Making records isn't all I do. I have my hands in a lot of pies, but in the end they all seem to be filled with similar ingredients. I spend a great deal of my life seated in front of a computer or recording console, juggling instruments, engineering sounds, mixing sounds, producing sounds. Lots of sounds hammer at my ears and after awhile, it becomes tiresome and I need a break. There's this thing they call 'ear fatigue' that is a very real and very annoying little thing, whether or not it's actually harmful to the anatomy of what's going on inside of your tubes is irrelevant to the fact that damaging or not, it muddies up your focus and numbs you to the clearer picture of what's going on.
Liken it to a muralist who paints a scene on the side of a building. A great big canvas right in front of him, all the colors he needs right at his fingertips ready to tell whatever clever story happens to be buzzing around in his head. But the one thing he needs, the most important thing of all in order to imprint his internal thoughts onto the external side of that building, is a decent amount of perspective, which unfortunately happens to be the one thing that he cannot grasp without taking any measure of a break. So he can toil on endlessly, seeing fingers as big as his head in front of his face and whole sections of a wall the size of himself all colored the same hue without any of it measuring to any kind of sense. Sure, he might have a delicate map in his brain or maybe a formula for proportion in which he starts out using, but in the end, the only way he can truly see if what he's got is worth a damn is by putting the brushes down, dodging the traffic in a stroll across the street to turn his head back over and examine his work standing and staring right back at him in plain daylight.
This quick refresher, this cleansing of the palette is a necessary step in anyone's life. Whether you're an artist of some kind or a student or the guy who changes the toilet paper rolls in the airport bathrooms. Taking a break is the only thing that lets you see that mural across the street, making sure it's all in order and exactly how you hoped it would be. Sure, you have to put down your brushes and stop working for awhile. This stresses many of us out sometimes, myself included. The relentless tick of the clock clicks persistently and loudly at those of us who feel we aren't reaching our potential. But sometimes the pause is worth double the movement.
Needless to say, here and there I take a break from toiling over what I need to be doing, completely push it aside from my life no matter how important I may feel it is. It's right up in front of my face, too close to discern its proportions and I need to step away and forget about it for awhile in order to see its beauty and its mistakes. You know that saying, you never find what you're looking for unless you're no longer looking for it. Some of that applies here, too. So here I am in a winter weekend in Los Angeles, seated across the street looking at my mural on the wall, no longer overwhelmingly in my face but from a proper distance, a heap of perspective standing before me to show me the way of my next stroke. Ears rested and thoughts re-organized.
And for now, meet Pete, the studio mascot.
Liken it to a muralist who paints a scene on the side of a building. A great big canvas right in front of him, all the colors he needs right at his fingertips ready to tell whatever clever story happens to be buzzing around in his head. But the one thing he needs, the most important thing of all in order to imprint his internal thoughts onto the external side of that building, is a decent amount of perspective, which unfortunately happens to be the one thing that he cannot grasp without taking any measure of a break. So he can toil on endlessly, seeing fingers as big as his head in front of his face and whole sections of a wall the size of himself all colored the same hue without any of it measuring to any kind of sense. Sure, he might have a delicate map in his brain or maybe a formula for proportion in which he starts out using, but in the end, the only way he can truly see if what he's got is worth a damn is by putting the brushes down, dodging the traffic in a stroll across the street to turn his head back over and examine his work standing and staring right back at him in plain daylight.
This quick refresher, this cleansing of the palette is a necessary step in anyone's life. Whether you're an artist of some kind or a student or the guy who changes the toilet paper rolls in the airport bathrooms. Taking a break is the only thing that lets you see that mural across the street, making sure it's all in order and exactly how you hoped it would be. Sure, you have to put down your brushes and stop working for awhile. This stresses many of us out sometimes, myself included. The relentless tick of the clock clicks persistently and loudly at those of us who feel we aren't reaching our potential. But sometimes the pause is worth double the movement.
Needless to say, here and there I take a break from toiling over what I need to be doing, completely push it aside from my life no matter how important I may feel it is. It's right up in front of my face, too close to discern its proportions and I need to step away and forget about it for awhile in order to see its beauty and its mistakes. You know that saying, you never find what you're looking for unless you're no longer looking for it. Some of that applies here, too. So here I am in a winter weekend in Los Angeles, seated across the street looking at my mural on the wall, no longer overwhelmingly in my face but from a proper distance, a heap of perspective standing before me to show me the way of my next stroke. Ears rested and thoughts re-organized.
And for now, meet Pete, the studio mascot.
