2024 In Review

2024 was a year of changes. I lack appropriate distance and time, but I believe will look back at this year as hinge, turning point, and marker, separating "before" and "after".

The year started with my exit from a job at Osso VR, and perhaps an industry and even a career.

I took advantage of the downtime to deal with home repairs and stuff related to my ailing father and his late partner's estate. Pro Tip: Do not agree to be the executor for anyone's estate. Refuse if you can. It is a huge hassle and liability. There is no upside. 

I spent time with friends, including some great walks with old friends I had not seen in quite some time. I took a couple of trips, including a peaceful vacation down to Carmel-By-The-Sea, and visiting friends back east and down in Los Angeles.

Physically, this was a year of increasing nuisances. Various nerve insults and impingements, some bone stuff, and other things nobody wants to hear about. I'm doing OK health-wise, but replacement parts are hard to come by at this point.

It was a solid year for music. The album I appreciated most was The Cure's "Songs of a Lost World".

 I finished an ambient electronic album with my friend Thomas. Given how long we have known each other, it is surprising it has taken us this long to collaborate on something. Look for a release in early 2025!

My friend Matt took me to a stunning classical guitar performance in San Francisco, which was one of the highlights of the year and one of the best things I have seen in a while.

Sid Luscious and The Pants also reformed, with new members, new songs, and our first show since the start of the pandemic. It went incredibly well, and it felt great to be back on stage playing new material for a receptive audience.

Sid Luscious and The Pants, 2024 edition, live at The Kilowatt!

Of course, there was the start of graduate school, knocking out 3 classes in my first full semester. I am enjoying it so far, and optimistic and excited about the future.

There's plenty to be concerned about in the world. The US election was a deep disappointment, and the first few weeks afterward have already depleted my patience and goodwill for the goons, plutocrats, and other bad actors who are already complaining about their victory. You won, get over it. 

Little progress was made this year on issues of substance, such as the climate. I do not feel like I have anything new to add regarding all that stuff -- I have written about it before, and not much has changed. I still think the biggest problem for all of us is the shocking income inequality and disparities between the super-rich and everyone else. It is like these doofs have never read a history book.

In the meantime, colleague after colleague got laid off or took a package, and are finding they simply cannot find another job, either because the jobs are being outsourced (to AI or cheaper humans) or eliminated. 2025 feels like it will be economically challenging, and even my moderately wealthy friends feel precarious.

If I were a billionaire, I'd be nervous, and I'd start looking at how to be a lot more generous before it is too late.

Perhaps a theme for 2024 was growth and change -- nothing stays the same forever, nothing lasts. That applies to good things and bad. I will try to stay optimistic and positive about the new year. 

See you there!

2024 Books

Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar

My choice for book of the year. Akbar's remarkable debut novel tells the story of a young man fumbling his way through life, addiction, and grief, trying to find meaning. Great writing, and includes poetry (in the voice of the protagonist). Funny, moving, and unique. Literary fiction. Highly recommended. 

“It seems very American to expect grief to change something. Like a token you cash in. A formula. Grieve x amount, receive y amount of comfort. Work a day in the grief mines and get paid in tickets to the company store.”

"It’s easy for people who have sacrificed nothing to rationalize their own ordinariness by calling me lucky. But I sacrificed my entire life; I sold it to the abyss. And the abyss gave me art." 

Fight Me - Austin Grossman

If Martyr! is my best book of 2024, Austin Grossman's Fight Me is the one I enjoyed the most. 

Fiction about former teenage superheroes dealing with now being middle-aged. All too relatable, and extremely entertaining.

Grossman is my age. He wrote for several video games (including some which are favorites of mine) and was responsible for some great innovations in game design. This is his 4th book. I enjoyed all of his previous ones. He is covering territory and references familiar and comforting. I felt like I knew these people and their experiences, and sometimes that is exactly what you want out of a good story.

Grossman is similar to Jason Pargin, in that his books are fun, fantastic(al), and easy to read, but also filled with deeper meaning just below the surface. 

Cory Doctorow's review sums it up well. Read it here.

"It’s a thing that only happens in the wild; the chance convergence of history, desire, despair, wild talents, quirks of physiognomy that ought to kill us and usually does. Then, on very rare occasions, it doesn’t and we stagger back from the catastrophe changed, life upended, clothes still smoking from our encounter with the sublime."

...

"I used to know how life would be: high school grades in order, then college, then a job. Now we’re in a future I never dreamed of, and everything’s changing so fast, I have no way to guess what’s coming."

...

"...Let the very idea become ridiculous. Soon you’ll turn thirty, thirty-five. After a while you’ll forget that the world was ever anything but work and home and bed, and new friendships that are almost as good as the old. Let that earlier time fade, let it hang in the back of your mind like a fancy outfit you’ll never wear again. Be a plain person in plain sight, one among millions."

I'm Starting to Worry About This Big Black Box of Doom - Jason Pargin

Fiction. Pargin's latest novel is set in the present day. There's no phantasmagorical elements, like his John Dies At The End trilogy, or the science fiction of his "Zoey" trilogy. Instead, Pargin writes a taut, funny road story as a pretext for presenting his essays and thoughts about the state of our current moment, society, and world. Pargin is a deep thinker who can convincingly present different perspectives. A breezy, fun read which offset both the heaviness of the world and some of the other books I struggled through this year (See: "Prophet Song").

"Real friendships, real bonds are based on being genuine and vulnerable and flawed around each other, but we’re constantly told that’s dangerous. Ask yourself, who benefits from that? Who wants a society where there are no strong bonds between individuals?"

... 

"It doesn’t matter how comfortable or well-fed somebody is; if you humiliate them in front of their peers, they’ll want to burn the system to the ground. Well, social media algorithms are a twenty-four-seven humiliation machine. That, Phil believed, is how a population is primed for authoritarian rule."

... 

"...nothing ruins your view of the world like getting your dream job."

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone - Lori Gottlieb

Memoir. Gottlieb is a therapist, who finds herself needing therapy to get through a bad break-up. This book tells the story of her own therapy interwoven with her working with several of her clients to provide an interesting "both sides of the couch" view of modern therapy practice. Gottlieb writes breezy, heartfelt prose with a sprinkling of drama. I believe this is in development for a series.

"We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same."

Becoming Myself - Irvin Yalom

Subtitled "A Psychiatrist's Memoir". Yalom is a giant in his field and has written a pile of books, a few of which are on my list for this year. Yalom tells his life story, including how he became a psychiatrist, and how he moved the field forward. He is not a flashy writer, but he is quite good. His life is interesting not so much because of what happens (mostly normal life) or what he achieves (which he understates and is exceptional), but because of his good observations and introspection.

"...many of the issues my patients struggled with—aging, loss, death, major life choices such as what profession to pursue or whom to marry—were often more cogently addressed by novelists and philosophers than by members of my own field."

Shutter (A Rita Todacheene Novel Book 1) - Ramona Emerson

Detective fiction about a native crime scene photographer who can communicate with the dead. Tightly written, solidly executed, with a few great twists and observations about human nature. I am sure this has already been optioned by someone.

"Grandma always said to me that you never do things for people to get something in return. That is the white man’s way of living. You do it because they need you. You do it because if you don’t, no one else will."

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

A justifiably classic and well-respected book. Half of it is Frankl's account of his life in a concentration camp in World War II. The other half is about his psychotherapy practice. Short, powerful, and worth a read whether you are interested in therapy or not.

"...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia (Zoey Ashe Book 3) - Jason Pargin

Science fiction, done on Pargin's humorous, fast-paced style. Also includes Pargin's incisive and thoughtful takes on a bunch of things. I really enjoyed the other books in this series, and Pargin's previous series John Dies At The End.

