So much to smile about. I don't know about you, dear reader, but this little guy is feeling all Christma-whisma-whissmissy. It's all tinsel and tingle here in the suburbs. Everything is all ding dong dingly. You really can't imagine, and I can't describe how delightful the Land Rovers and Hummers look sailing around with smiles across thier glinty grills. It's like a 24-hour open all night parade! It's like a spicy big bite bonanza! We're all tim-tim tumbly wumbly down here in California. Really. So Hip Hip Horrannukah and Happy Christy missy mismas!

Hey, I passed my juries. Hooray! There was a bit of hesitation on the part of my professors as I sat on the piano bench and began to play. In fact, when I first walked in, Darrell Grant, the department head, said to the others "Well, gentlemen, what are we going to do about the Mike Johnson dilemma?" Wow. How many people can say they have a dilemma named after them? And by a famous pianist, no less? Not many, I'll wager. The dilemma that he was speaking of was the problem of how to squeeze me through the rediculous new level change requirements that the PSU music department put in place last term before I took my juries. In the end, I played really well, and they agreed that I should move on to the next level. I played a piece by Debussy called Des Pas Sur La Niege, a solo piano arrangement of But Not For Me and My Romance, and a transcription. After But Not For Me, one of the professors asked me "Is that a transcription?" Which felt very nice, because when I told him it was my own arrangement, his little fuzzy eyebrows went up a bit. I did an eyebrow raising performance, in other words. So, after a few administrative wranglings, I'll be officially at the level I need to graduate. That means I get to do a recital! You're all invited. Please come. I'm going to make cookies and get the whole band in there to play. It's going to be a gas.

So during the break I've been working really hard on songs. I've done songs for Parks & Recreation, and for Reclinerland's IHML vol. 2. Since this is supposed to be a creative blog, I'm going to post some thoughts about the songs and about my process pretty soon. I'm overdue for a little bit of inspiration. Right when school finished for the holidays I wrote lots, and then as Christmas approached, bringing food, presents, joy, presents, travel, Jesus, presents and everything, I slacked a bit. So this blog will officially switch back to being a creative tool starting next post.

For now I just wanted to tell everyone the news. I passed my juries and am feeling jing jang jingly all over!

It's beginning to happen. I can feel it every time I sit down at the piano. I forget everything. I sit down to practice my little solos and I can't remember chord changes, I can't picture the chord shapes, I can't see the whole piece. All I can see in my mind is the face of the head of the music department looking uncomfortably at the floor. I can see Charlie Gray, the co-chair, slumping back in his seat making tsk tsk noises. All of my scales terminate in plunky noises toward the top. My arpeggios are uneven and marked by spiky wrong notes. I lose my place in the middle of my own arrangements. I feel like I'm standing in front of a dam that's springing little leaks. Every time I plug a leak, water shoots out another one. It's never ending. And the hours slide by like they're slipping through a funnel. Fast and slow at the same time. There's the guilt when I'm anywhere but in front of a keyboard. The longer walks I take around campus and the money I spend on trifles only serve to postpone the moment when I have to sit down and concentrate. Concentration doesn't yeild results, it yeilds more anxiety. I have a constantly warbly stomach. I can't shake the memory of last term, when I blanked out in the middle of a piece and had to stop, my eyes burning. I get angry with myself. I yell and pound the keyboard. I forget things outside of music. I was a basket case in Seattle, on the last day of our little tour. Joe can attest. I forgot names, destinations. I would carry on whole conversations but only be thinking about one thing: juries are coming.

Speaking of our little tour, we had a brilliant time. Sadly, we had to undertake the journey without our guitar player. But we covered nicely. Joe, Bob, Anthony and I were a perfect team. There was the Eugene show on the first night at the Downtown Lounge, a club that looked like someone burned down a Red Robin restaurant and turned it into a singles meat market. It came complete with a red velvet pool table and walls decorated with psychadelic naked pictures. It was a hippy porn shop that served chicken strips. A jazz band was playing ahead of us (inspiring more jury anxiety). Apparently they didn't know there was a band on afterward because they played overtime. We went on late and played to the six or so of our friends who came to support us. We had the time of our lives. And then, the next night in San Francisco, we ate sushi and became reunited with Anthony and my best friends Ron and Chris, who stood in front and cheered us. This time the club was very crowded. The band Climber from Portland got the whole room feeling good before we went on. In LA we interrupted a minor celebrity photo shoot by arriving too early and poking our heads in. We were taken aback when they told us to come back precisely on time for the load in. They run a tight ship in LA. If it had been Portland, they would have told us to come back "whenever". There, at the Lava Lounge, our friends again joined us. I had trouble with girls that night (boyfriends boyfriends) and the rest of the boys sat and drank and we contemplated how lucky we were. Joe was feeling sick, so he slept at the motel while we watched a skinny primping boy try to seduce a strange blond lady. He was only one of her many suitors. In the end, she left with another guy, though he tried very hard. We met Gary, the foppish English bartender who treated us to his rendition of our fake English accents. His impression of an American doing a fake English accent was impeccable. I thought Nigel Tufnel had walked into the room. There was more. The headlining band was incredibly LA. I couldn't get over how absolutely perfectly they played. Not a flaw. They looked, smelled, ate, probably even crapped like the band that accompanies make out sessions on shows like Dawson's Creek. There was nothing wrong with them at all. It was spooky. Almost inhuman, actually.

