The Drive

The Drive

Thoughts:

At a cursory glance, a solo drive across the whole of central and western North America seems a daunting idea. Three days alone in a car. Three days of prairies, and road construction, of truck-stop snack food and the soft-focus companionship of those arbitrary, warm-glow taillights.

But a 15 hour drive is an opportunity. And three consecutive 15 hour drives is a gold-mine. Consider the luxury of being able to complete a thought.

Imagine your standard friday night. You go out for dinner, and then see a movie. The story is well told, and it raises questions about friendship, and loyalty. It gets you thinking. You get back into your car, and think to yourself, "I wonder how good of a friend I actually am". And then head home to finish up the laundry, because you're heading out early the next morning for an out-of-town wedding, and you know traffic is going to be a horror-show on the QEW.

Imagine driving west. You're in the middle of Montana, just west of Yellowstone, and you finish up a 1 hour podcast on the virtues of friendship, and loyalty. It gets you thinking. So you start talking it out. To the steering wheel. To the sprawling vistas that surround you as you carve your way through the plains. Time is of no consequence. You're going to drive until you're sleepy. Or until you hit water. "Am I a good friend? What do I call a good friend? Who are my good friends? Why? And how do I see them? And how do they see me?"

There's depth in solitude. And much to be learned from one's own thoughts. We talk, in church settings, about hearing God. Perhaps hearing God is synonymous with hearing ourselves. Like a factory-shipped Dell, the information is already there. No install necessary. Just turn it on. Perhaps an unrealistic expectation given the pace of everyday life.

So I thought a lot. I think I learned things about myself. With that kind of time, you start thinking about thinking. To ask yourself if you're a good friend is one thing. To ask yourself why you answered that question the way that you did is a step further, and probably tells you more about yourself.

I did a lot of thinking back to specific periods in my life, trying to decipher what made those moments different than others. Where was my mind? What did I value? What was my inspiration?

There was time to quantify my situation. There are so many positives in my life. So many reasons that I love waking up (almost) every morning. My marriage. My work. There is something important about taking the time to sort those things into piles. To look at the things that fill me up and appreciate them for what they are. The well of contentment is sourced from the active awareness of one's situation.

There will be more to come about the time Kar and I spent together, on the island, and driving back East. But as for the drive out, it was excellent, and something I highly recommend.


Arbitrary Thoughts:

- The geographical diversity of the northern United States and Canada is incredible. It really is a beautiful drive.

- How other people live, how I live, and whether there are objective lessons to be learned is something I thought a lot about. The open simplicity of central Montana against the bustling and striving of Toronto is a jarring juxtaposition. In an ideal world, we'd all switch places for a year, just to learn, and experience. How I think about everything (politics, faith, etc.) has to be affected by my daily experience, no?

- It is only on that lonesome two-lane highway in the middle of the prairies, in the searing heat of a weekday afternoon, in the solitude of having not seen another car over the past 45 minutes, that one remembers the conversation they had with their mechanic that led to them deciding not to replace the timing belt after 130 000 km despite the mechanic's hearty recommendations to do so lest you suffer the devastating and undoubtedly imminent consequences.

- Hitting a moose would be terrifying. We saw one roadside on the way home. More terrifying is how little thought is ever given to what might happen if said moose, having come through the windshield, managed to remain conscious, and, heaven help us, angry.

- I'm just going to say it, because, well, I covered a fair amount of the country and saw a lot of people. Americans are a hearty folk, aren't they?

- When you're 356 miles from any town, in any direction, and the ground is cracked and dusty from drought, and the sun is blazing down on an empty road surrounded by fields of tumbleweed and wild grass as far as the eye can see, and there are rattle snake warning signs, and you see a tiny home two and a half miles up the mountain with two horses tied up out front and an american flag hanging off the side, your first thought is generally, "wonder where they got the flag..."

- When you're rolling through Iowa, you find yourself on high alert for a Ray Kinsella sighting. In Montana, it feels more like Clint Eastwood. Or somebody from the cast of Bonanza.

