Dear reader(s),
It’s 11/11! Make a wish!
Was your wish for a stream-of-consciousness commentary post? I’ll never tell!
It’s Monday night, it’s rainy, and it’s been a semi-productive day. I’ve also been fortunate to be able to lie in bed for a bit, listening to the rain patter on the plastic dome of the skylight like a white noise app from the early days of iOS.
You remember those days? You could go to the App Store and there were a dozen or so “must have” apps. The flashlight app, that just turned your phone a solid color; you could choose red and pretend you were walking to the bathroom at 2 am in a submarine; you could choose the strobe feature and see if you were susceptible to seizures. Shazam, which still seems like the most practical witchcraft to me. Koi pond, where the fish would follow your finger around the rippling screen. Not everything was monetized or ad-filled yet. Some stuff was a nominal price; some was just free. It wouldn’t last, but then, what does?
The rain just increased in intensity, which is making me think about music and rhythm. I’ve been playing around with GarageBand again; it’s amazing how your phone comes with a full-fledged recording studio and virtual piano and virtual sequencer. I never learned to play the keyboard and I think I should…to that end, I managed to (mostly) convince myself that I should focus on learning to play the (virtual) instruments I have rather than go out and get a physical midi controller with drum pads.
And there’s so much to learn and do…I spent half an hour with an EQ plugin trying to locate the exact frequency of the sibilant “s” sounds so I could remove them from my vocals. This, too, feels like some sort of magic.
Although the focus of this blog is writing, I don’t necessarily want to limit the January River “art stuff” to just writing. I’m incredibly inspired when I see somebody’s reel featuring a funny song that is somehow also amazingly well-produced AND features a bunch of different instruments. I look at the guitars and basses on my wall and think “I should do that.” I mean, you could do it all on an iPad.
I’m also thinking about merch. The point of this is not necessarily making money—the blog is free and will stay that way. But, I don’t know, if you could get a sticker or a T-shirt or a coozie with the snowdrop logo on it…that might be cool to somebody. Wear it to a show at a small local venue. Be kind of indie, right? Say “yeah you’ve probably never heard of him.” Do people still do that?
Picture it: black middleweight T-shirt. Swiss 721 Bold Extended. The words “ART STUFF” on the front, leading and kerning adjusted properly to make it blocky. Snowdrop logo and “january-river.net” on the back. Yeah? No? Maybe?
A snowdrop sticker with the URL below it? A car magnet?
Coasters? Guitar picks?
A throw rug with a quantum cat on it? I should go back to that story…
A final thought: I’m working on a long-form project under a different name and I hit 11K words the other night. That’s easily the most words I’ve ever written about a single thing. It’s 50 pages (depending on your formatting). And it’s a lot of work. I’m really proud of it.
So those are the things I’m thinking about…the more interesting ones, anyway. Speaking of which, here are some interesting multimedia things from the back catalog that you might enjoy:
- Rain Falls on the Streets of a Coal Mining Town – an instrumental composition using GarageBand and Apple Loops
- Not From Here – a short story with a song
- Blog Photos #1 – a collection of featured photography
- Collector’s Item – a short story in three parts about the search for a rare (?) and valuable (??) collectible
- Cool Band Names: A List – Flange, Flangé, and Squinge
Enjoy, and thank you so much for reading, listening, looking, and checking out all this Art Stuff!
–jr