In Canada I was thrilled to meet in person the acclaimed artist Marian Churchland, who brought a couple of friends and helped us to feel less lonely. She and her friends were excellent, and I really enjoyed hanging out with them. We played at the Marine Club, which was an old private club in downtown Vancouver. The place was pretty full of people. They Shoot Horses Don't They were a noisy, poppy, refreshing break from the LA bands. They are new Kill Rock Stars recruits. Let's hope they never lose their heads. We got our car towed the morning after the show and had to trek across Vancouver to recover it for only $50. Had that been Magic America, it would have cost us $250. Oh Canada! In Seattle Bob and I saw Death Cab For Cutie from the wings of the Paramount Theater as guests of our good friend Adam Zacks. The Stars opened, and they were excellent. I also went to see the Goblet of Fire with Joe's sister's cute roommate who has a boyfriend (AARRGG! Who is this Boyfriend person? Why is he taking all the girls? Or is he only snatching up the ones I like? That's another post) We had lunch with the inimitable Alina, our booking agent without whom none of this tour would even have been possible. Our show was attended by a crowd of six: Joe's sister Broehe, our friend Scott, his girlfriend, her friend, and a couple of stragglers. Plus the openers were loading out while we played. But did we care? Not a STITCH. We went up and played as if there were 1,000 in front of us. I took time out to dedicate the set to every band who has ever groaned or moaned about touring. There are those who bellyache about playing to 1,500 and there we were playing to 6. 1500. 6. Who, I ask you, has more right to groan? But we weren't groaning. We felt lucky. Our record had just come back to us from the manufacturers, and we felt lucky to even be there. So we made a point to connect to whoever was there. We're on a tiny label run by a guy we adore in a town we like, working with a booking agent we like. That's the point isn't it? Well, no, not really.

You see, I thought about something later that night. I've overheard some people say that they're making music for themselves. I hear my contemporaries defending themselves with the words "I'm making music for ME, not YOU." But you know, I discovered something when we played this time around. Something I've always felt, but couldn't articulate, or was ashamed to even if I could. Bear with me for a moment, but when I was in community theater as a kid, our audience was made up of kids much younger than we were. After a performance of, say, A Christmas Carol, we, the cast, used to head around to the front of the theater and sign autographs as the audience was filing out. I remember little 4 and 5 year old kids coming up to me wanting autographs. I, myself, was only 12. They would stare at us in our costumes in awe. We'd entertained them, you know. But more than that, we'd given them an escape, made them feel somthing, I don't know. Something. Then fast forward to a few weeks ago, when Blanket Music opened for the Decemberists. I was onstage looking out at the audience and thinking how young they were. Some of the kids in front were, like, 15 and 16. They were looking at us to give them something. To make them feel something. That was inspiring. And when I thought about giving them something, I played better. I had more fun. I made them clap along. They responded and enjoyed themselves. I gave those little kids something so many years ago, and I gave those younger kids something a few weeks ago. I hate to sound all Celine Dion or Disney or something, but I can safely declare here and now that I'm not making music for me. I'm seriously making music for them. Those few people out there. I'm making music for them. If they want it, if it'll help them or change them, or just entertain them or whatever, they can have it. My music is theirs. I don't care who they are: frat boys, punkers, tweekers, geeks, whoever. I'll give it to them. I want to give them something. A gift. Is it presumptuous of me to think of the music I make as a gift? I don't know. Who cares? The point is I thought about these things every night of our tour. I thought, fuck it, I'll sing for them, not for myself. And you know I had a great time as a result. I was motivated to play better, because it wasn't for me. I was at my best because I was giving and not hoarding everything I had for myself. There was never a time onstage when I didn't feel in command (except maybe the first night). I wanted to give them my best; make them laugh, give them some music, even if they were small in number.

So there it is. My music isn't about me. I'm not making music for myself. I'm making it for other people to enjoy. I mean, I already enjoy it. I like the stuff I make. I've had my time with it, now I want to polish it up and present it to them. If they want it, it's there, if not, well, it's still there. Okay, I've said enough. I'll stop now. I think the California air in which I'm typing this is making me all loopy. Or is it that juries are coming?

Holy crap what a lousy blogger I am. Ever since Lily went in and took over that last post, my life has been insanely busy. As it is I've only got ten minutes to post! No! Five! When I return, I'll have all kinds of new stories and tidbits from the Parks & Recreation tour, as well as some new songs to muse about. The past two weeks have really been eventful. Don't you wish you could read about them? Hmm?

We're going to Canada tomorrow! Hooray! I only hope my birth certificate arrives in the mail on time. Otherwise, no Canada. Well, I hope everything's going well with you all. Time's up!

Hello? Is this thing working? Okay good. Hi people, it's me, Lily. Dude, Mike is in serious trouble when he gets home. Dude has been gone all day! I've already batted all my toy mice under the fridge, my quaint little "hedgehog on a shoelace" toy is completely in shambles, and my food bowl is half empty! (Yes, I'm a pessimist). What's up with that? I mean I'm a cute cat! How could he neglect me like this! So, I thought I'd sneak onto his computer and take over his little blog in order to get even. I figure you all could use a little break from his "creative" ramblings. How many times can you read about chord changes? I mean, who does he think he is? Like the world cares about his freakin' rhyme schemes! I'm a hungry cat, people. Enough about Mike, let's talk about me!


This is another shot of me lying on the floor. I do that a lot. Hey, this is a tiny apartment, so there isn't much for me to do. In the daytime while Mike is away, I like to stare out the window, yap at the birds on the power lines, sleep, and do laps around the apartment. Oh, and sometimes I mew at people passing by in the hallway outside the door. Oh, and I also like to climb on top of things, like the refrigerator and the television. Sometimes it's fun to dump a bunch of Mike's books on the floor. He likes to come home to a pile of books. Trust me. He loves it. He'd better.


Here's me opening up a serious can all over someone's ass. I'm cute and all, but I can be deadly. Seriously. I'm real mysterious. One minute I'm all cuddly and purring, the next minute: HIYA! I'm not kidding.


