Tag Archives: blogging

So much time spent…

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Life long joy.

     This favorite little thing in life goes back so far that I’ve forgotten when.  Somewhere in the 80’s, back before I noticed girls or had my first 8-bit Nintendo game I found this in the house.  There was no planning or plan with borrowing it from dad’s office and using a blank tape.  I remember using the q – tip to try and clean the tape heads with alcohol.  I remember my fascination with its mechanism and the fact that I could record myself doing little skits and singing songs.  Like any child with a favorite toy it was me, cross-legged in front of the recorder, holding down play and reverse to make that screeching sound that everyone hates while I scanned for the intro.  Eventually there was a second machine which had the high speed feature.  Novelty of making myself into one of the Chipmunks lasted for a bit.

The use of the machine lasted to today.  There is something about the solid reliability of tape that digital can’t match.  I’ve used multitrack digital but it always feels like I get lost in the engineering role.   I’ve used tape 4 track of course, and had so many Type 2 tapes for this but what I remember is doing a really lofi song recording with two machines recording over and over until the first track was like a distant echo.  Every detail of that magic machine was a curiosity.  The smell of its speaker, the buttons I never understood to use.  Something about the recording process was so interesting as well, which I still find in the recording process.  When it’s recorded it’s like the songs enter their own universe with strange phantom sounds and foibles.  Mix tapes of songs are like a musical diary. 

Oh and with the band…yeah I’ve got a couple tapes of them (switched to digital more recently out of convenience but am considering returning)

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The library.

And as a kid who also liked things like Robotech and Tron there was this idea when creating any kind of battle.  It’s supposed to be a gun thing from Star Wars.  It just looks like…well…two pencils and a tape.

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You may fire when ready...

Those days are past but the use of my tape recorder still remains as the primary songwriting platform to this day.  The tapes of songs are great as they can’t get lost somewhere in the bowls of a hard drive, just somewhere in my desk.  I still have the Walkman that after recording a multitrack song would take it for a “test drive” walking through Cook Street Village with headphones to see if the song felt right outside of the home recording environment and see what I could change or add.  And of course, for anyone who knows about my band Cookeilidh or the blog post on being a celtic bassist, yes…i still have where it all started…with an extra whimsical ” o ” 🙂

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Still plays

Cheers,
Tom

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Created by TomPogson.com

Writing prompt : the walls

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They sprinkle around the place, changing with the years like my life is marked by sections.  It’s an apartment in the morning before a shift.  I’m hardly a wealthy man but I’m less and less tolerant of posters.  I had one in a bathroom with a part torn for the light switch.  Far less acceptance of white walls then.  I accept them now.  The change in the sky colors against the bare slate of the bedroom above our heads.  It rumples soft peach over the folds of the strewn sheet.  It’s a good place to have coffee.  I need to go.  My cups almost empty.  Later today is laundry day.  I’ll have lots more to say about them, hung up like soft soldiers in the failing light.

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Little bit about coffee

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This is one of those posts that I think was inevitable.  My day work is as a barista and has been with some exceptions like janitorial and university for some time.  Behind the counter is much like playing music.  You certainly don’t know it the first day and their isn’t any official training.  The more you’re standing behind the portafilters, steam wands and coffee sprinkled counters the more you pick up.

The challenge with coffee is the three factors, namely the product, the water and the equipment.  I like to think that the real drink of a barista would either be a light roast taken black or a single shot of well pulled espresso.  These drinks give you the inherent flavors of the source at its fullest and the wine like subtleties that are otherwise masked.  It’s sounds all fancy but it’s like anything else.  The more you drink the more you notice how bright or not, bitter or not, ect.  The coffee menus are actually simpler than they seem as well.  It is simply “how do you want your milk prepared?”  I won’t get into all of them but with a Latte it’s simply steamed milk over espresso.   A cappuccino is steamed milk and milk foam over espresso (with its name derived from the brown and white outfits of the Cappucine Monks).  Americano….just hot water…you add the milk.  Africano…half hot water and half steamed milk.  Then the other variables come in and yeah…you get those drinks that a barista needs to take a deep breath before announcing.  I can understand the fun of fine tuning like that.  The first coffee I had was at the age of 12, helping in the kitchen at church so I could get out of…well… church.  I remember taking lots of sugar and cream while I helped get ready.  There wasn’t actually much to do in that big square room of counter tops and fridges attached to the hall.  It was mostly about being outta the church sipping coffee.