Pargin deserves a wider audience, and if he weren't so imaginative, clever, and smart, his books would all be turned into shows on streaming services.

"...the most common mistake we make in dealing with people is in assuming that while our own feelings are a mess of contradictions, everybody else is operating with a clear agenda and any inconsistencies must be due to some kind of ruse."

Slow Horses (Slough House Book 1) - Mick Herron

Spy fiction, in the vein of John Le Carré. This isn't James Bond, it's more the burned-out nobodies who didn't make the grade or washed out. Great pacing, good characters, and an engaging plot. It is easy to see why this book made such a splash and was picked up by Apple for adaptation. Recommended.

"When she held the compact closer to her face, she could trace damage under the skin; see the lines through which her youth had leaked."

North Woods - Daniel Mason

A set of short stories. loosely connected around a place in Massachusetts, starting in colonial times and unspooling to the present. A best seller. The prose is fine, but I think the author was more impressed with his narrative concept album and historical progress than I was. This read like a collection of  typically depressing New Yorker short stories strung together with a thin thread. A bit of magical realism comes and goes throughout, with the author reaching at the end to connect everything and "make a bigger statement." 

Ultimately it is an unexpectedly nihilistic book -- life doesn't matter, the planet persists (even through vaguely described global warming and collapse of human civilization), the afterlife is boring and inconsequential, and nobody cares.

"I was already well into my fifth decade of life and did not have much time left for error..."

The Future Won't Be Long - Jarett Kobek

I read Kobek's I Hate The Internet a few years back and found it compelling. This book is even better.  Literary fiction following the lives of two people who meet in 1980s New York in their youth as they navigate adulthood. 

"What had happened over these years? Why was I dressing like a legal assistant? Why was I so pleased to avoid a party? Perhaps, said I to meself, you should cultivate stupidity as your new hobby. Perhaps you should become one of those horrible people trapped in perpetual adolescence, delighted to bounce up and down in dingy spaces, clapping your hands, listening to atrocious music and smiling like an infant feasting on applesauce. Wouldn’t that be the bee’s knees?"

This One Is Mine - Maria Semple

I liked the other book I read by Maria Semple so much I went back to her first novel. It is an intense, funny, and poignant look at, in her words, "strong, singular women who set out to destroy themselves. Especially if the women are living in fancy houses, have lots of help, and commit adultery." Set in Los Angeles, in a world both all-too-familiar and miles away from where I am today. 

"...happy is a misguided goal,” said Sharon. “The goal shouldn’t be to raise a constantly happy child. The goal should be to raise a child who is capable of dealing with reality. Reality is boring. Reality is frustrating. Reality isn’t about getting everything you want the second you want it. Even a one year old is capable of handling these things.”

Everything/Nothing/Someone: A Memoir - Alice Carrière

Carrière's memoir, covering her unusual parents and her own harrowing mental health journey. Powerfully written, and ultimately a positive and hopeful story. If Carrière can survive and thrive, so can we all.

"Starting at seven years old I said that the only feelings I could feel were 'guilt, regret, and nervous excitement.' I didn’t know the word 'anxiety' so I called it 'nervous excitement.'"

Chain Gang All-Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

A disappointing and simplistic story that read like a violent YA novel. The author attempts to create an important and meaningful work about the impact of incarceration, complete with footnotes. I thought it missed the mark and veered into self-parody, while failing to address any of the issues it wanted. The writing is painfully on-the-nose, the characters thin, and the plot short on movement and surprises. The author clearly knows how to write -- there were some great paragraphs and sentences -- but they are drowned out by what feels like first-draft urgency and clunkiness.

"...she believed that it was no accident that people of color, and particularly people from the African diaspora, made up so many of the characters on this show. She knew that Black people and other minorities were disproportionately imprisoned."

 

The Trespasser - Tana French

Detective/Crime fiction. French has written 5 other books in the "Dublin Murder Squad" series, but by all accounts this latest one from 2016 is the best. Compelling writing, bringing a gritty setting and flawed but interesting characters to life. This isn't my preferred genre, because it tends to feel too programmatic. French is operating squarely within the genre, but her talent elevates the work.

"The truth is, if you don’t exist without someone else, you don’t exist at all. And that doesn’t just go for romance. I love my ma, I love my friends, I love the bones of them. If any of them wanted me to donate a kidney or crack a few heads, I’d do it, no questions asked. And if they all waved good-bye and walked out of my life tomorrow, I’d still be the same person I am today."

The Truth and Other Stories - Stanislaw Lem

Lem remains one of my favorite writers, if one can say that about books that are inevitably translations. Regardless of the prose, Lem has always had great ideas. This collection of short stories is mostly strong, full of those great, inventive, strange, and unique ideas. Like many short story collections, some are stronger than others, and one or two tested my patience. Still, it's Lem. If you like him, you'll enjoy it. If you have never read his books before, I'd still point you at "Solaris" or "His Master's Voice" to start. 

"...birds and insects, to a different degree admittedly, come into the world with ready knowledge, of the kind they need—cut to size, of course. They hardly have to learn a thing, but as for us, we waste half our life studying, only to discover in the second half that three-quarters of what we’ve stuffed into our heads is unnecessary ballast."

American Narcissus - Chandler Morrison

Literary Fiction. Chandler Morrison writes about contemporary life in Los Angeles. In terms of setting and tone, he's similar to Bret Easton Ellis and Bruce Wagner. If you like their work, you'll like Morrison's. Morrison distinguishes himself with a bit more light than Wagner's unrelenting, scabrous downbeat tone, and more warmth and feeling than Ellis' often chilly work. Definitely not for everyone, but I loved every page of it.

"...it’s not only my future that’s questionable—it’s everyone’s.. Society is decaying. It’s collapsing under its own weight. You know what I’m talking about. I can see it in your eyes. Can you imagine what the world—or America, for that matter—will look like in thirty years? Twenty, even? Ten? I know I can’t. Preparing for retirement would be investing in a future I don’t believe in. I try not to make bad investments.”

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World - Naomi Klein

Nonfiction. Klein writes about the experience of right now, and the years just past -- the impact of the pandemic on truth and reality. She starts discussing the (deliberate?) confusion of Naomi Wolf and Naomi Klein, and then pulls the focus wider and to different spots of society. 

Klein is a powerful and clear writer. Her work is difficult mostly because she relentlessly highlights uncomfortable and dark truths, and asks tough questions. The more personal nature or frame of this book, and perhaps its immediacy (it feels like it was written this morning), made this book more enjoyable for me than her other books.

"If the Naomi be Klein you’re doing just fine 

If the Naomi be Wolf Oh, buddy. Ooooof."

"I would say, dripping with disdain, 'I’m an author. Not a brand. The product isn’t me. I am trying to communicate ideas. The ideas are in the book. Read the book.'”

"There is something uniquely humiliating about confronting a bad replica of one’s self—and something utterly harrowing about confronting a good one."

 

James - Percival Everett

Everett writes a companion/b-side to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim. Everett fills in what happens to Jim and recontextualizes some events from Twain's book. (You don't have to remember or have recently read Twain's book to enjoy James, but you might want to afterwards.)

James is more or less critic-proof, and will top many people's best-of lists for this year. Everett is a great writer, and the narrative moves along quickly. He makes the reader experience the non-stop stress and terror of being a slave on the run. It is enjoyable, you care about the characters, and Everett's prose is immersive and intense.

But I found James to be a bit of a "Mary Sue" at times, and some of the plot struck me as a bit contrived. There are a couple of big twists which I saw coming chapters away, and some aspects of the book seemed like checking off a comprehensive list of bad things about slavery with a 2024 mindset. These are minor quibbles, and this is also sort of the point of the book in the first place.