Here's another of my moods. This is one of me feeling all sexy. There's a cat at the end of the hall in our building that I like to flirt with from time to time. I roll around in front of him growling and hissing. I like to watch him get all upset when he finds out I'm fixed. Poor guy. Are male kittys capable of thinking about anything else? No wonder they're so demure all the time. Mike's pretty much a pushover when I get looking like this. He lets me walk on the counters and even climb up on the table when he's eating. Dude, speaking of which, where is Mike? Seriously. Before he left he was listening to some music. I'm not sure what it was because I can't read the writing on the clear box that the silver disc comes in, but I'm pretty sure it was him singing. He sings a lot. He sings in the shower, while he's cooking, all the time. I don't mind it, but sometimes when I'm trying to sleep it gets a bit annoying. Sometimes he sings really loudly while he's pounding on the long black thingy with the many white levers. He does that a lot. I try to climb up on the thing and lay across his fingers, or attack them, you know, to shut him up. But he gets mad and squirts me. So I get revenge by chewing through the little cord that powers the things he puts on his ears. We're a happy family.


Alright, well, I'm getting bored of this now. If any of you happen to see Mike, tell him to come home! I need someone to dangle my mangled hedgehog toy in front of my face so I can attack it. Besides I kind of miss the guy. He talks to me a lot. I suppose to you that seems kind of pathetic, but for me it's nice. I like to be talked to, even though the only thing I understand is my name and the word NO. The latter means I've done something bad. The former means i'm supposed to come. Yeah right. What am I, a dog? Please. Just tell Mike to get home if you see him, okay? Thanks.

Oh, and goodnight.

Anthony and I spent all day yesterday working on the Parks and Recreation album sleeve design. It's almost finished. Pictured here is the front cover. Anthony took the photograph. One of the reasons I like making music is that I get to do all of the things I like to do in one fell swoop. I get to write the songs, the lyrics, perform them, and then I get to design the sleeves and album artwork. It's hard to decide which of those components is my favorite part. Watching a design take shape is certainly thrilling. The very best part of the whole thing is holding the finished album in your hands. Then you toss it on your shelf, forget about it and move on to the next thing. I just found out that the Parks & Recreation tour is coming together nicely. We even have a date in Vancouver, B.C., which is one of my favorite cities on earth. Last time I was there was in '96. Our old band played at a place called The Pit on the UBC campus. Some kids there let us crash in their dorm. We took in beautiful views from the top of the dorm building looking out over Victoria island and all the grayish water. It was a very overcast day when we were there. The Pit was cool because the stage was oval shaped, and raked, so that the kids watching us were above, in front, and around us. They had these glittery silver curtains back behind the bands, which looked fabulous when struck by the red and green lights. That was one of the best shows I've done. Ah, Canada. I can't help but think maybe when God dropped me onto this green earth, he was aiming for Canada, but then he stumbled and I landed in California instead. C'est la vie! Dude.

Headway on the IHML Vol. 2 has taken a back seat to schoolwork. But it's alright, since my schoolwork involves music. I'm learning some great stuff this term. In my lessons I'm working on a short piece by Debussey called Des Pas Sur La Neige (I think), and since I've started learning French in earnest, I think I know what that means. I'm also working on my own arrangements of But Not For Me, and My Romance. The former involves a rather tricky technique of walking a bassline while improvising in my right hand. I'm finding it near impossible to keep both hands separate. The latter requires that I do a tricky stride pattern in the left hand while improvising. Another near impossible feat.

We do have a piano player for Up On The Orange Moon, and as soon as we carve out some time, we're going to do a rough recording of the song. Probably next week. In the meantime, more later.

Hello, my lovelies. I just realized that I didn't get a chance to do a post about my last weekend filming the Drift movie. It was really fun, although a bit gruelling. Basically we were filming the last concert that my character plays before he ships off to Sweden to be with his woman. So we had to fake a rock show. Joe and Bob and I, plus a girl named Alison (?) pretended to be the band. The shoot took place at Berbatti's Pan, here in Portland. We filmed half of a Parks & Recreation song, recording the first take. Then we lip-synched to it for subsequent takes. After that, I had to do a song on my own with my acoustic guitar. Same thing: I recorded the first take and then lip-synched to it on subsequent takes while the audience of extras pretended to enjoy themselves, or just spaced out. It was just like a real show! It was really funny to watch the audience's attention span deteriorate after an hour and a half of watching me lip-synch the same song over and over again. There I was, using all of the imagination I could muster to keep my energy up, keep the song fresh, pretending they were all into it while looking out at a dessert of blank expressions. I tried to make eye contact with some of them, but some of them I swear were falling asleep on their feet. It was pretty funny. Between takes I tried to talk to them, you know, keep them interested, but by the end even I was losing steam. Anyway, here are some photos:

This is a back view of the shoot. To the left in the white shirt is Gerry, the DP. Gerry is this really great guy. He's this terrific Welshman who's been around films for a long time. Sometimes I give him video game referrals (Hitman is his current favorite). I really like having him on the set because he has a good eye for acting. In the maroon at the camera is Matt, the director. Matt also has a good eye for acting. He's also blessed with a clear vision, which is nice. In the foreground, in boots is Alisha, the Assistant Director. She also plays a role in the film, and Lucy the makeup designer is to her right. As you can see, we had a huge turn out.

Here is a shot of the "audience". The girl in the red hat kept heckling me. The guy in the red cap had that same expression on his face the entire time. See, just like a real show!












Another shot of the "audience" from my perspective.

This is the "band". Joe is on the left. He had to wear sun glasses and keep his back to the camera so no one would notice that he's actually also the main character in the film. His character isn't in the band, you see. That girl on the right did a great job. Joe, who plays bass in Parks & Recreation, taught her all his basslines and, with no rehearsal at all, she knocked them out. She wore that cool outfit too. That's Matt the director on the right. Bob's in back, behind the drums. Poor drummers. Never get in the photographs, do they?


Here we are on the set of the cafe scene a few weeks ago. That's me on the left, at the table. Joe's at right in the sport coat. Lucy is the blonde girl to the left of Joe. She played the waitress I got to flirt with. Alisha is holding up the gray thingy and Matt's at the camera. You are basically looking at how I spent my Saturday and Sunday mornings all summer. In a cafe at 7AM drinking beer. See the extras with their chicken strips? At 7AM? I ask you!





