Henry Nam

It's simultaneously become easier and harder to advertise yourself as a musician. These days, everything from child prodigy-turned-50-year-veteran to a person with no musical training tinkering with Garage Band or FL Studio can count as a musician. Social networking sites in addition to many marketing websites make it incredibly easy to put up a professional-looking, professional-sounding website (present company excluded from professional-looking/sounding) with very little effort. Because of this however, the music world has become diluted (this also applies to the non-musical world too of course) to the point that saying that you're a musician or have a band or play shows or put forth an album means very little. Well, ok, I should be careful with my words. I'm talking more about a general, public notion of the word and not so much a personal one. To some, I'm sure those things do mean a lot. But as I feel deja vu about writing this entry, I digress.

I believe I've talked before about how little releasing a CD-album means in a day and age where iTunes dominates the circulation of music (iThink). I suppose from the moment that people started talking about music and musicians, it became a commodity, a statement substantiated by how many concerts you've seen turned to how many records or tapes or CD or DVDs or gigabytes of music you own. Perhaps it's because I'm past an age where my powerful, teen-angst emotions are (mostly) behind me, but it seems like a good song doesn't go as far as it used to. We've stopped really listening to music and let it become a social statement of sorts. But I suppose that it's not like 100 years ago, every music listener contemplated on how the music they listened to touched their soul and inspired them.

Anyway, I'd like to move my thoughts to brainvomit some ideas about musical success. Ultimately, feelings of success has to come from the musician. Yet, so many pursue a dream of becoming famous or getting that recording contract or filling up their tour schedule or even simply attracting people to them. Recently, I've been working on some music that really challenges and frustrates me, but to see that all turn into an incredible performance never ceases to inspire me and helps me remember why I do music in the first place. Yeah, I like the money, the recognition, the gigs, and all, but the times I am most happy playing is when all of the practice I put into my craft bears fruition in a performance whether private or public. Seeing everything line up is absolutely sublime and unexplainable.

I'm incredibly fortunate to have musicians in my life who push me to become better at what I do and broaden my appreciation of something that I once hated. I just hope that I'll never lose touch with what is "essential" to me in and about music.

Short version:  Boo hoo.  Whine whine whine.

Long version:  My head feels heavy.  Really, being a student shouldn't be that hard, but like many (oh so many), it feels like school's the least important thing as far as my actions go.  I'm struggling again.  Despite such a wonderful start, a really good previous semester, and all, I'm burning out.  

I think the weekends (or lack thereof) are really killing me, but at the same time, how much would I get done anyway?  I'm so close to the end.  Compared to the years I've been alive (and hope to continue to be!), these next 2.5 months are but a blip on the radar.  Yet, so much of my being just wants to stop having to worry about the school system and work as a musician and artist.  I think I just yearn for independence, but I know the moment I get my "wish," I'll regret not taking advantage of this precious time in my life.  

Maybe what it is is this constant state of transitions I feel like I'm in.  I'm always moving from one stage in my life to another, but that's life though.  Knowing myself, I may not enjoyed the "settled" life so much.  In this stage, I'm definitely feeling torn between my academic life and my quasi-professional life.  In a matter of speaking, I want to do more music and dedicate more time to art and do more of those books but school is getting in the way.  What a backwards way of looking at it, huh?  

Water break.

As I've been going through life, I keep hearing that once something becomes an obligation, it oftentimes becomes less pleasurable.  School's definitely feeling like an obligation.  A whoppingly expensive obligation.  I feel I really just need to grow up and deal with it, but I feel like a car trying to win a race on flat tires.  Going through this process has taught me a lot about myself, but self-enrichment isn't something you can really get certified in let alone support yourself on.  

I've long tinkered with thoughts of leaving it all, joining a commune, and doing whatever the heck I wanted.  Sounds nice!  I know I'll get bored of it though.  However meaningless everything I'm doing now feels, it'll translate to the rest of my life once I release myself from any obligation aside from tending to my own selfish needs in addition to the needs of the commune.  

Energy.  I need energy!  Even more so, I need will power, and that's something only I can give myself.  What I'm doing now feels so devoid of substance.  I'm doing what I need to to graduate.  I'm "learning" what my academic community has deemed important to know so they can certify me as a relative expert in some general field.  It's all for a sheet of paper that says I did it.  