- The definition of advertising genius is putting a monstrous, glowing sign roadside on the I-90 in the middle of nowhere that reads, "MYSTERY LOCATION, NEXT RIGHT! OMINOUS OCCURRENCES AND EVENTS GUARANTEED TO HAPPEN! 3 MILES AHEAD. NEXT RIGH!!" in huge bold letters. Guaranteed to happen? Let me make you a guarantee. If you turn at the next right, you're going to find a gas station with a fruit-stand.

JB

Audiophotoblog

A couple of newsworthy items in today's post. Firstly, we (CTV) built a new room downtown, and for the past few weeks I've been down here getting the ball rolling, working out kinks, and mixing for MTV, Much Music, etc. It's been a total blast. There's something about working downtown... lots going on... more energy, you know? Looking out the window and seeing people walking by, going about their daily business is surprisingly energizing. As opposed to seeing, you know, the 401 and a Walmart.

The second bit of news is that we got a new lens, and it's totally fun! We were always frustrated with how our other lens couldn't handle remotely low lighting.. to the point that shooting indoors was usually seriously suspect. So we picked up this baby as a solution... it's a Nikon 50mm prime.

Soooo... I thought I'd combine the two and make a photoblog! Been a while since I tossed up some pics. And granted, they aren't of Kar or myself, but I believe you'll find them equally glorious! A few details on the room included, for any audio buddies checking in:




The room is centered around a ProTools HD3 rig driven by this 24 fader D-Command. The surface is extremely fun to use... really quick and hands-on. Main monitors are Klein/Hummel O300s (5.1), plus a K&H small mono and access to the stereo TV speakers. An SSL Delta-Link handles I/O in place of the usual 192 interfaces.



Dolby gear! A CD player tied into ProTools. Dolby DP570 Multichannel Audio Tool allowing for immediate downstream monitoring of applied metadata. DP563 and DP564 ProLogic 2 Encode/Decode for upmix/folddown. LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meter for dialnorm measurement.





If God designed a metering solution for pro audio applications, this would be it. RTW metering station.



Two things of note in this picture. Firstly, Starbucks is right around the corner. Secondly, I have a window. A big one!!!



All I/O in the room centre on a MADI-based ring by Optocore. Which means gobs of I/O, all at the click of a button. No hard patching necessary! The Digi XMON provides monitoring control via the D-Command master section (In reality, only being used as a downstream mute/dim).



Ok, so hard patching is available... but not necessary! Rosendahl sync engine, and an SSL Alpha-Link for analogue I/O off the Optocore ring.



Working on Olympic Hockey mixes for the upcoming hockey-specific BluRay/DVD release. Crazy how I watched every game, and know every final score, and still find myself watching with rapt attention and cheering for every goal!



Faders!



Neyrink VMON is the engine that drives all monitoring. There are an unholy number of monitoring requirements in this room (or any proper 5.1 post room, for that matter) and this system handles them all. It's a plugin-based design that pulls audio from ProTools on a basis of which plugins you've placed where... I can access almost anything from this controller, including the outputs of all of my Dolby gear.


So that's that. Gonna be tough to head back up to Agincourt after having spent a few weeks down here, but no doubt I'll be back. I've learned a ton these past two weeks, which is always incredible. I really fell in love with this kindof work because of how diverse it can be, and how much there is to learn. There's nothing like sitting down in a brand new room based around a completely new concept, and figuring out how everything works and how it can positively affect your workflow and efficiency. Seriously, like a kid in a candy store!!

Peace.. and happy warm weather eh?
JB

He-man The Saved...

Sweet thing happened yesterday. Made me smile... brought me back a few years.

I had just gotten home from work.. it was probably shortly after 7:00p. The night before, Kar and Kim had planted their annual summer garden out back. Not a big one, but plenty of good bounty, to be sure... tomatoes, Cucumbers, and herbs galore. But I digress.

In digging up last year's plants, we had come across a small warrior. That is to say... He-man. An action destroyer... well... a doer of violent yet necessary deeds.. yes, that's probably the best way to go about describing him. He looked not unlike this:



He was just hanging out in our back yard. Well... the 'man doesn't really ever just 'hang out' does he? Probably reconnaissance.

