I am really excited about these new recordings I completed with the studio cats at Alchemy in Dumaguete. The sound is amazing and we really jammed. Three tracks so far: Lost Upward, Zuma Time, and City (Fly Away Home).

I am currently putting these huge WAV files together (via the audio-joiner cloud compression chamber) and plan to have a little preview sampler up on Soundcloud soon.

Part of a prospective concept album, the sampler includes:

Lost Upward - A multilayered flute and bamboo stick re-imagining of the mountains of Mindoro where the tribal vibe reigns. Monkeying around in the studio for 30 minutes generated this. Valuable lessons learned from the music masters at Malasimbo: Get to earth. 

Zuma Time - A combo of Miles Davis' Jack Johnson-era outtake "Ali" and some earworm techno refrain - boiled down to a Bob Marley "Live at Leeds" 1973 jet propulsion. First 3:29 of an 18 minute jam, just to whet appetites.*

City (Fly Away Home) - The song that came to me as a complete vision, in Manila - wanting to get far, far from the urban jungle. This is the instrumental architecture of what I hope will have many versions, including a proper roots reggae and a proper Lokal Bar tribal version. If I could interest Jahpoy in doing the deep QC Bamboo Lounge version... The version here is very jammy, way more upbeat than I imagined the song. But with tasty bass, drums, and guitar. Think Santana meets early '80s Police.

#endurancewriter

* Strictly my own––that was what uploaded onto the USB and the owner of the studio just passed away, they are about to have a wake there––may be days before I get the rest. 

All rights reserved Damon Shulenberger - EnduranceWriter.

I was reading this Guardian article on literary festivals with a groan in my stomach. Yeah, I have a stomachache. No hidden meaning. 

The bottom line is that I have never been drawn to literary types. Those who seem constrained by an admiration for poesy or prose. I'm sure there are writers out there I would like as humans. But within a fixed construct? Not so much.*

I've attended two Literary gatherings, one in Mexico and one in Marin. Good enough people. I did not have a real moment, because so many seemed so intent on rehashing the past. And adulating things that gave me a shrug. 

Would it be accidental if I never attended another literary gathering? Not so.

If I had time and there was a human who said "Hey Damon, let's go. Bring your flute"? Sure, I'd be there in a heartbeat. I appreciate good grooves.**

The hardest thing I have getting my head around is that writing may not be enough. Arisugawa Park may have had a lot of work put in by an original prose artist, but the chances of it getting noticed are small. Since I realized that ultimately I control it via whatever medium presents itself for dissemination, I have been walking around liberated and shit.

Best writing ever. 

In related news, Ari Park 1.20 - "Head on Desk" is near to publication. Full revelation: the only AP episode so far that gets a lot of hits is the one with the woman in the shower, obsessing over her dead lover (for good reason, as it turns out). Note to self: no more sudsy scrubbing.  Let's keep this novel on the under, for the truly elite.

​#endurancewriter

* A lot of worthy musicians had the same problem with Isle of Wight. Which is not to say amazing music was not created.

​** Santa Cruz, '93.

Life at the edge may result in a specific type of narrative that is not sustainable. Choose your poison; drugs, debt, war wounds, oppression––I would not want  that experience which tindered the brightly diminishing illumination of so many . 

On the flip side: life in one's comfort zone results in a very different type of book that can be equally confining. The sense of someone unwilling to venture far from mother's folds. Oh coddled, hip, and snarky youth.

The kind of writing I specialize in is forged of habit––there is the hardness of literary bones that have been broken and reset, many times. Yet there is an essential softness, an openness to new thoughts and experiences, that I protect like a swaddling baby. The moment they take away my ability to imagine in an unaffected way, I will die.

Many days only habit takes me through. Words disseminated this way fall into a void. Yet they are there to find resonance when and if they will. To be discovered by some semi-frozen body, mind in ooze mode but intact, accessing data from aeons ago on a prison ship heading for Tetra 5. That is something.

