A New Plan, Reality, and Music

The author in between practicing songs for the new album, CROWNS.

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I just wanted to announce that I will be traveling on to Plan B instead of around the globe. Plan A was to be a world tour. Unfortunately, my physical condition just won't allow that at this point. Big surprise, not, I guess... Who knows what the future will bring? 

Seems the actual "walking" aspect of my life is fading into the life experiences of the last version of Alex Wall. The idea of rough camping and walking 15 miles a day and such is as appealing to me as re-taking the S.A.T.. I literally gave my life to those things in 2019 and have now come back to this world to accomplish something different and greater.

My lung capacity is much shortened from what it once was, no matter what I've tried. I thought I could expand it, but have been unsuccessful so far. Putting on my socks, sucks. My heart is doing pretty well, but I am having serious sleep problems. I also suffer from what I can only find described online as Rumination Disorder--something I apparently have had all my life. This is coupled with PTSD from some recent family experiences and of course all the earlier ones. I'm working on it all. It never ends for me. (And that may be be point: please re-read This Beautiful Hell.) 

It's okay, though. Or, it has to be, since I have no choice but to deal with it all. Mercifully, music has been burrowing its way back into my life like an adorable kitten trying to climb up my shirt. Like a kitty who cares, music has been curled up over my broken heart, waiting to be my companion again. And that is making all the difference. It is now something I can't ignore, can't avoid, and for god-sake, why would I ever want to? I love it beyond all the other things in this world.

When I was a young teen, I dreamed a dream. It is one I have described before, but let me recap...

The Spark and Fusion

Once below a time, far back before humanity took over this world, the Spark that I've written about lived in another man's mind, literally on another planet. 

This man on a more ancient world was a musician too, very famous though. He (and his "band"--another man and a woman) was a real phenomenon, even inventing a new way to "hear" music. But he became embroiled on the losing side of a great spiritual, worlds-wide conflict--there being two other planets in his solar system that were involved. And with defeat, he chose to commit suicide rather than give into the authorities. Thus, voluntarily, he lost his only chance to survive death ("survival" in this context means fusing with the Spark after material death). Over the eons of galactic time and ages of interplanetary development, his Spark has become my Spark. It chose me, because my projected life was to be very similar to it's last host. 

So, it was in my teens that this was revealed to me. Sparks forget not what they have experienced in the minds of human beings. And, my Spark wisely chose to show me only a brief scene from it's former host's life. To this day that dream/vision rests in my soul. By choosing this life with me, the Spark challenged itself with overcoming some of the exact same existential problems it faced in the last guy's life. It is betting on me not to drop the ball. Frankly, I think it couldn't have chosen a more difficult challenge.

The Spark is collaborating with my personality, in my mind, while together we build a soul and while also attempting to bring that soul into the outside world, so that I might wear it like a strange garment. And while I myself know there is NO outside world.

This is not to be done for the sake of pride, but as a means of opening the window to what each and every one of us is capable of. I think the Spark is offering musical and compositional insights from the experience of its former host in order to give me a little something extra to work with since just about this time last year, right when the virus hit. I see these insights while I am writing and working out parts on songs these days; bits, pieces, flashes of long forgotten adventures in melody and meaning. Yes, I'd been given these types of musical and artistic insights many times in my life before this point, but nothing like I do now; so frequently and so clearly. Music itself is slowly becoming my Will. I know other artists and musicians would surely agree to some kind of "inspiration."

So why did I wallk so long? Why did I suffer so intensely? Why didn't I simply make music the only priority ten years ago and fill up this last decade with it? I don't think I was ready for the profound self-revelation of musically exploring every nook and cranny of an early 21st Century life in the flesh, but now that I know it is happening I welcome it completely. I didn't know what our society was until I camped around it and mapped it from the outside, from sea to sea. 

