“If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find a work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination, artistic accounts involved severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.” –  Alain De Botton

Four years ago I traveled to Kauai as a graduation gift from my grandparents. If I am being completely honest, I was not all that excited about the trip. It wasn’t that I was ungrateful, but more that I felt like I knew exactly what I could expect from a vacation to Hawaii. White sandy beaches, drinking out of coconuts, Luaus and tropical fish. All of which are things I was looking forward to, but there was a serious lack of anticipation. After a delayed flight, and switching of planes my best friend and I were ready to get off of the plane. We were met by my grandparents, both dressed in Hawaiian prints – with beautiful lei’s ready to put around our necks. My grandpa had rented a jeep with us in mind. The first thing I noticed about the island was that it smelled like flowers. The weather was balmy but fresh, and I could hear the waves from the airport parking lot. It was in that moment when I realized why there are so many, movies, photos and paintings of this place. Hawaii was like something I would imagine in a dream. As soon as we got to the resort I had my first ever “pinch me” moment. The view from the balcony was unlike anything I’d seen in real life, and was more beautiful than any picture or painting. From then on, I was in utter bliss. I experienced so much joy in things as simple as walking to the convince store – because everything was so pleasant and I had not expected that to be the case. This quote from De Botton reminded me of that experience. I hadn’t allowed myself to anticipate anything  new before my trip because I let the simplification of  others experiences do that work. This experience taught me a lot about expectation, and as I plan to travel to a new city that I have heard a lot about, I plan to make note of my expectations and continue to revisit them throughout my trip.

While my Kauai story turned out to be a beautifully pleasant surprise – I doesn’t always work that way. De Botton touches on the concept of disappointment in the first chapter of The Art of Travel. It i true that with expectation often comes disappointment. I don’t believe that it’s because the world is a disappoint place but rather  we let our imagination hinder what reality offers. De Botton writes “The present might be compared to a long-winded film from which anticipation selects photographic highlights.” As I reflected on these notions that this book suggests, I got to thinking – What things will stand out to me in New Orleans? What will I take the time to write about in detail? What will I find important or significant? and Why? What will I leave out?  For a while I was in a creative writing program at Evergreen. My professor insisted that we always keep a notebook and a pen within arms reach. After the first week of recording every single seemingly insignificant thought or idea, it became apparent to me how fleeting my thoughts are. And every time I sat down to write, I could open that book. It’s like an all access pass to your own brain, and it proved to be a terrifying but beautiful tool. De Botton, in his writing, reflects on his traveling experiences with such vivid detail. He writes about things like the barbecue on the veranda, that had seemingly no significance, but for some reason he chose to write about it. And it’s details like that, that really put you in a place. I want that for my writing this quarter. I want to record every thought, idea, or question. I want to draw litter in alley ways if that’s what captures my attention – and I want to do it without immediately questioning why, but rather make space to reflect later on. The more I give myself  to reflect on, the more I will learn. I am going to practice getting in the swing of this intense recording for the weeks leading up to my trip with hopes of it being a less distracting tool during my time in the city. I look forward to revisiting this book while I’m in New Orleans.

“Journeys are the midwives of thought…” This quote was said by de Botton. I believe that he’s trying to say that when you’re on a journey you have to develop an artistic way of looking at the world because you need to adapt to the stress and trivial, irritating things that accompany travel. By developing your ability to condense the striking elements of the world and to cast away the trivialities, you will find happiness or peace within yourself. By looking at the world as an artist, everything around you becomes art. When you are thinking creatively, and as an artist, you are able to grasp concepts of the world easier than most people who look past thing that aren’t of usual interest. On page 13 of The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, he says, “If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.” I believe that in this quote, de Botton is trying to convey the idea that art is basically a distilled reality. Because art is designed to hold the most interesting or startling perspectives of and reflections on the world, with all the boring bits sucked out, it can end up creating a distorted expectation of reality. Furthermore, when you’ve got an artistic imagination I would say it improves your ability to retain the most critical images from an experience, but as de Botton soon makes a point about, even a human trained to identify powerful images may allow their brain to edit their memories into small, scattered handfuls of single images. I think it’s interesting that he creates this contrast between the beauty of art and the aesthetic appreciation of points of travel that would normally be ignored. That is, while most might try to forget or sleep through the more stupefying parts of the journey, de Botton proudly shows his appreciation for the subtle, ephemeral details – the transitory byproducts of human travel. For instance, when de Botton has started to talk about Edward Hopper (page 47) and his love for the elements of travel and transport: gas stations, hotels, near-empty diners. As de Botton quickly assesses, “Loneliness is the dominant theme here.” Perhaps traveling alone affords one more introspection and opportunity to spend time reflecting on their experiences.