#endurancewriter 

I've got the zeitgeist blues and I must say it is a miracle I am still with you. Forgive me for confiding, but the elixir last night rattled my nerves, I saw second Jesus coming in a third-rate nightclub, Orifice Band revamping the hits.

The waterfront I cover is still stinking, the trash piling up anywhere there is a spare vacant lot or cover of verdure. Develop the hell out of it, I hear you say––it is so damn trashy. We despoil paradise on a daily basis through the simple process of owning and neglecting what we own, in preparation for the remunerative inevitable.

Look forward to the day when the capital is in place and the city arises, all cold and gleaming new for a while, till it becomes rundown like all the rest. Who can you really trust in this world? Not many and that is hoping for the best. 

​#endurancewriter

Whatever it is that makes you alive, hair standing on edge––don't give it up. When you get a bit older it should still raise a pulse. Once the experience is gone you can get by on the mirage of a pulse, which is known in certain circles as memory. The writing may get a bit hazy, cannon fodder in the distance. But don't give up. 

Pick up a new thing, making sure it builds on the old thing without intruding. Roll dice, bones if you have them. 

Expand the edifice if no one is interested. Stimulate yourself. Surround yourself with protein bars and shakes. As you build the edifice, don't forget the orifice. From dust were we sprung, unwilling–– into dust we shall slither, half alive (killer on the road). 

Experiment. Chicken ala Stephen King. Minced Sonnets. Wok-fried Twitter. Put it all in a blender. Do not push go. 

When you have enough decent writing to impress a few literary folks (mainly, as I said, yourself) shoot yourself in the foot. Throw a chair. Be the heel. 

Arisugawa Park 1.19 - Mountain Guru Climb coming sooner than you think.

#endurancewriter

Going strong for more than a year, the Chasing the Sun cloud music series continues with another Full Moon jam at Forest Camp in Valencia. This time a very different sound from Igoroots, more rooted in dub and 1980s electronica than in roots pasta vibrations.

When I look at the varied playlist I've created through jams and solo excursions, I cannot help but feel a twinge of pride. Something between Alan Lomax and a flute-crazed soulist, I've managed to get out of my musical shell and engage with varied musicians, as I engage my tribal soul. Van Morrison eat your heart out.

To get beyond the bullshit that was the music industry I was exposed to (as a teenage listener) in the late 1980s,  find meaning in the roughness of improvisatory questing. The tracks may not get a lot of hits, but they are there whenever I want to recall twists on my journey. Always finding time to create when the mood is right.

It is not easy as an amateur to get up on stage with seasoned professionals––but it seems more natural, the more you do it. People smile, listen, even clap.

I recently settled into the recording studio Alchemy for a few hours to record a proper version of "He Made His Way Through the City (Fly Away Home)," which I first introduced as an off-the-cuff a cappella thing within the Flute At Wild Lagoon joint.

Although I did write a slew of original songs on the acoustic years back (a couple are up on Soundcloud) this is the first fresh song that has come to me in a good long while.

I woke up humming "Fly Away Home" at the MNL Hostel in Makati one morning, thinking it was a Bob Marley tune. Conveying a need to get out of the city and back to somewhere with a few trees, gentle people.

It was only after careful evaluation that I found the song belonged to me. Working with a couple ace musicians I was able to convey the mood and tone of the song––think early 1970s reggae with Curtis Mayfield fills and some obligatory tribalism. We have apparently created an iTunes-ready hit single––if this was 40 years ago. Final mixing and instrumental overdubs to take place tomorrow.

​#endurancewriter

They say that blogs are going the way of the dinosaur. It is only because it is not in the interest of the mobile providers to construct an intuitive way of storing and managing traditional websites.

The app is for those large enough to generate mass installations (think financial institutions, major media organs, Twitter, and Facebook––prospectively Fabric). Conversely it is for those small enough to grind it out. Tweet and retweet, rinse and repeat.

If you are are not on the hamster app mill (The Feed) your audience is intrinsically limited. 

There is value in this. Gary Snyder's well known poetic formulation, "I hear no news" has been in my mind lately. 