Here I am getting makeup applied like a real actor would, minus the trailer and the fluffers. (Hey, now...!)










This next photo sums up Matt's experience making the film, I think. I had a great time on this film. It was run really well for being a first feature, and everyone was really professional and great to work with. I really enjoyed every minute of it. Look at Matt. And there's Joe in the background getting all cuddly with Lucy. These are my hardworking and talented friends you're looking at. I'm very proud of them. Stop me before I get too sentimental.

If you want more information about the film, you'll find a link to the Grammar School Pictures blog to the right. Also, there you can find a link to some more photos. These photos, incidentally, were taken by the lovely Yona, who functioned as extras coordinator on the film. She was brilliant to work with and hang out with as well. If you want to see more of her photos, go to her flikr page.
More later!

I have secured a piano to practice on during my vacation. My mom's husband Ross' mother (follow me?) is in Chicago, so I get keys to the nice old lady's house and free reign to tinkle on the keys of her beautiful baby grand piano. Today I got really depressed when we were all sitting around (mom, Ross, and I) in Ross' parent's house and my mother said "So, Mike, why don't you play us those scales you're having trouble with." So I tried some of them out. This is an attempt to describe the result: do re me fa so la KLUNK. do re me wait! WAIT! do re me fa PLINK PLUNK! Dammit! do re PLONK! Aargh! Now I'm really worried. So every day until Saturday I'll spend a couple of hours undoing the damage my Playstation, the Ideal Home Music Library, and spotty dating have done to my piano skills. The good news: I read the crap out of step-grandma's Hit Songs of Broadway book. Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are PLONK! Sigh.

Some of you might think I'm a workoholic. I'm no such thing. I've taken every opportunity to relax and I actually feel like a bit of a zombie. I've been getting cozy with movies, 100 Years of Solitude, and the California freeways. Today we went up to the gravesite of my little sister Gina, who passed away when she was 20 and I was 23. It was a beautiful afternoon in the cemetary. Leaves of yellow and red were absolutely melting off of the trees. It was raining a bit, so the sky was a great rolling wool blanket, all white and downy. A little man in a cowboy hat was driving a bright orange mower machine across the grave sites, making a nice choppy humming noise. It was peaceful and slightly chilly. We talked about our relatives and about who was buried where, and reminisced bit about where various relatives' ashes were at the moment. I found out that my grandmother's ashes are in my mom's closet. EWW! Ross told me they used to be under thier bed! EWWW!! These little family outings are starting to freak me out!

CALIFORNIA!" Huzzah! Ahm a comin' home. Did I mention that I'm from California? It's true. Whole goddam seething mess o' libs, freaks, gays, commuters, real estate agents and suburbanites is writhing and squirming down there and I love every last one of 'em! I'm going to kiss the soil when the plane touches down! California means sitting around doing a whole lotta nuthin. But, because it's me, I will not lie idly, nossir. Here are my goals, and I want you to hold me to them:

1. Work on my farmer tan. This permanent tee shirt stain MUST be eradicated. It is the cause of much embarrassment in...ahem...intimate situations during which I would otherwise be taken for a real HASSELHOFF, no mistake.

2. I intend to finish, yes, FINISH, the song page on the Reclinerland website. This means inputting lyrics and making the chord sheets available for download. I've been putting this off all year.

3. Practice the piano! This will happen in a limited capacity however, because practice sessions will be disguised as "browsing" at the local music store where my folks live. Salesmen bedamned!

Anyway, those are the three biggies. Other goals include: lounging, video games, movies, parental love, treks out to the city of San Francisco, parental love, some napping, exploring construction sites in my mom's suburb, walks, and more parental love. See you in a week!

I have been thus far unable to get a recording of Up On The Orange Moon due to my lack of technological prowess. I don't have any of the necessary equipment (including a piano!), and therefore must rely on friends for tech support. Thankfully, I have really talented and generous friends. So as soon as humanly possible, my friend Scott -- Super XX Man is his musical moniker-- will "engineer" a session with me. He's also donating the use of his piano and living room for the cause. I'll also need a piano player. Please don't ask me "Can't you play it??" because the answer is embarrassing. You see, I could play it, but for some people, there is a difference between being able to "play" a piece, and having the technical acumen to interpret it well. Besides, in order for me to play it I'd have to practice it for, like, weeks. And I have so much to practice for already in the coming weeks that I'd prefer to just find someone who's a good reader, which would free me up to sing it, even though the singer eventually will be female. My friend Ali is a great reader. And there is another Ali who I have in mind, dare to dream, to sing it.

In the meantime, I went back to it in order to recopy it for my potential players, when I discovered that the lyrics I'd written really blew. So I reworked them. I like these lyrics slightly better, but at this point I think perhaps I'm thinking about them too much. There comes a point in a creative endeavor when you just give up on process and go with it. Make the mistakes you're going to make, just finish what it is you're working on. There will be time, in future works, to make general corrections. But you have to make decisions. So I made mine. Here is the lyric. Keep in mind, you don't know the melody. To me it looks kind of funny just sitting there on the page like that. The sentence structure is a little off in places. Must fix that. Anyway:

INTRO: Just now I heard the rattling of a van, Misha
The Mirror Lady told me of your plan
I'll go but you should know it's all in vain
I've never been more sane,
And the Moonlight'll always find me

REFRAIN: Where darkness seeps through corners
Or crawls upon musty walls
Where shadows lurk like mourners
Up and down empty halls
Where no candle light can keep out the night
Threatening my padded room
When darkness blinds me, there you'll find me up on the orange moon

Where silver frosted mountains
Rise to the velvet sky
And powdered sugar fountains
Sparkle in Gemini
There my slice of paradise
Hovers above your room
If you dare confine me, there you'll find me up on the orange moon

OUTRO: No bars, Misha, can bind me
When evening kills the light
With twinkling stars behind me
I'll be riding the back of the Night

...and the piano takes us out. (applause) Please, please, thank you. Oh, no, no. I don't deserve it. Truly I don't. Roses? That's too much really. Oh thank you Ms. Paltrow. Your hotel later? Well...Ahem.