I fully expect a big-budget filmed adaptation.

“I don’t like white folks,” he said. “And I is one.”

Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner

Literary Fiction. Kushner tells a story of a spy-for-hire infiltrating a group of French lefty hippies that may or may not be planning something big. But it's really a story about how we are all fooling ourselves, and how people often see right through us and our self-deceptions. Not as immediately gratifying as "The Mars Room", but Kushner's writing is great and I expect a re-read would prove even richer.

"In my own salt, my own core, this is what I knew: Life goes on a while. Then it ends. There is no fairness. Bad people are honored, and good ones are punished. The reverse is also true. Good people are honored, and bad people are punished, and some will call this grace, or the hand of God, instead of luck."

Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change - W. David Marx

Non-fiction. The title says it all. A book filled with observations that seem both completely obvious and absolutely revelatory. Makes me wish I was in college (oh, wait...) so I could take a class with this book at the center of it.

...sociologist Pitirim Sorokin declared, “Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is ‘flat,’ and in which all members are equal. Unstratified society, with a real equality of its members, is a myth which has never been realized in the history of mankind.”

"A critical point about originality, however, is that choices never need to be original on an absolute, universal scale. They must merely be surprising within the community. A shortcut for great taste is arbitrage, finding easily procured things in one location and then deploying them elsewhere where they’re rare."

55 (Part 1: The Big News)

55 today. At least halfway, and maybe 2/3 of the way through my allotted days. The last few years have been challenging for all of us: American politics, a global pandemic, the ongoing slow melting of the environment.

I have also been dealing with aging and ailing parents and some of my own health challenges.

For me, and for some of you, this has also been compounded by personal turmoil and drought in the workplace. I was lucky enough to find a job in 2020. Luckier still to get ejected from it earlier this year. The corporate world seems more brutal, unforgiving, and silly than ever.

I am making a big change. After 30 years of being a product manager, I think I am done. I worked on and shipped many things I am proud to have been a part of, and got to work with some fun, creative, smart, and interesting people. But I think it is time for something new. This is convenient, because corporate America seems to be done with me as well, finding me too old and/or idiosyncratic.

Next month I start graduate school. I will be pursuing a Master's degree in counseling psychology, with the goal of becoming a therapist. I want to help people in a direct, clear fashion, and do work that I find meaningful and interesting.

It is a 2-year program that includes a requirement of 3000 hours of practicum. I'll be training for more than 3 years in total. 

I recognize it may not work out. But I am excited for new challenges, a different kind of work, and a different pace for my life. 

I am not sure what all of this will mean for the future of this blog. Therapists typically keep a low profile online. I have a few years to figure it out.

My product management career was mostly fun, always challenging, and sometimes lucrative. I owe much of it to two people in particular. 

One is Tim Bratton, who thought I'd make a good product manager, taught me the basics of the job, and gave me incredible opportunities early in my career. I have thanked him regularly through the last few decades, but probably not enough.

The other is JP Lester, who taught me what good management looks like, how to play the corporate game with skill and with heart, and brought me in to all kinds of exciting projects.

Together, they gave me the opportunities that have defined my professional career. Thank you, both. 

Thank you to all of my other colleagues, for putting up with me when I wasn't at my best, and encouraging me when I was.

Most of all, thanks to my partner in life Iran, who has been supportive through all of these ups and downs, successes and failures, job changes, and uncertainty. I could not have done any of this without you. 

In the near term, I am still offering product management services as a consultant, contractor, or coach. Act now, supplies are limited, etc. 

Back to Reality

After 3.5 years, I am leaving Osso VR. Times are tough all over. I've been through this before, and while I am sad to be leaving, I am genuinely excited about the future.

The Osso VR team did amazing work, and I am grateful for the opportunity to assist in blazing a trail on such a necessary and revolutionary product. I believe that virtual reality surgical training is as much a foregone conclusion as streaming music was. However, like streaming music, the early days are difficult -- you have to do everything yourself, from scratch, the hard way. It will likely take a few more years to catch on and become practical. Streaming was slow going until the widespread adoption of the modern smartphone. I think VR still needs that kind of transformative change on the device side and in the public's mindset.

I started working at Osso about 6 months into the pandemic, in August of 2020. The first year there was unusual and at times felt unreal, perhaps appropriate for a company working in virtual reality. Those early pandemic days were weird for everyone. I did a series of 20th century music lectures on Wednesday mornings that first year for team-building, and watching the attendance grow week to week was satisfying.

I remember working through The Day San Francisco Went Orange, with the ash-choked air from the wildfires mixing with an unseasonable heatwave. Nothing says "work from home" like sitting inside an 82-degree house. Hey, if I'd wanted that, I'd have kept working in Tokyo in the summertime!

During my first 2 years, the company grew tenfold, and that was an experience and challenge in itself. It was exciting to be back in start-up land, seeing the rocket start to take off.

My product team -- Sanju, Cameron, Maritza, and Jakoby -- were some of the best people I ever got to manage (and I got to hire most of them, too). I will miss them and the rest of the staff. They are mission-driven, passionate, and young. This was perhaps the first time in my career that I found myself being the oldest person at the company by far. I was impressed with my colleagues at every turn. It makes me feel better about the future.

Osso VR's leader, Justin Barad, is an exceptional person. I remain grateful to him for the opportunity. We did not always see eye-to-eye, but I respect his vision and persistence. I wish him and the rest of the Osso team the very best of luck. 

I am looking for another gig, and have some other exciting plans for the end of 2024. But for now, I'm going to take care of myself for a bit, work on some music, and do some more writing. 

I hope your 2024 is going well. Drop me a note -- I'd love to hear from you!

2023 In Review

2023 was difficult. At times, I called it "The Year Everything Broke".

Towards the end of January, the podcast I have been co-hosting went on hiatus. Each of the 3 hosts has had their own issues to deal with this year, and some of those issues escalated to a point where continuing is not possible right now. I miss talking with Michael and Dee, and I hope to get something else going soon. We are all doing the best we can.

This Old Fashioned may have been the best thing about 2023. 
It was certainly the best drink of 2023.

The torrential rains in January showed me that the front of my house was leaking, and likely had been for a while. I had to spend a shockingly large sum replacing all the windows on the front of the house, rebuilding my front steps, and getting the façade refinished. It was messy, noisy work that seemed like it would never end. I still need to get the place repainted, but the crew finally wrapped up in October. I am glad I was able to write the many large checks required to cover the repairs.

I caught COVID for the first time in March. It was not serious enough that I had to be hospitalized, but it was scary and painful. It was also disappointing, particularly given how diligent I had been masking, avoiding groups, getting vaccinated, and taking care of myself. 

On July 2, my friend David Meyers passed away after a long struggle with a brain tumor. I had known David since I was a teenager. He was the very best of what humanity has to offer. If you want to understand something about him as a person, and have a good cry, listen to this podcast. 

One of my aunts died in September from metastatic breast cancer. She was in her late 70s, had lived a good life, and leaves behind a grieving daughter and two grandchildren. 

Towards the end of this year, I found I needed gum surgery. It was less painful and scary than I expected, but still unpleasant and not recommended. This also triggered a few other health scares that have all resolved positively for now. 

I had to make more minor but expensive repairs to the car, as well. 

The biggest difficulty was dealing with my aging father. For the last decade or so, he has been involved with a partner only a few years older than me. This partner was someone with a drinking problem, substance issues, and an abrasive personality. The combination put me in a state of heightened anxiety any time I was around my father and his partner, waiting for something bad to happen. 

