thought of the day: beethoven suffered deafness, yet penned some of the most incredible melodies those of us lucky enough to hear will ever have the pleasure of experiencing. now in my head (a scary zone you’ll all likely agree) i almost constantly have little songs of my own design floating about, and assuming most people also tend to have music on the brain from time to time; with millions of deaf people since ludwig van, how many brilliant melodies have been lost in those minds that the rest of us will never hear?
happy new year to those who bother putting up with my inconsistent posting. the truth is over the past couple months since my last posting i’ve been doing two things related to this site: migrating to a dedicated, externally-hosted server and concepting some new designs. so my site is no longer kept on one of my computers here at the house, but a faster, more reliable machine somewhere else. and while i still find merit in my yellow/orange design, i’m surprised i’ve let it go this long without a refresh, considering how quickly i tend to bore with most everything else; the existing layout is a good 4-5 years old, a near-eternity in web years.
combine the above with a hectic work and holiday schedule, and it begins to make sense that venting my oft-abnormal thoughts and observations on some web log starts to take exceedingly lower priority; or maybe it’s just me.
this coming monday i’ll be making a return voyage to seattle, a city which completely captured my heart and mind since first visiting in august. perhaps it was dumb luck that my first visit fell on what many suspect was a meteorological fluke for the city: cloudless, sunny skies warmed to 80ºF every day for a whole week, the only rain coming in a rather brief shower at midnight during my venture back to the airport, almost a sign telling me not to return to minneapolis. nearly half a year later, it will remain to be seen if a seasonal shift bears the same fondness among my fancies.
the trip comes at an awkward time, occupationally speaking. some background: christmas has always been my favourite time of year, a magical time ironically enhanced by the snow i so wholeheartedly despise. yet my job as an art director/designer in advertising for a retailer has me more or less working on “holiday” materials essentially year-round, leaving me quite desensitised to what has until now been a rare and joyous time that i anticipate the other 10-11 months of the year. case in point, next monday also marks the beginning of holiday 2007 for me at work, yet as i write this it’s only the day after the new year and a week after christmas. while people are still returning and exchanging the gifts that fell short of their individual desires, i’ll already be knee- (or neck-) deep in concocting ways to drain consumers’ cashbooks for the same holiday “next year”; it has an almost perverse, paradoxical ring to it in my head, not unlike machines making machines or an omelette with chicken-meat inside.
anyway, i guess perhaps it means i wouldn’t be such a great elf up at the north pole. by the time christmas came around this past year, i was nearly sick of it; i can’t imagine how santa’s little helpers can and continue to do it for so many years… i wonder if the turnover or suicide rate at santa’s workshop commands a premium from the company’s insurance underwriter? i can fully emphathise with those ‘misfit’ elves who wind up venturing into other professions. but so what if the proverbial “christmas all year” that songs have pined for isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in the end? well for this fellow, it signals a more serious side-effect that zapping the sacred magic inside seems to have taken with it quite a bit of my creative inspiration as an artist. yes, i’m still the dorky, geeky big-kid and will always have that childish wonder about me, but for the time being, i feel like a round of cheese with a jagged bite taken to disfigure the overall purity of the shape. i notice a distinct lack of creative output for one, not only with this site, but also in my day to day projects at work, creative writing, drawing, etc; not good if being creative and expressive is your meal ticket… i’ve contracted a sort of “deafness” of my artistic sense, yet i continue to do some of my better work as time goes by, better technically speaking.
perhaps a week away from it all will give me time for some introspection and re-evaluation of my life’s trajectory, including how to correct the vectors i’m currently travelling, if in fact a correction is in order. perhaps the proper hearing aid may just wind up being putting my brain to good use for the benefit of mankind in science and medicine after all?
listening to:
Head on Straight
Tonic