Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 23

Practice Room / Focus

Of the scant few things I can recall from my time in music school, it’s the sound of a practice room hallway – that collage, that cacophony of harmony and dissonance, mistake and success, of toil and focus, mostly – that lingers still. Thinking of these pieces as the sounds emanating from my practice room, my contribution to the collage.

(Yes, I know it might be noise but I won't frame myself in relation to the other sounds; if this be noise, then let it be MY noise.)

Trying out a new routine here, a new writing schedule – though posting times will probably remain the same. A general desire to avoid posting while writing, to concentrate wholly on the process of writing these pieces. A little more sanity to the morning, a little less harried rush; a hope that by pushing the writing of these into my unplugged time I'll focus more on the words and less on the nuts and bolts of platform.

Thinking of something David Bowie once said:

"I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations. If you feel safe in the area that you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being. Go a little bit out of your depth and when you don't feel your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

Anything to go a little deeper into the sea. Back to work.

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In addition to these daily ramblings, I also send out a newsletter – a digest of the week's Informalities wrapped in a subscriber-exclusive seventh Informality – every Sunday morning. You can sign up here, if so inclined.

The Citizens of MINI MOTORWAYS Despise Me

Good morning. I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back to sleep. Turned to Emily Dickinson; perhaps could’ve also turned to the subject of this ramble (but Ms Dickinson was probably the correct choice).

Nearing the end of my first month with Apple Arcade and, while I've dabbled in several of its not inconsiderable offerings (SAYONARA WILD HEARTS, PILGRIMS, GRINDSTONE), it's Dinosaur Polo Club's MINI METRO follow-up, MINI MOTORWAYS, that's not only brought me back time and again but made the leap from occasional iPad enjoyment to constantly-with-me iPhone necessity.

(Also have to give a shout to WORD LACES, the other offering that's made the leap to the phone.)

But yes: MOTORWAYS. It's perfect blend of ambient music, restful simplicity, and restful panic – as the parking garages fill and the bleeping honking denizens of iconographized cities and the timer ticks to Sunday and its turnover promise of more road tiles or a bridge or a traffic light (still can't find the point of the lights – my citizens get angrier; maybe my cities are the digital realization of those traffic light-zero experiments) or, perhaps, the holy grail: a motorway – is nothing but irresistible. All I ask of you, oh, tiny road-rage-fueled beeping citizens, is the chance to make you happy, the chance that, like any Fantasyland offering, you share my faith that the next time I play will be the time that my dreams are realized and you get to where you're going.

In my Arcade "Play Later" list (that doesn't exist, yet - thank you XBox GamePass for finally putting one in): LIFELIKE; MANIFOLD GARDEN; and NEO CAB. Also, I think I included it before, but The Washington Post recently published a fantastic list of Arcade games, courtesy of Harold Goldberg, author of the must-read ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

EarBliss: LA SABOTEUSE, by Yazz Ahmed

Irresistible fusion of post-bop jazz with Middle Eastern modalities and rhythms. Also: I'm a sucker for jazz covers of Radiohead (see Mehldau, ART OF THE TRIO Vol. 3, "Exit Music (For a Film)", and this morning’s listen, Mehldau’s “Paranoid Android”-variation dominant soundtrack to MON CHIEN STUPIDE ). Highlights: "Bloom" (I believe Ahmed played on the original track), “Organ Eternal." Her latest release, POLYHYMNIA, continues the brilliance.

Of WristWalls and Timers

Once a wasteland of divided attention, perceived obligation, and self-loathing, my afternoons are, as my mental endurance and stamina increases, transforming into something resembling useful: the second two-hour work session of the day (the first being between 0530 and 0730, give or take).

Process not without its difficulties: while my previous working method (cram everything into the morning) suffered in length, it was the price to pay for the consistency it afforded: I put in my time every. damn. day.

But the afternoons are cagey little bastards: those pangs of perceived obligation tend to grow louder as the sun comes up, those pangs that tell me I should, I must, I have to (nevermind the actual obligations that preclude daily repetition (though if I got a little better about time management, maybe I could swing it) – appointments to be made to make sure the car doesn't combust, etc etc, or my desire, on the weekends, to spend time with my wife and to take care of things that need doing). Pangs a lingering product, no doubt, of learned behavior (calling dismissed as hobby, the lack of recognition of its importance to me both by myself and by others) and general exhaustion.