If we are talking quality, it is visitors who make the effort to find and receive who are worth considering. As an individual artist, why consider any other type of reader your audience––?

Those I would choose to communicate with are the seekers climbing the mountain, to speak with the cave-dwelling guru who utters Far Side one-liners. 

(Tradition has it that that which is perceived as a one-liner may be a carefully thought out question, held in until it spontaneously manifests––the cleansing ritual of internal laughter).

Which begs the question, am I the seeker or the wisdom dispenser (bumper sticker version: better Pez than Prez). As Whitman would have it, I am manifold, containing all possibilities, immense.

To be human is to hold untold potential within a bacteria-harnessing husk. 

Art: To turn a phrase, to make the well-worn new again. To harness the newly experienced. To stop consciously creating and spin wheels in one's sleep. Carve doughnuts into the loam of existence.

To read or not to read. Which word follows another? Once the scales have been mastered, the questions are immense.

Arisugawa Park 2.19 - Balconies, in which David climbs an urban mountain to speak with the Guru (himself), is very near to completion. Thank you for getting onto the "cloud novel" bandwidth, if not bandwagon. If you are enjoying, now is the time to tell a friend.

Two hands clapping are better than one.

#endurancewriter

What happens when all the hits, the likes, and shares settle? What are we left with? An existential question I know, one brought on simply by reading the Guardian each day and realizing how many featured articles are self-referentially circling around the same meat. The shifting nucleus of Internet traffic, the amorphous apps that dictate so many social and economic interactions. 

When I lost my iPhone at the Malasimbo Festival a couple months ago, I told people smugly how refreshing it was to be liberated from the connected now. They mostly smiled politely and went back to their screen sliding and glass-tapping ways. At the time, there was a bit of 'sour grapes' to my declaration, I'll admit. If everything has a reason, losing a smartphone must also have one. 

Two months on I am truly one of the converted to this idea of mobile device-free living.* It is insidious the way that app communication sneaks into our lives, making all other forms seem tiresome, imperfect. We can control the selves we portray and receive, given a proper framing device. Much harder in person. 

This adherence to an older code, a primitive calling, is in some ways paradoxical. I readily admit I am an online worker who produces reams of contracted written content each day, for dissemination throughout the search engine kingdom. The saving grace is that I do not need more than the slightest pulse of an Internet signal to receive and transmit my intellectual wares.

The next barrier I am setting in my sights is life without Youtube. That is, to live in a place where streaming-level bits per second is not available. Harder and harder to find, even in the developing lands beyond Westeros. 

Call me Serpico, eternally stuck in the early 1970s, stubbornly playing the tribal flute with those who will join or listen. Those whom I come across by accident rather than through  algorithmic providence. Through association with those open to a good conversation or a fight, I maintain a sense of balance and belonging on this here earth, not head-tethered in a fractious void. 

This is all a major teaser for my next Chasing the Sun flute recording, which I am currently piecing together from jams and nature's noise.

​Ice. 

* I do carry an unbreakable $20 touchpad samsung with simple text capabilities. 

It is almost that time folks, for another episode of the smooth-sipping cloud novel.

In Arisugawa Park 1.17 we move from Kaori's kickass manoeuvres on the landing to David's bold act of reconnoitering  at the request of boxer-clad Eve. For those not caught up on the action, now is a great time to get situated. 

Not to miss a mention of the perfect mood music for reading––Moonlight Jam on the Bayou, Puerto Gallera.

Capture yourself out there this moment, a timeframe removed, a foresight, a machine, too little too late, not always undone but uncovered

who said she would until dust we would all try and in your heart, in your mind, who has ever felt that way, the way that you do when you realize no matter how long you speak no one will listen

until what you say conforms with what is in their hearts and what it is is greed, impervious.

Attributable neglect, I heard it in my own soul confusion, I made myself drink from that well, I heard it in her voice, she was trying to bring me into some higher state of contusion––

Dragging the lake while inside the womb room we all fake, fake.