My father consistently chose this person over his friends and family, and they moved from Nevada to Hawaii to Thailand. At least my father was happy and secure, or so I thought. About two years ago, my father had a small stroke in Thailand. He and his partner said everything was fine, but my father then had two car accidents, one serious. When I saw them in late 2021, it was clear everything was not fine. My father was stuttering when he spoke, could now no longer walk without a cane, shuffled his feet, could not navigate steps or curbs without assistance, and fatigued easily. He was also quite obviously depressed.

I encouraged them to return to the USA, and in September of 2022, they did. 

In mid-April of this year, my father called me early in the morning. He said his partner had pushed him down several times, said they weren't going to take care of him anymore, and had told my father to kill himself. I could hear the partner in the background, drunk and screaming. I told my father to call the police and go stay with a friend. 

My father can no longer reliably read, write, or operate a computer. I purchased him a plane ticket and he flew down to Los Angeles to stay with my brother. I joined them a few days later to evaluate what we needed to do. 

My father was practically catatonic from stress, cognitive impairment, and antidepressants. He mostly stared into space when he wasn't struggling to answer our questions or sobbing uncontrollably. We had him sign powers of attorney for medical and legal purposes.

We looked into his finances. My father was once a multi-millionaire, and considered a business wizard by many. He was now quite clearly broke, with his credit card debt exceeding his meager cash sums. His major assets are two properties, jointly owned with the toxic partner. Also, by this time, my father had borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from me and my brother. We canceled jointly-held credit cards and cut off the partner's access to my father's accounts.

The three of us agreed it was time for my father to go into assisted living, and he would stay with my brother until a place could be found, probably in Southern California, not too far from my brother.

During this week, his partner had been calling and texting my father, my brother, and me, leaving vile, drunken, barely coherent rants. These calls and texts were happening almost non-stop, so we all blocked the partner.

Plans in place, I flew back to San Francisco. The next morning, I was told the partner had gone on a drunken rampage, smashing up the rental home they had been sharing with my father. Doors had been ripped off hinges, holes punched in walls, artwork, vehicles, and property attacked with golf clubs. The partner was found unresponsive on the floor, covered in blood. They had attempted suicide, and were hospitalized. The partner had not been paying their health insurance bills, however, and once stable, the hospital ejected them.

My brother and I found an assisted living facility for my father in June. My father moved in. The partner eventually stabilized enough that I was able to have the occasional coherent conversation about selling property and untangling lives. In July, I was able to visit the rental house and move some of my father's belongings into storage. At that time, the partner told me they were going to Thailand to check up on the property, set up a bank account, and contemplate moving to Thailand.

On the morning of August 9, 2023. I received a phone call from Thailand. The partner had been found dead in their hotel room. The empty whiskey bottles suggested a drinking binge. It is unclear whether this was another suicide attempt or an accident. Regardless, I had to call the partner's adult children and let them know.

My father was distraught. Despite my uncovering evidence of physical and mental abuse from the partner, my father kept telling me he didn't want to live anymore. After all of the effort put in to getting him safe and taken care of, this was hard to hear. 

The partner's will ultimately named me the executor of the partner's estate and will. Throughout this year, I have been dealing with attorneys in Nevada, Hawaii, and Thailand, trying to make sense of and get control of bank accounts and other assets. It has been like having a second job navigating phone trees, listening to hold music, talking to customer service agents, and sending documents to various addresses. 

There is more to the story, much of it sordid and sad. It is hard for me not to be angry about all of it as well. 

All of these events combined with challenges at work to make this an unsatisfying year at my job. I am not sure how much longer that will go on, but I have some plans for what's next.

The year rounded out with me catching COVID a second time in December. On the plus side, it was a much milder case than March. On the minus side, it meant that I had to spend half of my precious holiday vacation locked in my office, trying not to infect my wife. 

I could go on about current events. I tried not to pay too much attention to the desperation, horror, and ongoing tragedies around the world. It helps keep my own problems in perspective at times, but reading and watching too much just made everything seem worse. American politics, the Middle East, the environment, Russia and Ukraine -- it was a daily barrage of bad news and failure. At times, it seemed the whole world was coming apart.

Despite all of the breaking, there were a few bright spots in 2023.

One is that Emily Hobson and I released an album (Cold Comfort) and a covers EP (You Got All Sad) as Snow Westerns, a slowcore/shoegaze/cowboy alternative rock band. Working on these records was fun and satisfying, and I am proud of the result.

In May of this year, my wife and I went to Spain for two weeks. Attending a friend's daughter's wedding was our pretext, but we added on plenty of extra days in Madrid and Barcelona. The food was fantastic, the weather was gorgeous. I made some good permanent memories. Most notable was that we walked everywhere, not using public transit or cars except for getting to and from our arrival and departure areas. I hope to go back some day.

I had a great birthday break up at Sea Ranch. I wish I could go there more frequently. It is truly my happy place. 

Sid Luscious and The Pants are slowly reactivating. We are training up some new members and starting to sound pretty good. I hope we will be performing in early 2024, but regardless, it feels great to be playing music with a band again.

Part of that is my voice. Post-cancer, I have struggled to sing the way I used to. The treatments left my voice and throat somewhat compromised. I had been doing online voice lessons for a few years, but in 2023, my voice coach stopped doing lessons to return to graduate school. The work we did together seems to have paid off, however, and my singing is better than it has been in a long time.

I was able to use this for some online performances, notably UCSF's Art for Recovery group. I have been a part of this crew for 3 years now, and playing for them occasionally brought me satisfaction throughout the year.

I found solace and joy in seeing friends. I was able to reconnect with several people visiting from out of town, and had many great dinners and meet-ups with my Bay Area gang. No matter how dark, frustrated, or broken I was feeling, these people and shared moments always left me feeling energized and alive. 

And the best thing about the year was my spouse Iran. She took care of me on many levels, and her love and support made everything bearable. 

Thank you all for being here, for being present, for reading and listening. Here's hoping 2024 is better for each and all of us.

2023 Books

I joined a book club this year, which has "forced" me to read at least one book a month. That has prodded me into reading more in general. Here are most of the books I have read in 2023, more or less in order, with a few notes:

I Have Some Questions For You - Rebecca Makkai. Literary fiction mystery about a death at a prep school, but also about society's treatment of women. Great writing. Furious, incendiary, nuanced, thought-provoking. Highly recommended, and one of the best books I have read in a long time. My choice for Book of the Year, 2023.

The Vixen - Francine Prose. Literary fiction about a writer in the post-WW2 era. Great writing. Recommended.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion. Didion's classic collection of essays about California and America in the 60s. It's Joan Didion. That makes you say YES! or NO!

No One Left To Come Looking For You - Sam Lipsyte. A noir-ish mystery set in New York's underground music scene in the 90s. Kinda funny, scarily accurate. Breezy. Recommended. I have read a few of Lipsyte's other books (The Ask, Hark) which I also liked.

The Terraformers - Annalee Newitz. Science fiction about some terraformers. Not recommended.

The Shards - Bret Easton Ellis. Literary fiction-alized account of Ellis' eventful senior year of high school in the early 80s. Shades of Stephen King. If you have never read any of his other books, this is a good place to start, as it effectively covers all the things he does. If you don't like his work, this will not change your mind about him. I am close to his age, and I was overwhelmed with nostalgia for my own lost youth.

Liberation Day - George Saunders. A collection of sci-fi-ish short stories, many of which ran in The New Yorker. If you read The New Yorker, you know this means they are likely depressing, heavy, powerful. Also great writing. Recommended, but it may bum you out. 

The Marvel Universe - Bruce Wagner. Literary fiction. Another of Wagner's scathing, scabrous, acidic takes on Hollywood and contemporary society. I liked it, but I also liked (or at least appreciated) several of his previous books. Definitely not for everyone. I also read Wagner's Dead Stars (2012), which covered similar territory.

