Unwinding

My sister’s coming to visit in a couple weeks. It’s about time. I’ve been in Texas a year now (not counting the summer escape to Wisconsin), and no visitors.

Back when I thought a couple of friends were going to visit me in February, I bought a bottle of Jim Beam in preparation. They canceled the visit, and eventually I broke the seal on that bad boy. As much as I love bourbon, it seems that I can’t just down it like I used to. In part, I attribute this to the fact that I was drinking it straight, whereas my preference is on the rocks… but that’s just an excuse. Really, I think it’s because I haven’t had whiskey in a year.

A whole year since I moved to Texas.

Don’t get me wrong, it still tastes good, and that sensation is packed with years of memories, both good and bad (but mostly awesome). I’ll have to try some Scotch, but it could very well be that I am less of a whiskey fan than I used to be. These days, I just have at most a few flavorful, dark beers. Still love Killian’s Irish Red the best, but various incarnations of Sam Adams have become the default choice for me. I also discovered (and highly recommend) Left Hand Milk Stout. It’s even better than it sounds.

I’ll have to test my theory of hard alcohol decline on Sailor Jerry rum—which, admittedly, I never liked as much as whiskey in the first place. It could be that this week my stomach was just abused by too much coffee. Or maybe I just need to buy some ice trays for my apartment…

Wait, who am I kidding? If my body’s rejecting whiskey, then I’ll just have to discipline it to re-accept it!

That being said, having two to four beers is still a great way to unwind. Another month or so, and the MLB regular season starts.

This year, I want to be more in-the-know. Not having a TV kind of puts a damper on one’s attempts to watch baseball, as was the case for me last year. This year, I have a TV and an apartment but no cable hookup. I’ll have to find a way to watch some games, because hopping online to check scores after the fact is not the same. That’s like going to Wikipedia to read a half-assed synopsis of a movie.

I still have that PS2 game, too. The one with Pujols on the cover… I think it was 2005? I’m not sure. I’ll have to get back into that. I never did get the hang of batting with a PS2 controller, so that game sort of fell by the wayside. Video games and beer… now that’s what I call unwinding.

For some reason, I find myself fantasizing about a return trip to Wisconsin. This time, preferably without the stress. Man, it would be so awesome to just take a few days and sequester myself in Stevens Point, drinking the phenomenal, fabled Wisconsin beer, doing nothing but compose music. I could meet Aaron for coffee and conversation, do some musical show-and-tell to bounce ideas off of him, and hell, even babysit. We could give Mrs. Aaron some nights away while Aaron and I make penis jokes in front of the kid. Ah, but that's just a fantasy.

I opened this blog post as a break from what I was doing. I’m sitting at work, at the security desk, with my laptop set next to the work computer. Logic is open, and I’m trying to polish a turd in it. I have an experimental piece called Iwasawa Manifold, which is pretty much the same concept as my EA piece The Man With Four Faces, only it uses six channels instead of four. That is to say, it’s an exercise in improvisation and spatialization. Nothing worth presenting to anybody. Ever. But I don’t see it as a waste, because sometimes you just need to create something for the sake of doing it. My girlfriend, after finishing a painting session, likes to use up the leftover paints by putting them into abstracts and just see what evolves from the process. That’s what this music is: abstract sound-painting. But I need to remix it. There are problems. So that’s what I’m up to at the moment.

I needed to get this eight-minute piece out of my system before plunging into a project I agreed to do for someone. I am supposed to engrave a piano reduction version of an orchestral concerto. It’s going to be a lot of work, and not the creatively satisfying kind. It’s grunt work, plain and simple. Multitasking work. Someone else’s music, music I can work on while I watch TV or something. Or… case in point… work on while I’m at my night job.

But I keep procrastinating.

I just want a good Wisconsin beer and a Cardinals game.