quelquechose

You can argue that things are getting worse for the arts in general. At best, one can argue that things are the same. But you'd have a really hard time convincing anyone (artists especially) that thing are getting better.

I was driving to to work yesterday. I was about to cross the river on Central when I realized that I needed to go to St. Paul. So I turned and went down 2nd. On that street alone I drove past two brand-new modern buildings that house arts organizations: the Guthrie and MacPhail Center for Music. We also have a new Walker Arts Center facility. In these dark times, why are these places growing and getting better?

I think Minneapolis has a fear of anything that doesn't come packaged in a shiny box. Large institutions are selling the idea of legitimacy so that we can believe we're a part of something. Artists, on the other hand, need a community that's more real and more organic. Artistic community cannot actually be created by an architect and a developer. I think the Walker is actually helping to dig Minneapolis' artists their graves. It establishes a threshold of legitimacy that pretty much blacklists any upstart gallery from making a mark. It gives the public a cultural outlet they can trust so that they don't have to be in the know. And now they even have underground parking so your nice car doesn't get fucked with. Who cares that Joe Nobody can't sell his art or get a job? This is capitalism. Survival of the richest.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the music scene. I've gotten one response in my search for gigs, and that response was a 'maybe.' The one show I had lined up at all this summer was supposed to be at the Belfry. The only thing that really keeps me trying is the fact that I don't have any real-world job prospects. I'm still creating in a void. No social life, no money, working for my dad, and trying to record interesting music by myself at home. And every day it becomes clearer and clearer that I'm the only one who gives a shit. Institutionalize that, Minneapolis!

In the past week I've hit three open mics and sold two CDs. They pretty much went well. I've been going to work on my own schedule, which means I've taken some days off to work on recording. I realized that I need to relax and not pressure myself, but at the same time work on music every day. I decided I'm going to wait until I have the next project done, and then move. I don't want to relocate with unfinished business.

I'm having a major problem with this whole gigging out thing. I really don't know how people do it and it's a major source of confusion for me. Every time I contact a venue, I don't get a response. I don't really have many friends, much less friends who are musicians, much less friends who are musicians who get to pick who they play with. I can think of one time where I was invited to play a show with someone who I included in the past. On top of that, there are not that many places to play, not that Minneapolis is helping.

I keep reverting back to this idea of playing in the street, just because it's the logical outgrowth of my frustration. Just as I did with the open mics schedule (and completely despite the fact that nobody ever finds out about shows this way and actually show up to them) I'll post any busking dates on my web site.

I did not do the Cedar open mic last night. I get there a couple minutes late, and I guess the line starts outside before the door opens and then the list fills up right away. I would've had to wait 2 and a half hours, so I skipped it, and went to the Triple Rock to have a beer, and then went home and set up my keyboards.

I've been recording today. I'm monitoring with an amplifier on overdubs (no headphones), which I never thought to do because of feedback, but you can just monitor the mix and not the performance. It's much less claustrophobic.

I am definitely playing tomorrow night at Galactic--I won't skip out. Besides it starts at 10, so it'll be easy to show up on time.

I started working on songs and recording again, getting back into the healthy habit of plugging the laptop into the Tascam. I have a lot of half-baked tracks on my minitape recorder and I've been building some of them up. I may post some lyrics to one or two of them soon.

Aside from that, my knees got me worried lately because they feel swollen and they pop when I walk around, with the occasional faint, sharp pain. It seems to be a mix of the old hypochondria and pre-arthritic barometric pressure joint reactivity, but I've been taking a mixture of glucosamine, MSM, and chondroitin just to be on the safe side. For years I've had the same thing happening occasionally with my thumb. I bend it and it cracks. Gross. Our bodies are stupid.

My brother's cat was meowing outside his back door last week with a huge hole in its back. I didn't know what to do, so I just brought it to a vet and they stitched him up for $250. He better pay me back. Cats' bodies are gross too. Even worse because they don't seem to mind that their muscle is exposed, they just keep licking it.

What I've been doing lately:
- Paperwork. Mostly my taxes.
- Working an average 5 hours a day on my parents' house.
- Writing quick and partial songs and recording them on minitape. Playing drums with sticks (I normally use brushes).
- Worrying about muscle stiffness. My hands tense up when I play guitar for more than 30 minutes. My joints are starting to ache slightly. If I work really hard at music I may find success in my 40s, just in time to be a hopelessly depressed arthritic old man.
- Contacting places to play in Milwaukee and Chicago. No one so far.
- Researching the prospect of moving to Chicago.
- Researching the prospect of going back to school and taking web development classes.
- Thinking about how silly everything is and wondering why people even try and if I should even bother.