The Candy House - Jennifer Egan. Literary fiction about a group of individuals in the near future. A kind of sequel to Egan's breakthrough "A Visit from the Goon Squad". Not as good as "Goon Squad". It was fine. Recommended with reservations.

A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter. Literary fiction from 1967. Full of food, sex, travel, and ennui. Evocative and beautiful. It seems like someone should have made this into a movie.

The Devil’s Playground - Craig Russell. Cinematic mystery set in Golden Age Hollywood. Fun, suspenseful. The sort of book where you want a whole series featuring the protagonist. Recommended. 

Deliver Me From Nowhere - Warren Zanes. Nonfiction about the making of Bruce Springsteen's best album, "Nebraska". A little breathless at times, but if you like the album, worth a read. 

Birnam Wood - Eleanor Catton. Literary fiction about an idealistic environmental group colliding with a billionaire in New Zealand. Starts very slow, ends abruptly. Powerful but also flawed. Recommended with reservations.

Gone to the Wolves - John Wray. Literary fiction/mystery about metalheads in 90s Florida. Recommended (if that sounds good to you).

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult! - Maria Bamford. Bamford's memoir. Funny and sad. If you like her, well worth a read (though you will know much of this already). If you are unfamiliar with her, check out her one of her specials, such as "Weakness is the brand" (Amazon) or "Old Baby" (Netflix).

The Possibilities - Yael Goldstein-Love. Science fiction. A novel about a mother whose child suddenly vanishes, and her journey and discoveries about herself and the world. 

Comedy Sex God - Pete Holmes. Another memoir by another stand-up comedian. Holmes has a somewhat goofy stage persona, but reveals himself to be a deeply spiritual person who has been seeking enlightenment and understanding for much of his life. Like many personal spiritual journey stories, it is by turns inspiring, profound, silly, and sometimes cloying or unrelatable. But his writing made me think about my own life and has led me to revisit some of his favorites, notably the work of Joseph Campbell.

There Is No Antimemetics Division - qntm. Science fiction/horror, set in the SCP Foundation universe. Imaginative and strange. I have been reading some of the SCP stuff for years, and this was an excellent take on some of those ideas.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store - James McBride. An evocative landscape painting of a novel, like looking at one of those big works by Pieter Bruegel The Elder, where you see all these characters in a town with their own stories, lightly connected. Sets a mood and captures a moment rather than focusing on a main character and a story.

Lone Women - Victor LaValle. Historical fiction, set largely in early 20th century Montana. I thought this book was going to be similar to McBride's novel -- an accurate but fictionalized story of personal experience. It was that, but LaValle takes some unexpected and thrilling detours. A bit cartoony at times, but surprising and inventive.

Today Will Be Different - Maria Semple. Comedic literary fiction. Semple has a perspective, style, and attitude that suggests late 20th century New York City. She writes about what people today would call "rich white people problems" with a kind of snark and mostly self-deprecation. While the book initially felt like similar works from "New York-y" authors, Semple pulls it in some interesting and surprising directions.

Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning - Tom Vanderbilt. A non-fiction book that weaves Vanderbilt's efforts and experiences learning new things (music, surfing, jewelry-making, juggling, foreign languages, chess, etc.) with some science and research into human brains and education. Breezy, easy, and a reminder that we should all be learning new things, all the time. 

The Dog of the North - Elizabeth McKenzie. Literary fiction. This book is a story of someone stuck taking care of everyone around them (including older relatives with dementia) while neglecting themselves. Some strange turns, veering close to absurdity. I found it timely, sad, and amusing.

Monica - Daniel Clowes. A graphic novel, in Clowes' distinctive style. Haunting, dark, and disturbing.

  

The Major Labels, Major Artists, and Major Streaming Services Plan to Steal from Indie Artists

After 25 years of flailing, the record companies have finally gotten back to their core competency: screwing small artists.

Spotify (which is partially owned by the major labels) has indicated it plans to roll out a new system in which the rich and successful blatantly steal from the poor and emerging. If your music generates fewer than 1000 plays from 500 unique listeners in a given year, you will no longer accrue royalties or get paid for that time period. The same is true if Spotify decides what you are offering is "not real music".

That money will go to the major labels. To Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran and David Byrne and Thom Yorke and the estates of Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye.

It's a kind of reverse Robin Hood, or a perverse re-imagining of Superman 3/Office Space financial trickery. The amount of money for any individual indie artist is tiny, fractions of dollars. But collectively, it adds up to an estimated additional billion dollars over five years for people who don't need it and didn't earn it.

To be clear, it is not about the cash in and of itself -- the money for each indie artist is too small to have any real financial impact. But it is very much about the principle.

I wish I could say that all the old, successful artists who have been so vocal about streaming service economics in the past were standing up to fight against this, but they are all silent on this issue so far. I wonder why.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Spotify and other streaming services are about to start taking money from struggling independent artists and put it in their own pockets and those of their biggest and most-successful acts. This new policy is disgusting, grotesque, and exactly the kind of thing streaming services were created to fight.

The hubris and cluelessness of the major labels is again on full display, with them arguing that "someone just putting up white noise" should be worth less than "an artist that had spent a year in the studio...with all kinds of instruments and people involved."

Uh, no. That's not how art works, and it is not how copyright law for sound recordings works, either. Effort and expense don't count, or make a work more or less valid. Records have been priced more or less "the same" at record stores since time immemorial, whether it was a bloated pop creation that cost millions and took years, Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" (recorded in a bedroom on a 4-track), Nirvana's "Bleach" ($800!), or nature sounds.

Ed Sheeran, celebrating being able to steal from
Marvin Gaye AND indie artists
[Timothy A. Clary / AFP/Getty Images]

The major labels continue: "It can't be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof." Well, some might argue the rain has more value, and is more pleasant than whatever Ed Sheeran is bleating this week. 

But the bigger issue is that the label or owner of one piece of content doesn't get to decide the value of other people's content. (And Ed Sheeran is doing just fine, by the way.) 

"Obviously white noise is very different from 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' but it...is paid the same." Yes, it is. Because the listener doesn't care, and the service charges them the same. Subscription services and hosting companies will charge you the same amount of money to put your audio content up, whether it is famous, unknown, or "noise" (and I would note there are plenty of records that cover 2 or more of those categories). 

Even the idea that the major labels get to draw a line between "functional noise" and "music"...Have none of these people ever read an (art) history book? "Functional noise" is how a lot of now-popular music genres would have been described years ago. 

It is also worth noting this is a problem wholly of Spotify (and other services') making. They wring their hands about "bad actors" gaming the system. Who lets those "bad actors" upload whatever they want, without any editorial control or review? Oh yeah, it's Spotify. 

Services like Spotify could simply stop taking anything and everything they are offered. They could exercise the barest minimum of curation or editorial discretion. For years, they have largely gone the opposite direction, desperately hoovering up whatever audio files they can find, without bothering to listen to them or screen them for merit or offensiveness or anything. 

Except for that brief period when they were thinking about kicking "bad people" off the platform. Well, not kicking them off, but maybe just not promoting them. Or something. Hmm. Why not take their money and give it to indie artists?

Let's call this what it is: Major label (and big artist) greed. 

Yesterday

Prior to the 21st century, being a small, independent artist was extremely difficult. Recording studios were expensive, and making even a cheap record could cost quite a bit. CD, vinyl, and cassette duplication cost thousands of dollars and took months. Once you finally had your records, actually getting record stores to take them, sell them, and pay you was nigh-impossible.

The digital music revolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s promised to give up and comers a chance. Computer-based recording dramatically reduced costs of making a record while simultaneously making recording easier -- you no longer had to spend a year in the studio making an album with all kinds of instruments and people involved. You could do it yourself in your bedroom or garage. 

