Music is the key

Actually, music is the room. And I have found myself looking for a key to get in.

I started dancing about five years ago. Maybe closer to six. But I have only been listening to music, I mean really listening, for about one year. This past year. And I discovered something major about myself. I’m absolutely passionate about music — all kinds of music: hip hop, folk, classical, rock, house, soul, funk, and oh my god funk. I may love music, but i’m in love with funk. Especially rare grooves that no one but the true nostalgia kinds listen to. Girl Groups. Old Gems. Dusty as Hell 45s. In fact, you could argue that dancing is just an excuse I have to listen to more music. I sometimes go to practice and do nothing but toprock if the funk moves me. In a way, dancing is just a way for me to engage with the music. A way to be an active listener. Because in all seriousness, without music what the hell are you dancing to?

This passed sunday, I spent the whole day at Dick’s record shop on haight. I entered the store, looked around, said wasup to Dick and Matt and then picked up a record I saw lying on some big heap right in the middle of the shop. Put it on, the needle hit, and I knew I wasn’t going no where until the shop closed down. I picked up a stack of sleeveless 45s – stood by the turntable and went into dreamland. The headphones were on tight and I was searching through, literally, hundreds of scratchy records from all genres. My right hand, my needle hand, cramped up on me. I was tossing five, six records on the table at once, putting the needle down, searching for that funky break, and then making a split second decision about the record based on one thing.

Did it move me?

If not, I quickly picked it up with my left hand, my record hand, and placed it down into a neat rejection pile. I must have went through 2-3oo records in the first 1-2 hours. This woman came to listen at the table next to me and she said something like: “You know, I’m old fashioned, I like to listen to the whole record before making a decision”. Needless to say, I got a little embarrassed and started mumbling some defensive nonsense. She must have understood, because right away she said “but i know, you’re looking for breaks aren’t you?”

My ears pricked up. I had this shocked look on my face as I stared at this woman; later that night Gabe would say that she was probably the Oracle from the Matrix movies. I asked her how she knew? And she said it was obvious from the way I was listening to the records. She’d been watching me for a while and she guessed correctly. I was searching for breaks. She recommended I listen to Rodger Collins (got some on the Galaxy label!) and told me she ran her own radio show in Sanoma called “Miss Annie’s Old School”.

I kept digging and listening but then I burned out about 2 or 3 hours in. I took a break. Dick said I looked like I needed a cigar and a scotch. He wasn’t far off. He gave me a cold apple to snack on and I was back at the table within minutes. Ever so often he would give me a few records to check out. Dick’s always on point with his recommendations. One record he gave me I just kept playing over and over and over again. I told him I wanted to jump on the table and dance, lest I scare his customers away. He didn’t seem at all perturbed by the idea and asked me why I didn’t. Great guy.

It was dark out and the shop was closing. I laid my massive stack of 45s on the table, hoping to go through them once again. But I didn’t get a chance to. Dick went through the stack and gave me a huge discount. He charged me $5 for the $10 records and nothing for the sleeveless $3 finds. I was astonished! He said I worked hard all day and I deserved it. Needless to say, I’ll be there this weekend too.

Merry Christmas folks.

And for those who don’t know what motivated me to start the collection, here’s the official reason: If you love funk music then you have to go to the source. I have a massive digital collection of music (~150gb) but… it’s digital. It’s not organic. It’s missing something… some soul.

So one rainy day, instead of going to work, I bought a few records. And like a fish, I was hooked. I found some records google can’t even find. And it’s early in the hunt for these gems.

We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. In a mine the whole day through.

We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. It’s what we like to do.

 

 

One funky foot at a time

First off – if you haven’t, go over to my friend Bobby’s blog: “The Great Ab Race“. He’s chronicling a journey through his body and mind, sculpting both into pieces of grandeur. Definitely worth the read as I know tons of us never give a thought to staying in shape other than eating a banana and a low-fat yogurt for breakfast on the drive to work.

Second off – I’m currently listening to the album Funky Dick compiled by Dick Vivian. It’s a compilation of some heavy, funky, groooooovy, rare gems. I’m talking 25 tracks by female voices only. If you know music, you will definitely swing by Rooky Ricardo’s Records on haight (between fillmore and webster) and get this cd. Dick gave it to me to check out for free (this man is one of the nicest, most music knowledgeable people I know). I go into his shop to check out them good-old-funky-45s and he’s always finding rare gems for me. I love his shop. Every time I go in there I walk out a few hours later with a bag full of goodies and the world’s dustiest fingers. First thing I do when I get home? Well, I wash my hands and see the damage that time has done on those records just swirl down the sink hole.

Third off – I just learned 100+ new kanji in a matter of 2 weeks or so. By my own account, that is very slow. Snail’s pace man. But it’s faster than nothing at all. In these 2 weeks I learned more Kanji than the two months prior… combined. Which brings me to another discovery I made after meeting Little Actions.

Small progress >> no progress

If you’ve never taken calculus in high school, or you have and had enough sense to forget most of it then “>>” probably doesn’t mean much to you. But you probably got its meaning from the context, and your own common sense. Small progress is better (read: much greater) than no progress. I wrote this motto on my board at home and then under it I wrote:

• read one page
• learn one kanji
• write one word

(Damn! I’m listening to “Sure is Something” by Micki Lynn on the Funky Dick album! Shi* just doesn’t get better than that.)

