In the next few weeks, the alexjmann.com URL will point to my writing portfolio, consisting of essays (some have been published here; others elsewhere), comedic sketches, standup, and television/film projects.

I will continue blogging on Tumblr. If you enjoy this site, or did at one time, please follow me there. I have a couple new pieces up already.

The bris would begin shortly. The chant of the Mohel, his clinking metal instruments, the shriek of an infant. We didn’t have to be in the room, but proximity was a sign of respect. I stayed close. Others stood outside in the hallway; they’d listen, not watch. Cookies and pastries and chocolates — “nosh,” as Grandma calls them — filled the air with sweetness. Comfort food; we’d need it.

Read it here.

“You can’t understand the blues until you’ve had your heart broken, and you can’t understand disco until you’ve had group sex on Ecstasy.” – DJ Harvey

When I moved to New York City over a year ago, my guitar made the cut: It joined a pile of things I brought with me that I wasn’t sure what to do with, like the blender (someone kept stuffing it deep in my luggage regardless of my attempts to ditch it) and the iron (the wrinkles flatten once a shirt is on anyway, right?).

“I’ll play this again.” I eyed the instrument. The guitar became a fixture in my New York City closet, a prop, a piece of black wood strung with nylon, undoubtedly out of tune. It rested between shirts on hangers and a basket of laundry. I stored it somewhere I would have to see everyday, that is, if I wanted a change of clothes.

It was the same guilt-ridden strategy someone might use to be healthier: Place the fruits and vegetables in the front of the refrigerator so you feel shitty reaching around them. Install the pull-up bar under the bedroom door, engulfed in shame each time you walk under without doing one, just one. The best motivation for getting better at something is reminding yourself each day that you still aren’t.

The guitar sat there. And sat there. The skills acquired from lessons I took in high school years before — rotting away. “I’ll start playing again. When I have time.” I never made the time. I didn’t have a reason to.

II.

“The Blues are a mystery, and mysteries are never as simple as they look.” – BB King

I recently visited Brazil, a country with a rhythm. The language, the way people eat, walk and dance, they all pulse to a beat. I tapped my hand against my side walking down the street, or gently drummed my fork against my plate after I finished a meal. The rhythm was hard to ignore; It was a rhythm ingrained in the culture.

In Brazil, I listened to music with a common rhythm. Not a Brazilian rhythm, but connected similarly. The bands and artists included the the Yardbirds, the Jeff Beck Group, Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mike Bloomfield, the Rolling Stones, the Black Keys, and probably a few more.

I listened to these artists hundreds, maybe thousands of times before, but I never noticed their shared foundation: the blues. The connected rhythm of Brazil helped me rediscover the blues and its genetic foundation in rock and roll.

III.

“Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.” – Jimi Hendrix

When someone gives me an unsolicited music recommendation, I ignore it. I need to discover music on my own for it to mean something. There is a sense of accomplishment in the conquest. You invested time into  seeking a sound; The search happened naturally.

“You need to listen to this guy. He’s bluesy, ” or so I’ve been told in my past 20 or so years as a music listener by friends, family, and record shop owners (the latter of whom I’d also consider friends and family by my sheer gratitude for their ability to locate that one album I wanted at the bottom of a crate), but always ignored. The blues in my mind was something…dated. A type of music no one played anymore. It was irrelevant.

The artists I listen to the most are blues artists. I wasn’t paying attention. I had to figure this one out on my own to defeat my ignorance.

IV.

“If you don’t know the blues…there’s no point in picking up the guitar.” – Keith Richards

I picked up my guitar for the first time since high school a few months ago. The Brazilian rhythm helped me notice how even a complex web can share a simple foundation, like rock and roll and the blues. Discovering the blues seemed like a good way to get started again, a reason to pull the guitar out of my New York City closet, tune it, and play it. The blues was the foundation I was missing.

