I realize I am just a bit behind on posting photos of my children here. To rectify that, here is the first of a series of gallery posts from last year.
It was a beautiful day in September and it made sense to drag the children out in their finest rainbow dresses to the playground. Well, Cheeks didn’t wear a rainbow dress; she was dressed like a tiny Mrs. Roper. As one does.
Yesterday I took Penny to the doctor. She’d been getting these low-grade fevers for a few days and then bouncing back, having some throat issues that were causing her to gag on her food, and was just kind of inconsistent in temperament. More inconsistent than is normal for a 4 year old, at least. Nothing too bad, but off for long enough that we decided a doctor visit was warranted.
The drive from our house to the pediatrician office is about 30 minutes, beach traffic permitting. And that means plenty of time for music.
The thought of Frozen II on loop yet again filled me with dread, so I made a quick playlist of albums that I anticipated she wouldn’t hate and wouldn’t end up with me yelling at Android Auto to play “Lost In the Woods” ten minutes into our drive.
The first album on that playlist was Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips. An all-time great album, to be sure. One that I’ve listened to maybe 80 million times, no exaggeration. And why aren’t The Flaming Lips more discussed? They’ve been putting out great records for decades, but no one talks about them. It’s weird, right? It’s not like they’re a band who put out a few records in the late 80s and then disappeared. No, they’ve been consistently making new work since 1986. I hear more talk about Neutral Milk Hotel and they only put out two records in the 1990s. It’s wild! Talk about The Flaming Lips!
Anyway.
We were driving down the highway, I put on the record, and halfway through the first track, “Fight Test”, she says, “I like this music, daddy.”
“Did you just say you liked this, kiddo?”
“Yeah! I like this music.”
I tell you I have had some successes as a parent, but this was a special one. I felt like I really hit the mark with my gamble with this album, one that is pretty high in my own personal favorites.
During “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1” I explained to her that this song was about a girl who fights evil robots to protect the boy who is singing, knowing full well that orienting her understanding of the song in the terms of a heroic girl would help her appreciate it. And I wasn’t lying. That is what the song is about, at least at the level of understanding of a young girl. I could have talked to her about struggling and overwhelming odds and caring for our loved ones who fight for us and she might have understood a little, but telling her it was about a girl who fought robots to save a boy sent the idea right home.
The appointment went smoothly. She was COVID/RSV/strep negative. It was a relief that we don’t have to look forward to that joy smashing through the house again.
Penny shushes me conspiratorially with her post-nasal-swab sucker in her mouth.
Penny enacts her diabolical plan of peeking into the hallway.
On our way back home, we listened to the driving playlist again which had reached Pulp’s This Is Hardcore when she pipes up behind me. “Daddy, can we listen to the girl and the robot song again?”
“Really??” I asked. “You got it, sweet girl.”
After the song, I skipped over “Yoshimi Pt. 2” and “In The Morning of the Magicians”, but she made me go back to the latter track because she “liked that one”.
What a car ride! After so many years of inane, mind-numbing children’s music, to be able to listen to something with Penny that I love and that she enjoyed was such a pleasure. It’s funny how these silly little moments can feel so profound and rewarding against the daily grind of parenting.
We went to the diner close to the house for lunch. She got french toast and chocolate milk and I got an omelette with home fries and rye toast.
David Lynch has died. If you run in the same media circles I do, this will come as no surprise to you. I won’t bore you with my waxing poetic about how important his work is to me (very) or how much I admire that he was able to do all the things he was (a lot) or how great of a loss this is to everyone who cares about art (huge).
No, I’ll take this moment to share one of my very favorite David Lynch moments, a moment which is directly responsible for the unironic addition of “get real” to my personal lexicon.
My kids are obsessed with Frozen and its sequel Frozen II. Mina will request “Elsha” the very first thing upon waking up in the morning or returning home from daycare or as soon as she’s finished throwing her unwanted blueberries on the floor at dinner. It is relentless.
So, as you might imagine, the music from the movies is a constant stowaway in my head. And as much as I think “Let It Go” is a banger of a karaoke song and that “Lost In the Woods” is a hilarious Peter Cetera riff, I am not always happy to have the snippets of the other songs I only partially know bouncing around my consciousness.
The particular song that inspired this post is from the second film. It’s called “Show Yourself”. It’s sung by Idina Menzel as Elsha and it’s very, very catchy. Beatrice especially loves this one. We have a bunch of videos of her belting it at the top of her lungs. It’s really quite endearing how strongly it sings to her little soul.
