Rhythmic Symphony

Ahhhh, beautiful Colorado summer is here. All the cd cases in my car are melting, so i leave my widows open, and then 10 minutes later there’s a torrential downpoun into my car. No, I really do love it though.
I’ve been fervishly looking for a way to make RS more interesting for you all because becoming a fad is every musician’s dream. So from now on our performances will consist of us duct-taping our instuments to our bacon-grease-lathered bodies and playing emo covers of Disney theme songs as we attempt to not be eaten by starving black bears. Matt and I wil be wearing mascara on our arm hair and Amber will be doing an interpretive dance about rock, paper, scissors.

Well… it’s been over a week since we started recording, and we’re still stuck on the first song/chapter, The Beckoning. I’ll never figure out how it is that I came to love electro music so much since electronic things seem to hate me.
I’ve made much progress on the Novel though. I have a new job that pretty much gives me insane amounts of time to do whatever I want while at a desk with a computer. So I write. I’m tempted to post the prologue for some of your more curious types, but I think it would be jumping the gun a bit, so you’ll just have to wait.
There’s not a whole lot else going on, except me thinking about meat. I think I’ve blogged about it before, but what the heck, I want to write about it anyway.
…….. As far as we know there is only 2 ways fuel our bodies and stay alive.
1) Killing other living things and consuming their flesh for energy and assimilation, or…
2) Maiming other living things to do the same.
Either way I’ve heard it defined as species fascism. The funny thing to me is we can’t survive without taking what isn’t ours. Even if you just trim some leaves to eat, that plant didn’t grow those leaves for you to eat! It grew thoses leaves to sustain itself! Who are you to decide what living organisms have the more rights than others?! If you could cut off cow’s limbs and they would grow back would you do it? What it comes down to is it’s a cutthrought world. Eat or be eaten. There’s no way around it.
Now, I did think of a way that I could be wrong…. It seems to me that berries and some other fruits are grown specifically to be eaten. As if they’re made so that we’ll go “Oooooh! Shiny, colorful, juicy! I want to eat it so that I can then distribute the seeds wtih fertilizer around the world!” But if you know I’m wrong please correct me. Berries and some fruits are the only things that I can think of that might actually “want” to be eaten. But can you live off of only berries and fruits? C’mon people! Share your intelligent come backs with me!!!

Well, before I dive into all that cleavage stuff (…………….) I want to say something that actually has to do with music. WE HAVE FINALLY STARTED RECORDING THE ENVARYAN CHRONICLES! Aron form Invisble Asps came over on Saturday and helped me get over my Cubase block. So, it has begun. There’s still all kinds of bugs I need to figure out, like why everything I record is 1/4 second behind the track I recorded before, which btw will melt your tendons if you listen to it. So, no idea when it will be done… but it has begun.
Now, there’s something I feel ought to be said after something that happened to me today. A woman walked up to me to say something and I unconsceincely, and to my dismay, glanced at the boobs hanging most of the way out of her shirt. She faltered a little in what she was saying and placed her hand over her chest. I felt like I should say I’m sorry, for I truly regret it when my eyes wonder to a girl’s bosom, but c’mon! I’m not trying to look! I’m trying not to! But if you launch them out there like a couple of torpedoes its bound to draw some attention!
So, I’m proposing a rule for body parts: If you don’t want people to look at it KEEP IT COVERED! Y’know that stupid thing that girls say when a guy is staring at their chest?… “I’m up here”
Actually, SUPRISE, it’s all you. Not just your eyes, not just your face, but its all you. So from now on I’m going to assume that anything that’s not covered up is okay to look at and/or talk about in open conversation.
So that’s it for now. You’ll know how my new philosphy went by wether or not my next post is from a unemployment office.

