Life Tale - Blog Posts
My Life as a Musician and the Importance of Failure
After college, I was pretty sure I’d end up being a musician of some sort. The last year of film school really took it out of me. I got overly ambitious with projects and continually shot myself in the foot with intended scale, failure to adapt and refusal to scale back. I failed about as hard as I ever have that final semester and the summer after, about all I did was sit on porches reading comic books and rode a bicycle. In hindsight, I do think the experience was good for me. Since then I’ve learned to get things out, not only to have them done and off my plate, but to push myself to produce more and worry less about any work’s reception. It’s a balancing act of perfection and timeliness, a constant struggle that makes or breaks me daily as a designer and illustrator.
But back to music, I spent about a year after school concepting and working on an EP in my childhood home in Maryland. I’d write and record music for most of each day. Many months of this ended up in my being broke and a bit burnt-out on music. I kept producing the EP but started looking for a part time job. I was lucky enough to have a friend who had moved to New York after school and had a small illustration gig for me, illustrating tarot cards for some website for maybe a movie I think. Anyway, it went alright and it got me back into something I’d done my entire life but hadn’t much considered since highschool: drawing. I took the moderate success of the illustration gig and started scouring Craigslist for freelance design gigs. I suppose the rest is history, to skim over the agonizing period where I hunted awful Craigslist ads to work on my chops. As this started becoming more and more something I saw myself doing, maybe even for a career, the album started working on me in a bad way. I felt like I didn’t have enough time to finish it and I’d devoted so much time and energy on it already. So in a last crazed push, I slapped the thing together, called it Brighten Up Sourpuss (a directive and goal for me at at time of pretty extreme isolation) and sat on it. I had always intended to “shop it around”, whatever that means, and go on tour with it… I know. So, I went on with the design life, moved to Brooklyn and set about carving out a place where I could work for myself doing something I liked (something that didn’t make me as crazy as music did) and gave me the time to enjoy other things too (friends most importantly).
Well, here is the result of those many months in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by drums, cables, microphones, guitars, a xylophone, a banjo, a recorder, harmonicas, and anything else that I needed to commit to audio. It was a good time (again, in hindsight) and I’m rather proud of what I produced. I hope you enjoy it.
My Year In Bicycles
I’d say my cycling enthusiasm level is now “avid.” It’s been about a year of serious riding for me (or since I was convinced to take my roommate’s 80s Schwinn road bike after he left for another coast of America). The bike was impossibly small for me and he’d kept anything related to comfort free of what he called the bi-cycle (top right). I believe the frame was 51cm, with a plastic seat (I have to call them saddles now that I’m avid), and awful, bare drop handlebars. These words may mean little to you - simply put, the bike was a pain in the ass. And hands. And back. But, I speak of the bike in an ungrateful tone, which is completely the opposite tone I’d like to be speaking of it in. The bicycle was my entry into the mania that now permeates my everyday life. I returned the borrowed mountain bike (top left) I’d had for several years (having ridden it a handful of times [which was also far too small for me]) and set out every late-spring day on that little red beast to try to get my confidence up riding in the city. I’m getting ahead of myself however, I had to ride every day just to learn how to deal with something so foreign. The first time on a road bike is extremely unnerving and seems wrong - the way a lot of things you’ve never done and go against your basic human understanding of ‘how the world should work’ feel wrong. Two skinny inline wheels should not stay upright, especially when adding a skittery, lanky 140 pounder on top. Once you’ve given into the magical psuedo-science keeping a paper thin bike upright, you have to deal next with the posture a classic road bike thrusts you into. Riding on the top of drop bars is not comfortable, especially for a person with wide shoulders and lanky arms (me, I’ve already mentioned my lank) - but what’s worse is the leap of faith you must take to enter the lower part of the curved drop handlebar. If flashes of your face grating against the sidewalk don’t instantly pop into your mind, you’re a brave person with a brain problem.
Suffice it to say, I learned to ride the bicycle without too many issues - and through daily riding and an ever increasing interest in how the parts worked, I was well on the way to my present compulsion, need, and desire for all things bi-cycle. After taking the Schwinn to a bike shop and complaining of outrageous back pain, I was told the bicycle was about 4 sizes too small for me. They set me up on a monstrously large bike and it fit and was a revelation to my atrophying back. So I got a new bike (not pictured) and donated the Schwinn to a friend who still rides it lovingly to this day. My new bike was a low-end fixed gear that was promptly stolen after 3 months of use outside a bagel shop. I hope someone is enjoying it (or its various stripped-off parts) - I did, for the short time I rode it as it gave me a brief but thorough look into the world of fixies - a dangerously associative world I may not have escaped if my ride hadn’t gotten jacked. Despite thinking not all that highly of the New York fixed-gear order, I got another fixed-gear bicycle (bottom left) - but a nice, proper one. It was not long before I threw a freewheel on there though, and indulged myself a little coasting. The rest of My Year In Bicycles involves a lot of conversing with my old roommate who bequeathed the Schwinn to me about bicycle parts, trips we’ll take, and bicycles we need to buy. We’ve both begun a small collection at 2 a piece with a 5 bike plan in the works. My latest acquisition is an old French road bike (bottom right) from the mid 70s that I rescued from a Salvation Army and cleaned, painted and rebuilt as a fairly faithful restoration. I’ve begun training on this monster for a long trip myself and the Scwhinn’s original master are planning. I will always think very fondly of that little bicycle and the awfully wonderful time I had riding it.