So I welcome any comments or criticisms you may have. (or roses.)

The dead high school across the street from my building has come alive recently. I first noticed a difference one night when I was walking home and saw the lights all glowing yellow from inside. Seeing the windows lit through the rusting chain link fence from across the overgrown fields was eerie. Usually at night the building looks like a big hunk of dead brick lurking behind spooky purplish trees. That's eerie enough. Now, with the windows lit, it looks like it's alive. I almost jumped when I saw the silhouette of a policeman standing out front. The lady at the Thai place a couple of blocks down told me they're moving a bunch of New Orleans refugees into the building. I immediately felt sad for them. I couldn't imagine being displaced like that and then having to spend my days cooped up in a high school. It's good news in a way, because at least they're being sheltered somewhere. Also, it's kind of nice to know that they live across the street from me. Now, if I want to donate something or help in some way, I can just go across the street. Does that sound lazy? I've separated out some clothes I'd like to donate. As soon as I figure out where to donate them, I'll go over and deliver them.

Today I did some sketching on a new song for the IHML called What Were The Chances? It's about two people who meet at a ball. I only worked out part of the lyric. It will have a sprightly, kind of stride-style accompaniment in the piano which I haven't worked out yet. All I have are the chords and vocal melody. I took some of the material in the intro from a song called Why Isn't It You by Ivor Novello. That's usually how I do it. First comes the vocal melody, then the chords, then I fill out the accompaniment.

Speaking of stride-style (that's what the accompaniment pattern of old ragtime songs is called. It consists of the left hand playing a bass note alone, in octaves or tenths on the first and third beats of a four beat measure. On two and four the left hand plays a chord. Meanwhile, the right hand plays syncopated improvisations on top. Stride playing imitates the Boom chuck boom chuck of banjo strumming, or the bwhamp bwhomp bwhamp bwhomp sound of a brass band. You know The Entertainer? That's stride), I mostly practiced one of my pieces for school today. I'm afraid I wrote over my head on this one. I'm doing an arrangement I made of But Not For Me. It's got all of these big honking chords and everything. I know you're thinking, why would you write something that's too hard for you to play? I don't know. I really don't. It's a challenge. To spend as much time practicing something as you spent writing it can be a bit daunting. But one plugs away. More later.

Let me tell you how talented my friend Kaitlyn is! I was having a rough night last night. I mean rough. And she turned it all around.

I crawled over to meet Kaitlyn at a little restaurant, looking forward to having her lend her voice to our project, when who should I run into but a gaggle of my old friends who are now famous scenesters and who, as a result, don't talk to me much. There they were, sitting there giving me sidelong looks, tentative "Hey"s and half baked "How's it goin's?". Included in the group was a very nice girl who I asked out earlier this year. Well, she had a boyfriend, which is fine, and she probably wouldn't have been interested in me even if she were single at the time, which is fine. But the problem is, every time I've run into her since, which happens often since we have mutual "friends", she acts all uncomfortable around me. Her boyfriend, whom I have never even met, but who I'm sure is a really nice guy (I mean, he ended up with her, right?), doesn't even look at me. So there she was sitting with my old friends, who also happen to be musicians, booking people, gallery owners, you know, blah blah, again looking all uncomfortable. I wish we could just be friends without all the hullaballoo. We seem to have a lot in common. Sad. I don't know why it is that I always feel like I've pissed my own bed when I walk around Portland. I feel like everything I say, every little joke I make offends people. I feel like they gossip and it comes back to me. Once, a friend I met for dinner told me that before I arrived a girl who was at the table with him went so far as to say, after she found out I was joining them for dinner, "Eww, Mike Johnson's coming? He asked my friend out!" Hmm. Note to self: asking girls out is a CRIME. So I'm always paranoid these days. This town just isn't big enough. I'm a pretty congenial, sincere guy. I don't know. I suppose I come off a bit goofy, a bit sarcastic, which puts people off sometimes. I'm a hard worker, which puts people off too maybe. Most people think I'm funny. I suppose I suffer from the constant feeling that 1) I don't belong, and 2) that the world is just against me. I mean, all I did was ask a girl out. Why the drama? And then there's my old friend who just sits there with a vacant stare while his girlfriend does all the talking, asking me trivial small-talky questions. Why? I mean, all I did was not get as famous as him. Would an honest conversation with me kill him? I have plenty of other good friends who are popular, or who have achieved some kind of success with thier music and they don't act wierd around me. I suppose I'm not on his level anymore or something. Or maybe it's cuz don't have any tour anecdotes to swap or accolades to brag about. OR DO I...?

Ah, but I DO have one thing to brag about: Kaitlyn Ni Donovan sang on my freakin' record! The instant I managed to get away from the popular kids and sit next to Kaitlyn I felt better. My friend Corrinna was there too. The three of us chatted at the bar. And then K and I went up to the studio and she overdubbed some vocals on one of the P&R songs. I mean she killed! It took a few takes, and she really gave herself to the music and went for it. She insisted that I not look at her while she made good use of her sultry, velvety voice. I understood. I get pretty self conscious when people are looking at me while I'm singing, too. She only sang on a couple of little parts of the song, but she breathed life into the track. Just sitting with her in our studio, working on and chatting about music, listening to her sing turned my night completely around. That's what music can do. Turn things around. She played me one of her songs from a mix CD she'd made for me. Fabulous. I forgot all my worries and biked home at, like, 2:30 in the morning feeling elated. Thanks, Kaitlyn. Doing good work does that to me. I love to do good work. Lily was really nice to me when I got home. She stretched and yawned and laid by the window purring while I fell asleep.

So, there it is. But now I'm depressed again. I always feel depressed for, like, three days after I run into those people. Oh well. Sorry to trouble you with a post about my feelings again. More later.

