Music, Innovation, Technology, Balance, Being Yourself.

Status updates on Facebook have been sounding pretty negative these days.  People lose sight of how lucky they are all the time.  I did just now and I’m pretty ashamed of it.  A rich girl who has the luxury of starbucks every day has set her 5th negative status update in a row, and it’s about how she wishes it were October, as if there’s something wrong with August.  It really doesn’t matter, you know?  I talk to my colleagues at school, and the topic of how crazy getting out of college will be comes up practically every time.  I think about it too.  I’ve wondered about it for the past 3 years.  But just now, I had a sort of revelation: we’re not completely screwed.

I’m at a point where if I end up being a plumber after Berklee, I won’t be pissed.  That’s a crazy thought.  I’ve spent retarded amounts of money just to go here, how does this connect?  Frankly, I’m happy with anything as long as I can sustain myself and continue to create things.  My goals center around specific things where it doesn’t particularly matter what my day job is (that is, unless it prevents me from having the time to create).  See, you’re not going to be failure if you haven’t set goals to fail.

Things have been real crazy around here. Pinn Panelle is getting ready to enter the studio again, my guitar rig’s makeover is almost complete, I’ve resumed vocal training and continued to write more music, even after a couple of setbacks.

My 6th semester is almost ending as well, so I freaked out and drew a map of my identity in my assignment notebook. Things are actually starting to make sense, but the amount of work necessary to get where I want to be is pretty extensive.

A panel of highly esteemed people in the audio industry including George Massenburg, gave a clinic in one of Berklee’s studios. Some things that I’ve heard before and some things that were new and very interesting.

Even crazier was the last minute arrival of Nobuo Uematsu (yes, the guy who wrote the music for the Final Fantasy games)

I met him later on, I asked him who I should be listening to these days.

He said I should listen to “Lady Gaga.” Unbelievably nice guy.

jk no one’s broken my heart. LOLOLOL.

It is spring break though! I’ve gotten to work on everything I wanted to work on so far. It’s been raining for three days straight.
I’ve gotten completely soaked mmmm 4 times.I got to meet so many cool people at my friend Jeremiah Louf’s Berthday Pahtee. Man, it goes on and on and on. Since my last post, the band I’ve spent 2 years working with called Pinn Panelle finally played our first show at the Berklee Synth Community Concert. We played with awesome artists who should be famous. We finished and released our band’s first recording ever called “Snow Falls Up” to our close friends and family (it’s now on the music page and can be downloaded). To keep up to date with the band go here.

Being a part-time student has been the most amazing thing. It’s funny because I’m busier than if I were going full-time. Yet, I still get to meet so many people, and see my friends, and develop myself more.  I miss my friends from Illinois.
I wish I could see them.

The title is supposed to imply that I haven’t posted in a while, and that is LAME.  Sorry about that, it’s not like I’d have a reason for not being able to post.  I mean, the fact that nothing’s been put up MUST mean that I’ve been working on absolutely NOTHING for the past 2 and a half weeks.  Yeah, you know I’ve probably just been sitting on my bum, staring at the hairs on my flabby forearms, and thinking about what I could be doing – actually, not even thinking.  The possibility that a great personal project in progress is becoming something tangible is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE!

What a crazy idea…

I thought up 10 different ways for starting this entry, but I couldn’t figure out which one would give me enough momentum, let alone which one.  haha.  But there’s so many things going on that I think I’m just going to release a sudden outburst of news and things…

SOsometimesIthinkthatIsay”um”and”like”toomuch.Wowit’sreallyhardnotpressingthespacebar.

Iranintosomegoodfriendsatthelibrarytoday.ImetJordynBlakelywhoIthinkisaverycoolgirlandshe

playsinabandcalledClatter Clatter.IreallyliketheirmusicandJordyngetsmadatmewhenIcallhera

hipster.She’sverycoolthough,notlikewhotheymakefunofat: http://www.latfh.com/

Thatwebsiteisridiculous,youmightlikeitifthat’syou’rething.  That really got me warmed up and now I don’t want to type like that anymore.  Anyways, it is a lot of fun to finally be able to enjoy a luxury like walking outside and running into people you care aboutz.  It’s good to spend time on your own, work on homework and what not, but I think everyone knows how it feels when you do that too often.  It’s pretty meh, dontcha think??  I’m bookmarking stumbleupon.com; what a genius thing!  Now I have the ability to STUMBLE UPON random and cool things so that when I find myself at the party, I can FINALLY be COOL and take some people into a bedroom and show them awesome things on the internet.  I don’t know whether that was sarcastic or not.  I sincerely believe that stumbleupon.com is great though.  Showing people internet things at a party can be lame, depends on the situation; I’ve never done it, now that I think about it.  Sometimes, I go to peoples cribs, and we’re hangin’ out so we watch youtube videos.  But back to running into people, I love it.  One time last week, a friend of mine told me he was going to give a sermon at a church, and it would be an important moment for him because this would be the second time he’s ever done it.  So I knew I had to go.  Well, come Sunday me and my friend Rose Seyfried (sigh-freed), were writing a song and we called it a night at around 6.  Being honest, I forgot he was giving a sermon that night, so I figured that I was just going to not go to the service because me and Rose stopped working a little late.  Well I check my facebook inbox, and I found one of Chiduzie’s invitations (that’s my friend), and then I practically flipped, because I remembered how important this was.  I bolted out the door thinking, “I can probably still make it because all they do is sing until 7pm.” I closed the apartment door behind me and rushed onto the street.  While jogging, I noticed my lips were chapped, so I reached for my pocke-.