Naturally your water source should be clean and filtered.  Your best bean choice is from a cafe or local roastery.  Supermarkets rarely throw out old beans and they do go stale eventually.  With the machine you want it to be as clean as you can possibly make it and one trick is to run a pot of water through first to heat the machine (like pot scalding with tea) and to improve the machines ability to extract flavor.  It is also common for people to use to much coffee in the ratio of coffee to water.  One teaspoon of beans per cup of water is perfect.  Your lighter roasts also have more caffeine as the roasting process extracts the caffeine and also gives it that shiny coffee oil look.  Lighter roasts also go better with savory and dark with pastries (sweet).  Chocolate is a great pairing, famously with the mocha which got its name from the port of Moka which traded beans around the world from places like the original source of coffee in the hills of Ethiopia.

There’s a bunch to consider.  Coffee’s almost done.

Cheers,
Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

The Sober Guy.

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It's. ..yummy..

I’m not just sober.  I’m just got off work sober.  They’re all laughing and talking and playing the music so loud my drink is doing that thing that meant the TRex was coming in Jurassic Park.  Actually I think it is TRex playing on the multi cd carousel.  Earlier TRex.   I know the little facts like that.  They can ask me about Marc Bolan if they want to.  Go on anyone.  Give it a go.

I’m in the same place…I’m with the same people.  I hardly think I’m in anyway better than anyone else.  I’m the same way with weed.  I have no interest in it.  Only tried once when I was in a room of musicians and the first two fingers of their right hands were never empty.  It only gave me a stomach ache.  I tried using a jacuzzi once.  When it was full of warm water and the jets were spraying around me I sat there thinking “Ok.  Now what?”

Yeah, I’m a riot a parties.  I’m usually the one at the end who is helping people to cabs.  I actually do like beer and wine (I’m planning on a blog about Georgian wine and I’m still trying to find if anyone sells the Korean beer “Kite” that I had at the Pho Ever Restaurant just off of Shelbourne. )  Buts that’s just it.  I like ‘get togethers’ with friends and trying new things.  I like to come up with things and create.  I had a 24 pack of beer once.  The thing lasted like a month. 

Very weird. 

Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

Me and Max

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     Ever wanted to slip back like a shadow in time?  There’s points in my life I would like to visit and put on a rolling guitar effects loop.  Others naturally I would like to just take a Pink Pearl to and completely obliterate.  But I can imagine they are there for a reason.  They are hard lefts and rights.
     Max is a mishmash of the past for me that I liked the idea of revisiting.  I haven’t worked in my parents garage wanting to be a bike mechanic since I was twenty two but writing gives me the chance to play with that world, with a character like Max and allow other crazier things happen.  I don’t think I’d want to write an actual autobiography…ever.  Most of what I do is actually pretty boring and mostly by myself.  Not the best copy but there you go.  Most of what I do is just beavering away at this sort of thing or bass (hey, who wants to here a scale?!) or what have you.  It’s the end result I’m after…like with Max and his dream of being an awesome self employed bike mechanic.
And along the way to that I can take him on all kinds of adventures where he can show his simple honest spirit.  I love Max for that.  In an age where things are getting lean and too complex for words he is just Max.  His dreams aren’t palatial and he always tries to put a positive spin on things.

So if you’ve gotten this far thank you very much for reading!

Please check Max out at…
Journal by Max

Cheers,
Tom

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My problem with cultural appropriation.

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One of our rules in the Ollie and Emma project is that we leave the issue aside and just have fun with the opportunity to bring people together.  That aside I think their should be some ground rules.  Being the white half of a comedy team writing a multicultural project knowing where the line between funny and too far is only too apparent.  It all comes down to simply respecting someone else and looking past the stereotypes which need to be finally dropped.
The problem I have with Halloween headdresses, sport teams names and so on is that it treats Native culture like it’s something of the past.  We call the University of Victoria sports teams the Vikes (Vikings).  We don’t call them the UVic Norwegians.  There is another team I’m sure is called the Pilgrims (I will admit…I’m not especially a sports person.  Apologies to those who are.).  The folks who are referred to as Braves are still very much alive and active as well as the use of real ceremonial garments (and unless your entire sports team is First Nations, which would have the name make more sense).  The best way to think of this is consider something that is important or sacred to yourself and ask yourself if you would want it used like a gimmick.  Yeah, First Nations people don’t love that either.

This is one of the things about working with my cowriter Cheri Jacobs that I think has it’s own influence on the Ollie and Emma project.  Our two cultures can work together with common respect and have lots of fun doing it.  All the people who I have met have been very welcoming and free of judgement. 

Community is possible.

Cheers,
Tom

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The world of waiting

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I like the quote that Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode used to talk about the years he had already worked in the music business.   He got the quote from Keith Richards originally but I don’t think it’s only true for rock stars…

“It’s five years of work and the rest is waiting.”