The old woman wore a purple and teal nylon tracksuit. The pants purple, the jacket teal with grey stripes down the sleeves. The logo on the jacket was unrecognizable, like something you’d buy at a flea market. Her sneakers were tied and clean, though worn around the edges.

Buses passed; the old woman never got on.

“Everyone has a story,” the old woman said between short breaths.

She was quiet, or what some might call a good listener.

I told the old woman about Sarah, a middle school classmate. Sarah’s feet pointed inward and she tripped easily, even if she stepped on something small like an eraser. Sarah sat next to me in science class. One day Sarah told me she would be missing school the next day because she was volunteering at the Special Olympics. During role call the next day, the teacher asked where Sarah was. “Oh, Sarah?” I said, “She’s at the Special Olympics.” The teacher frowned.

“There’s no being right if everyone is wrong,” the old woman said. “All you can do is laugh.”

I told the old woman about my grandparents who live in Florida and forward me conspiracy emails with subject lines like “How To Deal With People Who Claim The Holocaust Didn’t Happen (i.e. Mel Gibson).” My grandparents have poor eyesight, so when returning their emails, even the absurd ones, I have to avoid condescension while making sure my message is legible. I once bumped up the font to size 30—a derisive one word per line. Realizing this, I dropped the font to size 28. Okay, two words per line.

“If you ever decide to email me, let’s stick with font size 30,” said the old woman. She squinted as a bus pulled away.

I told the old woman about my friend David, an addict. He sent me a text message when he left rehab: “I’m back in the game.” I hoped it wasn’t the drug game. I learned his game was Glee. A new addiction. Within a week of being home David started an Glee blog, a mailing list, and a Facebook page with pictures of his face copied and pasted into pictures with the Glee cast.

“Glee? Send that boy back to rehab,” said the old woman between chuckles.

After a pause, the old woman turned her head my direction. “Where you heading, anyway?”

I told her I was going to visit Sarah, the girl with the inverted walk. I showed her Sarah’s address on the back of a envelope.

“No need to take a bus. Sarah lives just a few blocks away.” The old woman pointed.

I stood up to leave. “Your socks.” the old woman said. “They don’t match.”

I looked at the old woman. She lifted up both legs of her purple track pants and pointed to her ankles. “Mine don’t either.”

I nodded. She smiled.

I walked toward Sarah’s. I thought about Sarah’s inverted walk and my grandparent’s conspiracy emails and David’s Glee addiction. I thought about the old woman’s mismatched socks.

I glanced back at the bench; it was vacant. I heard the swish of the tracksuit, the rhythm of the sneakers. The old woman was on an afternoon jog. Jogging at the speed of walking. But still jogging in her mismatched socks.

It’s a good sign when people take their pursuits seriously, but themselves less so.

Recently, I’ve forayed into music production. Specifically, DJing. I’ve always been the “music guy” in my circle of friends, casually claiming the title of “DJ” at parties. Developing an ear for how people react to different forms of music and studying the psychology behind it, it was appropriate to learn DJing beyond clicking tracks on iTunes.

The “DJ” is different things to different people: The radio DJ, or Disc Jockey, plays records, chats about songs, and engages in an open dialogue with his listeners. The wedding/bar-mitzvah DJ is an MC and party host, rather than the guy who plays the music. The DJ/producer (the type I am studying) expresses himself solely through sound. The DJ/producer mixes, scratches and blends records, using the turntables as an embodiment for instrumentation.

The DJ/producer is the most technical of the DJs, and requires a basic understanding of music theory. The tool-set of the DJ/producer includes, at minimum, two turntables and a mixer. The turntables play the records and the mixer controls which record(s) protrudes from the speakers at which volume, and with what quantities of treble and bass.

Learning to DJ is like learning an instrument. The process has dragged painful nostalgia of when I first picked up a guitar, and the frustration of training my hands and ears congruently. The ear training feels foreign, even to a regular music listener:

1.) Count the number of beats.
2.) Mentally organize the beats into packets of bars.
3.) Choose the perfect cue, mix and drop points.

