Monotheism

The successful spread of monotheism can exclusively be attributed to the basic premise of monotheism itself, which declares there is only one way that everybody should think, act and behave, and that all other ways of existing are not only wrong, they are evil. This extreme intolerance provides incentive for monotheists to conquer all who do not believe like them in order to re-educate them to align with their ways, which monotheists, in their supreme arrogance, call “salvation.”

Attraction

If you imagine back millions of years ago to the time before communities had been formed (after all, there could be no society before there were enough humans to form a society), it seems probable that the best way for humans to continue to exist would be for a male to wander around impregnating lots of different females, and for those females to reproduce no more young that what they could take care of by themselves. The most successful humans would be those that were genetically motivated to behave accordingly. That would include a sex drive to motivate couples to copulate, then motivation for the male to move on and means and motivation for the female to take care of the child. I believe that many of these motivators can be tied to sexual attraction as we know it today.

While culture does influence our concept of attraction, the degree is probably overstated by most. It is more effective for culture to exploit our natural inclinations. If they were to create them, it would be most effective for them to ally with culture, and many of the ways in which we tend to be sexually attracted do not at all harmonize with our accepted social norms. Humans tend to want to credit civilization for everything, but I don’t give it too much credit as we mostly act in highly uncivilized ways. The role of culture is often to provide means for us to get along despite our genetic impulses. This is why I think the current fad of encouraging people to follow their bliss or whatever is not only poor advice, it is dangerous.

Evolutionarily speaking, diversity is essential. Our success at genetic diversification can in part be attributed to our attraction to those who seem exotic. When critiquing human sexual attraction, it is important to realize the distinction between the majority and the minority. (One of the major flaws with democracy is that it values the majority opinion only.) If everyone agreed on everything, we would all compete for the same things to the extent that we would kill each other fighting over them. Majority opinion need only be 51%, which means it can be disagreed with by 49%. This slightly unequal balance is what makes us survive as a species. When analyzing human sexual attraction, we can make generalities regarding it that only a majority of our species need relate to. So for instance, it is a flaw to think that all humans should be heterosexual. A minority of homosexuals makes perfect evolutionary sense in maintaining a diverse balance in order to avoid over-competition. This notion will be especially hard to grasp by dogmatists who believe that everyone else should think and behave exactly like them, or worse, their conception of a “higher being.”

In order to maximize the chances of conception, it makes sense that females would be attracted to males a few years older than them, since females reach puberty a few years earlier. Much to my chagrin, it similarly makes sense that females be attracted to taller males, since males with longer limbs will generally have one longer muscle which will put their sperm closer to the egg. It would make sense for males to be attracted to younger, healthy-looking females, who are more fertile and more physically capable of taking care of young. We can find all kinds of evolutionary logical explanations of attraction such as these.

I will now return to my initial postulation that pre-society humans must have been propagated by males wandering around impregnating females and then leaving females to raise the children themselves. I am not suggesting we should return to this barbarism, simply demonstrating that ways in which we are and tend to want to behave today can be credited for allowing our species to continue to exist in past millennia. Behaviors current society frowns upon were at one time essential. These ideas need not be applied to humans only, but I’m not going to try to speak for how other species might be attracted to each other.

Species growth would want the couple to start coupling as soon as possible. The quickest way for this to happen would be to skip mutual consent altogether and just have one gender be stronger, more aggressive and more dominating than the other. Of course you wouldn’t want one gender too much stronger or they would tend to kill the other gender off, which would cause a serious problem. It would also help if the genders met half way in this regard, which can explain sado-masochistic tendencies. To avoid trauma and still provide motivation for couples to get on with it, it would make most sense for attraction to be superficial. For the record, being able to make someone laugh is every bit as superficial as looks.

Species growth would also want for the couple to stop coupling once the female was impregnated and provide incentive for the male to go impregnate someone else. I propose that this can explain why sexual attraction tends to wane over time (I know many will object to this, but any relationship that has not figured out how to keep things novel will have a pathetic sex life) and why males tend to not be attracted to rotund (to be euphemistic) females (although in northerly latitudes the perceived relative healthiness of women with more fat would supersede this). Big hips help ease birth itself, which can explain the attraction to the hour-glass figure. The fact that the female must be able to successfully feed the kid can explain why males tend to be attracted to big breasts. (The necessity of females to be willing to care for their young can explain the motherly nurturing instinct.)

