Hard Like Algebra

So it’s not every day that your favorite band puts out a new album, and the real truth is that I am typically pretty on top of these things in the manner of anybody who grew up claiming that music changed his life and is now thirty-one and would still probably hold on to this fact.  So it was strange to the point of feeling disconcerting when I got the Insound newsletter today and it mentioned that yes, that crazy* bible-themed new Mountain Goats album, The Life of the World to Come, came out today.

Needless to say I have never been more on time as far as leaving for lunch break in my life.

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banksy image via denial_land on flickr

Some things!

–In an attempt to have posts look uniform, I am going to try to have a photo and an eventual read more link in far more of my posts now. Whee!

(can you see how exciting this post’s gonna be?)(I bet you can’t wait for more!)
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Today I went to see Ben Kulp play at Scratch PDX, which the organizers bill as “Portland’s Performance Playground.”

Like a lot of performance nights in that vein, Scratch PDX had a range of talent, depth, and quality. Some stuff was pretty *wink wink* but overall, the performers were committed and the audience was generally apt to love what they were seeing.

I’m always fascinated by how the audience for something like this (or really anything) has a core group of regulars. It’s amazing because you think about this shared, communal experience, people going weekend after weekend to see 30 plays in 60 minutes, or, in this case, once a month for the non-summer months of the year to see the community at large perform works of varying polish. I found myself wondering what would happen if I decided to go for a year without listening to or viewing anything that was prerecorded.

[Side note: Ben was great. It was nice to see his first performance ever. It was fun to see public reaction, and see him control what he could and shrug when he couldn't.]

A night like this does two things for me, and I doubt I’m the only one who would say these things. First, it makes me realize there is a community out there for performance, and gives me a bit of a “wow, this was here all along, why have I never gone before?” response. Secondly, it inspires me to make work of my own–and in this case, it reminds me that I’ve got a background and a lot of training in this, and that I could so something worthwhile.

That’s exciting stuff. I’m glad I was there. I might be there next month, if they’d have me, to perform.

I was cleaning the kitchen tonight, which all good Buddhist writers will tell you really helps you focus on being mindful, opens ideas up in a way quite similar to meditation, and a whole bunch of other great things (which probably include repairing that ouchy hangnail and finally figuring out a cheap way to hang those art posters you have had in tubes for years, left hiding for no one to see).

Growing up in the Midwest–and maybe elsewhere, though I feel like this is part of being Midwestern–a lot of “Clean Plate Club” style rules are commonly ingrained into belief systems. A good example of these was something I learned from my mom–essentially, if you’re doing the dishes, you’re also cleaning the kitchen, so don’t just start it, finish it up.

Sound logic, really. It meant that the kitchen counters were always clean enough that you wouldn’t have to think twice about setting food directly on the counter, and it also means that I practically have the entire meal prep cleaned up by the time i am done cooking a scramble or other simple meals.

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