my first blog

hello and welcome to the rytunes blog.  here we will definitely cover some music.  in fact, i should guess that most posts will have some kind of musical theme woven through them in some form or fashion.  i'm also interested in art, mathematics, architecture, food, a book here and there, a few films, and something i call free concept association (it's similar to word association).

now a bit of background.  why here?  why now?  (i am one to have background in spades, for better or for worse)

first, i enjoy writing (but i do not like capitalization; this is soothing to some to read and quite annoying to others).  this is a surprise to those that do not know me very well.  i come from an education in mathematics, see, and that fact stops many people in their tracks.  because of this fact alone, many assume i can only communicate with about three other human beings on the planet (it's at least four).  now the proverbial 'they' certainly assume i'm good at a chalkboard (which i am), but not so much in terms of written prose.

i'll let you be the judge of the quality of my communications, but i certainly enjoy writing.  and this is a fact that i've only come to have confidence in rather recently.  i think i've enjoyed writing for a long time but for some reason, i thought i wasn't supposed to be good at it or like it (maybe like the inverse of women that stop studying the sciences because of societal pressure...or the contrapositive?).

the fact of the matter is that i majored in math because of the flexibility it offered me - a theme about me (flexibility).  math had the fewest required courses.  sure, they were hard, at times, but the choice allowed me to spend time in the darkroom, the architecture studio, outside playing ultimate frisbee, teaching in the classroom in the evenings and with many wonderful lifelong friends (i'm sure they will make appearances in these postings).

you're maybe wondering why i chose the number '30' for my blog address.  the real reason is that 'rytunes' by itself was already taken (curses!).  but i got to looking into the number 30...

30 happens to be the sum of the first four square numbers: 30 = 1 + 4 + 9 + 16 (this is called a 'square pyramidal number')

30 is also the smallest 'sphenic number'...a positive integer which can be expressed as the product of three distinct prime numbers: 30 = 2 * 3 * 5 (you'll recognize that 2, 3 and 5 are the first three prime numbers)

i turned 30 about 6 months ago.  and while 30 trips around the sun may not mean much to you, it means 940 million kilometers / year * 30 years = holy shit, that's a lot of kilometers (but not *that* many miles, for my ethnocentric friends out there).  even trying to imagine that distance makes me a bit tired.  no seriously, something happened to me on or around my 30th birthday.  and it didn't happen in vegas.

i was actually driving on highway 71 from houston to austin on my 30th birthday.  it was a friday.  i didn't have a party.  when i got to austin around 2pm, i just went to the record store (waterloo records, for the austin crowd).  and then from there, to the elephant room (after some meandering) for a mediocre jazz performance by a group that was covering some christmas tunes in a jazz format.  some songs were good, others were a disaster.  but the underground sanctuary on congress avenue had brought me many fine memories over the last decade, so i let it slide.

in the ensuing two weeks, i woke up.  i didn't really realize that i was sleeping but i had been for some time.  well, more coasting than sleeping.  the thing is, i'm very good at my job.  and i'm good at managing my participation in 'the system.'  i pay my taxes, i make good decisions (for the most part).  and like many good americans, i subscribe to dozens of things i don't really use.  including a gym membership that i've kept in austin for nearly a full two years after leaving the city (i'm bad with that autopay stuff sometimes).  and the truth is that i had gotten to a place of not really questioning things the way i am generally accustomed to - constantly making sure that i'm spending my minutes the way i want to spend them.

so around the beginning of the year, i decided that i wanted my 30's to be a decade of intentionality.  not that there was anything inherently wrong with my 20's...just that i didn't feel like i had truly opted in to a lot of the decisions i made.  or i didn't quite understand the reasons why i made the decisions i made.

it all kind of clicked for me around the beginning of 2012.  i feel more comfortable in the driver's seat, as it were.  not more in control because i don't think we can ever really be in control.  but ready to make a turn if i need to as things arise or even double back and make a u-turn if something exceptional comes up.  in several recent communications with new and old friends alike, people have commented that i 'look good,' which i think means i'm reflecting more good stuff from the inside to the outside.

one thing i know for sure is that i'm not perfect.  i'm definitely not always right.  my opinion is simply that - my opinion.  but i think there's something to that.  something about waking up, acknowledging yourself for who you are and being comfortable just being.  that sounds simple but it's actually quite challenging.  self acceptance takes a lot of generosity.

my brother and i got turned on to the same tattoo concept recently.  we came to it separately but roughly at the same time (kind of like the way calculus was discovered...but without the controversy).  an adaptation of the japanese enso circle art form.

we haven't actually gotten the tattoo, but the reference here is more to say that this blog is meant to be an expression of me and my imperfections.  i hope you find some of it entertaining, other bits downright funny and maybe the occasional philosophical debate will be sparked or your musical tastes will be complemented by some of my suggestions.  who knows, right?

gordon lightfoot - i'm not sayin'.  i love this song.  it's very much an 'accept-me-for-how-i-am' kind of song.  it's a terrible 'love song' for a longer-term kind of situation (at least in most cases) but it's a great 'like song,' which is a genre of music that there just isn't enough of, in my opinion.

my first blog.  in the books.