Something happened to me recently which hasn't happened to me in a long time: I heard a song at Caffetto and it stuck to me. Last I remember it was Iron +Wine (but I didn't know that until I borrowed a random CD from the office at SSCA.) Before that it was Neutral Milk Hotel's King of Carrot Flowers pt. 1. This time, Welcome Home by Florida songwriter Radical Face.

I don't listen to music much. It just naturally happens that way. I don't think music is meant to be researched and shopped for. It's meant to be out in the world, playing at some random place you happen into. Friends are supposed to expose you to music, and it should come to you when your not expecting it.

I've never bought a CD because of what I read on a blog, or because of a clip I heard on television.

I could say a lot of stuff, I suppose, about Muzak or radio, how music is turned into an industry and how we thus become consumers first and listeners second. There's books written on the subject, one of which (Noise by Jacques Attali) I'm getting started reading now.

I feel like music is a source of connection we feel to the world, and to reality, and then to ourselves. That connection is often amputated and rerouted to our system of culture and a very constructed, mediated sense of reality. (Music is constructed, too, but organically.) I think it's safe to say that I feel disconected from the world right now, and now more than ever. To compensate, I dig into myself. I try hard to be happy, but it doesn't work because there's just one person keeping it together: me. Hearing a good song unexpectedly provides an escape from that. An escape from the ridgid brain connections I've forged in order to create myself the way I wanted.

It also reminds me that such exceptions, more than anything, prove the rule. But hey, that's the fault of consumers, giving in to fantasies of control and false individuality. That's another subject.

I used to take an herbal supplement called 5-HTP, which is meant to promote the production of serotonin in the brain, thus providing treatment for depression. I took it off and on, only when I needed it. When I did need it, I would try to take it for a couple weeks at least, and then I would keep taking it until I started forgetting to take it. (If you don't remember to take it, maybe you don't need it. If you do need it, you'll know when.) I started this after I had a breakdown 2 years ago. I tried taking Effexor, which I got samples of from my doctor at the time. It helped. I felt numb. I went to work every day, and watched TV, and didn't mind it. I stopped taking it because it would have cost me $150 a month to stay on it.

I quit taking the 5-HTP a few months ago, just because I didn't feel like I needed it. I was doing fine, albeit on a fine line. Then I got a cold. Once I realized that I could never make up my sick time (even when I'm OK I have problems going to work for my dad. He pays me well, I can't stand the work, I manage to just scrape by) all of my other problems surfaced. I'm making no money on music. I can't get a gig. I can't find a decent job. And I don't have a social life because I'm too broke to do anything, and besides, I should be at home recording anyways. I couldn't turn these thoughts off while I was at work. I never have been able to. Eventually my brain gets tired and just accepts it and I go on with my life. But then it happens again.

Taking a chemical won't change who you are. It won't change your brain. It definitely won't make your life situation any better. It can only promote change. So I'm trying to see what I can change and how I can help myself. I'm just afraid that the answer is to "find a job."

Any job that fits my qualifications does not fit my skills or personality, and vice versa. That's the trap I'm stuck in. I've gone after jobs that "fit me," and I don't get hired, usually because someone more personable is just as available. I was able to slip in to jobs only to get treated passive-aggressively, and sometimes even used as a scapegoat. If I've ever had a job that did not fit this profile, it was low pay and small hours.

EVERY employer wants a "motivated, team-oriented, self-starter," which I can be if I were running a gallery or something. I can't be that while answering bitter emails from dissatisfied Target customers. And I can't pretend I'm going to. What the fuck is the point of that?

I've always known this about myself and that's why I fight against the odds and work my ass off in my spare time, making music, making art, promoting the arts, volunteering, running a zine fair, etc. hoping that it will pay off down the line. The fact is that it WILL NOT pay off--without money. Money to get 100 copies of your CD out to bloggers. Money to spend weeknights at bars networking with the indie rock scene. Money to allow you to spend the afternoon recording without being in a hurry because you're losing a day's work. Money to keep yourself healthy while you're running on overdrive. Money runs everything, and without that backing, no one gives a shit that you have pictures hanging in a coffee shop. Or that you have a CD on consignment at a record store. Or that you have new songs ready to perform on a stage. I've tried really hard, hoping that my trying will lead to me not needing a job as bad. But in order to make anything off of my efforts, I need money. To get money, I need a job that pays me decent wage for full time work and doesn't penalize me for being human (cram thousands of people into a building for 40 hours every week and they're going to get sick, especially when they can't afford to not go to work.)

