So, I’ve been trying to forcibly enact change on my life. Nothing super-crazy, I’m not going green, Vegan, Buddhist, Anarchist or anti-anything. I still listen to the same music, eat the same food, and frequent the same social circles; but I am trying to change some things. Most of these changes are just small, almost subconscious tendencies. I’m just trying to objectify my life and find areas where it could be more efficient. I’m not writing this blog to explain all these changes, not because its overly personal, so much as that its personal enough to bore you. These are just things I want to change, and many of them lack a definite form or stated cause, so I would have trouble explaining them within the limits of language anyway.
What I want to talk (read: vent) about is this feeling I keep fighting. While I’m adamant about this change, I find that I can’t be all about it all the time. Because these are mental processes, when I’m not focusing on them I’m sliding back into old habits. I’m just sitting here alternating between typing this and fiddling with my bass, and I’ve noticed I do the same thing with a lot of things I do. If I’m not intensely focused on trying to create a new tune, then I inevitably give in to listening to my muscle memory. Obviously I’m thinking about more than playing my bass right now, and I just noticed a moment ago that even though I sat down to make something new, whenever my mind begins to wander from the fret board I inevitably fall back on familiar rhythms. Unbidden, my fingers trace their practiced patterns over these same four strings. Playing out my life over a tired ostinato. Living in consonance with the same jaded melody.
There’s Schism, with it’s simple beginnings, straight to the double hammer-notes. Then the transition into Anesthesia that I came up with two years ago, I can play it faster now, or I can slow it down and still stay in time. I can change the emphasis, go down a register, make it sound so new… but it’s the same pattern, my fingers know it just the same. I want to make something new, something fresh, but then I inevitably seek the comfort of a minor pentatonic scale. It may sound different to me, I’ve maybe never played out that exact sequence before, but it’s the same tired motions, bouncing between the same three-fret stretch, moving up, or down, or around in the same comfortable technique. Is it new? Am I forging forward? Or am I just letting myself become comfortable with my subconscious’ new intonation? Am I changed just because it sounds so new to me? Or is it still the same old song calling my fingers to motion?
this is really interesting to me. we really are so much alike in the way we think and analyze, in how we're introspective. does it count as change if it's from the same perspective, from the same core? can it be growth in one direction if you're still operating out of an unchanging point? does change have to be absolute, and not bits and pieces? i think it's good to have something consistent, some sort of backbone or outline to move out of, to trace your progress. i don't think it means you're not changing. and anyway, there are different kinds of change. it depends, do you want complete, revolutionary change? or do you want change within things you want to remain constant?
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