The Excitement of Adventure

San Bruno Mountain Reserve 2012

This post is part of the Open Book Blog Hop (begun by author P.J. Fiala) where you can learn more about authors and bloggers. The theme this week is fun.

My "fun" is limited. I'm a bit of a workaholic and a stay-at-home parent of an active toddler, which means 99% of my time is spoken for. I have to plan every part of my day and week just to make sure I can shower and brush my teeth. When I do get a spare minute, I am usually so tired, all I can do is watch the latest sci-fi creation out of Canada.

That said, when my husband is off work, we do family or date things. This often involves hiking, short excursions, and or movies. Today we went to the beach, took a long walk, and had a picnic. Afterwards we got frozen yogurt at a DIY yogurt bar. That is a pretty typical example of our family time.

Before Kiddo, however, things were a little different.

Halloween Shiny Toy Guns concert, Bako 2011

I really enjoy dancing - salsa, hip-hop, techno, swing, waltz, whatever. It brings me joy. I also love live music, especially funk and folk (though my interests are pretty varied). Dinner and dancing or a concert would be an ideal time for me. I also really enjoy art openings, festivals, and museums for daytime fun. So if I was childless and wanted to have some staycation-style fun, this would be it.

But more than this, I love adventuring. An adventure for me could be hiking, camping, or just exploring a new town. When I lived in the Bay Area, we would go on a different hiking trail every weekend, and often explore a new section of the Bay. Every weekend was a new adventure, and I absolutely loved it.

We try to do that everywhere we live. When we were in Phoenix, we would take a day in different parts of the city. We went to the mountains. We went to Sedona. We went to Tuscon. When we lived in Bakersfield, we explored Tehachapi. We sussed out all the cool spots. We went to Lake Isabella.

Now that we're in Santa Barbara County, it's hard to feel like there is any adventure left, because we've both lived in the area for significant portions of time. Having our son brings an element of newness to the place, but it's not quite the same. I'm still getting used to the change and embracing it. The next big adventure is scheduled for late September when we'll be camping in Big Sur with Kiddo and going to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. While I've been to both places when childless, I am excited to share them with my son and experience them as a family. It is different. There won't be dancing or concerts. Our pace will be slower, but I will get to experience it all through Kiddo's eyes. To see his joy when watching jellyfish tanks or when feeling the tide pool exhibit will be wonderful.

What do you consider fun? Leave a comment below! 

Tracy

Speaking of fun, check out chick lit and women's fiction author Tracy Krimmer. Her new book, Jay Walking is on pre-order on Amazon. You can read about this, her other novels, and check out her blog at her site here! Also be sure to like her Facebook Author page here.

 
Also, if you're interested in joining our blog hop, link up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Techno in Pop - A Po-Mo Look at Music

"We regret to inform you, your favorite genre has been co-opted."

The conversation went much like this:

"This is like techno."
"No it is techno." The singer warbles a little more without many sound effects altering her voice.
"No it's not.  It's pop. She's singing without any sound effects and it's in a power ballad pop style."  Christian grumbles under his breath while scowling.

In the past couple years techno has infiltrated pop music like no other.  It is the background to rap, pop, and even some rock.  Techno lends itself to this mixing and blending, that is the origin of the thing.  DJs would spin beats, mix in samples, and perhaps have a live singer if they were feeling saucy.  Like rock or jazz, techno has developed its own sub-genres that have taken on lives of their own.  The family tree of techno is lush with new developments, various fan bases, and tributes that cross pollinate within the genre family as well as other genres entirely.  When I hear Gigi D'Agostino or Daft Punk sampled on the radio as part of a pop song, I find myself feeling ambivalent.

I'm not into deep trance, never will be.  Still, there is a sort of heresy in mixing beautiful music to make it into something new.  Maybe this is a natural development of post-modern culture, to continue mixing in order to pretend to be something new, while acknowledging there is nothing new under the sun.  Everything is just a symbol of a symbol of a thing that was lost long ago.  After all, every melody has already been written.  It was said and done centuries ago.  So then, is a musician just recalling something, reconstituting orange juice and putting in a splash of cranberry for a twist? Or is it something else? Is there any point in writing music at all? In painting? If there is nothing new under the sun, is it okay for things to be a reinterpretation? Is that acceptable? Should we acknowledge this and judge things based on this understood truth? It certainly changes the rating system. 

