actually, it's sort of not worth the time. the max i can claim on this is $4000 (for the year) for living expenses, or $10000 for "professional recording expenses" that need to go to a for-profit recording studio.

i have no use for a for-profit studio for what i do, and i'd probably just end up yelling at the engineer until he walks out.

or kicks me out.

so, $4000/yr is basically useless.

the only reason i need to be concerned about applying for the $10000 and then just pocketing it is that it might harm me to renew. i want to avoid that. but i don't know if i'll still be alive in may.

the way the calendar aligns kind of works it out, though. i could maybe...yeah....it does make sense to apply for this, even though it's small.

i'm thinking the jury is probably full of liberal "arts" douches, though, the kind that think that celine dion is a singular talent and a canadian icon, and they're just going to be confused by what i send them.

there's this whole nationalist bent to it. and i'm often not friendly to canada.

but i should do this...

again: this is why some kind of minimal income is ideal to maximize freedom. this jury is not an audience of my peers. this would be more likely to work out if i wanted to be avril or alanis or something - or if i were a local indigenous or francophone singer that was carrying on a "cultural tradition".

it's a fundamentally conservative system. every second sentence says something about heritage (and i'm kind of the view of "fuck heritage!"), but there's not a word about creating new forms.

it mirrors the society.

you have to expect that.

i have to try....it's worth failing for....and it's practice for something else next year, if i make it that long.

they want two audio recordings. i'm going to give them two fragments.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/introduction


https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/second-movement-part-1-rough-part-2


i think these are 'pop' enough to qualify, and yet also have artistic merit.

wish i had looked into these grants a few weeks ago....i'd never claim i'm an organized person....

there's one that's open. everything else is closed.

until may probably.

had i done this in september, i'd have more options.

the one that's open is for "popular music". that's a complicated, multifaceted and bluntly intimidating term.

i guess in the sense that it's "not classical" you could sort of call what i do "popular music".

except that a lot of it sort of actually really is better described as classical music.

again, it's the kind of thing i have to think comes down to the person making the decision. if i'm trying to get past of panel of american idol judges or something.....it's not what i do. i have no commercial potential. but, if they're a little more open-minded...

i lose nothing but time trying.

time is important, mind you.

it's the only truly quantifiable thing in our existence.

the only abstraction with any meaning.

time is not money. time makes money seem useless and worthless in comparison.

but i think this is worth it.

escaping the studio for a familiar blast of new york at trinosophes in detroit

looking at his biography, it's surprising that i'd never heard of virgil moorefield before yesterday. well, the name is vaguely familiar, but i couldn't have placed it to anything. however, the biography (along with a bit of youtube sleuthing) made it clear that i'd better show up, as that slice of the history of new york's music scene is really exactly precisely where my brain lives.

he was performing a new piece, and while i got the impression that the band might not be entirely into it yet, i have to point out that it was a little bit generic in terms of minimalist post-rock, broken only by the inclusion of a sax player. it swayed and rocked like you'd expect it would, but that's just it: very predictable. there wasn't really anything new to it. the melodic lines weren't anything much to react to, either. it's one thing to be predictable and be good, it's another to be predictable and sort of mediocre at it.

listen. it happens. there are beethoven pieces that flat out suck. i wasn't going to make too much of a judgment on the basis of one piece.

the second piece (apparently a reinstrumentation of "i wish i'd thought of it sooner") was a lot more creative. it definitely exists in the space i referenced, but it was noisy and erratic and just overall worked very well.

the third piece (the one posted) was somewhere in between, in that it went back to the predictability of the first piece while maintaining some of the excitement of the second. it was more along the lines of being predictable and good. but, there were also some jazzy curve balls in there.

overall? i didn't get the same kind of raw power i get out of swans, the atonal mess of zorn, the messy dynamics of branca or even the glacial harmonies of steve reich. what i heard tonight was kind of reaching into all these places and pulling a little out of all of them without really hitting any serious high points. i didn't hear anything to define virgil moorefield, so much as i heard a lot of bits of things i'm familiar with from elsewhere - none of it really put together in a way that really grabbed me. i'm sure there's far more to his work than i heard tonight...

....but i can't help but think it was a good explanation of how i could be so into so much of what came out of that scene without having ever heard of him.

that being said? it was worth the $10. i'm glad i went, and i'd make the same choice next time. maybe i'll check out some more of his work in the meantime hoping to find the best of it...

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/11/08.html