This is a solemn post to offer my best to everyone in New Orleans in thier time of tragedy. I'm so sorry I've never been there. I sincerely wish everyone there my best.

We're here sitting in our office listening to Dixieland jazz on the muzak trying to send them good vibes.

We had a great time filming this morning. I got my four hours sleep, per my last post, and biked over to the Basement, where loads of extras were sitting around the front of the bar waiting for all the equipment to get set up. After a bagel and some repairs to my shirt, we were off. We were all feeling really good, I think. The two weeks off did wonders. It was fun to feed Joe the lines during his angle shots and goof around during takes. I forgot how exciting it all is. There was one funny point when the necessity arose to record an audio track of the pinball machine. Well, one of the extras who appears in almost every bar scene, Payam, got up and started playing the pinball machine, and everyone on the set was silent while he played. I stood there in the middle of the room pointing a microphone at the machine. We only needed a couple of minutes of noises, but Payam wasn't aware of this. So he played pinball while everyone in the room sat stock still, glued to the sounds. You should have seen some of the looks on everyone's faces: eyeballs goggling at the ceiling, hypnotized by the dinging and cha-chinging of the machine. It was like time stood still. In the whole world the only sound was that of Payam playing an Addams Family pinball machine. He was doing pretty well, getting bonuses and all, keeping the ball in play. And then somewhere, from a far off galaxy way in the distance comes Matt Knapp's voice: "You can LOSE anytime now, Payam."

I felt really comfortable with my body this time around. Sometimes on off days when a camera is pointed at you, you kind of freeze up. You're hyper aware of every single movement of your body, of the position of each body part, down to the last hair follicle. You feel a bit like you're sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool. That was not the case with me this morning. I felt loose, like there was no camera. I was listening to Joe, playing with the lines, having fun in the bar with him again. It was nice. Then we did a little walk out of the bar. Gerry, the film's DP, had rigged up this cool little dolly out of a slab of carpeted plywood, some strategically angled skateboard wheels, and two long pieces of PVC piping. I thought we were shooting an episode of McGyver! (I'll be here all week!) No, but seriously folks, what a day of filming! Oy, Gevalt!

And then, a different cha-ching, that of the punch clock, pulled me back into reality. My next post will probably be about the music again, because I intend to get some of that done either tomorrow or early next week.

More later.

We've had a small break from filming Drift this past couple of weeks, but now we're getting back into it. So Saturday morning at 7:30 AM I will again be drinking beer and sitting across from Joe in a little dark bar. It's so early to be tying one on. I've just had a haircut, so I have the itchies all over my collar and down my back, but the breeze feels good on my neck. In other words, I'm ready to get back into it. We'll be reshooting this scene in which Joe and I play basketball together and have a conversation. I guess there was a problem with smudgies on the lense or something on the first try. I think it's a mixed blessing, because although the scene is difficult to coordinate, I'm going to feel much better this time around. The first time we did the scene, I had been up all night, so I was really tired. Plus it was blazing hot on the court. We had to keep pausing for airplanes, traffic noises, dog barks, and even some family shooting off a model rocket across the park. We had to coordinate the bouncing off the basketball with our lines, so there were huge frieght trains moving through the dialog. That's what it felt like for us, I'm sure. Once it's edited it will come off very snazzy. This time, I will be ready. I plan to get at least 4 hours of sleep the night before.

I'm excited about Sunday because I get to do one of those fake phone conversation scenes. I don't know if you know very much about filming, but you know those scenes where two characters are having a phone conversation, and the camera cuts between the two people as they talk to each other? Well, to make those scenes, each actor speaks his half of the conversation into the phone, as if the other actor is on the other end responding. Really, though, the actor is just pretending to be talking to someone. Then the editors cut the scene so that it looks like they're talking to each other. I don't know why I'm explaining this to anyone. I'm probably the only person on Earth who didn't know that's how it was done. The point is, I get to pretend to have a phone conversation into a payphone at the airport. How cool is that?

In other news, very shortly, I'm going to be posting an MP3 of Up On The Orange Moon for you to listen to on the Reclinerland website. I'd like to have the score up online for people to download, but I'm not sure how I'm going to manage that. It weighs in at a cool 7 pages. Anyway, I'd really love your feedback. It's the first step toward the completion of the album. And speaking of which: the mixing for the new Parks & Recreation album is finished. We're shooting for a November release, which is ambitious, but possible. I've had a good time this past coupleof weeks sitting up all night in our studio with a cup of tea, 50 bottles of water, some beer, and soda pop twiddling knobs and singing harmonies. With strings, horns, harmonies, and all of that, this album was very complicated to mix. Some songs start off really sparse and then grow into these orchestral monstrosities, while others just rollick along like the second coming of the Housemartins. I had to come at every song from a different angle, sliding the faders up and down during playback. We're all very excited about this record. It'll be our first one as P&R, and we want it to be special. Plus, for a while it was looking like it would never be finished, what with all the setbacks we dealt with. We had computer problems, personnell problems, money problems. All of it. We couldn't record in a church with an $8000 budget, but we did what we could with what we had. I think when you hear it, you'll hear a bit of struggle in the music. That enriches the project. It's just like when a performer goes onstage with a little bit of nervous energy. That nervous energy can really drive his or her performance.

So, no more all-nighters for me. Today, actually, was the first day of my new "Get Back On Track" sleeping regiment. You know, when you come off of a stint of going to bed at 4AM every night by waking up extra early one day, so you'll be really tired by bedtime. That's what I did today. Got to bed at 4, up at 9. And ladies, our finishing the record is good news for you. It means my weeknights are freed up!

(cue chirping crickets...)

I feel a bit behind, but some really cool person named J. Quigley has been photographing pop shows here in Portland, and we got caught unawares in his skillful lense back in May, before we became Parks & Recreation. Thought you might want to see them. Head to this link:

http://www.pbase.com/jmquigley/reclinerland

My apologies to Mr. Quigley for my delay in getting a link to these photos. We really appreciate you taking them!