So we planted him. The girls had just finished the last round of fertilizer, and everything was looking great. It was then that we realized that some small level of security was in order. These plants were young, and tender, and their future was bright. Luckily, 'the most powerful man in the universe' (according to Wikipedia), the skull-crusher himself, had just moments ago fallen directly into our hands.

We chose to place him from and centre... right there in front of the baby tomatoes, snugly tucked into the topsoil. With a healthy view of the entire property, he was ideally placed to protect the premises. As an extra precaution, we procured a staff (a twig) and placed it firmly in his right hand. Done deal.


So I had arrived home from work yesterday, and was grabbing a glass of water in the kitchen. And through the window above the sink, a strange sight befell my eyes. Two small boys... maybe 8 and 10 years of age... plump, but agile, had silently breached our lot line. Passing through the gate tucked away in the back corner, they were now hiding behind the recycle bins, presumably deciding on the appropriate next move. Undoubtedly, they had spotted their property from across the fence. They had come to collect.

There was a tension here. They were in enemy territory now... and they knew it. You remember that feeling. Things sound different in the neighbour's yard. There's a weird smell... perhaps the light plays differently on grass....

I was watching these events unfold with mild amusement. I had half a mind to race out the back door screaming, catching them in the act and forever altering their collective sense of self-worth...

And then, before I could act on my evil ambitions, the oldest was off like a flash!!

He ducked out from behind the bin so fast I hardly saw it happen. He was tearing across the back yard like a rabbit on a mine-field. Like when your parents would ask you to take the trash out to the barrel in the back field at 10:00pm... it wasn't a question of whether the bullets were coming... only whether you could outrun them.

And oh did he run! ... and then swooped down on "the vanquisher of all things unsavoury" with a reckless abandon. Such speed, and, yet... finesse. In one fluid motion, almost Jeter-esque as he pulled his prize from the dirt and turned back upstream.... Those last few steps to safety always were the longest, weren't they?


It was a rescue that lasted all of 4 seconds. And yet it meant the world. I saw the older of the two smiling deeply as he passed back through the gate, safely onto home soil. There was relief in those eyes... as though he had realized his potential, taken that next step towards becoming a man.

And little brother? All admiration. There are moments that tell you who you are, and then there are moments that tell you who you want to be...

J

Music

Do you remember those high school years, when music was an eager, yet carefully paced consumption? I remember racing to the nearest HMV to pick up the latest Christian Punk Rock album... countless times. Christian Punk Rock, as though punk rock personified had its own defined awareness when it came to the great mysteries of the cosmos.

It's a journey of extremes. Bible school fostered a new outlook on life, and, with it, a new lease on artistic freedom. I shunned my former self, and all things artificial - all things quick - were to be avoided. Amplification be damned, the organic ruled the day! And I found myself digging into meatier fare. There was heavy discovery there, and much of what I loved then, I love now. Some things don't go out of style.

Today... well, today I listen less as a spectator. I buy less music, to be sure. I listen to less music. But what I do listen to, I value more. My friend Grant and I have had countless discussions regarding music as an involved experience. Music as an activity. In high school, music was a means to an end. A mechanism employed for the synthesis of emotion and energy. It pumped me up. It tore me down. Whatever it did, it was more about 'me' than it was about 'it'. As is so often the case with commercially successful music.. The Kanye-blaring low rider is undoubtedly less concerned with Kanye's craft than he is with how Kanye affects the version of himself he's attempting to project. Digression...

Annnnyway, today, I listen for the joy of it. I LOVE music. And there are some guys who just do it in ways that make me laugh for the shear joy of it. That list is always growing, morphing. Some artists, albums.. are ever-present. Others come and go for reasons as varied as the music itself.


Back to the idea of music as an involved experience. I like that. Life is an involved experience. Faith is an involved experience. When we approach our faith as an act of receiving, we've lost the plot, haven't we? Yes, faith becomes something when we engage, and wrestle. The real meat of faith is bound to that intellectual struggle. Those rules are echoed in art.


This record caught me lately. Dylan is devastating in his ability to lock you into a moment, a story... Never has a man so effectively avoided paying mind to verses and choruses for want of a good tale. "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" is a song I think about for the entire day. Dylan isn't making this stuff up. He's there, in the cabin, watching the whole thing unfold. He can smell the stale whiskey, the moldy floorboards. He's looking into the man's eyes... following their slow climb up the wall, to that 12 gauge hanging up over the doorframe.

