Well I thought I'd copy dave and since I don't have any astophysics lessons to share, I thought I'd post a little poem thing I wrote the other day.

"Seasons, Colors, and Contrast"

The lingering remnants of a summer past
Makes the barren, late-autumn trees look in contrast
To this time of change

For when the air cools itself
I find my soul lives to warm myself
To this time of change

And soon snow covered houses
Will litter the earth which then arouses
Itself to another time of change

For change is really nothing but
A made-up word that tells us what
A summer did not bring

Why I cannot write songs:

This is a complex issue. I like to think myself a creative person. I mean, sometimes I can come up with ideas that I fashion to be original. They very well may not be. That is not the point though. I will be addressing the abstract, intangible reasons as to why I cannot write songs as opposed to things like, I can't play the piano that well. Those are things you can learn. My real limitations as a songwriter are as follows:

Songwriting takes a certain brashness, a consistent shoot-from-the-hip mentality. If your truly going to spill your soul for the world, you had better not be ashamed of what you have to say or how it's going to sound. This blind confidence, regrettably, is not something I display a large majority of the time.

There is another aspect to songwriting that makes it difficult for me. For a lot of people, songwriting is a bloody process. It takes a lot of sweat and tears for these people who sit down and force themselves to write. Although an entirely valid and often highly successful method for these people, this, I cannot do. I feel as though me forcing myself upon new songs makes them inherently limited. When I sit down and "force" myself to write, nothing comes out. Literally it is writers block of the most sophisticated form. I feel as though each word, no, each letter I write down, must change the world. No song can be written from this disposition. For me, though I'm sure I've just convinced myself of this, I can only fully pursue a new song idea if it comes in a moment of overwhelming inspiration. These moments, again regrettably, are few and far between for me.

So here I lie at a crossroads. Do I force myself to write for the simple reason of just practicing getting my thoughts down on a page? Or can I really not ever writing anything worthwhile that doesn't just come pouring out of my soul? How can I get over my mentality that everything I write has to drop the Pope to his knees in tears? These are questions I still need to explore.

So I suppose the title of this blog is a little misleading. I intend on getting to the bottom of this conundrum, because I desperately want to capture moments in my life in song. Maybe I could write a song about my songwriting predicament...

Oh and in case you didn't get to see it, you should watch the presidential roast from the other night. Very funny.
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I thought that I would write a post that rings true to our promise that some of these posts will have nothing whatsoever to do with music: Astrophysics. For you fellas looking for some hot new pick-up lines, in my experience, I've found that nothing rev's the ladies' engines quite like a heated discussion on the existence of an Einstein-Rosen bridge. I humbly dedicate this post to you guys.

Astrophysics has always been a hobby of mine, something I actually considered majoring in but regretfully relinquished upon my realization that you don't really get paid to sit around and think about the universe. My interest really took form once I read Stephen Hawking's famous A Brief History of Time followed by his updated, more accessible version A Briefer History of Time. The topic of this post will be sampled from these texts.

One of the most revolutionary notions in Astrophysics in the last century is that time is not absolute. The premise for this theory is based on a famous Einstein thought experiment that goes as follows:

The first thing to understand about this idea is the relationship between being in a gravitational field and accelerating in a vacuum. Imaging for a second that you are in an elevator in outer-space. You are just floating around inside until the elevator begins to accelerate upwards. To you, it would appear as if you were in a gravitational field, you would be pressed to the floor, objects you drop would also fall to the floor. This relationship is a key component to this thought experiement.

Let's imagine that we have two people in a rocket ship that is the length of one light second (that is it takes light one second to traverse from top to bottom of this vessel). Each person has a flashlight, a watch and are stationed on opposite ends of the ship. The first case to examine is where the ship is stationary in the vacuum of space. The person on top flashes their flashlight once, waits one second, then flashes it again. Not surprisingly the person at the bottom recieves these two light signals one second apart. Now lets imagine that the rocketship is accelerating upward. The person at the top does the same thing, flashes, waits one second, then flashes again. What does the person at the bottom read this time? Since the light has less distance to go because the person at the bottom of the ship is accelerating up, they recieve these signals less than one second apart. While this might seem trivial, the implications are actually very interesting.

If we reflect upon the relationship we discovered about being in a gravitational field and accelerating in a vacuum this experiment indicates to us, given the speed of light is always a constant 3x10^8 m/s, that time actually slows down in a gravitational field like it appeared to do for the person at the bottom of the accelerating rocket. So bottom line what this means is that time does not just march along at a steady pace everywhere, it slows in gravity and speeds up in vacuums. This is an utterly foreign notion to most people.

For those men who are lost as to how this could work for them when trying to get with girls, let's get creative. "Hey, you look as young as if you were born in a really strong gravitational field" or "If we were sucked into a black whole (a place of infinite gravity) and time stopped, I couldn't think of being with anyone but you." The possibilities are really endless. You're welcome guys.

To those who are always looking to find the next big thing, just ahead of the rest of the curve, I will cue you in on a little secret. This past July, Dave and I had the pleasure of working with three ridiculously talented musicians who call themselves the Jeanna Salzer Trio. Comprised of Alex Bunke on drums (Carter Beauford II), Harrison Dole on bass (The Fifth Beatle) and, you guessed it, Jeanna Salzer on keys and lead vocals, it was safe to say Dave and I were in over our heads.

We recorded them with our semi-portable set-up on a whim at Dave's church. They laid down 8 songs in one evening. Now, I don't know how familiar you all are with the recording process, but the records you hear on the radio usually take months if not years to complete. Not only did this band lay down tight, groovy instrumentals in one evening but Jeanna did all the vocals in one take. This would be quite a feat in and of itself if she were singing DO RE MI for each song. Instead, she sang some of the most soulful, complex but tasteful vocal runs I've ever heard. Doing this all in one take is literally unheard of and Dave and I were completely blown away by her voice.

Their songs span a wide landscape of musical stylings, all centered around an ever present pop-sensibility. The chemistry that we felt in the room as they were laying down the tracks, (hopefully) comes through loud and clear on the recording. The record has an incredibly organic feel to it that allows each song to breathe as if you were sitting there with them as they played it.

So for those looking to up their indie cred, (something that should be everyone's quest at all times) check out the Jeanna Salzer Trio for some music that just plain makes you feel good.

Jeanna Salzer Trio Myspace page: www.myspace.com/jeannasalzer
Jeanna Salzer Trio on Facebook: www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Jeanna-Salzer-Trio/21620194025

Hey Guys,

In an attempt to create a website with more dynamic content that will keep 'yall coming back, we thought it might be cool for each of us to have our own little blog journal thing. These will be used for writing things about the band and things that have nothing to do with the band or music whatsoever. So we're gonna try this out. Hopefully we will be diligent in writing on these. Please comment away to let us know your thoughts or if you just would like to talk some shit about us. Have a good one.

Dan