The steps need to be processed simultaneously, which the hands then react to.

When I DJ, it feels like I’m training exotic areas of my brain. It’s taken months of practice to regularize tasks that I remember appearing simple when I was an outsider. Consider record mixing, one of the most basic maneuvers of a DJ:

1.) Choose two tracks within an overlapping 10-12 BPM range.
2.) Play one track while cueing the other.
3.) Adjust the pitch so the tracks have matching BPM.
4.) Prepare the cued track for the mix.
5.) Drop the cued track on the first beat of the bar.
6.) Repeat.

The goal should be to have two separate tracks that sound like a single track: A unique-to-the-DJ, live, remixed song.

The DJ can take a rock-and-roll track, transition to a hip-hop track, and then again to an electronic track, all while making it sound like the song never changed. The DJ allows his audience to enjoy the ambiance of social environment with his sounds serving as a backdrop to the social interaction. In a room of music, the DJ is in control.

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The Ronettes’ Be My Baby is the most sonically pleasing song I’ve ever listened to. It’s an instant mood-enhancer.

The same concept applies to our mental space: Articulate a controversial, thoughtful or offensive message towards someone, and you’ll cross that line through his mental comfort-zone. This will garner a reaction, spoken or unspoken, and a memory of the confrontation.

If you approach this space — tiptoeing to the delicate edge of unease without crossing over — people sense it. This is an optimal line to constantly approach with ideas. It’s how people remember them.

A piece of art is successful (the second part) when the artist’s perspective resonates with an audience in a way that’s understood, even if it differs from the artist’s intention. However, the process of creating art (the first and often less examined part) is selfish: the artist produces to provide himself with a clearer, stronger, deeper perspective of his own life.

As an extreme example of a process-driven artist, consider Henry Darger, a recluse with a negligible public occupation as a hospital janitor who led a secret life as a writer and artist. A custodian during the day, Darger produced a 15,000 page work of fiction, a 5,000 page autobiography, a 10-year weather journal, a 10,000 page novel and a collection of diaries, paintings and illustrations in his spare time. Indifferent to result, Darger’s work did not emerge until after his death. He’s heralded to this day in museums and recognized as a prime example of outsider art.

Art allows for process because it is malleable. An artist can take bits and pieces of life conditions and experiences, often confusing and overbearing to reality, and weave them into a neat, linear narrative on a canvas. The painter chooses from a pallet of colors, patterns, symbols and textures, and arranges them into a painting. The musician uses instruments, samples and production techniques, layering sounds into a song or album. The writer — and this is especially true of the fiction writer — tells a story using language, characters and emotion reflecting pieces of our own lives.

The process of creating art, regardless of its result, can bring us one step closer to understanding our own reality.

The premise of musical narratives was the theme behind the four situational pieces I wrote a few weeks ago. Each storyline dramatized an ordinary moment of life — one we’d otherwise ignore — with music, causing the protagonist to feel imposing, elevated and perfectly out of touch with reality. To ignore my own questions wouldn’t be fair, so below I’ve coined the jukebox as if it were me.

As the plane picks up speed and you feel the tip lift off, you push up the rubber window cover and hit play on your iPod. What song is playing?

“Bring It On Home” by Led Zeppelin, 1:36 into the song. I’ve written extensively about Led Zeppelin Moments previously.

A pungent breeze tickles the sweat on your forehead as the train exits the tunnel and flies down the track slowly coming to a halt. As you watch, there is music playing in your headphones. What song is playing?

“You Are My Face” by Wilco, 1:29 into the song. There was a period of a few weeks when every time I waited for the subway, I attempted to time its arrival with this point in the song.

You increase the volume on the radio as you catch a final glimpse of skyline, partially blinded by the bleeding purple of the sunset. What song is playing?

“Running Down A Dream” by Tom Petty, played from the beginning. I don’t think there is any better driving song.