This is heavy you just can't touch with volume, or overdriven tubes, or strained vocals.

It isn't about melody and rhythm. Dylan, it seems, was never particularly gifted at either. It isn't easy. You can't listen to this in the car.. on the road, in traffic. It's lost.



It seems like everybody I listen to has, at one point, said something like, "Bruce is the reason I do what I do..." One of Canada's great exports. There's something here, something embodied in the jumpy up-down, summer stroll sound that I recognize. I think there's probably a great deal of Toronto in this record. The speed of the city coming up against a love for the open skies and cleaner air that lies north.

What I love about Bruce is that everything sounds as though it was done in one take. Never one to let perfection get in the way of the more important pursuits... beauty, depth...


I don't really listen to music in the car anymore. At least not this stuff. Only my own work, as a point of reference. If its worth listening to, then it's worth waiting for the proper moment.

Try an experiment with me? When you have a moment this week, try this:

Turn off the TV, and sit down with a great album. Give it your full attention. Dive into your own thoughts, and go wherever the songs take you. But listen actively. Engage with that artist, and try to better understand what he's chasing. There are plenty of examples of simple artists making mindless music. But the great stuff, those guys are serious about their craft. It's surprising how valuable the experience can be when you dedicate yourself to better understanding it.

Lemme know how it goes?

JB

The Imperative of Conversation.

Relational skill.. this is something to ponder. Discussion, and the ability to communicate with the people around you...

Roger Ebert writes:

"I wonder about something. With the invention of channel surfing, and then web surfing, have we all become rewired? Has the national attention span dropped? Is that why kids like shallow action pictures and why episodic television is losing to reality shows? And why sports, which offer a frisson every few seconds, are more popular than ever? Is that why slogans are replacing reasoning in our political arena? Is an addiction to video games the ultimate expression of this erosion of our attention span?"

Do we know how to talk?

I'm noticing that an increasing percentage of my moments of communication with others consist of multiple people, all talking at each other. Talking at, as opposed to talking to. What is relating? It's as though we've forgotten the first staple of relational living... the fact that other people are interesting. We gather in large groups, we spend entire evenings talking at each other, opening our mouths... What's said, in the end? Anything? What does anybody gain from the experience?

People my age seem to approach relationships with a sort of intensity... the breakneck hang-out. Embarking on an aggressively shared moment as a means of maximizing the individual experience. The idea being, "I've got to have as much shared fun with these people as possible, because I can't think of the next time I'm going to be able to fill myself up, and this is my only chance". But at the end of a social experience loaded with speaking, but short on conversation, something still feels unresolved. As though nothing really happened at all.

When a social experience is more about yourself than it is about the others involved, it's doomed to fail, right? And that, maybe, is the root of the problem. In today's world, the self is at the centre of everything. More of me. More of my content, everywhere, all the time. Check my facebook. Here are the pictures of my latest vacation. Here is a video of me playing a song. Here is a blog all about what I think about relating. We are a society of individuals, and our minds are largely occupied by our own pursuits.

What does the pie chart of my mental activity look like? What is the percentage slice dedicated to others?

It isn't natural anymore. We have to learn community. We have to study our own experiences. We have to get good at being friends. The contrary is immaturity. Self awareness is key. We have to step back, and think about how we relate to others, and why. Nobody needs to borrow my sugar. Nobody calls me up to ask if I can help them move this weekend. We need to find those opportunities. And we need to hold ourselves to high standards. We really do need to hold ourselves to high standards. To stop separating ourselves, fitting ourselves into a stage of life in which all things are permissible under the banner of youth.

We need to have this figured out, because it's going to make us better friends, better neighbors, and better people. It's going to alter how we think about others, and what we do with our wealth. It's going to change how we approach faith and spirituality. A generation of skilled conversationalists is a generation that continues to grow, and learn, and mold their understanding of the world based on a bigger picture and a higher vantage point. I think that is imperative.

A great day!!

Sooo... Kar leaves for Leamington and I'm flying solo on a Sunday afternoon in cold, semi-snowy Toronto. What to do?