I didn’t have my chapstick.  Was I missing something else?  Oh no I’m wearing a different pair of jeans. is my wallet in this pai-.  nope.

So I left my wallet and my subway pass and I left my keys, and pretty much everything.  Well an awesome friend of mine named Laurynn Scholar appeared out of nowhere and completely made a diving catch.  That girl gave me a $5 bill.  What an amazing thing to do.  I thanked her like, mega, and then booked it for the subway.  Basically, I managed to get to the service just as Chiduzie was being introduced to the crowd.  And I was so happy I made it.  This man went up there, and said truly great things that anyone could be inspired by.  It transcended any annoying argument between Christians and Athiests.  It’s so cool to see people who are close to you, do things like that.  There was this sense of universal meaning and I knew it was because, at the heart of what he was saying, there was GENUINITY.  This is the other word I mentioned near the beginning of this blog that is so important to me, and at this moment I could see it working in its purest form.  I could feel some spirit coming back into my step, my outlook.  I got some of my bounce back, as it were.  It was really revitalizing, especially after living with the worst diarrhea I’ve had in my entire life for  3 weeks…

…but that’s another story.

sorry.

New Haircut.  Special thanks go to Sameena Khan!  A rare non-smiling face, courtesy of yours truly, haha.

I would make a comment about this but I’ll save it for the…

Video!

Wow, to my good friend Billy Maloney: you’re the man, and a great cook! This really made the headlines for me personally.

Bon Appétit.

A++

I made a visit to Massachusetts General Hospital.  It was dramatic yes… but mostly absurd!

Kind of funny.  I just moved back to Boston, into a completely different apartment in a new location, I wrote a blog post about how “a lot of things have changed,” how much I’ve changed, my old myspace just exploded, I have a blog, I have new roommates, my first part-time semester is about to begin; but I’m still Derek and I’m reminded that some of me has remained the same.  It whispers in my ear that I still have more to do.  While I’ve learned and am conscious of my strengths, I still have weaknesses.  Vice versa.

The topic of school is mostly a conversation roadblock with people who don’t go to your school.  So I don’t try talking about it ’cause it ends up being like:

“How’s school?”

“Good, it’s been busy/fun/miserable/awesome.”

“cool.”

It would be even cooler to talk about the significant events that really had an effect on me since leaving Illinois.  I left off on a weird note in my last post, saying that I didn’t want to be a “circus act,” which implies various things.  At the end of high school, my work as a guitar player who played in Jazz and Progressive Rock bands culminated to a busy and complex instrumental performance called “Framed.”  It was dope I suppose, and I took that musical image with me through all my college auditions.  But when the summer came around, I listened to the songs I had written and realized that I lacked BALANCE in my writing.  This was one of two concepts that really became solidified in my mind while in Boston.  I began to keep songs with more form and lyrical content in my back-pocket, and I think my old band mates – Ryan, Dale, and Paul – could tell they were different (I didn’t show them much of that stuff at the time).   Man oh man it was a good thing I derd <—(my friends know I like replacing vowels with the “er” sound), because I saw crazy prog rock super ultra guitarists everywhere at Berklee!  I almost cried.  In fact I did.  Kidding, but on a related topic, what would really surprise me were some of the insecurities that revealed themselves in other guitarists, and musicians in general; and mine!  So then, did I change my compositional style to go in a different direction than some of my colleagues in order to stand out from the crowd?  It may appear like that, but it goes a little deeper.  It touches on the other very, very important concept to me, GENUINITY.

Kay, I need to sleep.  6th semester ROCKS!!! \m/ (>.<) \m/

I came back to visit my hometown in Illinois 3 weeks ago, to find a town that seemed just… Not the same! I remember not being able to decide whether it was because a lot of things in the town actually did change, or whether it was because I’d been in Boston for a really long time. I’m sure there are millions of college students out there who are trying to figure out the same thing… and are writing blog entries about it. Ok but I’m a different case though!  Let me make this relevant B^).  I know I’m not the only one who thinks that these past 2 and a half years at school have been some of the longest ever; but I don’t mean that like a Jack Bauer “longest day.” They’ve been tough, relentless, long, yet there were plenty of good times and I can take so much away from those years.  I think my old neighborhood feels different because of both facts: I’ve been away for a very long time, and a lot of things have changed, period.  It’s the same thing with me as a person.

I remember who I was from the last year of high school, to the first year at Berklee; during the application process, the audition, the interview, the drive to Boston in a conversion van filled with my belongings.  I was going off the idea that I was going to be a virtuoso guitarist, the best of the best.  Lord, I was clueless.  I was known in high school for my talent, and knew that it was my job to try and not act like a jerk to people.  But I didn’t have a real reason for those things.  I worry that it was because I wanted to prove something, to show people who doubted me that I actually COULD do legit things.  Lord, I was clueless.  I’m not sure if I can remember all the varying moments at Berklee where I gained a better sense of myself.  Somehow though, I realized I didn’t want to become the best guitar player in the world.  I realized how unattainable a title like that was.  I don’t mean that pessimistically, but more in that it just doesn’t make sense.  I WANTED TO MAKE MUSIC.  Not be a guinness world record or circus act… I do actually like the circus though.