One way of putting my seeming inability to fulfill obligations are these mini-vibrations of mindless ticks.  Computers, cleaning, cooking, researching, writing, doodling, daydreaming ... it's all over the place.  I'm terribly afraid of even the prospect of being put on medications that "help" me concentrate in fear of losing the dynamic way my mind works.  I depend on it creativity, but perhaps I'm only leading myself to my own destruction.

I need to sleep.  I'm not going to solve anything by staying up and worrying about all the stuff I should have done.  It isn't done, it won't get done, and tomorrow's going to come anyway.

I thought it was pretty funny to be cycling through radio stations and come across one that was talking about a fart heard over a sports cast interview that made even Tiger Woods laugh.  It really seems like bodily humor jokes are among the few lowest common denominators among guys.  That said ...

What stinks more, a fart fart or brain fart?

Your authoritative source of deeply philosophical, envelope-pushing thought,

Nam

THOUGHT ABOUT FOOD:  I'm only now realizing the irony of eating veggetarian buffalo wings with an omlet.  

I've been doing pretty well for myself.  Thanks to some wonderful teachers and an incredible support group, this semester turned out to be the most successful of my entire college career.  I actually heard today that I got put onto the Dean's List!  Go figure.  The summer has been far more chaotic than I thought it'd be.  In the span of about a week and a half, I drove 3000 miles.  I've been waking up bright and early (for me) every day to make it to my 8am class.  Today was my last day, and I have to say that even though the work load was quite something, it was thoroughly enjoyable.  I feel like I got a lot of really valuable and relevant information from the class.

Pictures are currently uploading on Photobucket.  I'll fill them in once they're all done.

First is a picture of the Monsterpocalypse Series 2 Booster set I picked up and gave out as gifts to my fellow gaming friends.  It's a really fun game that most people are reluctant to play at first, but it's pretty simple and easy to pick up once you play a couple of games.  Plus, I think the world is really cool.  Just imagine taking the monsters from all those movies you saw growing up:  Mazinger, Aliens, Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, Cthulu, and so on, plopping them in the middle of a city, and letting the mayhem ensue.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play more than a few games since the new year.

Next are some pictures from kite flying at Buttermilk Falls.  The Justice Kite is falling appart.  We used a bunch of plastic bags and my mini carbiner to make a string and hook for the thing.  It worked just fine.  Once I set aside some time, I'll do some more repairs.

Here are some pictures taken after I got out of class early.  It's a side of SMCM that I haven't really taken very many pictures of.  Then again, I haven't made the time to really soak in the beauty of this place.  Schedule's mostly been wake up, maybe food, class, work, homework, sleep, repeat.  I really want to go kayaking, swimming, and sailing again.  Just a matter of finding the right day and making the time.

The following are some snapshots compliments of Csernski of the CreamCenter show at the Charm City Art Space.  There was a HUGE SMCM turnout for some reason.  We welcome new member Paul Lemley to our amorphously ameboid group.  Audience participation was excellent!

Then the following day, Sk8N8, Csernski, and I attended a Breast/Testicular Cancer fundraiser/race.  The turnout was impressive.  We had people from all up and down the East Coast.  The event was the first non-outlaw skate event I've been to (that hasn't been at a park).  I got a chance to ride my Hammerhead.  The poor thing doesn't get very much love.  

Once the pictures are done, I'll be uploading the videos to YouTube and posting them here.

I've got a busy weekend ahead of me (once again) followed by the begining of the second session of summer classes: American Comedy!  Very much looking forward to it.  Hopefully, I'll be able to work some more on my SMP.

Love and Peace,

Nam

I'm in one of my pathetic down-swings on the mood scale, and for no good reason it seems.  Save for the work I'm currently procrastinating on because of said mood, things are going pretty well in my life and for the people who are involved in it.  Inspired by a conversation with a couple of my friends, I'll start with a to do list for the summer:

1. Play hacky-sack every day after class.
2. Go swimming in the river again.
3. Climb trees again.  
4. Go longboarding regardless of whether or not I hvae company.
5. Make some new friends both on and off campus.

I read an article in the New York Times about Japan's policy of paying blue collar workers to leave the country.  The idea is to encourage foreigners to leave so free up jobs for native Japanese in response to the recession.  The immediate thing that comes to mind is that it seems racist, short-sighted, insulting on several levels, and ultimately, sad in its plethora of implications.  But the newspaper is pretty clear on its bias, so in my usual fashion, I'd like to try and put myself on the policy-maker's shoes.  