We wait so much of our lives and you just know for a fact that there is…oh lots more to go.  As I write this (originally) I’m early for work and so I’m simply waiting as well.  Some folks naturally don’t like to wait.  I probably don’t much of the time as well as there is lots of things to do with creative work where it’s not one event after another.  So much of what I do is scheduling (as my many employers can understandably talk about) and that naturally leads to those in between times when you are simply waiting on the green light to get going.  But since we know that the waiting is going to happen I think that it’s almost empowering.
I mean, we now have these sometimes leash like mobile devices and if you “do social media” that is certainly one way to use up that time when we line up for a ticket, a coffee, purchasing a new shirt but there also just that opportunity to be more present in the moment.

This is one thing that is great about kids.  They are utterly self aware and in the moment.  They notice everything, and as we know, they are only too ready to tell you about it.  Ok, this shouldn’t be confused with patience as spending any time at a religious (or otherwise) service can tell you but that’s just because they have been told to quell their natural exuberance.  But as a busker, kids are awesome because they will often halt their parents who are cannoning from one very important thing to the next very important thing to pull at mom’s coat and exclaim…

“Mommy!  Look!  Guitar!”

I owe their union a lot of money for this.  It’s about being relaxed that things will work out and just setting off early so you’re not late.  Don’t line up if you can’t.   Don’t take on more than you can.  You don’t need to be perfect.  You’ll have plenty of time to wait tomorrow too.

But then I’m probably just an early bird.  Victoria is wonderful first thing in the early morning.  Give yourself the time to enjoy those little details of her city because there is lots of them.  That’s actually one thing I’ve really enjoyed about working on my own twitter and my project accounts…when reaching out to the city to tell everybody that we are here I’ve learned how much is really going on that you can get involved in.  This city was founded on a Gold Rush and a sudden influx of people from all over the globe.  With a background like that set on the Pacific Coast there is always another thing to see.  So step out of your own blinders when you have no option but to wait.  You could be surprised to find out where your really standing.

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Work in the arts.

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“There’s a job…there’s a gig here” Billy Joel

It’s probably one of the hardest things about a career path that’s already not the easiest choice.  If you do any other kind of work and let’s say you’ve just started and you’re not making that much coin people still respect it because it’s still considered “real work”.  In the arts though it’s seen strangely as not being given the same accolade unless you are one of us fortunate enough to have a creative field as their primary source of income.  But the trap here I think is that we run the risk of treating it like a pipe dream or a hobby.  Having a hobby is fine but for those of us who think of ourselves as artists we have to give our craft that same attention as any other tradesman who puts in forty hours a week.  Will this immediately pay off?  This I can’t say but there is certainly a pride in putting serious determination behind what you do and one thing I have found is that you never know where your creative road will take you, but the more work you do on your craft, the better armed to fight you will be when you get there. 
Our role is different from some trades as just hammering the same thing again and again can work against us so being creative you have to find ways of still focusing on your craft without making yourself bored (creative death here!)  As a writer I like to play with different forms or ideas like this or my other blogs, narrative experiments, prose, non-fiction, or a thing I sometimes do called morning stories.  In this one I do a thousand words (usually ends up being more) of something.  In the same way as a Artist Way morning page you just go with what pops in your head and roll or riff on that.  Writers probably have it the worst for practicing because there’s the natural assumption that everyone can write so it’s easy to get complacent.  The great thing about it is the portability though and I have so many of those little Hilroy 300 page books just full of material and even a little mini one that fits in my coat.  And just like a musician who listens and transcribes what they hear the more well read you are, naturally, the better.  Check out some of the books on writers and writing as well.  Try a new form like creative non fiction or poetry.  Poetry is not to be sniffed at as people think of folks in berets musing on the moon.  Taken to its highest level poems are the writing equivalent of making every shot count.  This fine art, and the origin of all writing in western civilization, is all about specific details and sense and particularity.  Trying to write in a non ambiguous way and connect with people at gut level is genius.  That’s one thing I found with well crafted (and you’ll laugh) country music.  You can’t be ambiguous in that form.  It’s from the hip and for a musician it’s usually written in a bright major key which makes it just that much harder to emote in a way that connects with listeners.  And that’s why some of that style can hurt.
Don’t shoot the country pianist.  He’s doing his best.
A good idea is to set up your work at a time when you know you are at your most alert and won’t be too distracted.  Set that as a daily habit that you don’t intend to break even if the building is burning down around you.  Ignore the fireman.  You’re working. 

So pour yourself a coffee, punch the clock and rock. 

Cheers,
Tom

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