Food day!!!

Now, I'm no minx in the kitchen. I don't really have the serious skills, and everything I make would generally fall under the category labeled "simple". But I do love it.

So... ready to go? Come with me!!:









One of my favorites. Potato and Leek soup. Several yellow potatoes, chopped onion, two full leeks, one large sweet potato, two medium sized carrots, chopped, and most of a medium sized butternut squash. Pureed (or in my case, blended..) after slow cooking. Add a slosh of milk or cream, two table spoons of butter, let sit, and enjoy:




Next up.. drinks. Nothing particularly exciting in the fridge, but some Motts kicking around, and a few other odds and ends. Caesar time! 1.5 ounces of Vodka, Motts Clamato, a dash of Worcestershire, a dash of tabasco, Celery garnish in a salt/pepper rimmed glass:








And to finish? A bullet. Fresh strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, with plain yogurt and So Good vanilla soy milk. Sooooo goood!!!!!:








And for this evenings entertainment... AVATAR. With my eyes closed. Gotta love aggressive sound design in a completely computer generated environment. All in all.. a killer day to end a killer weekend!





Salut!
JB

Musings after church...

It's frustrating to me that so often, when we talk about things that happened back in 'biblical days', everything seems way too easy.

The general public is one large, amorphous mass that generally agrees on an obviously asinine concept (ie./ killing other Christians with differing belief systems during the reformation). The good guys are eloquent heros who stand on boxes declaring truth in the face of certain torture and death. The resultant death is followed sharply by an upturn in courage on the part of fellow believers, and a general understanding that the inspiring selflessness of the decision to die has resulted in a furthering of the cause.

What actually happened!? If a guy stood up in a hostile environment today, in another part of the world, and declared his truth, and was shot... would we call that martyrdom? Wisdom? Foolishness? Ridiculousness?

Would not our thoughts have less to do with the guy who was killed, and more to do with the people who killed him?

How about the crucifixion? What happened to the mob? What was their reality? On an individual level, what brought those people out that day? What made them so angry? Were they just simple, unintelligent people? Again... this image of a large, jeering, hostile crowd is unbelievable! Who are they? They're the 'biblical public'. It's fascinating that they're a part of the narrative of our faith for the sake of telling the story, but nothing more. When Christ was finally killed that day, did they shuffle off towards their homes for dinner? Did they suddenly recognize the error of their ways, en masse? Was it awkwardly quiet?

What about the family in the next town over, who were out taking their kid to soccer practice (or whatever the comparative norm of the day was..) and declined to follow the crowd as it made its obnoxious, over-energetic way down the road towards the hill? The husband said, 'you wanna go see what's up?' The wife said, 'you know, I really do have to get this washing done, and it's been a while since we spent an evening alone together anyway...'

I recognize that I'm skipping over culturally specific factors. The questions still drive me crazy.

Every time I see a video in church... something representative of that time, my thoughts go in the opposite of the intended direction.

Was Christ literally so entirely polarizing that the entire community hated him? This is the guy who kissed babies and gave a crap about the homeless? And if that was the case, and he was so completely hated that the entire general public would relish the opportunity to come out as one and witness his being put to an excruciatingly painful death, then what the heck was their deal!? Seriously.. guys.. chill the heck out! Let's talk! We're all human beings here! And if Christ really was that aggressively difficult to like.... well... then why would it be expected that anybody would ever be particularly on board with his message?

Sometimes I think that the whole thing would be far more convincing if it was a back room deal. He was smuggled out of his home in the middle of the night, and by the time the town woke up, everybody was asking where he'd up and gone to. And the community leaders spun some sort of clever little thread about how he had left suddenly, and somebody had seen him hightailing it out of the gate, making sure he wasn't followed. The whole thing would've left a seed of doubt, and people would've started asking what they had ever done to him, anyway? And why did he think he was so much better than us?

But that's not how it went down, because the Pharisees.. those guys weren't particularly intelligent. Just angry, grumpy, small-minded old men with a vendetta the size of texas.

Nah.. I don't believe that. I think the extra dimensions were all there.. just not recorded. We have the basics, I suppose.. the meat of the story. But man, more often than not I find myself wishing there were more bones...

JB