First of all, I'd like to establish that I'm coming from an elevated standpoint; I see the effects of our own economic downturn, but I've been fortunate enough that it hasn't had too significant of an effect on my jobs, but I suppose with being a musician and artist, when I have jobs, I'm simply not AS unemployed.  But I digress.  The Henry Rollins article I talked about earlier made pretty clear that I can pass whatever judgment may naturally come to me, but I'll never be comfortable being full convicted in my beliefs since I can't relate to the degree of suffering Japan is going through.  I'm sure the policy makers thought about how to best deal with the issue, and though it seems a lot of people disagree (at least the article makes it seem that way), I think that the policy is reflective of some residual beliefs in the country.

The article suggests that the policy is controversial.  That means that I should be careful in generalizing opinions as "Japan's" sentiment.  It's unfair to really claim that Japan has racist sentiments without mentioning that we have a fairly large, anti-immigrant population here in the US.  Japan is an island.  We have neighbors.  Sadly, the arguments for stricter border control make it seem like they with the US was an island.  However, as far as my history knowledge goes, Japanese decendant never engaged in systematic, mass genocide of the indigenous population when claiming the land.  Not on mainland Japan at least. 

I don't know.  It's just shocking that things have apparently reached a point where the country has adopted a policy of open discrimination in response to the economic situation (once again, not to say that our country is free is policies that are very openly discriminatory).  The thing that surprised me the most when writing through this is that I see so many parallels to troubles here in the US that make it difficult to even begin taking any sort of moral high ground.  

- -

In other news: busy, busy, busy.  I'm in the home stretch.  A few more weeks and things'll slow down academically for a bit.  I'm proud of my friends who are graduating and excited to see who I can.  My opinion still stands that the ceremonial aspect of my gradutation isn't something that's all too important to me now, and I feel that the celebration aspect of my eventual graduation will be expressed through how I use the education I've gained.  But maybe that'll change.

Freewebs has now just become Webs, and during the transition, it seems like a lot of things have changed.  As a result, a bunch of things on my website no longer work, so I plan on doing a overhaul and redo a lot of things.  Some of the immediate things on my mind:

1. Fix the music player
2. Update the video player/replace it with my YouTube page.
3. Update the links page
4. Update the Art section and fix the broken links
5. Update my gig schedule.

How's this for a weekend:

Thursday, teach lessons, drive out to Rockville, eat at California Pizza Kitchen, see and a couple of old friends, pick up a drumset from said friends, drive to GMU, see another friend for the first time in years, go to a Blues Jam, sleep for 4 hours.

Friday, somehow manage to get up, get showered, get changed, and make apple fritters in a kitchen I've never been in before, drive out to the Zoo to run an errand, drive out to DC, find out our reserved parking was taken, unload gear, spend an hour and a half looking for parking all around DC, spend 5 minutes frantically running from the parking lot to where we need to play, have the sound guys screw up the wiring, needing to cut several charts, playing a mostly successful set list for the National Cherry Blossom Festival, NOT offend Asian tourists by playing Shanghai Gumbo, NOT get rained on by the 80% chance of rain that favored the 20% that it wouldn't rain, take this picture:

PHOTO CREDITS: Sierra Polisar

Then take this picture ...

PHOTO CREDITS: Sierra Polisar

and NOT have my shirt actually tucked in for any of them, drive up to PA, get dinner, fetch a very special someone from a very discombobulating drive, and have an absolutely wonderful weekend of relaxation and good dining with the best of company I could ask for.

Monday, briefly see my family as they return from the airport from California, drive out to Southern Maryland, hit stupid traffic and construction making me miss a class despite leaving with plenty of time, then having class until 9pm.

Today's been pretty good.  I woke up, studied for a quiz, found out that the class was canceled, did work, prepared for teaching, found out an hour before the lesson that it had to be canceled, did work, updated this, and make preparations for rehearsal for Friday's concert.

Definitely lots to do, but I have the time to pace myself in a relatively comfortable, yet brisk pace.

And a beautiful video:

And a breathtaking video about a flying man:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ueli_gegenschatz_extreme_wingsuit_jumping.html

Love and Peace,

Nam

Dear blog,

All cliches forgiven, at the worst, this week has felt like a kettled filled with my repressed tears that has hit maximum capacity and subsequently boiling point.  The tears were mostly from today while the fire and heat came from frustration and stress.  I need an outlet. 

