something i should have been doing all along

A week from tomorrow, I am leaving for Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to attend the annual 34th Infantry Division reunion with my grandfather, who served with the 34th in Italy in World War II. I think I may attempt to chronicle this trip on this blog. Or I may just use Twitter. I need to streamline my various interactive Web applications.

Anybody still out there?

the new jam

www.daytum.com/benk928

This is excellently nerdy. Soon to leave beta and join us in the wonderful world of Web 2.0. I need ideas on what I should be tracking -- thoughts?

slowly coming around

*dusts off cobwebs*

So I am 99.99% finished recording the CD, which I think I am going to call Paragraph, since it's one word that signifies a single idea represented by a few sentences, without ever saying what that idea is. If I want to be really pretentious, I can say it's part of a cycle, with Crisis of Location being three words (and put out in 2003!), Plaid Flag being two and Paragraph as the one-word conclusion. Right now I am thinking the track listing will be as follows:

1. 1993
2. Just Visiting
3. Pace Around the House
4. Secret Language
5. Bring It Back
6. Here Now, There Now
7. Waves
8. Write Your Ballads
9. Stereo Tree
10. I-101

I have not decided what "I-101" will finally be called, nor am I totally happy with where "Stereo Tree" is on the list, but it is subject to review.

On Radiohead's Kid A, there's a song called "Everything in Its Right Place," which the band has said finally helped crystallize what the album would sound like. They had been trying to follow OK Computer in a bunch of different ways before deciding to head in an entirely different direction. Plaid Flag was my attempt at recording all the songs I had written junior and senior years at W&M for posterity, so I didn't really try to come up with a "sound" for it. This one definitely has a sound, and "Stereo Tree" was the song that made me realize that. I've learned more about inspiration and the creative process and stuff like that while making this than I thought I would. It's been (mostly) solitary work, but rewarding as hell. I hope people like it.

Now, if only I could figure out what parametric EQ is.

first post! (in a while)

So I am concocting a few political posts in the background for the future, but I wanted to put something on here to prove to myself it's not another rusted hulk in the ghost fleet of my failed blogs. Today's topic, songwriting -- a subject I am engaging more and more academically as my creative dry spells become more frequent.

For the last year or two, I have been writing and revising a bunch of songs that I am quite fond of. They're more like character sketches, or flash fiction; meant to evoke a feeling or a sensibility moreso than a story or specific person. I came up with guitar parts and sang melodies of nonsense words over them, recorded them on the quick-and-dirty, and took them with me to Europe this summer. On the plane home from Zurich, I listened to the demos on my iPod and wrote the lyrics. The songs, despite being sketched out months or years ago (starting back in late 2006) are quiet and acoustic and very different from what I was writing and recording in college. I think there are 12 or 13 that are ready for prime time, but I'm nervous about the way they sound when compared to my previous songs, which are catchier. I'd like to write at least one "traditional" song, in the pop-rock vein that I'm so comfortable in, but I worry it would disrupt the feeling of the "album" (that no one will listen to. There are five or six more "regular" songs that I already have, including another titleless wonder called "Coffee Song" which I think is great, but they will have to wait for later.)

The other big concern is the title of the quiet collection. I think a lot about song titles and album titles. What's a good title for a dozen or so contemplative, acoustic songs about love, loneliness and frustration? And how do I make the point that these are songs I write when I'm in those moods, and not the way I feel generally?

Love, Loneliness and Frustration (But Only Sometimes) is a non-starter. What are some of your favorite album titles, and what should I call mine?

an issue i care about, part two

What Could Make Someone Want to Leave New York and Move to Buffalo?

What, indeed? There are two stories in this article: one, the tale of trading expensive major urban living for cheaper minor urban living, and two, the undercurrent of urban decay and its implications. First, the second.

Last summer I was sitting in a creepy Internet cafe in Sevastopol, Ukraine, checking my e-mail and the news. I only had a minute or so, so I could only skim a quick CNN.com story about the I-35W bridge collapsing.

Being the interstate highway nerd I am, I knew that meant one of two places: Minneapolis or Fort Worth. Turns out it was Minneapolis, and we know much of the rest of the story. Then there was the steam explosion in Midtown Manhattan last year that killed a woman, badly burned a number of people and should have raised a great national discussion of our aging infrastructure.

I think the root of most of our national problems is in our urban planning. America spent much of its considerable postwar wealth on constructing suburbia. In the process, we built a remarkable network of highways from coast to coast which made it easier for people with money to escape the major urban centers of the East, and build cities with no urban center to speak of in the West (I'm looking at you, Houston). In the process, we built big houses on large parcels in subdivisions far from school, work and shopping. We drove everywhere and we got fat. We never bothered met our neighbors and we felt isolated. And I'm afraid of these fat, isolated people driving across some old interstate causeway and it crumbling to dust beneath their SUV.