Based on former experience, the best case scenario is that I will settle for something that will pay me to simply maintain my human existence. If I save anything, it'll cover the hole that I create when I get pissed off and quit. My only life, it seems, is a flat line. It also seems my creativity has been dwindling since I stopped getting student loans and switched to paying them. I made a huge mistake. I invested in myself. I thought being educated would get me somewhere. I didn't realize that you're more prepared for the workforce as a high school graduate than as a college graduate. (Note: I know that college grads are most likely to get the job. What they don't tell you is that it's college grads who get in and get out without challenging themselves who get the job. Prove you can do it and put it on your resume but don't let it make you think you know anything. But remain pliable. You're part of a machine.)

I hesitate to write stuff like this on such a public forum, knowing that a potential employer may happen upon it while Googling my name. But hey, if you thought you wanted to hire me before you read this and now you don't, then the only way we're going to get along is by me subverting. Go find a tool.

I was planning on releasing a new full length CD this spring. While I did get a lot done, it's not finished, and I haven't been working on it. My priorities are forced. Music is a luxury. While I always find time to write songs and play guitar, recording requires a lot of patience. Patience I don't have. It also takes time. If I have any extra time these days, it's not out of creative need as much as it is me being too depressed to go to work. Furthermore, I try as hard as I can to get out and play shows to promote myself, but I'm going on nearly 6 months with no gigs at all. My career is at a standstill while the rest of the world shoots past me, and if I were in my right mind, I would keep fighting. The truth is I'm a wage-slave scraping bottom until it becomes realistic for me to believe I'm allowed to think I am what I am: an artist.

I don't know when the next CD will come out, but hey--it's not like the world really needs another collection of sad songs to bury under it's own capitalist detritus. Hello, machine. Take me.

A good song on the radio, a dreary day, coffee and the drowsiness of a monday morning (and a cigarette, although I no longer smoke) used to inspire of a mood of hopeful yet melancholy reflection. I would then set to work knowing that darkness brings with it connection to the world, and that I was on to something in my life, something that would lead me to a better place. Now I just feel empty. The heaviness of the need to support yourself with income sucks the life out of all realism. My soul was never listed in the deductions on my pay stub. And I want it back. I'm writing the IRS.

Last night I was at the Bad Waitress with a friend. We were just sitting there using our computers. I closed mine, hopeless and unaccomplished. I was looking for a job and places to tour. Prospects seem so slim, and I spiraled down into a metaphor involving the jelly packets, how some are in the little bowl, but some fall out and get put back in, and then... I don't know. Being outside the system, you need a rope or you die. I hold on by working crap jobs for people who don't respect me.

Part of it is depression. Then part of it is my personality. Still another part is this place.

Can a depressed misfit survive in a small city with an identity crisis and a passive aggressive personality disorder?

Come 8/31, there's nothing keeping me here. Unless I start a fun dance band, or find my calling in middle management, or give myself a labotomy, I'm moving.

So I'm depressed. My job is stupid. Money is tight. Things are hard. Fuck it.

I'm leaving in May. Milwaukee, Chicago, Nashville, maybe Omaha. Maybe even Minneapolis. I may just keep it acoustic for simplicity's sake. My amp sounds like shit anyways. I'll live on canned tuna and gas station mayo packets and sleep in the car.

I need to start playing around town. If need be I'll play in the street.

Of course I may fly off the handle tomorrow and take everything back. I do that alot. But what I don't do is flake out of actual plans. So basically, all I need to do is make plans and they'll happen.

I beefed up my profile on last.fm, and you can now stream and preview lots of my records both old and new:
Twenty-Eight
Sorry About the Noise
Lost in the Background
I'll Stay by the Ground
I Heart Boredom
...with nothing to say
Signals Encoded in Magnets
Abstractions + Distractions
Humid Apartment Music

Check it out at www.last.fm/music/Gerald+Prokop.

Scratch everything. I'm not working with a band, I'm not playing any shows, I'm not going on tour, I'm not trying to work as much as I can. I will finish this record because that's a realistic goal. But I'm not gonna guarantee that it'll get done without me killing a few brain cells.

My life is not my own. I'm not in control, so it's kind of stupid to make any plans.

I'm recording my next CD, creating an art booklet to package it in, I've got zines on the backburner, electronics projects I'm planning, and a big chunk of mahogany that I paid $50 for, hoping to turn it into a guitar. While that all sounds busy and interesting, the reality is I spend most of my time bored out of my fucking mind, sweeping up dust in a basement, patching concrete, sanding walls, moving furniture and dealing with the habits of scatterbrained, sixty-plus entrepreneurs.

I hated gym class, shop, after-school sports, etc. Somehow my predominant career got to be manual labor. So far every means I've found to break the spell has fallen apart. I'm becoming a career job-seeker. No one will hire me because my disaster-zone of a resume shows a history of settling for jobs I didn't want. I've gotten my hopes up so many times, I'm letting go. There is no job for me. I have to create it myself. Combine music and art in my own style of publishing, like I'm already doing. I'm already working the job I want, I just don't have time for it.