I am not a nerd…. I am not a geek. This is a revelation to me, and it’s not something I’m excited about. Maybe 20 years ago if someone had looked at me they could’ve said “Oh yeah, he’s a nerd.” But as I’ve realized when I hang out with people of like interests, wether in person or on online forums, I’m sadly lacking.
I should be a nerd or even maybe a geek. I play too much video games, I’m a full grown adult and yet I read more comic books and manga than novels, and I’d take sci-fi over reality television anyday. But when it comes time to flex my nerdy muscle… I’m still a scrawny, pastey-white guy. I haven’t played every Final Fantasy, and I’ve never even tried WoW! And all my cosoles are outdated. What kind of gamer am I? And when it comes to graphic novels, manga and sci-fi, yeah I love ‘em, but I get talking with other fans and without fail I’m always the guy going “Huh, I didn’t know that. No… no I didn’t go to the con and meet Neil Gaiman. No… huh uh, I didn’t know that was his phone number and address…. No, I somehow forgot to memorize every issue… word for word.”
So I’m kind of in this weird inbetween world. I REALLY don’t want to talk about sports or musclecars, but I kinda feel like I’m outta my league with the nerd community. I love watching episodes of Firefly or Farscape, but I’m not into buying little collector Creighton figurines or memorizing Serenity’s bluprints.
Oh, well. At least I can always feel at home with philosophy. Maybe I should be hanging out with Socrates and Nietzsche….

I get so many questions about this, and then confused looks when I try to explain it, that I thought I should just write a post about it and clear up all the confusion…….. or multiply the confusion by 10.

Is Rhythmic Symphony “Christian Music?” I feel like the question is as silly as asking if my meals are christian meals, if my job is a christian job, and if my vomit is christian vomit. All of these things I do (hopefully the last one not as often as the others) but it’s strange to me to slap the label “Christian!” on them because I am a christian (boy, when you say that word alot it kind of starts to sound like a meachinical blade moving back and forth against steel). Every member of Rhythmic Symphony believes that the Bible is true and that Jesus is the Son of God. We believe that there is a Heaven and that tha path there is solitary (not the game solitary… geez). The Bible (GASP, he said it!) says that as disciples of Christ everything we do should reflect Him, and if your REALLY believe and follow what the Bible says then that is inevitable. Everything you do will reflect Jesus in some way. I suppose in that way we do make Christian music.

But why do we have to label everything we do as Christian? My life should echo Christ to people, but I don’t go around saying I have a Christian job. I have a job because I need to make money, and because its part of my life I reflect Jesus as much as possible in my job. But its not a Christian job. I make music because I love to and I love to share it, and I reflect Jesus in it as much as possible, but that doesn’t make it Christian music. It’s an uneccesary label.

Some Chistians ask me how come I play for secular crowds, and some secularists ask why I play for Christian crowds. Honestly I started out playing for the Christian crowd, but the problem was there was nothing “crowd” about it. Very few in the Christian crowd wanted to have anything to do with it. It was too odd for them. It was electronica…. but not techno. And there was no guitar and no overused, ripped-off, impersonal lyrics. It wasn’t worship music (…well it was, but it didn’t SOUND like worship music). They didn’t understand it. Rhythmic Symphony was an anomily that didn’t fit into their grid. So I finally got frusterated and went elsewhere. I found people that accepted me. People that accepted my music and really enjoyed it. They saw it for what it was worth. They saw me for what I was worth. I sill try to set up “Christian” shows, but they’re rare and not much has changed since back then. I still believe in the Bible and try my best to seek God, but I don’t feel as welcome in the Church as I once did. It would be absolute foolishness to turn my back on God because of the Church. I think that Church today has some serious problems, but that’s because they’re people. People screw up…. a lot.

So that’s the story. If you wanna label us a Christian band then go ahead, I don’t really mind. It’s an accurate label, but a silly, uneccesary label.

Well, the Dark Arts Festival was awesome. Lots of great music and I truly enjoyed the art. We played in the sanctuary at the Church nightclub….. and it was awesome. I don’t know how to describe the church other than it’s over a hundred years old and very gothic and very big. I bought myself a piece of hand made chain mail for my hand, trying to bring more silver into my stage outfit. The shirt is a black long sleeve thing that I cut slits of fabirc out of and will be putting silver fabric underneath…. someday. I’ve already put a massive shiny, silver fabric down the middle (kind of looks like a cross) with rivets. It’s pretty cool, but I need more silver with the outfit still.

The shoes I got are probably the awesomest part of the outfit. They’re platforms, big ones, maybe 4 – 5 inches, and black and shiny silver with all kinds of little straps. I bought some extra hardware (screws, brackets, stuff like that) and put it on just for a more industrial effect.

…….. unfortunately they’re trying to kill me. At CDAF I fell down on stage…. twice….. and then when I was trying to get my massive synth off the stage I fell again, dropping my 700 pound Roland on top of me. I felt dumb. My shoes just laughed as I was being crushed to death.