The Brooklyn Bridge is 125 years old. The Golden Gate Bridge is 71. The Boston transit system (the "T") is 111 years old. Lord knows how old some of our sewage systems are. Undoubtedly, the people who take care of those structures are working hard to prevent disaster. But somehow, demand for services and infrastructure has increased in a time where local government revenues are down, and the most common solution to traffic is to build more roads. Let's put a stop to pork-barrel federally-funded projects and repair or replace the parts of our infrastructure that we rely on. Let's increase government revenues not by raising taxes, but by selling the right of way from unused transit corridors. Tear down (some of) the interstates. Encourage people to walk, bike or transit to work and watch the societal and health benefits roll in. It ought not to be that hard.

The other note here is just more of a personal one: here is a story about people who fell in love with the big city only to find it didn't offer them some of the things they wanted. They made a decision to try and find a fulfilling life off the beaten path, away from the teeming masses. I could write a lot more, but this post is too long.

Homework: Why isn't our national infrastructure more of a political priority? Why have government revenues failed to keep pace with the price of public works? And what do you think of my "urban planning is the source of all societal ills" idea?

So, who wants to move to Buffalo?

michelle and hillary

In 2004, my friends in Virginia Beach and I made a pact to watch all four nights of the Democratic National Convention, where we watched the good (Barack Obama's meteoric liftoff) and the bad (John Kerry "reporting for duty"). Due to the peculiarities of W&M's fall schedule, I watched all four nights of the Republican National Convention in my dorm. I plan to do the same thing this year.

I'm watching Joe Biden's speech right now. Matt just called his great teeth "the cliffs of Dover." Brilliant.

The first two nights of the 2008 DNC were marked by two fantastic, but very different speeches by remarkable women. Will said Tuesday night that he was going to read the transcript of Michelle Obama's speech and I told him to find the video online. I didn't find the text of her speech particularly amazing. What blew me away was her delivery. Apart from politics or my voting behavior, I think back to when I was an actor in school, or on my high school forensics team. Public speaking is really hard. The stage fright is no big deal for me, but delivering a written speech naturally and convincingly is another matter altogether. I'm not sure if I can articulate exactly why I liked her speech so much. Maybe that's the best endorsement of all.

A very different speech was the next night, from one Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Maybe you've heard of her. I am no Hillary fan. She has such high negative ratings among independents and Republicans that I think she would have undone a lot of Obama's appeal in those areas had she been the VP. But man, can she talk. I often criticized her for being robotic and cold, and she blew those concerns away. Only Clinton could speak to her supporters, and she made a strong case for not voting for McCain, if not a strong case to vote for Obama (her husband did that tonight, quite well I might add). The "were you in this campaign just for me?" line was well done, and her delivery was as good as it could have been -- which is to say, better than I expected.

The risk a good Clinton speech carries is the notion that it only reminds her supporters how bad they wanted her to be the nominee instead. What Bill did tonight, by telling people how a successful presidency should be conducted, is complete the speech that Hillary started. She made the case against McCain and thanked her supporters, and Bill made the case for Obama as president. After all, who would know better?

an issue i care about, part one

Devan made a great point in the comments a little ways back: the shame of our system is in the people who work to maintain the status quo. So let me introduce you all to one of my favorite topics, and one of the few issues I really care strongly about (which almost necessitates it being one of the many not discussed in the typical political campaign):

Redistricting reform.

This is neat, because it combines my hatred of partisan politics with my deep love for maps. Behold: the 3rd Congressional District of Virginia:


This is a textbook example of Republicans in the Virginia state legislature carving out the Democratic strongholds in their home districts (the 2nd, the 1st, the 4th in particular) and duct-taping them together, leaving one seat for the Democrats and several safe seats for the Republicans. In this case, you have Bobby Scott representing the inner cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton and Newport News, the poor rural areas of Charles City and Surry counties, and the east and south ends of Richmond. The area highlighted is predominantly African-American, which correlates strongly with Democratic votes.

Meanwhile, Randy Forbes (R, 4th) represents mostly white, affluent Chesapeake all the way up to mostly white, affluent Chesterfield County, and Thelma Drake (R, 2nd) represents all of affluent Virginia Beach, the rural Eastern Shore and parts of Norfolk and Hampton. It's cherrypicking in order to minimize the opposition seats, and everyone does it. Tom DeLay of Texas got into a bit of trouble for doing the same thing in his state. And since you can only redistrict after every census, it allows for a long period of partisan stability, plus accounts for the high reelection rate of incumbents. Barring scandal or tragedy, Bobby Scott probably won't ever lose his seat in the 3rd to a Republican. And he should have to worry about that, just as much as Thelma Drake ought to (please God) lose her seat to a Democrat. But the system is set up to prevent that from happening. If there is one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it's how to keep themselves in power, to the exclusion of all others.

Fun fact: it is said that if you drive down I-85 in North Carolina's 12th Congressional District with both your car doors open, you can kill everyone in the district.