Minneapolis can't support artists. Take the number of venues or galleries and compare it to the number of musicians or painters and you have a problem. And some of those people are cooler than you. Some have "friends in the scene." Some have money in their family or other weird sources of income. Plenty of them are younger than you and willing to take greater risks. Add my own personal struggle with myself, and it gets hard to compete.

Anyways, I'm TRYING to piece together the possibility of going on the road this year. Take my guitar, CDs and zines and try to get some momentum. The only thing stopping me is money. My jobs are completely flexible. In theory I should be able to afford it as long as I work full time.

And thats where the plan falls apart. I've been working for my dad most of my life. I've tried to save money with that job so many times, and I always just end up in debt to him instead. My depression gets worse the more hours I put into that job. I had a stomachache for a year and a half that came back every day. No one knew what it was. I got a different job and it was gone.

As an experiment, I'm going to try and put up with this shit throughout the month of March. Then I'm leaving for 10 days to tour the Midwest. I'm not planning on this, I'm hoping for it. I'm going to be blogging more. It might help to write about how much I despise what I do for a living. And sometimes I feel like people think I'm OK with it. I'm not. I need out or I'm going to destroy myself. 5 years from now I see myself either working full time or being creative. I can't see myself doing both.

This blog is being simultaneously published on Blogger and LiveJournal, after which it will eventually be moving to Blogger. I will be using both as I get Blogger set up. You can always access my blog by going to blog.geraldprokop.com

My home studio upgrade is almost finished. I'm in the process of ordering the computer hardware now. That's it. The remainder of my funding will go towards post-production of the next CD. I still think I'll be mixing on my own, but I'll be outsourcing mastering, duplication and printing services.

Recording itself is always interesting no matter what equipment you're using. I'm pulling myself in all sorts of directions--working on old songs, writing on the electric, starting with the drums, starting with an old notebook, spending two hours layering a guitar part so I can scrap it later. Those are the problems that get worse the more tracks you have. So far after two months of "casual" recording (mostly nights) I have a good start on about 12 tracks, and 4 that are close to being done. Not bad I suppose.

I just arranged it with one of my employers to work on my own doing a website. That'll be helpful considering that I was up until almost 4 a.m. last night making rough mixdowns.

I'm working on transcribing the bass parts to some of my songs for a friend of mine who is going to be playing bass for me. There's a few that definitely need a drummer, but plenty that we can get by on.

I'll be playing a Saturday afternoon gig at the Triple Rock, adding lead guitar to Brad Senne's new songs. It's around 5:00. We practiced once!

I'm working on recording again. I went through my notebooks today and picked just over twenty songs to work on over the winter and spring. So far the new system is working well. I hooked up the monitor outputs into my stereo so I can listen to the stuff on real speakers. I find that I also prefer recording bass while listening to the mix on speakers, rather than headphones. The next step is a dedicated computer. The laptop screen is way too small and I unhook and rehook things too often.

On Wednesday I'm getting together with Brad Senne, who asked to me to collaborate with him on guitar. It should be fun. I don't get many chances to just focus on guitar on stage.

I also took a bunch of stuff apart and hatched up some circuit-building plans, which opened up a financial can of worms I'm not really equipped to deal with. So I need to take everything, make a parts list, put everything back together, and then wait. Wait for money.

I've been working on getting myself a business checking account, and making test mixes of some tracks I made since I got the new Tascam. I'm in the process of buying an old car from a friend of mine. Then I'll be working 10 hour days, paying for the car, putting money into the business account and taking my amp into the shop to get repaired.

I just ordered a keyboard amp--not for the keyboard but for vocals. I'll be practicing and trying some new stuff out for live shows. I'm still looking for people to play with. Fuck if that shit ever works out. It's too easy to lock myself inside and just record stuff. After nearly 20 records in the past 10 years and I still can't get this gigging thing down.

I'm nearing the end of my savings plan I started last September and I just put in an order for a bunch of new equipment!  I'll soon be graduating up from the 4-track to a 48 track system as well as adding a handful of mics to my current collection of 1. 

I put an ad on craigslist for bass players and drummers and I've gotten plenty of responses--all bass players since the subject line mentioned bass.

"Sorry About the Noise" is consigned at Treehouse, Electric Fetus, Cheapo (T.C. Locations) and Roadrunner, ready for Tuesday.

My next CD "Sorry About the Noise," will be released December 4th!  All sites are updated and a new track is posted on MySpace Click on the cover for more:

Official track count for the October Sketches project is: 37.

I did a track per day (at least--some days I did more) between Sept. 21st and October 21st. I mixed them all, and then realized that my settings were wrong on my computer so they all got fed through a filter they shouldn't have and I have to re-do them all.

Anyways, this will turn into a record. More later.