Everyone wants to do something new and fresh, but sometimes it's okay not to push things.  It's okay to enjoy a good arrangement of something old.  I can appreciate a beautifully rendered folk song from the heart of the Whiskey Rebellion in the Appalachian mountains.  I also like Ke$ha.  Some people might think these things are mutually exclusive.  But the purpose of music is many fold.  It is an expression of human experience, from something as soul-searching and yearning as a traditional melody to something as primal and superficial as a popular club song. 

So, yes, I like techno the way it was.  I also like that it has become part of mainstream music culture.  There is a lot more dancing in my seat as I drive places because of the change.  Pop music could be worse.  It could consist entirely of Banda.  Thank GOD for DJs!

Retro v. Techno, Alexis style

My stomach is breeding butterflies.  It might be the coffee, or it might be that I am going to UC Berkeley's campus later today.  Why am I visiting the bastion of hippy and militant student protest? The land of stinky weed, tie-dye, scholarly pursuits, and organic produce? Nothing intellectual I assure you.  I gave up that vice a few years ago.  No this is something much more nervous making.  Give me a class filled with undergraduates any day and I'll talk circles around them.  Give me a young South Asian electronic artist and we're closer to the problem, and the excitement.

I grew up in the Hudson Valley.  It is one of the two most folk musically rich places in the country, the other being in Western Massachusetts (for a general introduction to American folk click here or here.).  I performed with my dad in music festivals, coffee houses, and bars all over New England and in some other locations which are more surprising (Des Moines?!).  We even recorded a few CDs - one when I was fifteen and another when I was seventeen.

I got tired of folk music (though it will always hold a special place in my heart), and as I grew up I wanted to experiment with different music genres.  In college I had a few friends who did some jazz/funk/rnb with a huge band.  I got to sing backup and lead for a few performances and had a total blast.  I discovered the type of music my voice is MADE for.  It was too much fun.  I hadn't realized how relaxed and silly you could be on stage until I played with those guys.  It's an entirely different dynamic than writing and performing music with your parent (no offense Dad).  It was exactly what I wanted out of music moving forward and unfortunately it couldn't last. College has a definite end which came way too soon. 

In Phoenix I tried to get into music, but nothing gelled and I felt like it was a lost cause as I was planning on leaving after 2 years. Even though I desperately wanted to start playing again, it wasn't the right time. Here in East Bay, Christian and I are seriously thinking about putting down roots.  So I began looking for a few different avenues for a musical outlet.  But what type of music should I pursue? East Bay is to artistic expression as the Australian Barrier Reef is to coral ecosystems.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You're probably asking yourself how a folk turned funk singer would have even considered techno vocal parts.  It's no mystery. When I started dating Christian he immediately exposed me to the world of techno.  I've always liked music with a beat - anything I can dance to makes me happy, especially if it has a good vocal part (what can I say, I'm a singer). Regardless of the level of lyrical wisdom a good beat and interesting composition gets me every time. I became enamored with such greats as Bob Sinclair, Paul Oakenfold, and Benny Benassi. The Ministry of Sound annual became one of the most anxiously awaited musical moments of my year. I think we have three of them in MP3 form on our flash drive in the car. Year after year of this got me thinking, if I could sing techno vocal parts, that would be amazingly fun and I wouldn't necessarily have to go on tour all the time (which is why I never pursued the singer songwriter bit - I hate doing performance after performance).  I even contemplated attempting to tackle Fruity Loops and drum up some beats myself, but I wasn't sure I had the patience.

Enter Craigslist and the infamous ad to which I responded in "gigs." I had been searching daily for something and Mr. Berkeley had placed an ad for a female vocalist in his techno project.  Sweet! Somehow I convinced him with my unusual voice to collaborate with me on this project.  It wasn't his first choice, because my voice is not a typical breathy, flat Alice DJ type of voice.  I've got soul. It required some reimagining on his part, for which I am thankful.

So here I am, in my late twenties, a former folk singer songwriter, going to meet a Berkeley student (who I have a sneaking suspicion is an undergrad) to collaborate on a techno project.  This could either be brilliant, or a really bad idea.  Cross your fingers and wish me luck.  I'll let you know how it goes.

P.S. I don't think the coffee helped my nerves.