You walk down the aisle, eyes darting from seat to seat looking for an empty space. There is music blaring in your headphones. What song is playing?

“Going Up The Country” by Canned Heat, played from the beginning. The Allman Brothers are the quintessential road trip band, likely because much of their music is about travelling. However, I crown Canned Heat the winner in this case because they make flute sound country.

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1. Hypebot picked up my piece providing another array of song suggestions and more proof that musical delusions may be less delusional and more reality than I imagined.

2. It’s possible for a film to be so gripping that it creates a second-derivative musical narrative. Meaning, the combination of music and and on-screen drama duplicates the delusion as if it were happening to us. There are two prime examples of this:

a. The first example is from Forrest Gump, occurring when white-nosed, psychedelic-era Jenny balances on the apartment balcony contemplating suicide to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s masterful “Free Bird” guitar solo. Watch it here, and watch it twice.

b. The second example is from Apocalypse Now, which opens ironically with “The End” by the Doors. Notice how the sound of the helicopter’s propeller, which you don’t initially see, lifts clouds of desert sand and blows the trees in perfect symphony with the opening notes. Watch it here and shiver.

Tomorrow: “I’m not sure, but, I think the market will be down.”

This answer is reflective of the current market condition. If the general sentiment — typically what’s portrayed by the mainstream financial media — is pessimistic, the average person will mirror and predict down.

One year from now: “The market will be recovering and probably up by a little bit.”

This answer is often more optimistic because the time period — one year from now — is out of reach. We assume, for one reason or another, that things will “get better by then.” Someone will do something to make it better. This prediction is based on nothing.

Five years from now: “The market will definitely be surging and the economy will be back on track.”

The most illogical and predictable answer of the set results from pushing time parameters out of reality’s grasp. This answer won’t change whether the parameters are five years, ten years or twenty years into the future. The idea is that we can’t fathom what market conditions, let alone our personal conditions, will have in store that far away. We assume that things “will get better,” just because they will.

I don’t think think there is anything wrong, on a personal level, with inherent, unjustified optimism, or what John Cassidy might call rational irrationality. It’s certainly more pleasant than being an unjustified pessimist. But, I do think unjustified, rationality-free optimism can pollute productivity and decision making.

If you assume things (the market, a relationship, hobby, career, etc.) are just going to “get better” without reason, you place yourself in a safety zone, and one of inaction. Unjustified optimism is equipped with mental stagnancy: it assumes natural improvement. It’s as meritless as assuming the stock market will go up if we “keep doing what we are already doing,” just because it will.

I am in favor of, however, justified optimism: things will get better because of this, this and this. Or, because I’m going to do this better or differently. But, unjustified optimism — portrayed by the people that “answer” the stock market questions above — is for fools.

Unjustified optimism allows us to become mentally dormant, permitting cruise control. The solution to any dilemma becomes a quest to amass more of what we are already doing. Ridding ourselves of unjustified optimism creates a natural, inventive realism. It forces us to improve reality, rather than adapting to unreality.

Picasso said, “Even if you are wealthy, act poor.” The same applies to outlook: if you are feeling unnecessarily optimistic, it’s probably a time to become grounded. Focus on reality — things you can touch, feel, change and improve — rather than assuming an externality will accomplish something for you, just because it will.

You are last in line for what appears to be a full capacity of travellers. As people begin to pile their bags into the lower storage area and load, you watch beads of sweat roll off your forehead onto the tips of your once-white sneakers.

The line dwindles down, and you swing your single piece of luggage — a black backpack — over your shoulder in preparation to enter the bus last. You walk up three steps, make brief eye contact with the driver and turn the soft corner as you enter the beginning of the aisle. Everyone stares at you, wondering how long it will take for you to spot the single remaining empty seat on the bus.

You walk down the aisle, eyes darting from seat to seat looking for an empty space. There is music blaring in your headphones.

What song is playing?