Newsletter

This website is effectively becoming my bimonthly newsletter. I think I'm just going to write about where I'm at with all the things in my life. Not so long ago I graduated from university. Well technically I don't think I've graduated until the convocation thing, but I'm done with school and academics for the rest of my life. After finishing my exams I went to Vancouver for 4 days to attend a small film festival. A project that I provided the music was screened there. We had to do a Q&A after our block and it was genuinely the most intense pressure I have ever felt in my life. Passing out while I was up there was a very real concern of mine. No work or school presentation has ever induced so much anxiety. I guess I cared about this more. I also felt very out of place amongst a panel of actual professional filmmakers, or at least people trying to make it professionally. I didn't go to school for this... It was cool though we stood so akwardly far away from the other filmmakers. We were the only animated film in the block so lets just say it was very visually obvious who the animation freaks were. I got asked a couple questions and I have no idea what I even said. I don't know what my creative process is. Despite being the reason we were there, the film festival was a very small part of the Vancouver trip. We really packed a lot into 4 days. It was super fun. Porter airlines gives out 2 free alcoholic drinks on their flights. Very cool. I watched Amadeus on the plane, I had been meaning to watch it for a long time. After I got back from Vancouver there was a lot of running around to do. I went to the periodontist, the dentist, got car insurance, got a car (thank you Nana). Then I had to find an apartment. Forgot to mention this but I found a job. So yeah that's the reason I had to do all of this. The job is in St. Catharines, so I had to find an apartment. After a few trips to look at places I signed a lease for one that I'm so far pretty happy with. I'm typing this in my r/malelivingspace ass apartment with no furniture. I'm working on the furniture thing though. I found a TV Stand on Facebook Marketplace and I think once I pick that up it's going to kick off a series of other purchases. Once I have the stand I'll get a TV, then a couch, then a rug. After that I think I'm pretty much good. So far work has been alright. It's a little slow at the moment, I've mostly been onboarding and trying to figure out how exactly my job works. St. Catharines as a whole has been pretty great. I'm part of a really awesome band now. I've never been in a band before. I'm playing bass and I think I've been cooking on the bass parts. Also, Summer is finally here for real, it's been sunny most days. I've actually been walking to work pretty often. Theres no free parking at my work so walking saves me like $16 a day. Unfortunately the past few days this week I've been sick so regretably I've been driving to work. So I guess to sum things up, the past couple weeks at least have been pretty good for me. The apartment is great, I have it all to myself. I've been cooking a lot of really yummy meals and playing lots of guitar and bass. I'll try to update the website more often but man, it was a lot easier to do that when nothing was going on.

Samba

This is the official companion piece to the interests blog post about Brazillian Music. I don't really have much to write about it other than it's awesome I enjoy it greatly. I figure I will just include links to some of the songs I have been learning on guitar and by extension listening to hundreds of times over and over.

First up, the one that kicked this off for me. Aguas De Marco - Tom Jobim & Elis Regina [Link]

I don't know what there is to say about this song other than it rules. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it literally won nation wide votes for best song in brazillian history.

Up next, Saudade Vem Correndo - Stan Getz & Luiz Bonfa [Link]

On every guitar cover I watched for this song the comments are always people referencing the legacy its had. It's been featured as a sample in a lot of songs. I think the original is pretty great though.

Number 3, Corcovado - Tom Jobim, Joao Gilberto & Astrud Gilberto [Link]

Ok so fun fact I guess, the singer at the start of this song was married to the other singer for a little bit. In reading about them I stumbled upon a very old looking archive of the official website for Astrud. It looks like she was a really big animal rights advocate for her entire life. Her website is here and I suggest looking through it. There are lots of photos of her over the years with lots of very influential bossa nova people. Also an art section with some, um, sort of peculiar ms paint looking drawings. The website sorta just bursts with personality.

Its getting very late and I am becoming very tired so to round off the list we have Chega De Saudades - Tom Jobim [Link] and Samba De Uma Nota So - Tom Jobim [Link to Live Version because sure]

Alright that's all I got.

More Music!

I started recording full length original songs using a guitar in October of 2020. I was in grade 12 and was just about to turn 17. This started a 2-3 year period where I was constantly making new songs. You could call this my most prolific creative era. I was making about 40 songs per year? I never considered any of them to be finished or "real" songs that people would listen to. In the back of my head I always just viewed them as practice and each song was a step towards one day making something to a finished, "real" level of quality. I'm not sure if I ever really reached that point but over the years as I got better I had loftier expectations for the quality of my songs and recordings. Little did I know, pursuing this would turn recording into an unreasonably major task. Suddenly writing and recording a song turned from something I could do in a single day, into something that took weeks or months of trial and error. The finished product got a lot better but it became more a lot more trouble that it was really worth especially considering an increasing workload in school, jobs, relationships, etc. I don't think I will ever say I'm done with music, because I think saying that would cause some kind of serious crisis or ego death as this really was my whole life for a very long time. But yeah, the dream of doing this in a professional context is certainly not on my mind to the extent that it was a few years ago. That's not to say that was ever really my goal. My goal right from the start was just to have something that, in the future I can look back on. From this perspective I have absolutely achieved what I wanted to and then some. Over the years I have always had these songs available to me privately and I would revisit them every so often. I get a lot of value even from the oldest ones. I'll hear something in a horrible, noisy recording that makes me stop in awe that I did this. I think it's really unlikely that I will ever reach the same level of output that I was able to achieve at 17, but I would like to at least have a few "unfinished" recordings every year. I've never been someone that takes photos. Not to diminish the value of photos but I don't think looking at a photo holds a candle to listening to a song you made years and years ago. I can very vividly remember where I was and what was going on in my life when I listen to most of them. These songs are the closest thing I have to a scrapbook and I hope to add to it throughout my life.

Click the photo to go to the bandcamp page. It's all free.

If you are already on this website I think it's safe to assume you at least vaguely know of me. That's really the best case scenario.

This website is a place for me to practice sincerity. That's my understanding of it right now at least. I'm not making any effort for the writings here to be perceived in any way, they are very much just straight from my head.

This is effectively a journal of sorts. Only made public. Mostly I just write about things that interest me. Opinions. I wouldn't consider this a website of any serious societal value. The only thing you can learn about on here is me. But I think that's okay. I know the value that I get out of it at least, and I'm the one paying for the domain name at the end of the day.

Genuinely everything on this website is an invitation for a discussion. I like writing about things but I love talking about things with people way more. If I write something on here and you disagree I want to hear about it. Or if you have something you think I should see or a song you think I should hear, tell me.

Maybe that's the point of this website.

Anyway, below is Nick Mullen. My hero.