Groves was also highly enjoyable, but the other two early albums of hers I listened to in 2022 were not nearly as satisfying.

And then there’s Matt Bisonette.  He’s currently a touring bass player for some big, big names (in the 70s) but in his past he’s played in Jughead and Mustard Seeds, two Christian-leaning bands I’ve dearly loved.  So I was very glad to find that Spot (7) and Raising Lazarus (9) fall very much in their style of upbeat, positive, carefree, distorti-power pop and that he is, in fact, a practicing Christian… practicing more than in just empty words.  He has quite a few more solo albums which I’ll explore over the next year or two.

 

In my reading life 2023 was the year of Clifford Simak.  I read 14 novels and 9 non-fiction books (for a whopping total of 23, the same number that I read in 2022, but far less than my peak of 50 in 2007).  Half of the novels were my Simak.

Lemma tell ya… when this guy is at his A game he comes up with some imaginative stuff!  His book City is considered a sci-fi classic, and for good reason.  It is a bittersweet, timeless story of a world that’s gone to the dogs.  Literally.  Mankind bred dogs to be able to talk and created self-replicating robotic arms for them before slipping off to Saturn and other dimensions, leaving dogs to argue if this ancient myth of “mankind” is actually based on reality.

Goblin Station was a wacky comic book, with a well-read cave man, the ghost of William Shakespeare, maybe a wolfman?  It was pretty madcap, but not zany.  But even better was another classic, the lonely The Way Station (I’ll be reading that one again) and Ring Around The Sun, which was an early novel based on Simak’s themes of alternate dimensions and the economy.  Yes, the economy.  I should also add that most of his writings have rural settings.  Based on a few pages in Ring Around the Sun I’m pretty sure Simak was a fellow INFJ.  So wonderfully unique… so uniquely unable to ever fit in with 99.99% of the worlds population. 

In the early summer I enjoyed Amish Zombies from Space by Kerry Nietz, the sequel to Amish Vampires in Space.  He kept it PG, even with the violence, like a good Christian author.  I’ve been waiting for 2023 to read the final book in the series: Amish Werewolves of Space (what? You were expecting Amish garden gnomes?)

I received the Mike Lindell autobiography What Are The Odds as a gag gift from my kids but I like reading autobiographies so the jokes on them.  It was a great read… about as fun as it gets these days.  I re-read Perelandra by C.S. Lewis after a three+ decade break.  Some people love this book but not me.  The first 2/3 of the book is fairly decent but the last third has no action of any kid and is pretty much a long allegory with few guideposts to help the reader along.  The Jewish Gospel of John by Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg was an excellent interpretation of this meaty gospel, postulation that its original audience was the Samaritans, which would explain many of the “problems” people have had with it over the centuries.

I guess my 2022 reading time was pretty enjoyable… another thing to be thankful for!