Digital distribution meant that not only was a costly investment in physical media not required, but musicians could sell globally, with transparent accounting, effortlessly.

When my colleagues and I started building what became Rhapsody, the world's first music streaming service, we had a utopian vision: all music would be treated equally. It didn't matter if you were The Beatles or Lady Gaga or Sid Luscious and The Pants. 

We did it, and that model of equality became the standard, which every other service adopted (or copied) more or less without question. Partially because they had no ideas of their own, and partially because they were too lazy to innovate and were content to catch a ride on the work we had done. 

And as we had thought, people started listening to more music and audio from a wide range of sources. The major label's "share" of people's listening began to decline.

One could also reasonably hypothesize that the major label's share of listening also declined because the labels weren't developing long-lasting, quality artists, and because there was a massive influx of independent musicians which provided many real alternatives and allowed people to hear things other than the few dozen songs the majors jammed into people's ears by methods legal and illegal.

It also turns out people want to listen to all kinds of things, not just major label albums. They wanted to hear weather sounds, white noise, and podcasts. And the music services were eager to provide this alternative content. Ironically a big driver here was the major labels' own insistence on eye-watering terms for streaming the music they control -- the major labels incentivized streaming services to look for other things for people to enjoy. And another driver was the music services responding to customer requests.

Ultimately, this is another re-statement of the content cartel's position: Only their music is real art, and the rest of us amateurs should just shut up and pay them and be grateful for their amazing artistry.

This kind of thing is another reason I left the business in the first place.

I Will Follow

Spotify can't help it -- they're beholden to the majors, and too craven to take a real stand. And given the way the industry works, I will not be surprised to see every other music service fall in line and do the same thing. Their precious major label deals will probably require it, either explicitly, or by careful legal construction that ensures the services can't survive unless they do something effectively the same. This is how the biz works.

I am not sure if I will leave my music up on these services or not. These services are still good for listeners, even if like so much else in our 21st century world, the rich get richer by stealing from the poor. And we don't have too many alternatives left. 

But I don't have to like it, even if Spotify cravenly tries to spin this as a "pro-artist" endeavor.

One reason we started these services was to build something more equitable, fair, just, and accessible for all artists. Even back in 2000, Queen and other established artists didn't need more money. The biggest artists didn't even want to be on the services. We had to bribe them all, with fat cash payments for the privilege of paying them more royalties later. And now, for the privilege of looting the pockets of the next Yo La Tengo. I guess in that respect, we won for a while, but eventually, Big Content came roaring back, and we lost.

But another reason I was motivated to do all that work was because Napster -- an illegal, unlicensed service predicated on blatant infringement and violation of the rights of artists and labels -- was decimating the music industry. I, we, all wanted to help save the music business from Napster (and from the music businesses' own cluelessness and ineptitude).  Ironically, Rhapsody bought the Napster brand some years ago and re-branded. I used to think that was a kind of loss or victory in and of itself. But now?

We should have let Napster destroy the music business.

Latest album: Snow Westerns "Cold Comfort"

I have new music available. Working with Emily Hobson under the name Snow Westerns, we have released our debut album Cold Comfort.

It is now available on Spotify for streaming (with Apple Music and other major streaming services to follow) and Bandcamp for purchase.  

Emily and I started working on this project just a little over a year ago. A single songwriting session brought us several ideas (all of which developed into songs on this album) and an idea for a sound, image, and style: slowcore shoegaze cowboy music.

Over the last year, we wrote and recorded over a dozen original compositions which became our first album, and a handful of cover songs which will be released next month. 

I may write a bit about some of the individual songs and process in the future. For now, please enjoy our work. Thank you for listening!

 

 

This is the third collaboration I have done in the last few years, following 2022's Cure For Loneliness (with Christy Phoenix as Rêvenir) and 2019's End.Game. (with Brian Ward as Luscious-235).

54

I wake to greetings and birthday wishes from friends and family. I log on to a memorial service for a dear friend. I drink some coffee, and stare at the ocean, thinking about the water, living as waves for a while.

It has been a hard year so far. But I have learned there is help when you ask for it.

I recently had to put my father in assisted living, and I am still sifting through the wreckage of his life. Those of you who have been through something like this know how wrenching it can be under the best of circumstances. This is almost the worst of circumstances, but I will save the details for another post. Suffice it to say if you are lucky enough to have both of your parents alive and lucid, go talk to them about their finances and make plans for their futures.

This challenge seemed nearly overwhelming on my own. But when I allowed myself to ask for help, friends stepped up in every way, from taking on tasks to sharing advice and experience, and even helping load a box truck in 110-degree Nevada heat. 

I have also found myself struggling to stay motivated at times. I am still trying to understand how much of that is the pandemic or old age or stress or fatigue or just "time for a change". And then wondering what to change, or what to change it to. 

But I know I am making progress, because those questions -- what to change, and what to change it to -- bring feelings of possibility and excitement, rather than dread and anxiety. 

My friends provided guidance and support, and when I asked for it, concrete help. It is still difficult for me to do that asking. But like all things, it gets easier with practice. I am practicing. Learning to show a little more of my self, to be more vulnerable and human. 

There is light, too. I am writing this in one of my favorite places, gazing out at the beautiful blue Pacific. I have been reading some good books this year. Listening to music. Going out for some good dinners. Spending time with friends, always my favorite. 

I have a new record coming out soon - another collaboration. This project (Snow Westerns) has been one of the more enjoyable things I have done in a while, and it is sounding pretty good. Lauren took some great photos. Another instance of asking for help of a kind, letting people in, releasing a little of that white-knuckle grip I often have on everything. 

And it looks like Sid Luscious and The Pants might return in one form or another with a little help from friends old and new. 

The waves crash outside. They are all connected to each other, reinforcing and pushing each other. All made of the same water, all part of the same ocean.

Thank you for your help, everyone. Happy birthday to me.

The author, a few weeks before his 54th birthday.
Photograph by Lauren Tabak.

The Content Future: By Bots, For Bots

The latest noise is Spotify is taking down "fake songs" generating "fake streams". This was all predicted by people both smart and not-so-smart.

So what's going on here? There are sites and apps that make it easy for anyone to generate "original music" and then upload it to Spotify and other streaming services. There are also sites and apps that make it easy for anyone to hire bots to "listen" to those streams on Spotify and other services and attempt to monetize their music. 

This isn't new. This is utterly predictable given the business model and larger trends. And it is easy to stop.

How It Started

When you start negotiating content contracts for a streaming service, you find yourself having to come up with definitions for many things:

What's a user? Uh, I guess a unique email address and password? If it's a paying user, they need some kind of payment method. Do we need any other identification? Proof they're a human? Nope.

Ok. What's a "play"? Hmm. Full song, all the way through? What if someone skips right before the end, though? That doesn't seem fair to the song owners. OK, what about 3-5 seconds? No, because that might mean they just couldn't get to the skip button fast enough and did not want to hear that song. So you end up saying something like "OK, maybe something in the 30-60 second range counts as a play" as a compromise.

A couple years into getting Rhapsody off the ground, we came to work one day to find a totally unknown "artist" was #3 on the hip-hop charts, appearing overnight. Nobody on the huge team of knowledgeable music editors had heard of them. No articles anywhere on the internet. For the sake of argument, we'll call them DJ Billy and the Boingers. 

I asked the team to see what user accounts all the plays had come from. As I expected, the #1 account was "billy@djbillyandtheboingers.com", with something like 2800 plays a day. I did some quick math and realized the only way that was possible is if they were skipping tracks every 31 seconds: Playing just enough to trigger a play count, then doing that over and over. 