I'm in a collossal funk at the moment. I have to postpone work on the IHML while I singlehandedly mix the tracks for the new Parks & Recreation record, out later this year (yeah, right) on HUSH. I'm not complaining, nossir, I love mixing the record. I'm learning so much. It's just that I've been pulling all nighters, because I don't get off this job until 11PM every night. After work, I bike over to our studio in Northwest Portland and sit down to the laptop. I have to sing new vocal tracks on all the songs, ten in all, and then mix them. I try not to be up all night working, but this stuff takes time. Inevitably I'm done by two or three in the morning. Someone named Moxiegrl asked me once if I ever sleep. The answer is no. So then I've been waking up really late in the day, like, 1 o'clock, and going to work by 3. I sound like an old man even mentioning it, but it's a bit of a grind. I wish I didn't have to have a job. No, better: I wish music was my job. Right now it's just an expensive, time consuming, relationship eroding hobby. Well, this blog is supposed to be about my work, not about my feelings, so I'll end here. Soon as I get a creative inspiration, I'll post. So, as always, more later.

I hope you'll indulge me in a quick post before I meet Jeff London for lunch. I did more work on Il Est Calm yesterday. It's going to be a long one. I picture these songs in my head as these little pieces, but I'm always surprised as I work on them to see them grow into 8 or 9 page monstrosities. Il Est Calm is really short in terms of length, but the page count is going to be sizeable.

Contributing to the sizeable page count is the fact that I decided if this record is going to feature just piano and voice, then I'd have to give both instruments equal weight. That means each song should have at least a few moments when the piano comes out on top and carries the song. So I'm not going to be adverse to long instrumental introductions, or big finales. The piano is useful (dare I say instrumental Ha ha ((when did I become such a geek?!))) in effecting key changes and exposing the singer's mood. The music is where you can really tell what the singer is thinking. In Up On The Orange Moon, I let the piano play the melody and carry the song out with these ambiguous chords. In this song, Il Est Calm, I think the piano will have a really odd interlude in the middle. I wrote something that's jumpy and juicy; kind of grim considering it's about this person dying. There is an interesting back and forth from 3/8 time to 2/4 which happened on accident. Hope I'm not getting too technical there. The point is it's going to be fun and challenging to see how the piano can function.

It's also going to be difficult given my limited piano skills. So Here's how I do it. I stand away from the piano and just sing what I want it to do. Just imagine and sing, sometimes I act it out even. Then, I sketch it out using just lines and blobs. Lines for the melodies, blobs for the chords. I jot down notes in the margins with little arrows pointing at the staves. Then I sit down and slowly, very slowly, carve out the melodies and chords given the texture I've come up with. This allows me to figure out how fingerings are going to happen, what chords are impossible to play given a player's reach, etc. As I come up with something, I write in the notes on manuscript paper. It's quite a tedious process. It's like when you work on playing a piece of music, but in reverse. Sometimes I'll hear something in Satie's music or Schumann's music and think "Hey, that would be good" and I'll straight lift it. Not the chords and melody, but the texture. You can learn a lot stealing from the old masters. That's a last resort, though. Really.

Anyway, off to lunch. More later.

Poor lily. She's all cooped up in my little apartment. I wish I had a bigger space for her to traipse around in. I live on the corner of two busy streets, so she can't really go outside. My place gets lots of light, thanks to the large North-facing bay windows and she gets to look out the window often, but that doesn't quell her kitty urge to hunt and frolic about in the outdoors. I have a photograph on my fridge of Lily standing outdoors in a pile of leaves, with the sunlight illuminating her fur on one side. When I look at it these days, I feel guilty. The photo mocks my Lily. Who knows when she'll be able to roll around in the leaves again? Someday I'll get us a bigger space, maybe with a backyard and everything. She'll have a little kitty door to go through as she pleases. That would be nice. Someday.

In the meantime I've moved on from songs about deranged women and decided to move instead songs about death. Up On The Orange Moon is finished, and I've started work on another song for the IHML, Vol. 2, called Il Est Calm. The title is culled from a short film made by a girl I knew last year who I desperately wanted to date. She was so cool. She played piano, made films, worked as a camera operator at the local news cast, was unashamed to admit that she liked Harry Potter, and spoke French (she even had a boxed set of Harry Potter books in French). She was really fun to dance with, hang out with, and talk to. So of course she didn't return my feelings of affection. In the end she had to give her phone number to another guy right in front of me to get it through my thick skull that she wasn't interested. I was crushed. During our friendship, she had asked me to write some music to accompany her little film. So I started work on it. I really liked what I came up with, and she loved it. But then our friendship ended after the "phone number" incident, and I never spoke to her again. She still wanted me to finish the music, and I suppose I should have, but I was really hurt, so much so that it was impossible for me to continue working on it. In the end I left her a curt phone message and that was that. This all happened last fall. Immature, I know.

What, then, to do with this music? Well, I shelved it. Now, however, I'm using the music for this collection. I have a vague story in mind: a scene on the Siene, wherin a guy is holding his dying lover in his arms, and she's saying "Il Est Calm..." as death comes. She asks him to sing her a little song as she dies. So romantic! So tragic! I thought it could be a bit of a tribute to She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Plus, it conforms to the Ideal Home Music Library's tradition of having songs in fake French. Well, not fake French, really, but little snippets of real French mixed in with English, like in The Lady From Reims.I don't know why I have a tendency to try to write in a language I don't know. It's hard to explain. I suppose I could write songs in Russian. If the inspiration comes, I will. But it has to be natural. Writing in Russian seems pretentious because I know the language pretty well. Writing in French seems less pretentious because my ignorance of the language makes it fun to play with. It's hard to explain. Anyway, I came up with the vocal melody again while on my bike riding somewhere in Southeast. I sang the melody into my cellphone and later, when I got home, matched it up with the music. We'll see where it goes. More later.