Trust

In my experience there are four kinds of people: those who lie, those who exaggerate, those who refrain from telling the truth and those who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. People have suggested I have trust issues, to which I coyly reply, “I don’t have trust issues because I don’t trust anyone.” Actually, that’s not true, I trust people sometimes. But I always regret it eventually.

My parents have been married 38 years. One day when I was around ten, my parents got into a big argument and my dad left. The next morning he came back and brought with him a gift for each of us three kids. Presumably he brought something for mom too but I don’t remember. My dad sat down with each of us, discussed the situation, apologized and promised that he would never leave us no matter what. I can’t really remember the conversation or what he gave my brother and sister, but he brought me a hot wheels car that from that day forward was by far my favorite toy car. I do remember realizing that he had spent his night away wandering around buying us presents, which showed that he was still thinking of us even while he was gone. My dad never left again.

That car happens to be sitting on the window ledge next to this computer now, and I sometimes find myself staring at it and thinking how lucky and grateful I am that no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get and no matter how annoying they are (oops, I mean I am), my parents will always be there for me. I can’t even begin to imagine where I would be right now if it weren’t for that fact.

Passive/Aggressive Communication

I’m not the only person who, after a conversation, ponders why I handled it in the manner I did, but I might do it more than most. I will be moving soon, and my current landlord just called and gave me a ten minute lecture on how we need to clean up the house and the yard so she can show it to prospective renters next week.

I found her nervous tirade annoying for several reasons: it happened at 9am on Saturday morning, the entire conversation falls under the heading “No shit, Sherlock,” we already discussed it when I gave our notice, I’m the only one home which means now I’m going to spend my Saturday cleaning this place by myself when most of the shit in this place isn’t mine and I have friends visiting from out of town (well Eugene, less than two hours away) this weekend and last but not least I freaking run a housecleaning business for crying out loud, which means the place will get cleaned and I get (and give I’ll admit) lectures about cleaning on a daily basis.

I could have been agreeable and assured her things would be clean, but I instead chose to basically pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about. The downside to this tactic is that it caused her to lengthen and intensify her rant in a desperate effort to get through to me. The upside is that now she’s going to spend the weekend worrying that she won’t be able to rent the place, which I feel is appropriate because her being able to rent this place is the least of my problems right now.

Drumming

For me, drumming is intimately tied with frustration and loneliness. The amount of time I spend drumming is inversely related with how happy I am. In other words, the worst times in my life have been the times I’ve spent drumming the most. I use drumming to express my vexation and isolation. For me, drumming is catharsis. During a self-illuminating conversation in 2004 with bandmates about what to do after another of the band members had quit, I said, “I don’t even like drumming- I just don’t know what else to do.”

It is no surprise that I’ve never been at all interested in communal drum circles, where the music is highly rhythmic, simple, repetitive, energetic, danceable and fun. If I’m in a mood to be silly, carefree and happy, I will definitely be doing something other than drumming.

I listen to music when I’m alone. The fact that few people I’ve ever hung out with like or can even tolerate the same music as me is only part of the reason why I don’t like to listen to music with others around. It takes a certain degree of concentration to be absorbed into music that eschews distractions which others necessarily provide. One unavoidable assumption worth mentioning is that when we are with others, our assumptions of those other’s opinions influence our experience. Most people consider sound something that goes on barely noticed in the background. Sound fascinates me. My curiosity of it sprung from my obsession to give myself something to practice on the drums that I didn’t already know how to do, because challenging oneself is a highly effective distraction.

Performing by drumming in public is a pain in the ass that only fellow musicians can understand. First, you have to convince a venue to let you play there. Then you have to try to coordinate a time and place to get other musicians together to practice. Then you have to hope a miracle happens and that those musicians show up in time to make use of practice, as musicians are seemingly always running late. Unless the practice is taking place at my home, I have to get to the practice space, which requires: packing up my drums; loading them in my car; driving to the place; unloading my drums; setting up; waiting for everyone else to show up, set their stuff up and probably stop drinking and/or smoking weed; practicing; tearing down my drums; loading them in the car; driving home and unloading my car. This all must be repeated for every practice as well as the gig itself. I’ve driven to venues up to 6 hours away on several occasions, and have had to haul my drums ¼ mile to get them to and from the gig. At the gig itself: the room generally sounds horrible and is filled with smoke; the soundman, if any, usually has no idea what they’re doing; you almost never get paid enough to cover the gas it cost to get there; if there is any audience (usually limited to the bartender and the other bands playing that night, although they often show up late for their set and leave immediately afterward. Not to mention they often are unbearable to listen to…), most seem to not care about what you’re doing whatsoever which really makes one ponder why waste all this time doing it. After the gig, you have to listen to everyone’s bullshit opinions (usually consisting of them lying to your face) about your music, which is probably the worst part of it all as far as I’m concerned.

