There are those for whom the best days of their lives were their teenage years- sigh school, summer break, all the romantic crap that John Mellencamp and Brian Adams sang about in the 80′s.

Then there are the rest of us whose high school years were made a living hell, mostly by that first group who remember their internment so fondly.  As I stack the years on top of each other, I try to remember what I would call “the best days of my life”… but nothing seems to fit the description.  It’s not that I’ve led a shitty life- quite the opposite, I’ve been blessed in every chapter of my autobiography.

I realized recently that these days- my thirties, the era when I’m supposed to be disillusioned and start growing that old-man shell that I’ll carry with me to the grave -are absolutely the best days of my life.  Every metric I can think of is soaring to new heights:  I have more friends now than I ever did in high school or college.  My career is moving to weirder and more interesting places than I ever imagined as a student.  I’m more active and in better physical shape than my younger sapling-thin self could have imagined.  That old-man shell really only seems to be growing around my business sense, protecting me from snake-oil salesmen like Taxi and A&R Select.  The rest of me is still fascinated by everything from electronics to the ways my cat defies physics.  I am comfortable with who I am, and I never felt that way in my teens or twenties.

Who the hell dreams about being a teenager- or even their twenties -like it’s some kind of existential peak?  Unless you plan on dying at 38, you’re setting yourself up for a pretty long downhill slide.

I think some people look past their mid-twenties and think, “well, that’s all the fun I’m having in this life, time to get serious.”  As Cards Against Humanity says, it’s time to grow old, buy some stuff, have kids, move to Florida, and die.  It’s an imaginary burden that simply isn’t fair.  People earn new degrees and change careers in their fifties.  People travel the world with kids whether they’re rich or not.  I don’t know anyone who has made all the friends they’re ever going to make by the time they’re 30.

The best days of our lives are any day we’re not sitting on our asses wishing we could do or be something else.  The long downward slide doesn’t begin at a specific age, it begins when the Comfortable becomes more important than the Struggle.  Maybe if I keep working at it, I can keep the best days of my life going until the day I die.

You know you do it, I do too. You end every fortune cookie with a given phrase:

• …in bed.
• …except in bed.
• …with animals. (My old church youth leader taught us that one, actually.)

Here’s a new one for you: Yet.

There’s a huge difference between “I can’t do that” and “I can’t do that yet.” One is a closed door, the other an open pathway. There are indeed certain things we really “can’t” do: Breaking the sound barrier on foot. Eating a Volkswagen in under five minutes. Falling in love with a sparkly teenage vampire. (Well okay, that last one is more of a “shouldn’t fucking ever” than a “can’t”.)

Maybe as we (humans) get old, we begin to think “by now, I should know everything, therefore anything I don’t know how to do is impossible.” We tell ourselves this because it’s a lot easier to close a door than walk down a pathway. The irony is that we grow fat and sedentary while voraciously reading stories of people changing the course of their lives— starting that new business, climbing that mountain, building that airplane –at a time when they should be having their midlife crisis, buying a motorcycle, ruining their marriage and alienating their kids.

You know, like normal people do.

Ever since I decided to overhaul my image and focus more on the outer space stuff, I’ve encountered a whole lot of “I can’t do that”, to which I’ve had to append a whole lot of “yet.” The funny thing is that the more you say “yet”, the quicker it comes to mind each time you encounter another closed door.

• I can’t sew yet. I really never sewed anything before deciding to make my own video set backdrops. I learned how.
• I can’t solder yet. I needed to build my own effect lighting out of LED strips, but I’d never used a soldering iron before. I learned how.
• I can’t build my own electronics yet. I could’ve spent hundreds of dollars on hardware that would control lighting for me, but instead I bought an Arduino and learned how to make my own damn system. Now I’m thinking about building my own stage robot.

There are still plenty of doors in my life for which the universal key is yet. I can’t play the guitar, I can’t skydive, I can’t drive stick, I can’t speak any language but English.

Yet.

There’s no harm in adding that word to a lot of “I can’t” fortunes. At the very least, you’re opening that door to see where the pathway could lead. Sometimes it’s scary (as in “could involve a career change or going back to school”), but sometimes it’s as simple as asking someone with knowledge how to do something.