Still, though, in this paint shop office – heater working well BTW; this place will be a sweat lodge before I'm done with it – with only two walls and no door, I'm learning to create walls and boundaries and doors with the MultiTimer app on my Apple Watch; it's the essential tool of my day, walls and structure on my wrist. Eventual goal being that it, the mid-afternoon block, becomes nothing special – it will simply be what I do.

And I know that, in order to bring my (perceived) calling to fruition, I must (there’s that word), in the words of JLP, make it so.

(Listening): MON CHIEN STUPIDE (Bande originale du film), by Brad Mehldau.

To the bitter end

Mélange: Profanity-Spewing Dinosaur Animoji / GEARS OF WAR / Cursive

Good morning; it’s foggy. Well, it was. But it isn’t anymore. Except in my brain. Case in point:

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Spent much of the morning perfecting a tweet about the profanity-laden dinosaur animoji and thinking of how to best rearrange my office so as to maximize the impact of the tiny window of 750w warmth it provides. Deleted the tweet but will work on the office. Think it's time for one of those social hibernation periods – not out of any particular disdain for social media but simply a reflection of my preferred state of mental calm and a desire that my breath be more wisely spent.

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The accolades for GEARS 5 has inspired me to take another stab at finding the appeal of the GEARS OF WAR series. After 10 years and somewhere amidst the third act of the first game (the remastered ULTIMATE edition), I think I've finally found that appeal – though I can't put it into words, yet. A problem, certainly, but no more of a problem than the inability to jump in GEARS. I dig the cover-based gameplay but this lack of jumping is a cement shoe – this isn't a constant throughout the series, is it?

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Declaring it official: I can no longer write in cursive or in lower-case. (I had intended this to be a longer piece but this simple declaration of defeat will have to do.)

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Confronting the truth that I will have to return the bookshelf to its previous location and that the office rearrangement was, like the profanity-laden dinosaur animoji tweet, destined to fail. Happy Monday.

Shelves

Groomed Morkie

Of Purpose v. Vacillation

It's a remarkable phenomenon: doing The Work IS the tonic for most ills: even amidst the greatest tumult, be it imagined or real, the very act of sitting and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard restores balance; it restores that sense of purpose.

On the good days, I tell myself that this is the path I chose, this path of selfish creation; that I found the one thing that I would do if no one gave a flying fuck about my work and that I am, in spite of myself and my learned inner resistance's protestations, doing what I want to do: I am writing a third book.

And then the bad days: there are many of them – more, I think, now, than there had been (but I might be wrong). The days when the blood sugar is out of control, the days when I feel suffocated by this place, by family, by my body, by life, when I lose the capacity to outrun myself, to fight the Happy Meal toy plastic bag over my head from the trash heap – around here, the ditches and culverts of back roads – of this comfort food fantasyland, and submit to its haze of perceived truth: that, ha, writer-boy, you're not a has-been! You're a never-was!

(Reading Wolfe / BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES: so I'm exorcising these exclamation points. Nearly done with it, should be out of my system by this time next week.)

But I know (or I at least tell myself that I do) that the bad days are mostly a product of my opinions, my imagination run amok and wasted on useless things (a better use would be to use that imagination in The Work, wouldn't it?) than of reality – and that the truth is sandwiched somewhere in the middle of these vacillations of myself. And so I type on, because, truthfully, it's the only cure that works these days; I don't know what I'd do with myself if I didn't.

Further Notes on My Shitty Handwriting, Continued

Rummage sale has commenced up the street and the bargain shoppers roam and The Morkie has been delivered to the groomers, our path lined with children in costume at the end of driveways. STRANGER THINGS, sort of; I think there was a hot dog costume. The hot dog waved.

Thinking through the why of my seemingly endless quest to improve my shitty handwriting. Current line of thought: handwriting is a powerful – if not the most powerful, for me anyhow – tool for thinking and for the results of that hand-thought to be nigh-indecipherable leaves me adrift in a ruptured dinghy with a half-finished exorcism, uncertainty, and the uncomfortable feeling of having forgotten something.

Also: quality of handwriting / speed of it indicative of speed of thought? By slowing down the former, can the latter be brought into balance? A perpetual state of rush – probably carrying more weight than my bridge's capacity but hell, that's my one true talent, especially this year.

Working at it, still: slowing down, trying to hold the Lamy Safari the right way – though I feel as though I have to learn to use it anew every morning; I only get a true grip on it around the third or fourth hour of the day's work. Trying to forget that I'm trying to get better at it – ameliorate the performance anxiety, maybe – another of those efforts to keep my head in the game that, by the very nature of having them, keeps me at least three feet from the borders of the game itself.

Happy Friday.

(listening): FIBS, by Anna Meredith.