This was certainly the case for Gustave Flaubert. In the first Motives section, On the Exotic, de Botton creates a portrait of the French author of Madame Bovary. I was really impressed at how radical his views were for his time in history.  I drew a connection between his total hostility to his own country and love of the exotic to some of the things I hear nowadays, like people who say they’re “colorblind” in an attempt to try and downplay their privilege. It was so rare for someone from that time period to be so dedicated to throwing away pointless affectations and limiting social boundaries like binary sexuality, so I thought his experience was interesting. I wish that de Botton would have included more information about Flaubert throughout the novel, because I found his section to interest me the most, quite honestly. I like to read about strange characters and people who were radical before their time versus someone continually speaking about the same subject using different words. To be quie honest, I am not fond of de Botton as a writer. I find his opinions to be strange and his attitude to be off putting. He does this by using a way of speaking that is hard to understand. The tone of his writing is rude, and it almost feels like he is acting like he has infinite knowledge of everything. I feel that his tone is condescending and because of that it’s hard for me to not become biased while reading this. He uses tiresome language to express extremely facile ideas. This is probably not the most popular opinion of de Botton and his writing, but it is how I feel. I also thought that some sections of the book were consistent, and some tended to meander. The quality of the writing was inconsistent. You could see this inconsistency in the Departure sections 1 and 2. This is mainly where he is describing the details of travel and he is reflecting on it in what I consider to be a rather vapid way.

This track is unmixed and unmastered. It has accompanying vocals that are not on the recording. It is only instrumental.

I have been writing and performing this song so often that it almost seems opaque to me. It started out in a series of recordings I was working on utilizing record samples inspired from our classwork. I picked up a Stravinsky record, Gregorian Chanting record and Shoenberg/Beethoven record from Rainy Day in Olympia. This was the ninth song in a series of sixteen and counting. The exact sample is from the beginning of the Concerto in D. The piano I wrote is rooted in D major but spends most of its time in the minors surrounding it. It wasn’t until this afternoon that the piano was actually recorded into the song file. This instrumental was used simultaneously with slight variations for two different performance collaborations. I practiced performing this song for two weeks with three different people; each version was equally as powerful and met with similar reception.  The first performance took place at Pig Bar in downtown Olympia with Ladexx. It was the only original in a series of three songs we performed and I used the Akai MPK49 to perform the piano live. The next morning I awoke and came into class to perform the piece for our quarters final performance workshop with Eli and Kimani. This time I decided to use the actual grand piano rather than a keyboard. The difference in key weight had an unexpected effect on my ability to play some of the softer parts audibly and stronger parts with restraint. For the first time I was able to contrast separate performances and instruments before writing a finalized version of instrumentation. The piece is still in development and is due to be performed in Eli’s future set lists as well as Wednesday March 18th at Pig Bar’s Open Mic. There is a recording of the original performance floating in cyberspace that I am trying to aggregate. I will post when I find it.

This track is lightly mixed and unmastered. It is only the instrumental.

Chad Leaf is a classmate, friend and LA native whom I collaborated with in Fall quarter. I thought this a pertinent inclusion in the study considering the connections between Olympia, Musical Cities and LA. With idle hands I slowly pieced this track together. It began as essentially a long series of trial and error experiences between two jams separated by a cigarette comma. The instrumentals consist of myself on the piano, Chad on the guitars and bass and Eli with lyrical accompaniment, however, this has yet to make it onto the recording. The drums and beats were produced by myself and a unique drum program to Logic Pro X.

The collaboration started as a rough idea chad had recorded and an inquiry to my involvement. Chad came over to my place with Eli and we set out to replicate the drums Chad had included in his rough draft. This process was relatively easy considering the ability to program and quantize in DAW’s. I took the beat Chad had in mind and added my own flair to it with the quick snap 808 Snare drum and the live sounding cymbals and fills. After this loop was created, Chad tuned into the Digital Audio Workstation and accompanying instruments set out we jammed over the guitar riffs and melodies that were written beforehand. This process went on for a few hours. We eventually decided on a few solid ideas and recorded an instrumental with rhythmic repetition and movement over-layed with sparse dances of guitar.

A second recording session brought Chad in on the Bass Guitar and filled out the bottom of the song like an old wedding dress.

Okay. I’m bad at simile.