It’s amazing how that simple change in outlook has given me a sense of possibility I haven’t felt since I was playing around with my first MIDI hardware in junior high school. By this time next year, who knows: maybe I’ll be posting blog entries in Spanish.

Taylor Swift photo by Eva Rinaldi

I’ve used autotune many a time for album backing vocals and even to patch up a spot on the lead here or there. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to keep that a secret, either. What about live shows though? I have always been dead-set against using auto-tune for any reason during live shows (well, other than that Cher effect), but recently I stumbled upon a use that doesn’t seem like cheating but makes the show sound a whole lot better: Autotune the doubled vocals.

Warning: Technical Content. When I (and many artists) record a song, you’ll often hear them double (or triple, or…) the lead vocal during the chorus. When performing live, though, you can’t just use a pre-recorded backing vocal unless you sing with the same inflections and timing every single time. To achieve the same effect, some people use a short delay (like a sixteenth note or less) or some kind of ADT plugin that detunes, delays, and varies the live vocal so it sounds slightly off. The effect works a little bit, but I’ve found that it mostly just sounds like phase issues.

While putting together the vocal setup for “The Good Life” and “She Will Set You Free“, I experimented with something I’d never thought of before: Why not auto-tune the artificially doubled vocal track? Given that my voice naturally drifts from the exact pitch, auto-tuning the quieter double made it sound a LOT more like a naturally-recorded double track. And it’s not like the audience doesn’t already know it’s an artificial voice anyway; I haven’t been able to clone backup singers yet. The lead vocal is still a natural, un-retouched sound, it’s just being reinforced by a pitch-perfect robot.

What do you think? Legitimate use, or terrible crutch? I’ve got a rehearsal recording (in m4a, not mp3) that’ll demonstrate… I kick in the auto-tuned double- not a pre-recorded double -during the chorus.
Lost on Block Island – Rehearsal (Download M4A)

Political intrigue? Starship battles? Secret Agent Space Werewolves? I’m totally there.

If you want to hear my performance of the book, it’s now available for FREE over at PodioBooks. Yup, free! I’m still working on the book’s sequel right now, so that one should be following it soon.

That being said, I wish Pandora Radio offered a few things that would make this artist supremely happy.

1. Analytics. Who is thumbing my music up? Who’s skipping it? What stations are my songs appearing in? What kind of people are listening to my music in the first place? Where are they located? I have no freaking idea, but I’m sure Pandora knows. They’ve got to. Hell, I’d pay a modest monthly fee for access to the kind of detailed listener info (anonymized of course) they’re obviously collecting for advertisements.
2. More indie artists on major label stations. I listen to the Foo Fighters channel. A lot. I mean constantly. I have never heard a single independent band on that station. Is Pandora trying to tell me that there are simply NO indie bands that sound like the Foo Fighters in their system? None at all? I seriously doubt it. Take the risk, P, and throw in some unknowns between The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Audioslave sometime. Maybe make it a slider in a preference list somewhere… “How much new/unknown material should we add to your stations?”
3. Concert announcements. You know where I’m listening and you give that info to advertisers. Why not add another option that’d benefit listeners AND bands, letting them announce local concerts? Think about it… A band pays a fee for concert promotion in a certain area, sends a recording announcing the specific venue, time, and ticket location, and that announcement plays once or twice per hour (or per listening session, whatever) immediately before one of that band’s songs. Again, make it a checkbox in the preferences for paying users… “Let me know about upcoming concerts in my area for artists I’ve thumbed up.”
4. Band bumpers. Just like the concert announcements, I’d love to hear Dave Grohl’s voice saying “Hey this is Dave Grohl with the Foo Fighters and we think you’ll really like this next song from our new album, ‘Back and Forth’.” You know, add a little HUMANITY to the music and give artists a chance to pay you money to speak directly to the fans. And, once again, paying users could turn this off if they wanted.

That’s all that comes to mind right now, but I think most of these suggestions could actually help raise the bottom line and keep Pandora running… while at the same time giving listeners something they actually want… more of a connection with the artists they like.