Granted, my life really isn't that bad.  I still have a roof over my head, jobs that I love, get to eat at least a meal a day, and am in this closed, idealistic place called college.  As far as I know, my grades are the best they've been in my time at school, phenomenal by comparison.  I seem to finally have gotten my act together.  I attend class regularly, stay on top of my work, and have not noticably ticked anyone off, save myself of course.

But if the worst day in a person's life is when (s)he broke a finger nail, as trivial as it may seem, it still is the worst day in his/her life.  That's not to say that this is even close to being the worst day of my life.  Rather, point being that I feel miserable even though I have it pretty good.  Here's my rant.

Sleep troubles mostly.  I'll go to sleep early and not be able to fall asleep for hours.   Tuesday was just one of those silly-stupid days where it felt like the world was trying to tick me off.  If I were religious at all, I would have taken it as a sign from God to not have gotten out of bed that morning.  After a tapas-portion of sleep, I wake up to find that the electricity had gone out in my apartment which meant that my alarm clock was out.  Somehow, I had the luck of waking up 10 minutes before I needed to head out to make it in time for class, but I'm certainly not the type to be able to just wake up and go, especially not when disoriented, groggy, and grumpy.  When I left, a garbage truck was blocking my driveway.  After I was able to get around it.  I got caught behind a slow-moving truck.  Literally after the truck turned onto a different road, the road I was on became a construction zone as who I assume to be either the phone company or the elecitcity people were doing major maintenance.  From my groggy, grumpy, self-centered perspective, it was simply another obstacle.  I turn onto another road.  THAT one is also blocked from construction/maintenance.  After I finally clear it all, I get onto the main road to get to school only to have yet another slow-moving, erratically driving truck pull up in front of me.  Later that evening, I was working on a paper.  I took off my glasses to read some text from a book and in my stupid, blurry-vision state, accidentally closed the Word Document without saving it.  So paper lost.  Great.  When I lost the ability to be productive anymore, I attempted to retire only to be greeted by several hours of sleeplessness from general stress.  I fell asleep by what I assume to be somewhere between 3-4am.

This morning, I received a wake up call wherein a few choice words from my generous caller put me in a further, terrible mood for the remainder of the day.  Even worse, it all turned out to be a misunderstanding leaving me with unjustified anger.  Said words proved to be absolutely degrading to my ability to function today.  My mind kept wandering in class (also not aided by the lack of sleep).  After getting through classes, I had plans to do some minor grocery shopping and gas up my car.  It was supposed to just be a quick thing but ended up taking two precious hours because of some unexpected developments with the plans.  I did what I could to not be as grumpy as I felt. 

I'm the kind of person who, when I've got developing beef/drama with another, cannot just do what's needed.  At least, it feels that way a lot of the time.  The talk with the aformentioned person kept getting delayed, only adding to my frustrations.  After that had happened, I found out from my mother that my grandmother is continuing going through struggles because of the situation in Korea and is also in rapidly degrading health.  I hate the communication divide between us and the general sense of being unable to help either of them in any way.  So here I am with a full plate, complaining to my online diary, trying to find the courage to just sit down and do what I need to.  My travel plans for the break ended up frustrating matters in regards to my midterms.  Since I won't have Internet over the course of the break, I have to get everything done by Friday.  Today was supposed to be my productive day, but it just melted away in a deluge of boiling tears and fiery anger.  I'd like to think that I'm usually not like this, but it's times like this that I really hate living off campus alone.  Argh, stupid college and forced moves.

And my computer is freaking out and not working properly.

So what's good in my life (since I could use a bit of optimism)?

I'm going to see friends and family and actually talk to people over Spring Break.
After break, I'm going to have four new students.
The electricity is seems to be mostly holding up now.
I'm excited about April: more gigs, one of them being the National Cherry Blossom Fesitval in DC!
I got permission from my teacher to skip class for said festival.
I'll be working with more musicians.
Evan and I are arranging "Shangai Gumbo" by Spyro Gyra. 
I had some really great friends who checked in to show they cared.
I'll have to do more drawing for my SMP, the thing I've looked forward to the most.
My father and brother seem to be doing mostly well.
I'm mostly satisfied with my love life.
My academics are still great.
I'm looking to get a new keyboard soon!
Once I get some free time, I have lots of things I want to do!
I can do this.  Just because I haven't been a strong finisher in the past doesn't mean I can't find it within myself, yes?