When Menzel sings the line “Show yourself!”, it resolves in a way that, in my mind, connects to Paul Simon’s iconic hit “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”. You know the song. We all know the song. Everyone knows the song. It’s been playing non-stop since its 1972 release.
The mental mash-up, the music portmanteau goes a little like “Show yourself! I don’t know where I’m going, I’m on my way, I’m taking me time but I don’t know where”. Try it. It’ll get stuck in your head, too.
All done?
Good.
As you can imagine, such a potent musical melange wouldn’t stay sequestered in my head. When I am doing chores around the house the music escapes, and that means that Sarah has to endure it, also.
“Oh, god, I hate Simon & Garfunkel!” she said to me.
“I mean, yeah, goodbye to Rosie! Queen of corona!” I said.
“Yuck! I hate that song. There’s only one Simon & Garfunkel song I like.” We started to search through Spotify to find the song she was thinking about, but without success.
Then I had a thought, “Maybe it’s just a Paul Simon song?”
Then we found it. “Yes! This one! I love this song!” she said.
“This song?! This is the song you love??”
And do you want to know what the super hot Paul Simon jam my wife absolutely loves is?
It’s this:
Wow. You think you know someone and then you learn that their favorite Paul Simon song is “You Can Call Me Al”.
Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope you’re fortunate enough to spend these dark winter nights with people you love, no matter what you celebrate or don’t celebrate. It’s a time for chosen families, for friends, and for people who love the hell out of you no matter what.
So put your feet up, eat something delicious, and sing loudly.
We also got to celebrate Mina’s first birthday this March. She’s proving to be an incredibly pleasant little girl, all smiles and laughs with very little unprovoked freaking out. If she is melting down, something is wrong.
Fortunately, he birthday was free of freak outs. We were also dealing with lingering daycare plague, so we delayed her birthday party until the second half of April. This nice thing about tiny kids is that they have no idea what “time” or “dates” are, so making them wait to celebrate their birthdays until it makes most sense for everyone is totally fine. Parenting!
Hey all! It’s been pretty quiet here on the old Black Laser front for the last few months. And there’s a very good reason for that which I will get into in a later post. For now, let’s rewind the calendar dial way back to January 2024.
Penny and Bea turned three this year and we threw them an age-appropriate party. They had cake and ice cream and got presents. And that’s pretty much it. They had a great time. We took some photos. We made some memories. All in all, a successful third birthday for a couple of little girls.
Happy New Year, everyone! I was fumbling around the internet recently and came across a post on Fstoppers that provides a framework about how to process your creative output from last year and your creative goals for this year. I thought it would be fun and interesting to go through this list here to share with you all.
Note that I am going to change some of the photography-specific language in the questions to be broad. I’m a photographer, sure, but I’m also a bunch of other things all lumped together.
Ok? Ok! Cool! Let’s get going.
On a scale of 1 to 10 how do you feel about your year as a creator?
Pretty iffy, overall. I posted 18 times here for the entirety of 2023: 8 were photos of my kids, 4 were TBLR posts, leaving just 6 that were actual writing. Not so great? But I did restart my TBLR project and am pretty happy with how that’s going. There’s been a bit of a lull through the holidays and all that business, but I have one in process that will go up soon. So that’s fun. I also have six more Failure States planned for when I feel like wallowing a bit.
What is one big lesson you learned as an artist this year?
I wish I could say I learned something, but I am not sure what that would be? I haven’t pushed myself too hard this year. Granted we had a baby which took up a whole lot of time between January and the summer, but that’s not a good excuse. The honest truth is that I just didn’t make much time to be creative this year. Anxiety, depression, shit even just distraction. I’ve been not so good for myself this year as with many other years.
Glance through your calendar for this year, are you happy with how you invested your time? Why or why not?
Not really. I spent a lot of time in 2023 dicking around and not getting too much done. Not that my value is determined by my output, but there was quite a lot of time that I spent messing around that I could have used better. I log all the time I do professional creative work in a notebook that sits on my desk. For a good part of the year I also logged the time I did personal creative work, but that sort of dropped off. I suppose that I subconsciously felt ashamed or something about how little time I was logging for it. Kind of silly. I should probably start logging it again this year.
What piece or series was the best one you produced this year, and why was it the best?