It seems to be just the right time to both complete my own spiritual goals for this purely material life, while also doing my part as best I can  to be proactive in designing a new world for the "After-times" (a word I heard Kai Ryssdal use on Marketplace, to describe the more settled future we will eventually find after the pandemic and it's related chaos). I want to influence my fellow human beings, but not for them to believe what I believe. Rather I want them to make their own beliefs the most important things in their lives. I explored our nation, high and low, and you were right there with me, fellow readers! Now we know that basically people are good--if not always thinking very carefully; having a penchant for serving ideologies instead of each other.

Reality Theory

Tangentially, I wanted to remind folks that I am a polymath and therefore continue to be drawn to many different subjects and disciplines. I even have a Reality Theory of my own that I have been working to formalize mathematically for the last two decades. Finally, are my suspicions about the purity and fundamental nature of consciousness as reality maker being validated. My time so close to the Spark in the last ten years has convinced me that there is indeed NO outside world. All that we experience through our senses is a world of collapsed quantum waves that vibrate back out into superposition when we aren't observing them. The best summation of this theory is described by Bob Berman and Robert Lanza in their co-authored book, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe (2010).

I had long been a student of a group of philosophers and scientists, including, Emmanuel Kant, David Hume, Alfred North Whitehead, Marshall McLuhan, David Bohm, John Stewart Bell, John Wheeler, Fred Alan Wolf, Terence McKenna, and Dennis McKenna, and now I have to make space (pun intended) for these new guys: Berman and Lanza. The Anthropic Principle has played a large role in my thinking, but I am much more convinced now than ever before that nothing occurs outside of living things and the consciousness that permeates them, individually and collectively. With Biocentrism, the lines are finally laid down, boldly and unapologetically. I am convinced that this will help lead to the physics and metaphysics of a final and real Theory of Everything.

What does any of that have to do with me? I have a novel mathematical (geometric) and graphic approach to representing multidimensional reality, and it happens to fit Biocentrism perfectly. It is called, "Metaphorics." I will announce the publication of this hypothesis at some point in the next couple of years. While these things are not involved in my creative efforts, they do influence my thinking.

MUSIC - Crowns

The album I've been working on for the better part of this last year is moving along via it's own momentum now. Nine songs have been written (with possibly more to come). Lately, it's been a matter arranging parts within the songs. The project is meant to be an unbroken piece when listened to or performed. In other words, each song leads into the next song. In all, the album is like one song. I want to be able to sit down and play it all the way through. So, keeping the whole thing in mind even when playing one of the songs is important. Besides distributing it online, I really wanted to release it on vinyl. The total length should be about 40 minutes.

Writing and Composition

                      

Some of the subjects of the songs are close to being almost banal in a purposeful way that kind of makes them especially personal to me, and I hope the listener too will identify with that. As with most of my music the lyrics are meant to be more like poems. Songs usually come into being in the following way...

1. Subject is chosen.

2. Instrumental composition is worked out.

3. Words begin to come as I repeat playing it.

4. Melody is born.

5. Write a poem to match the music and fit the subject.

6. Integrate music and lyrics. 

The subjects range from dementia, depression, longing for youth, to deals with the devil, death of loved ones, this apocalyptic age, tyranny of politicians, billionaires and "holy" men, to prophecy about the "Age of Heroes" to come. The things I believe and the things I have written should be familiarly available in my music. It has always been that way. "Crowns" refers to symbols we use to give our world meaning. The obvious connection is to leadership, but the symbol of the crown could also fit the corona (which of course means "crown") virus.

The music is old fashioned sounding, compared to what is considered popular right now, especially when played solo on the piano. But I "hear" the songs in my head already in their final and more aurally experimental state, in full instrumentation with a band beside me.

Therefore, the first published version of the album will be piano and voice--kind of like a demo. Then, after I've had some time to perform it, I will put together a band to fully record, produce and perform it (along with future albums).