We had our first incident of gaming the system. It wasn't clever -- they had likely just found a script that clicked the mouse every 31 seconds, and parked it over a looped playlist on the desktop PC app. But they had ruined the automated charts and generated a substantial sum in fees. And there were multiple accounts doing this. It only cost them $10 per month to set up a valid account, and if they ran it 24/7 on their content, they'd get more than enough money back to cover their subscription fee and they'd place on the charts.

We deactivated the accounts and sent them nasty letters. We updated the charts. We took down the content. We updated our terms of service.

But it was clear to me this was the future: bands (or other bad actors) trying to squeeze money out of these services by exploiting the sheer size of the content, and the fact that nobody was really minding the store at most of them.

This sort of thing infected all of the streaming platforms. A band called Vulfpeck recorded a silent track and asked all of their listeners to loop it endlessly. Internet news covered all of these acts of "artistic resistance" as though it were some kind of righteous cause instead of fraud.

To this day, you can easily find places to buy listeners or fans for any service, whether it is Spotify or YouTube or Twitter. Everyone knows this is going on, but nobody wants to do anything about it. The services want inflated user and playback numbers. So do the artists, as long as they can benefit. 

The labels and publishers are starting to complain because they're seeing it eat into their shares of the money.

Easy Diffusion: "a photograph of a robot playing synthesizer, beautiful lighting"

...comes now the mechanical device to sing for us a song

Complaints about machine-generated music are old. People griped about the phonograph and the pianola and the radio and the synthesizer and drum machines, saying it wasn't real music. Some people still feel music made with electronic tools is somehow less real, authentic, or expressive than humans playing acoustic instruments.

AI is now generating songs, both compositions and audio, or providing tools that make it easy for people to create something that sounds like music and then upload it to the streaming services. (In the case of Boomy, it turns out their terms of service states they own whatever you "create" forever!)

Supposedly this is "flooding" streaming services with "fake" content. And we are in early, early days here. These tools are still somewhat unfriendly and the results not great. "Real" artists and labels are starting to demand this stuff not be allowed on art sites, music streaming services, and video content systems.

I think they are somewhat misguided. Who's to say the "fake" content isn't good, or any less real than the "real" songs? If you have listened to anything popular in the last few years, you might swear it is all AI generated anyhow, given how derivative, focus-grouped, and unimaginative it all is.

Music has been assisted (if not driven) by technology for a long, long time. You might think singers today are providing authentic, heartfelt performances. The reality is that even without the computer tuning slathered over the top (which makes everyone sound the same), even "good" singers are doing dozens of passes which are digitally edited together to provide a single "performance". Computers make this easier, but people did this back in the tape days, too, either splicing tape or punching in.

If you're manually assembling an artificial, Frankenstein's monster take from 87 separate tracks, why not just ask a computer to simulate the vocal for you? Is there a difference?

Go a step further. What if Bjork made a record of her singing over AI-generated music? Does that still count as "real music"? Should that be allowed on a service which bans AI music? What if the record is a hit, and Bjork releases a follow-up that is the instrumental version (i.e. the same record with no vocal)? Should that be allowed on the service?

One could imagine all kinds of variations on this scenario. The dividing line between AI music and human music gets blurry quickly. Artists should have access to tools. Some will use it well, some will use it for selfish purposes. Most of what comes out won't be particularly interesting. But there will be a lot of it.

An Endless River of Junk Content

Once communications of any sort become mechanized one sees a few patterns repeat. One is that costs of that communication plummet. Another is those kinds of communications become quickly devalued as the volume ramps up and bad actors unleash a torrent of bad content.

In our lifetimes, we have seen this happen with:

Mail. Junk mailers bought addresses in volume and used early computers and printers to turn the daily mail into a pile of instantly recycled ads, scams, and noise. Look at how much you get physically sent every day, all year long. It is part of the reason nobody writes letters anymore. You think physical mail, you think "garbage".

Email, too. This struggle is ongoing, but email has become something between a nuisance and a threat thanks to spam, phishing, and other mechanized messages. This is one of the reasons people hate email, and move towards other platforms like texting, Slack, and social media.

Telephones. Telemarketers and then Robocallers deluged the phone system. Believe it or not, there was a time you were excited to answer the phone and talk to someone. That quickly turned into the telephone version of junk mail -- your answering machine would be full of sales pitches, with the rare message from a friend. This is part of what drove people to abandon landlines in favor of mobile phones. But mobile phones have become just as overwhelmed with robot callers, and nobody answers anymore.

Social Media. Between advertisers and bots, social media is also now full of garbage. It can be hard to tell where the social media companies feed algorithms stop and bad bots start, but the end result is your feed is no longer reliable. We all have those friends who seem to be constantly sharing Ray-Ban or luxury goods "discount codes", weight loss videos, and more.

Art is next, whether you are talking about visual art, music, videos, anything. The bots are here. Go look at YouTube, or listen to Spotify. People are already using them generate unending torrents of machine-generated "content", and steering that flood towards any platform that will take it, with the hopes of making a buck. The result will be the same as other platforms: Real people will see the platform ruined, and will leave, looking for alternatives or abandoning the activity entirely.

Now the AI and bots aren't just going to be creating the content. Increasingly they will be consuming it as well. People hire bots to listen to their music on streaming services, driving views, posting "comments", trying to fool the algorithms on the services for more promotion or to extract a few dollars. We face a future where most "plays" are content that was made by bots being "consumed" by bots. 

It represents a massive waste of resources and a diminishing of actual human creativity. It is probably as inevitable as it is stupid.

Easy Diffusion: "a photograph of a robot playing synthesizer, beautiful lighting"

Turn It Off!

One of the original sins and fundamental problems for streaming services (as well as user-generated content sites) is they take anything and everything. There's no quality control, no barrier to entry, no review, no gatekeeping. Not that long ago, removing all that stuff was considered a great innovation and a positive disruption. No more preventing great music from finding an audience.

But it turns out that, for the most part, anything worth hearing did find an audience, with just a few outliers that were missed or overlooked, and many great talents that were cultivated. Along with some commercial, disposable stuff. The old gatekeepers were doing a pretty good job. 

Not only that, there are still gatekeepers and people deciding what you get to hear and watch, but now they are doing a worse job, and one that is driven by private business decisions, marketing initiatives, or their own personal networks and preferences..

The easiest fix for "fake content" is simple: Stop letting anyone and everyone upload their garbage to your services. 

Do what every store does: Evaluate the merchandise for yourself and decide if you want to use your valuable store space to carry it. Don't carry the bad stuff.

This saves the services lots of money. There are real costs for music (and other) services to ingest and host content. And most of what they do ingest and host never gets played, or gets played so infrequently that it is not worth the cost. These services are paying middlemen like Tunecore and Distrokid for this useless content, and TuneCore, Distrokid, etc. are charging people to upload it. So Tunecore and Distrokid do fine, charging both parties in the transaction for garbage.

At a minimum, services like Spotify should be charging Tunecore, not the other way around.

Removing content from the services also means that there's (slightly) more money for all the content that remains, which should make the artists less unhappy. 

It also means that "real" artists wouldn't have to see their content next to AI-generated nonsense or Spotify's "Kirkland"-quality music-for-hire.

That doesn't mean one cannot enjoy any of this content, anymore than one might enjoy Kirkland products from Costco. If it gives you an "art experience", it is art. 

Just remember there is better stuff out there. Entertainers pander to you, ask "what do you want?" and then give it to you. Real artists give you something you didn't know you wanted until you experience it. 

Much like we are encouraged to be mindful of the products we buy and how that affects the workers, the environment, and our culture, we should be mindful of the content we consume and the systems we use to generate and appreciate it. 