I guess we can call this the resurrected The Black Laser Reads. I’ve been thinking about this for years but never felt like I had the technical skill to execute in a way I would have felt good about. But over the last two years or so I’ve been recording a lot of voice over auditions and learning a lot about processing audio for that purpose. Suddenly, this year, I realized I actually do have the skill to execute TBLR v2 in a manner up to my standards. That is pretty satisfying. I have so many books in line. I could fill my entire year just reading for TBLR and do nothing else. A bit of a trap there, actually.
Evaluate your [output]. Are your pieces where you want them to be artistically? Technically?
Nah, they never are. My work can always be better. I think, for me, that artistic and technical quality go hand-in-hand. If one isn’t in place, then the whole work is a bit of a failure. I always try to accomplish both and consider both in the evaluation of the work after releasing it to the world. And I am not writing nearly enough. Not nearly enough.
What do you like about your [work]? What do you dislike about [it]?
I like the creation of it. I like the feeling of focusing on a project and doing my best to make sure it comes out well. But I wish it were more varied. I love my kids, but I’d like to take photos of something that’s not just them. I love reading audiobooks, but I also need to be writing for myself. And I have some video work planned that I can’t get off the ground for schedule, childcare, and financial reasons. A lot of things I’d like to have done, but did not do for a lot of reasons that just feel like silly excuses no matter how real they are.
Are you producing great work, mediocre work, expected work, innovative work, or poor work and why?
Somewhere between good and average. Above average, perhaps?
What did you accomplish this year that you are most proud of?
I kept my kids alive and they are nice people. That’s it.
What are you most disappointed about from this past year as a creator?
It’s been a bit of a creative wash. A lot of attempts, a lot of struggle, a lot of effort and thought and learning and support work, but not a lot of results. Frustrating.
What is one thing you want to stop doing (1), start doing (2), and continue doing (3) in 2024?
First, I’d like to stop sabotaging myself and cutting myself so much slack. Do I need to drink a couple glasses of wine or beers at the end of the night? No, not at all. Do those things affect me? Sure! They definitely allow me to convince myself with excuses and they affect my sleep which makes the early mornings pretty useless. This isn’t even really about alcohol dependence or some feeling that I am an addict. I don’t feel that way. But I do think I could be better about saving that sort of thing for times where it makes sense and not rely on it as a way to blow off steam at the end of the night. Even if I knock out 30 minutes of work that I wouldn’t have done otherwise, that is a positive outcome. This was one of my major takeaways from our most recent Whole30.
Second, I’d like to start writing fiction again. When we were living in my mother in law’s basement before Sarah gave birth to the triplets, I started a story that I quite liked. I worked on it until Penny and Bea came home from the NICU, but really lost the emotional steam for it when Olive’s health took a downward turn. In fact, that story has opened automatically every time I’ve opened Scrivener since then. That’s like 3 years now. That’s a lot of auto-openings. I need to get back to it. There’s no craft that I enjoy as much as writing stories, but there’s also no craft I feel quite so unsure, so unconfident, so weird about. That feeds into a lot of fear and guilt and other stupid, self-defeating nonsense. I just need to rip off that bandaid and build some momentum.
I think the best way to do this is to set a real schedule for myself. For the last few weeks I have been deliberately waking up earlier. Trying to retrain my sleep schedule. Once in my younger adulthood, the middle of the night was a fertile creative time. Now, however, in my early forties with three children that just isn’t true anymore. It took me a while to realize this. No, that’s not quite right. It took me a while to admit this to myself. Hence the deliberate schedule shift. My goal is to get to the point where I can wake up early, spend an hour writing, and then engage with my day as a stay at home dad. Because that’s my life. I need to make it work. I want to make it work. The time for it is now.
I’d also like to take photos of stuff again. I feel like I’ve fallen into glorified snapshot mode, which is fine, but is not creatively rewarding. I am still going to take too many photos of my kids, of course, but I would like to also take photos of stuff that’s not my kids. You get it.
Third, I’d like to continue with TBLR and Failure State. Those are fun projects that I can work on when I am not fresh. That is, late at night, after a long day of small children screaming for my attention. I can absolutely zone out and edit mouth noises out of my performance of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” while exhausted. No problem at all. What I can’t do in that state is form compelling thoughts and ideas and then translate them into words. Best to use that time of the day for projects that don’t require 100% of my processing power.
So that’s about it. Some optimization for this coming year. Some places I’d like to put more juice. You know what would also be great? Getting a job. Or jobs. I’ve been seriously underemployed since Verdant collapsed and that is driving me nuts. But I’ll save that for Failure State: Verdant Construction whenever I get around to writing that.