Taking a deep breath before diving back in,

Love and Peace,

Nam

(Boo to non-working YouTube links.)

Yesterday was long, short, obligatory, and self-motivated.  After a long week of relative sleep deprivation due to the process of making "Jack a dull boy," I missed Call to Arms and essentially had my entire Saturday dedicated to jazz.  The concert went really well.  It was really touching to see all these alumni interacting with each other.  Very much a night of nostalgia.  But excluding the rehearsal at 3pm, we were there from 6:30pm though 10:45pm which didn't leave me with much energy to do much else that night. 

That said, this week went really well.  I've been staying on top of my work and am very proud of myself for being able to do so.  And though any prospects of being productive Saturday were obliterated by the fun concert (and I guess I'm grumbling a bit because we didn't get to play all that much), I have all today and possibly even all tomorrow to get through what I need to.  Tomorrow, it's supposed to now 7-11 inches which is impressive for Southern Maryland.  And since this whole state is so poorly equipped to handle inclement weather (I mean, back in MoCo, school'd be cancelled if there was a CHANCE of snow, haha), it looks like school's going to be cancelled for Monday. 

But now that I think about it, I JUST remembered that literally a week from now, I'll be playing again at the Golden Age concert.  And if Monday is cut out, that means we've lost half of our practice time as a band, and a 100% of practice time for the combo.  Woo, this is going to be fun, hahahaha! 

I have two midterms coming up (it's already halfway through the semester!) and hope to get them done before Spring Break.  I've also been on top of my SMP work, though I'd like to pick up the pace some and finish the writing process so I can get to doodling!  I'm not too terribly proud of the story I have, but I don't think it'll matter in the end.  I've been doing research on a regular basis but need to write more stuff down to show for it so I'll have material to work with when I do my write up next semester.

Well, time to do some laundry and get some groceries.

Love and Peace,

Nam

PS  I love this kid's reaction, hahahaha!

Here's a ridiculously catchy song that I've been loving and hating, but more of the loving as much as I hate to admit it.  Thanks to my father for continuing to introduce me to music I'd never think to listen to. 

The Bird and the Bee - Again & Again

Things are finally forseeably leveling themselves out.  My brain is finally absorbing the information I'm asking it to for school.  And it's wonderful to be learning again!  I know I'll be complaining soon, but I'm actually pretty happy to be swimming in my work, fully immersing myself in academic obligations.  Unfortunately, other important things are taking a back seat, but I set priorities for myself at the beginning of the semester, and if it takes me a flu to put everything back in perspective, then awesome.

But now that I've decided to wrap up for tonight with a post, I do have to say that I'm excited for the future.  I hope I get the summer job, but if I don't I have the benefit of an awesome backup plan in the form of a summer class.  Haha, I guess it's a good thing that I'm actually excited about education again.  It's quite refreshing.

I've been keeping a "Hero Diary" for my SMP which has helped keep me focused on elements I need to be thinking about when I really dig into the work.  I'm on my third concept that I've drafted and still feel that it's not the right one, but it's in the right direction.  I still think that it's awesome that my school's going to give me credit to work on a comic book.  I'm just excited to get to the drawing phase!  Unfortunately, writing has to come first.

Music is looking promising.  In addition to continuing to play with Francis Bridge, I know that I'm eventually going to play for our school's Coffee House.  I'm really excited to do a solo peroformance again!  It's been a while.  On top of that, Liz and I have some new stuff to perform.  I was also contacted to accompany an opera singer-turned jazz performer for a duet with the intent of gigging.  How cool is that?  My creative juices are at a pretty good level.  I'm coming up with new material every time I touch the guitar.  I'm feeling a bit bummed that I haven't been devoting much time to improve as a pianist, but I've gotta work with what I have!

Overall, despite feeling down yesterday, I'm in a very pleasant mood today and feel that I will be for the rest of the week.  Everyone I care about is in moderately good health, I don't have any drama in my life (knock on wood), I'm enjoying the work I do, and things are looking up.  I just need to keep plowing and not lose momentum.

And while I'm in this feel-good mood, how beautiful is this?

Love and Peace,

Nam