There will almost certainly be some interesting, perhaps even beautiful, examples of machine "art", which people will find moving and "life-changing." It may very well become what most people want -- McDonald's sells a lot of burgers, people flock to Disney/Marvel/Lucas products -- but it doesn't necessarily mean it is "good" for you, the culture, or the world. 

I look forward to experiencing it, but I am also pretty sure I will prefer human-created work, in all its weird, obsessive imperfection.

A Story of Scars

Our bodies replace about 1% of our cells every day. Some say all of your cells are replaced every seven years. While this isn’t really true, it suggests that our bodies are constantly dying and regrowing. We become someone new a little bit at a time, every day.

What is a scar? From my perspective, it is the body recovering from damage. Something happens, cells die, and are replaced, sometimes different than they were before. Some trauma is significant enough that it leaves a mark. A place where you might be tougher, skin thicker, as the result of an accident. You might be more or less sensitive.

These marks, this change, isn't always external. We've got these in our brains, in our spirits, in our hearts.

I might argue that as we age, we become nothing but scars. We accumulate so much damage, from accidents, pain, catastrophe -- what else is there to us? Every cell in my body has died and been replaced more than once, with each new generation perhaps learning from, responding to what came before. 

My life comes from these scars, and my life is marked by them. 

I have one on my left elbow, barely visible now, the remainder and reminder of being hit by a car twenty years ago. Traumatic, and at the time, one of the worst things that had happened to me. In hindsight, I got off pretty easy.

I have some scarring on my neck, both external and internal, a reminder of the radiation that saved my life even as it destroyed parts of me, changing me forever. I look at that part of my neck every day. No beard grows there. I can recall how long it was just a wet, infected wound, and how worried the doctors were. I feel how the internal scarring continues to change my voice. Every time I turn my head to the left, I feel the damaged muscles strain and tighten.  

I treat it as a series of prompts and reminders: Life is precious. You are still here. Make the most of it. Do something. Be happy.

That’s not all. Like many people my age, I have tattoos. I was the first person I knew to get one, back in 1990. At the time, it seemed transgressive, and "rock and roll". A tattoo is just a self-inflicted, ink-filled scar. I have three now, each one marking different times in my life, when I was different person or with different priorities. They don’t hurt on their own, but I can remember getting each one, the person I was then, and how that person was hurting in different ways.

I am not sure if I will get another tattoo, but I am sure I will end up with more scars. Because I plan to live more, to have more lessons learned, more things to remember.

The author, recovering from being hit by a car, circa 2002.

Are you living or just surviving?

A few weeks ago, my voice teacher told me she was not going to be teaching anymore, focusing on her advanced degree instead. She loved teaching voice -- her passion and interest for it led her to a graduate program -- but she needed her time and energy for her studies. It is what she really wants, so she is stopping teaching.

It had been nearly 3 years that we had been working together. I had to check twice. How can that be? It felt more like 6 months, but also like forever.

I have spent those last 3 years mostly at home. I created and taught a songwriting class. Made a couple records. Started a new job. Started attending an "art for recovery" online group. And have continued my therapy. 

These days were a kind of smeary blur. Wake up. Drink coffee. Listen to some music. Sit in front of the computer. Stare out the window. Try to work. Get some exercise or not. Play some music or not. Maybe talk to someone on Zoom. Have dinner. Look at the internet. Try to sleep. 

Three years. That's almost as long as all of high school or college. Yet when I go back over this time, the resolution of my memories, the real new experiences, the living of the last 3 years feels like it amounts to perhaps 3 months (if I am being generous) of what I might have experienced in high school, or college, or almost any period of time in my life up until about the last 7 years.

I realize I have been focused on safety and surviving, rather than living. 

That is somewhat understandable. I had a serious illness 5 years ago, and that has taken me a long time to recover from, both physically and psychologically. It changed me physically and psychologically, as well. There was Trump. Job disruption. The ongoing slow-motion apocalypses of the environment and perhaps American democracy and civility. World War 3.

And of course, the pandemic, with losses of friends, dramatic changes in society and the world, and fear and uncertainty. So perhaps a defensive crouch was warranted for a time. 

But the truth is I am going to die anyway. So are you. So is everyone. Probably not tomorrow, and in my case, hopefully not for a good 25 or 30 years. But it is absolutely going to happen, and probably sooner than anyone likes.

Knowing that, I think the question becomes not "how can I get more time?" It is "how can I live more with the time I have?"

I don't mean "live more" in the sense of dreaded and beloved achievement, the empty satisfaction of running a marathon or climbing a mountain or writing a book or any other kind of finish-line, bucket-list checkbox-ticking. I don't mean acquisition of trophies or material goods. I don't mean the obliteration of extreme hedonism.

I mean "live more" in the sense of finding a life that has more personal meaning and that feels more authentic. Getting back in touch with what I want, rather than what I "should" do, or what is "safe". 

By the time one gets to middle age, one has enough actual life experience to temper dreams with reality. But one should also make sure reality leaves room for dreams, and I think this is where I have made errors. Too much reality, not enough dreams.

It gets easy let inertia take over. To keep doing today what you did yesterday, and hope it will be enough to carry you through to some kind of finish line. But that is not living.

The times in my life I felt the most alive were when I did not know what tomorrow would hold, but that I was moving towards something I was excited about. Music. A new project. People. 

The outcome was uncertain, but the process was exhilarating. That is risk. 

The fun part of rolling dice isn't knowing how they'll fall. It isn't even when they fall your way. It is the clacking of them in your hand, feeling all of the possible universes bouncing off of each other, and the exciting moment when you throw them, waiting to see how they actually turn out. 

Quite literally, it is not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game. It is that you play.

Perhaps that is what I have been missing. I became focused on the certainty of outcome, even if it was gray, unsatisfying, and predictable. Or perhaps precisely because it was those things. 

I am looking to get back to a life where I have some of that good uncertainty. I have been thinking about my work, my projects, my relationships. What I want. If I even know any of that anymore.

It is becoming clear that some things need to change, and that sitting in this comfortable room, day after day, is surviving. But it is not living.

Some of you are lucky or smart enough that you figured this out a long time ago. Some of you have inspired me over the last few years through your actions or words or both. Thank you.

I have watched some of you as you made big career changes, leaving your own sure, certain paths for something else, something perhaps more satisfying, but definitely something new. 

An old friend embarked on a big art project. By their own admission something that was both a long shot and out of their comfort zone. But they are going for it, and have been for over a year now. I found myself in awe of their confidence and courage.

I also found myself surprised that I felt ashamed and embarrassed for my own lack of same. That is the kind of thing I had done in the past. That I used to do. What happened? Where and when did I lose that fire? I know it was before the pandemic, and before the illness.

--

I left the house. I walked 2 miles from my house to the city. I went out to a gathering with friends. I was indoors around people for about 2 hours. The first time I have done that, really, in more than 3 years. I neglected to wear a mask. 

A little more than three years into the pandemic, I finally got COVID-19. 

I do not regret my decision to go out, though of course, having COVID is inconvenient, debilitating, and somewhat scary.  Perhaps it was a little foolish. I could have stayed home. I could have worn a mask (and in hindsight, that is absolutely what I should have done). 

But I had fun for a couple hours. I was alive. 

--

To be clear, COVID-19 is serious. None of what I have written above should be construed as making light of the pandemic or the potentially life-destroying consequences of getting COVID-19 even once. 

The pandemic is still happening. We should all avoid getting sick, and take reasonable precautions to avoid getting sick and transmitting the virus. Mask up when around other people if indoors. Get your shots. 

However, you could also get cancer. Or have a heart attack. Or take some bad drugs. Or have a tree fall on your car or house. Something is going to get you eventually. 

Life has risk. Survival is reducing risk by reducing life to the bare minimum.

It is never too late to change the rest of your life. It is never too late to stop surviving and start living.