September Update

I don't talk about this much, but as some of you may know, my undergraduate degree is in Poetry. So a big part of my senior year in college was spent obsessing over a collection of poems to submit as my thesis. For a number of years I believed that I might have lost my only copy of that thesis, but as it turns out, I did find a different copy, preserved as a posthumous gift from my late father. I found the copy that I had given him, decades earlier, preserved in a box of his things. There were 12 poems in that thesis, and one of them was named for September. I've always had a fascination with this month.

In Wisconsin, when this poem was written, the colors of fall are gorgeous. Here's a little snippet in an ABCBDB cadence that I invented from that poem, "September:"

In September, I can't focus,
I am estranged, staring out
at the passional leaves, so proud
to be falling, such devout
martyrs happily dying, and by
each day, their old colors flushing out.

Today marks the first day of my children going to school in Ashland, at the Siskiyou School, so that is a blessing.

Although it certainly wasn't a 'perfect' experience, I did have access to a rich and varied range of  high-level academics: the White Plains, New York of the 1980s (remember the MASP - more advanced student program? - now known as Gifted & Talented (G&T)); a private school in Paris; a B.A. from UW Madison; post-grad classes at Stanford, San Francisco City College, Rogue Community College, and Southern Oregon University (SOU). Throughout the course of my life, academics have had a consistent and important role. I am proud to give my children access to that kind of  hands-on experience that I had growing up. It really made a big difference in my development.

Between having access to great teachers, extra resources to give me early access to things like electronic music, which was all I needed to spark my own growth and personal development, & of course the incredibly intense social element, which is always a mixed bag, but arguably has to be a component of any adolescence without some possibly serious consequences in later years, this is quite simply a moment of celebration, because neither child has been in this situation before and moving forward they will always remember this day.

They will be very different after this amazing experience of going to school.

Ashland truly is a magical place for this very thing: an artistic and creative celebration of adolescence, and I think having their last 5-8 years before college in a place with such a small town vibe will be something my children truly cherish. That's the idea, anyway.

Meanwhile, I'm just chilling out here in Sacramento during the workweek and I'm definitely becoming a fan. The contrast from upstate New York is really interesting, because I miss having the access to nature, but interestingly, on the flipside, now I have access to the outdoors at night. Sure it's an urban hell hole, but at least I can walk around without getting eaten by mosquitoes.

Ha ha, I'm only kidding, it's not really an urban hell hole, except in very isolated spots. Mostly, it's a very important B level metropolis with deep roots that intertwine with the very fabric of California, and having my workdays in a walkable downtown that offers dining options, shopping for basic necessities, and a light rail system to get me around - is hitting a sweet spot for me that I haven't felt since being a teenager in Paris. I am really feeling the vibe. And another thing, which is just weird, and I don't have an explanation for it yet, is that my singing voice has really hit another threshold somehow. I know that sounds odd, because it is, but my voice I think is better now than maybe it's ever been and I'm 50 years old so I don't understand that at all. Humidity. It might be the humidity.

Coupled with the fact that I have a handful of new songs that I'm really happy with, and the fact that I discovered an entire album's worth of songs from my brief period as a lead guitar player - we did sort of a jazz/bluegrass thing - I swear, for the first time in my life, perhaps, I am am actually proud of myself in a visceral way. I can't explain that either. I feel a sense of purpose in my bones. Part of that is from work, which I can't talk about much, because I am actually bound by law to obfuscate even my role at the California Department of Health. Hopefully that doesn't sound too weird, but I read through the disclosures and technically there's a pretty long list of stipulations that I have to abide by if I even want to discuss my work at all. Which honestly feels great because I'm just gonna leave that out. I'm just doing some database stuff for the state of California. End of story. Let's just say it's a cool job and I like it.

But part of that is also from this long-game sense that I'm finally feeling the benefits of some old emotional and creative investments. I am actually thinking back to my 8, and 9, and 10 year-old self, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and being fascinated with the concept of multi-classing - and now being an actual polymath in the technical universe in a meaningful and lucrative way. What a fucking arc. Seriously. I will drink to that.

Oh, right. The music. I don't know why I adore Waxahatchee so much but I do. Let's just get that out there. If you've been in a relationship for a long time, I think her songs really just reflect some universal truths about the trade-offs between humans that we make in the service of love and other things and yeah, I don't know of a better storyteller in that space. She has an amazing voice, and the production is great, and all of that, but for me, the power of the songwriting is just truly next level. She's a treasure. Another great songwriter, who I don't mention often enough is Luke Sital-Singh. Over the years, I find myself coming back to his music again and again.

Cool, let's check the radio numbers.

So that's a bit low I think month over month, but compared to where we started years ago, it still feels like a dream come true to have this many people from around the world dialing in all the time to hear music from our little corner of the Internet. So I am certainly not going to worry about it. Just this week I got stuck doing a emergency trip road trip from Eugene to Sacramento, and having CHILLFILTR® radio to dial-in to for that trip really meant the world to me. I'm not sure if any of you of my beautiful readers have tried this before, but when you connect your phone with a USB cord to your car to get map support, if you also open up a webpage and go to chillfiltr.com/radio, or just simply go to chillfiltr.com and click the little logo that pops up in the top left corner (only on mobile), you can press play from there and listen to CHILLFILTR® radio as long as your phone has data access. We stream at 128 kB per second, so it's not too much of a drain on your overall data usage, and I love it, because it just keeps playing music with no interruptions. I keep thinking that maybe one day I'll throw in a hello message for 10 or 15 seconds once an hour, but for now that's not even a thing. It's just a free-to-stream broadcast of what is now 6000 of my favorite songs.

Of course, in the background: it's a Docker image, running a freeware install of an internet radio broadcasting platform, with a Python library to shuffle the songs according to genre, which then bounces directly through the Live365 servers so they can track the ISRC codes and pay the proper royalties to participating markets - with listener counts logged by IP. Live365 also plugs us into the TuneIn ecosystem, which is why you can listen to CHILLFILTR® radio directly through iTunes if you felt like that would be fun (which it very much is). So this is your yearly reminder to add CHILLFILTR® radio to your musical media consumption diet. You won't be disappointed. There are songs that I have curated that are not available on any streaming platforms at all, that's just a fact, and I would say close to 5% of our tracks are exclusive in that way.

Ok, be well. Enjoy the last bit of summer.