Hi. Well, I just wanted everyone to know that the film is going really well. It's called Drift and it's made by Grammar School Pictures. I play a character called Aaron Rilke, the best friend of the main character Colin Miles (played by Joe Ballman). Aaron is really just a cardboard cut-out of myself: he cracks jokes, he fronts a band, he's shit at basketball, and he leaves funny voice mail messages on his phone. The key differences between myself and Aaron are that he's a ladies' man, he's a bit of a hipster, he wears tighter fitting clothing, he's in a successful band, and he's much more laid back than I am. Also his move to Sweden to be with his long distance love ends in blissful happiness, while my move to New York to be with my long distance love ended in heartache. Yes, Aaron exists in a movie, you see, and I exist in real life. But that's not for the blog.

Acting in movies is much different than acting in theater. I like it a bit better, actually. On film, if the scene is in a bar, you're in a bar. So you just sort of show up in the surroundings and play the character. As long as you have your character down, that is. I got that from an interview with Ben Kingsley, who had a similar thing to say about playing in Iranian man in House of Sand and Fog. He said when he shows up on set and is surrounded by sights and smells, and by the character's things, the character comes out of him. Now, I'm no Ben Kingsley, but I've been using that as a kind of guide for my portrayal of Aaron. You see, if Joe and I are sitting having a conversation in a bar (which seems to be all we do in this film) it's easy to just let things happen. I have a beer. The bar is dark. We're surrounded by people talking. Joe is close, across from me in the booth. It's easy to just sit back and listen to him. Plus, on film a lot of a character's feelings can be shown by the way the director stages and dresses the shot. In one scene when Joe leaves my character on the dark suburban street, all I have to do is watch him go up to the house, stand for a moment, put my bike helmet on, and walk away. The dark house behind me, the quiet lawn, the dim streetlamps are enough to show the audience how I feel. I don't need to mug, or shake my head, or show them anything.

One challenge is that there are only a few scenes in which Aaron is doing anything more than nodding, smirking, pointing, (per the stage directions) or asking Joe questions about things he just said, like "She said that?!", or "Are you really going to ___". So I have to give the part a little bit of depth that the script doesn't necessarily give him. Buy that's what it's all about isn't it? A good script is just material to work from isn't it? I look for little ways to do that in each scene. On the whole, in movies the audience picks up on what your character is doing, not what he's saying. So I try to show a lot with my body and with gestures, being careful, of course, not to be too broad. A little gesture is all it takes. I let the written words come out of my mouth, while showing the subtext in my body. In many cases this gives the words meaning that they don't have literally. But sometimes it can serve to emphasize what the words are saying. Most importantly, it means that I can put various shades of meaning into the countless "Yeahs" and "Reallys" that appear in my portion of the dialog. This morning, we were doing a scene in a bar in which Joe says, "I'm really glad you're here for this part." and Aaron says, "Yeah, me too." There isn't much subtext to a line where the character is outright stating his feelings, at least not in this particular case. So I tried to show with my body the essence of what Aaron was saying. During what I felt was the best take, I was sitting back in my chair, slouched, avoiding Joe's eyes, instead of going for a Lifetime Network half-smile, cock-of-the-head kind of thing. I looked into my beer as I said it. On another good take I looked out at the street and the trees past Joe as I said it. I didn't aim the line at at Joe, but I aimed it at the afternoon, enjoying being there on the porch at the bar with him, having a beer, friends again. I let the line fall out, and tried to show happiness with my body. On the whole I enjoy the challenge. I love acting.

At some point I will to do a full post dedicated to my thoughts about the project, but for now the curious can find the director's blog at http://www.grammarschoolpictures.blogspot.com.

More later!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: "Dude, Mike, how come you spend so much time writing about writing songs, instead of just writing songs? No wonder you're not getting anything done!"

Well, you see, friends, in response to the first part of your question, not only does this blog exist to combat writer's block, but it also serves to combat a condition called DDD, or Day-job Doldroms Disorder: a vegetative state that occurs when one is left to one's own devices at a summer job whose most challenging aspect is to spit out the enormous phone greeting as quickly as possible when the phone rings. In the intervals when the phone isn't gurgling I would basically just sit and stare at the wall if it weren't for this trusty blog. (Incidentally, why can't they replace this pathetic, dying bird chortle with something pleasurable to hear, like a sultry voice saying "You have a call, gorgeous!") This blog keeps my mind focused on music instead of on kissing up to rich people. They armed me with a computer at their peril, that's the way I look at it.

With regard to the second part, ah, but I am getting so much done. I am so close to the end of Up On The Orange Moon that I can taste the double barline. And, I spent all day Saturday sitting on my butt in Salem, where we were shooting the film, listening to piano music. I analyzed the Dicthterliebe song cycle by Shumann, wherein I discovered many juicy tidbits. Schumann wrote those songs in the 1850s, when Romanticism was the fashion in Europe. It's encouraging to know that those old pianists spun such inventive textures out of such simple simple chords. That takes a lot of the pressure off. Then I listened to a bunch of Moussourgsky's late piano songs. They were written later in the 19th century, I think in the 1870s. Anyway, his songs are insane and very difficult to analyze. So I gave up trying to figure out the harmonies and just paid attention to the textures. I don't think I'll be writing anything all that complicated, but it helps to see what's out there. Then I listened to some Satie. My favorite pieces of his are the Sports and Divertissiments from 1914. They are a little book of short, elegantly calligraphed pieces which accompany some illustrations about the upper crust at play. They're very cute pieces, and surprisingly easy to play for how inventive they are. I found a recording of them and flipped out because I didn't think one existed. They are sadly absent from most recordings of Satie's music that I've come across. But they further reenforce my conviction that good music needn't be complicated. So while I didn't get much writing done, I did get some great ideas which I jotted down. Soon as I get home from this...erm...job, I'm going to get to work.

Why, you might then ask, if I was filming in Salem, did I have so much time to sit and listen to music? Well, that, my friends, is for another post. In the meantime: more later.