Recovering Baptist

How many different songs has Randy Jackson called “one of my favorites?” With all the hypercompulsive people on the world wide web, surely someone has gone through all 6 plus seasons of American Idol and cataloged them. If you happen to know where such a page is, please point me to it.

My math says Randy has identified at least 150 different favorite songs.

I bet Simon has said that about fewer then ten.

One of my friends pointed several of us to the Lûscher color quiz. Whether it’s the MBTI, color tests, fortune cookies, or tea leaves, we can all look to something and find some reflection of ourselves in it. The color quiz, however, captured enough truth about me that my friends were both frightened by and in agreement with the results.

RB took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! “Intense, vital, and animated, taking a delight in …” Click here to read the rest of the results.

The results are true enough. One person said it made her sad to read the results, and another said that I sounded very intense. Both are true. Some of the phrases of the results give words to feelings for which I have had none:

• Feels in an invidious position: that trust, affection, and understanding are being withheld…Feels he is getting nowhere; that, instead of the admiration he needs, he is consistently misunderstood. Wants to escape from the situation…
• Circumstances are forcing him to compromise, to restrain his demands and hopes, and to forgo for the time being some of the things he wants.
• Intense, vital, and animated, taking a delight in action.
• Wants to act freely and uninhibitedly, but is restrained by his need to have things on a rational, consistent, and clearly-defined basis.
• The tensions…have led to…a sense of personal (but unadmitted) inadequacy.

Sadly, the above are all true. I am an intense person who likes to do things, but it’s hard to free myself to do anything because of the boys. Work is contributing to the feelings of inadequacy. And lately I have put aside all of my hobbies which gave me a sense of accomplishment (playing music, remodeling our house, playing ultimate frisbee) in exchange for those which require less effort (like enjoying fine food and drink prepared by someone else or smoking a pipe with friends).

When you add all of this to the other underlying problems that I have been working on lately (and about which I will eventually post), it’s not a fun time to be me right now. It’s an eye opening time of self-reflection, but I am ready for this phase to be over and to see what I’m like on the other side of it.

Final note - the Lûscher test is 50 years old, and it is a real and serious psychological test. The book makes it clear that it is “not a parlor game.” It’s not the kind of thing to do while drinking with acquaintances. This is something to either disregard altogether, or, better yet, to discuss with real friends who love you and can talk with openly and honestly.

While they make for decent TV, I’ve always thought the artificial constraints on those do-it-yourself shows were kind of silly. Even Mythbusters falls for the trap of giving someone two days for some sort of impossible task like building an Archimedes death ray. What kind of nutcase decides to remodel a room in two days and expect it to actually look good? Perhaps one like me.

I’ve written before about Fringe. It is one of the more unique arts organizations, as an evening at a fringe event combines a DJ spinning techno with a short film and two pieces of chamber music. It’s being held this year at a church, and the bar is generally manned by either one of the church elders or possibly the pastor. I made the first event, but I was on an airplane for the second one.

A few weeks ago I was asked to engineer the third event in this year’s series. Engineering one of these shows means not only ensuring that the DJ and the movie can be heard, it also means recording the show and putting it up on Disc Revolt. It’s a helluva opportunity, but it’s also turned out to be a bigger challenge than I ever thought.

Recording chamber music is a tricky affair, especially when the arrangement is a trio of piano, violin, and either clarinet or French horn. For starters, how the hell do you mic a French horn??? There’s only one take, and not a lot of rehearsal time. That doesn’t leave much time for precise mic placement. And since the only recording device we have is a CD burner, it meant one shot at getting the mix right. But none of that is the bad part.

The real work comes in the post production, and that’s the tough part, because part of the deal is that the music will be posted in 24 hours. While I’ve recorded a lot of material, I haven’t done much post-production. I’ve spent most the night and this morning learning the software, identifying the right effects, cutting the tracks, labeling them, and putting them up on the web. I can’t say that it’s the best classical recording ever, but given the circumstances, I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out. Now it’s time for a nap.

I hope you’re a noisy boy. I love noisy children. It makes it so much easier to tell where they are and what they’re up to.

I’ve always like that quote, but now that my second child manages to slink out of the house and up the street every time we turn around, it really hits home. If you find a lost, small, blond child walking down the street, please return him to us. Thank you.