Today I learned that the woman responsible for extending my vocal range by an octave or better has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My father sent me an article from the local paper about a benefit concert- tonight -for Marge Halvorson. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but the impression she made on my life- and my career -may never be fully appreciated.

Marge kicked my ass, vocally speaking. She simply wouldn’t allow me to be lazy or develop bad habits, at least not while I was in her office or rehearsing for a performance. She saw talent in me even at age 17 when she cast me in a Spokane Opera production- my first time on stage as an opera singer.

Marge taught me how to breathe. You think you already know how to do that? Bullshit. You’re doing it wrong. Maximizing one’s singing potential means maximizing that airbag capacity. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born with perfect posture and I had to re-learn everything from standing upright to holding my head a certain way. And it is all important.

Marge taught me that the pronunciation of a German word is far less important than what the word means. Or any word, for that matter. Why would I sing one syllable louder than another, or hold it longer? Was it intentional, or was I just going with the flow of the language? What matters most is the message you are trying to convey through song, not the rigors of proper diction.

Marge made it possible for me to hit a high C.

Most important to me, Marge helped shape me at a time when I was an uncertain, socially awkward class clown with a tendency to be a selfish prick. She didn’t care, I’m sure she’s dealt with worse.

The kinds of people that teach others to be creative are a special, immortal class of humanity. I’ve said before that the greatest compliment you can pay me is that my music inspired you to create something of your own. Well, thanks to the creative people I’ve met in my life, I am a full-time performing artist. I can sing with confidence (even if my pitch isn’t always perfect). I am ten times the performer I was when I first met Marge and I know I’m not alone.

Tonight there will be a concert (which I wish I could attend) where a small fraction of the people she’s helped will pay tribute to her with their voices. These are the people, like myself, who are the embodiment of Marge’s immortality. Every note we sing is a thank-you to the woman that made it sound better.

Last weekend another friend passed away due to a rare form of cancer. She wasn’t someone I knew well, but my room mate had been friends with her for well over a decade. When I met Liana, I was wearing nothing but a corset, panties, and a cape. No, seriously, the first time I met her she was playing Riff-Raff and putting the “Boss” tattoo on my arm for a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The makeup has worn off, but she has left an indelible mark on me. I know she has left a deeper mark on my room mate and most of her friends as well.

Her spirit and creativity have outlived her body.

So, for Marge and Liana, thank you. Your voices will never be silenced as long as I’ve still got one.

The concert was scheduled for 90 minutes, but at least an hour of that was all music and applause breaks. How the heck was I supposed to tell a 200-page story in less than half an hour? Actually, I (like you) have been practicing condensed storytelling for years thanks to a 140-character limit on certain communication media. What I didn’t expect, however, was how this process would change the story.

We’ve all been there: Writing a brilliant tweet, but it comes out to about 250 characters.

The process of paring a thought down to fit an arbitrary container is frustrating, sometimes maddening. After all, if I didn’t mean all those words, why would I have written them? Yet as I started trimming each chapter down into just a few bullet points, I had to perform some painful artistic triage. The question that keeps popping up again and again is “what am I trying to SAY here?” I had, at most, 5 minutes between each song to explain a chapter that could be up to 40 pages.

Trimming those tweets down to the magic 140 (or less if you’re adding links, photos, etc.) is the jogging track for creative editing that you never knew you were on. The exercise of saying what you mean instead of whatever comes to mind is one that strengthens your storytelling potential. In fact, it can even broaden your vocabulary as you try to combine three words into one.

But as I condensed I realized that, for all the words I had barfed onto the manuscript, I had been missing key concepts that made for a much more compelling story. When presented with the bullet points of what I’d actually written, they often pointed to a concept I had either misarticulated or missed entirely.

It’s like mixing a song with a hundred instruments, then muting everything but the vocals, bass, and drums to find the foundation again.

In the end, I found with a better story than the one I’d written before taking the stage. Who knows, maybe I should condense each chapter into a single bullet point. A tweet. A word. Imagine that: A twelve-word novella. Maybe that’s some kind of bullshit zen ideal, maybe it’s just an academic exercise, but if Twitterization helped me this much, I’m willing to give it a shot.