CROWNS 

Current Song List

1. Herx Sing

2. Already Over

3. With You

4. Seven Stars

5. Snow to Rain

6. Crowns

7. I Don't Know

8. Euphoria

9. Age of Heroes

Album Cover Ideas

The following sketch gives a very rough idea about the theme...

Recording Environment

I have been writing poetry, song lyrics and prose since 1980, playing my own music since 1982. I've been multitrack recording since 1984. In the early days, buying and piling up mountains of equipment was the real goal of building a studio. Thankfully, I have been able to hold onto the core recorder (a Korg D32-XD 32 track recorder with programmable moving faders).

I used to have twenty guitars, two basses, effects units, a dozen microphones, stands...tons of stuff. In 2011, I gave most of it away and put the rest into deep storage. What I have now is the most basic set up left from that storage. My 1986 Fender Stratocaster is in need of serious repair and is unplayable, same with my acoustic. So I bought a simple Ibanez electric, which turned out to be a great guitar! I picked up a Kustom amp for $2 at a yard sale, from a couple who thought it was a broken air conditioner. I still have an old modified bass that I just bought coated strings for a year ago. I have my little Yamaha keyboard and my Rode condenser microphone. Interestingly, for live vocals, I still have the same Shure SM-58 I used in high school!

Mostly though, I have been attached to my mother's beautiful Yamaha Studio piano. I secured a microphone on left and right inside the piano to isolate them from vocals. For some reason, since my surgery in October 2019, I have found it much easier to play the piano, and to sing.

   

From left to right: Korg D32XD recorder, Shure SM-58 microphone,

guitar and piano, and amp far right.

Ibanez guitar and Kustom amp.

I hooked up a headphone jack for my mom so she can listen along to the mixes on the recorder.

I am learning a bunch of cover songs too.

A Working Routine

Though musicians are said to "play" music, writing, performing, recording, mixing, mastering and producing an album is a huge amount of work. For sub poverty folks like me it has to be done for no compensation, and is the very definition of "a labor of love." But it does pay me. I have had a horrible experience in the last ten months (even unrelated from viruses and coming civil wars). As implied above with my mentioning rumination, there were panic attacks and depression, insomnia, anxiety, high blood pressure. I had been libeled, defamed, and slandered by the closest person in my family. Being able to escape into music might well be called a "life saving" activity.

I do live -in direct care for my mom now and am blessed to have her as my captive audience. Actually, when I procrastinate and a day goes by without piano work, she begins to tell me how much she likes listening. Many nights after working on my originals I play her a set of ELO, the Beatles, John or Paul's solo material, Pink Floyd, the Eagles, or unusual stuff like TV on the Radio, Duran Duran, David Bowie, on and on... Mom remembers the songs by sound, but not by title. She has her favorites of both my music and the covers. She is easily moved to tears, unable to suppress her intense emotions (even really good ones) when she listens to music. Songs like those from John and Yoko Lennon's, Double Fantasy, or Louis Armstrong's, "What a Wonderful World" or Cat Stevens', "Morning Has Broken," or Leonard Cohen's, "Hallelujah." By far her very favorite cover tune that I play is "Midnight Blue," off of ELO's, Discovery, album...

Mom's favorite cover song: Midnight Blue

With Mom's support, my routine includes playing a whole day 4-6 hours of cover tunes (sometimes broken up) to keep my piano and vocal chops up. Then, each other day I work on the latest CROWNS' songs, before running through the whole album as it is currently structured. This is usually in 2 hour chunks. I do get burned out though, and if I play my songs too often I get sick of them. Giving a day in between covers and originals is enough to keep my interest in both.

* * *

I suppose that at this point, everything creative that I do is really just for myself. I have to admit that, like all my former walking, if one or two people care enough to follow along I will continue to be motivated to share what I do. I have no more illusions about becoming a big star, nor do I desire to be cool anymore. I want to make music for music sake; to mine the ancient melodies within myself and brought forth by the Spark, in an attempt to reinforce the harmonies needed to help keep humanity hungering for unity, peace and love.