Anyways, where was I? Ah yes. Small progress. It’s simple really. Say you want to build a record collection. You can either save money, wait a long time, and buy in bulk, or you can buy one record a week. I guarantee you will have a much greater appreciation for your collection if you build it up brick by brick. You will know the labels, artists, songs, production dates, COLORS, and smells of each of your records if you do it piece by piece. Of course, if you go to the record shop and pick up one album, most likely Little Actions will be right there watching you. And you might just walk out with 5, 6 or 23 different records – 2 of which might be the only ones available in the city.

Point in a nutshell? Break everything down into smaller bites, then do it and make small progress. Sooner or later, you’ll be making such amazing progress that the “little” bites will get bigger and bigger with time.

daaaaaaaaaamn son, “You got to be a man” – Helene Smith. Can’t wait to get back to Rooky’s this weekend.

 

Dr. David Van Vactor on Carry The One Radio

Carry the one is back on track! As promised, this week’s interview is with Dr. David Van Vactor. Check us out on iTunes!

Little Actions

I’m going to tell you a story about how Little Actions pulled me out of the swirling cesspool of unfinished projects and anxiety.

A few weeks ago, right around the time of the previous blog post actually, I felt…. overwhelmed. I had tons of menial tasks to take care of and I was falling behind (read: stopped working) on the big projects I cared about: Japanese, Carry The One, Bboying, and Science. If we were to convert the arbitrary measure of how much I have been working on each of these to mph, I’d say I was doing pretty much 0 miles per hour on 3 out of 4 of them. Science, remarkably, was trucking slowly around at about 35-40 mph – in essence not great either. In contrast, I was blowing by at about 120 mph when it came to being disorganized and I was god damn near the speed of light if you saw how much nothing I was doing.

And then Little Actions saved the day. Little didn’t come in on a giant, wavy haired horse or disguised in a red and blue leotard. But he did save me. You see, he’s not one of those with great power comes great whatever. Little is much more subtle.

When did I first meet Little you ask? Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I’ve probably been going through my entire life with Little in the room and i just never took a glance at him. How rude of me. Because it turns out I needed to know Little a long time ago. If I would have known about him in the summer time I would be fluent in Japanese by now.

So when did I really meet Little, you ask? Well, to be really honest it was a little less than two weeks ago. It was early morning and I was finishing up my wake up routine (which used to take about 2-3 hours…shame). And I sat down in front of a big pile of papers: my inbox.

It’s the lid of a shoe box. It sits next to my desk and I toss items into it that I don’t want to deal with right away: letters, drawings, etc. The goal was to empty it out on a weekly basis, on Saturdays actually.

I haven’t touched it in six months. It was a heaping mess of papers and I actually just stopped using it. I wrote “clean out my inbox” on my to do list and never got back to it. Mind you, each week I would say to myself “clean out that inbox”, “clean out that inbox”, “clean out that stupid inbox”. And I never did. Until that day when I officially met Little Actions.

I sat down in front of my inbox. Not on purpose mind you, I had absolutely no intention of cleaning it out nor was the word inbox even in my mind. I just sat near it. And I stared at it for a while. Then I reached, I swear without even thinking of what I was going to do after reaching. I just reached and grabbed one of the envelopes. And I realized it was junk mail. I then picked up the entire box and put it on the floor next to me. I looked at it again and then began going through the letters, drawings and papers. I made 3 piles. Trash, finances, and art. And 5 minutes later the inbox was empty. I threw the trash away and kept the finances and art on the floor, in two neat piles (I didn’t deal with these for a few days to come). But my mind was blown. I just cleaned out an entire inbox that I have been afraid to touch for the last six months. In just 5 minutes! But how?

I sat there and tried to figure out what I did differently. Why did the job get done this time and not every other time before. And I figured it out. It was Little Actions, disguised in that first initial reach. I had a major epiphany. I’ve been living my life on a road. I’m trying to move forward as fast as possible but there is a giant elephant in front of me. And I just keep walking behind this slow behemoth. And then one day, I just take one little step to the side and zoom! I’ve passed the elephant. With absolutely no effort other than my own momentum. I realized in that instant, I should no longer approach my projects as projects. But as nothing more than that first initial reach, that small, seemingly insignificant action.

For a while now I’ve been taking Little Actions. I caught up in my Japanese because of it, without even realizing it. I started dancing regularly again. I’m on top of my music collection. And science wise I couldn’t be happier. I’m reading a lot more and getting so much more work done it’s not even funny. In reality, the only project left is Carry the One, but I’ve already taking the little action of opening the audio editor. So this Wednesday, you should be hearing a brand new episode. This blog post too couldn’t have been done without Little Actions. I told myself, hey, just write down one sentence about how awesome you feel before you go to work. Just one. And I got completely lost and sucked into this little story.

Thanks Little Actions! Now to put my shoes on, the first step in getting to work and being productive.

 

PS: I tried to convince myself to not edit this entry, arguing that it would take a long time and that I need to rush to work. And while I was trying to convince myself of this phooey, I said: “just edit the first sentence” and zoom!