Cyborg/Pinball/Bridges

I learned at an early age that I live alone in my universe. I specifically remember being completely confused the first day of second grade that the other boys in the class had not also spent the summer playing “Cyborg.” From that day until now, I have seldom met anybody who can truly relate to my preferences, interests and beliefs. Consequently, I have spent many years trying to create bridges hoping to connect my universe with the universe of others. I don’t really believe this has been a futile endeavor, but I tend to perceive it as being a frustrating one.

In a lot of ways, I view my universe as being akin to a pinball game. I’m a helpless little ball being frantically propelled around by various random, unavoidable obstacles, equipped solely with two little levers with which I can only keep myself from being sucked into the hole at the bottom of the table whenever I tumble towards it. With practice, I can aim myself at an obstacle in an attempt to gain points (learn) from it, and I guess that the only point of the game. Despite my best efforts, I’m sometimes sucked into the hole by forces beyond my control and out of reach of the levers, and then I must prod myself in the ass with a spring-loaded rod to get myself going again. I could just sit there with the rod up my ass, but that’s the same as having never come out of the hole.

Cymbal solos

A good friend gave me a little pre-amp last Christmas and I have a couple microphones, and lately I’ve begun using them by plugging them directly into my computer and using a cracked version of Sound Forge with no editing, compressing or equalizing options whatsoever.

Actually, the impetus for recording was a cymbal competition at cymbalholics.com, where the premise was to record an mp3 format solo using only one cymbal with no edits lasting two minutes or less. I recorded a solo that I thought was pretty good using only my 22” Sabian Raw Dry Ride and my bare hands. Although I didn’t win, I did get second place in their sister competition dedicated to hi-hats. My hi-hat solo using 14” K’s, brushes and a bass bow kinda sucked, but I won another set of hi-hats, generously made and donated by a guy named Matt with an avatar of Teethmeister, and recorded a better solo using them and a pair of sticks.

Since I’ve made the recordings, I might as well share them:

Cymbal solo
Original hi-hat solo
Hi-hat solo redux

Cullen

I don’t know what it is about Lost Nation, Iowa, but three of the greatest people I have ever met (as well as the biggest nuisance I have encountered since high school) are all from that same little town. Eric, Cullen and Phil grew up together as best friends who all loved The Red Hot Chili Peppers so much that they each learned a separate instrument so they could form a band. Despite their closeness, they are all very different and distinct individuals, and somehow I ended up hanging out with each separately during three different times in my life.

Once, when Phil had gone away to an instrument repair college in Minnesota, we decided to try having me replace him as the drummer for Soothing Syrup. I took a quazi-kit made up of a floor tom, snare and hi-hats into Cullen’s dorm room and struggled through a miserable experience trying to mesh with Eric and Cullen. It didn’t work at all. Years later, when Damon and I were seeking a bass player for our new project, Cullen tried to play with us with equally disastrous results.

While our musical tastes and abilities were incompatible, Cullen introduced me to some surprisingly fun recreational activities, such as perusing car dealerships after hours, extreme snow surfing in his Caprice, breaking into the art building, constantly taking random photographs and spying on people. But the single most important thing I learned from Cullen was the concept of tone.

One day I went with him to a showing of student and staff artwork at our University. Looking at a painting, Cullen exclaimed, “How did she make that red?” This caught me off-guard. What did he mean, “make red.” Don’t you just buy red at the paint store, dip a brush on it and apply it to the canvas? Then I looked at the red, and began comparing it to every red in the exhibit, and found every red to be different. I also contemplated how one would make that red; mentally visualizing the color wheel and trying to dissect what colors could have been combined. I considered how that red was being influenced by its surroundings, and vice-versa.

Tone: what a concept! From that day on, I began considering the tone in all things; visually, audibly and orally. When I worked at a recording studio a few years later, my sense of audible tones became highly developed. I tried to learn the tone of every component of a sound, even hearing the influence of different microphone cables.

As far as I can tell, there are four kinds of people: those who idly let life pass them by, those who wonder what it’s all about, those who try to make something of it and those who are aware of tone. Admittedly, that’s an egregious oversimplification that actually only echoes my own progression through life, but that’s possibly all I’ve learned thus far....

Thank you, Cullen, for giving me the world.