Death Sound

Albeit to say that where we live, our neighborhood, has changed in scope and dynamic, it is home.  We have lived in our neighborhood since 1978, and that is a long time.  Most people alive today didn't experience the 70's, and most everyone will agree that today things are different.  The world is a different place.  Is there a different criteria for buying a home?  As a musician and someone who does produce music at home from time to time, the desires for a home may be different.  We have made vast improvements to the house structure including insulation, HVAC upgrades, and paint.  These improvements were necessary.   Although they are effective at insulating your living space from the outside, nothing can completely ensure you happiness in a dwelling.  It is a life long pursuit.  Decor, feng shwi, and sentiment all cooperate in providing a comfortable or inspiring living space.  It would be optimum if our dwelling provided physical serenity on its own, but that is asking a lot.  The reason why people buy a second home often at a beach, is because that environment is more conducive to relaxation.  The wafting of warm ocean wind, the sound of undulating waves, and picturesque sunsets are effective at providing a peaceful experience for the mind and body.  Everyday life is not so storybook.  We must work for happiness, and for me music has been a large part of that happiness.  It is a vessel for personal intellectual and emotional expression.  Through music production you can express your feelings, seek salvation, and find respite from the anxiety of the modern world.  There are many kinds and styles of music, and each style carries a different role.  Rock music can be inciting and aggressive.  The Blues can be consoling.  Certain kinds of jazz music can be very sentimental and romantic.  The beauty of music is that it can provide emotional fulfillment not available in our immediate environment.  Our environment or our surroundings in large part are not determined by us.  We can fine tune our houses and yards, but the dynamic of our neighborhoods and towns are at the mercy of the consensus.  A consensus is achieved by considering most of the proximal things and also things further out.  These are factors home buyers would want to understand before buying a house.  If you find yourself in a home with a dynamic largely dictated by the outside world, it may diverge from you own desires.  Music can help, but music also can become an antagonist for a bullying and dominating force.  The world today has become very divided, and it is likely your neighbors and your co-workers may not have the same tastes as you.  If you project a certain vibration through music, it would be easy to receive push back from your efforts.  It is unfortunate that music can be so polarizing, but it seems to be the case.  I enjoy different styles of music, because none of them seems to be effective at soothing my tattered soul a majority of the time.  Continually I must change it up.  Lately I have shelved my desires entirely, because the military has been raising their own hell.  When you are being trained to kill the enemy with 155mm howitzers, jazz music has nothing to do with it.  Likewise it does not have the sonic strength to overcome that dynamic of field warfare.  When acoustic jazz waned in the 1960's, it was because it no longer could compete with the sheer volume and force of modern American life.  Largely this was because of the change from steam to diesel in the rail industry, and amplification became necessary to produce the power needed to produce music which could have a physiological impact on listeners.  You might be able to hear the music, but history shows the power of music is through feeling.  Its communal strength is in uniting common souls through its message.  This power of music has been lost in America, and the music industry has shrunk and complied.  Nowhere can we find the raw angst, aggression, and power of stadium Rock, Funk, and Heavy Metal.  It may have been NWA was the last musical group capable of connecting with and moving the masses.  Hip Hop was castrated, and its sheer sonic power and authority have disappeared.  Instead tepid, weak, and complicit pop music has taken its place.  It exists in a bubble refusing to confront the dynamic of daily American life.  To accomplish such a goal, to try and change the American dynamic through music, is a monumental task.  It requires vision, artistry, technique, and money, four things which rarely come together today.  Instead we live in a tube, a tube which used to be called television.  Now the tube is the internet, and its experience is not the same as real life.  In some ways it seems better than real life, but when the generator fails and the signal stops we are shit out of luck.  Better to prepare and produce on the grand scale employing many and effecting more.  This once was the way of America until the divisive presidency of Donald Trump.  His rallies used this methodology, but the message was wrong.  It is time for the people to reclaim this cultural need.  When I attempt to produce music, even in the home which has been upgraded and improved, certain ills of society continue to interrupt.  I have been able to truncate ambient noise to a large degree, but what remains are two things which, because they are invisible and inaudible, are doubted and discounted as refuse.  Indeed they are sly, covert, and scheming entities which continue to exert control over our lives.  Modern government and industry refuse to accept responsibility, only because you can't see them.  Diplomats at the Havana embassy could hear their protagonist.  It hummed, and buzzed, and clicked like crickets.  Most of these sounds could be considered to be otoacoustic or sounds made by the body itself in response to aural stimuli.  Tinnitus is an example in that its sound is produced by a dead range of the hearing spectrum.  An area where you no longer are able to hear produced the sound of tinnitus when subjected to low frequency sound waves.  It is perplexing.  In a certain way people with hearing loss actually can hear infrasonic stimuli.  It is how I know, because my left ear rings from tinnitus when planes or locomotives are nearby.  Needless to say when my ear is ringing from tinnitus, I don't hear as well.  My ability to hear and appreciate proximal music is lessened.  My ability to produce music live also is hampered, because lower frequency sounds are omni directional and not easily directed in a particular direction.  Bass tones become muddy and indistinct.  Phase distortion is introduced, and intermodulation produces unpleasant overtones.  It is difficult but not pointless to try and produce music under these circumstances.  The norm is what has happened across the globe.  The favorable and often pristine audio acoustics of a quiet world have been lost to the military industrial complex.  Nothing sounds the same and nothing sounds nearly as good as audio from the 50's and 60's.  As a musician you are dealing with a loaded deck, a slanted field, or an antagonist who is trying to defeat you before he even understands your message.  It is sheer domination.  Consequently democracy has suffered at the hands of this massive acoustic sickle.  It is due time for this nemesis to become recognized, be held accountable, and to allow greater cultural forces to inject life into a dying society.