Five Pounds of Pressure

I have noted a theme on true and fictional crime shows of the perpetrator forcing their victim at gunpoint to dig their own grave. One morning when my back was aching I imagined myself in such a lose-lose situation. At that moment I would have said, “Hell no, you lazy son of a bitch! Dig it yourself!”

This coincided with an interest I had just taken up in complex (sometimes called “eerie” or “spooky”) chords on the guitar. This was ignited by the memory of a recording session years ago when I had been hired by a Russian jazz artist (unpronounceable name forgotten) to program the synthesizer (before programmable presets put me out of business). His chord progressions were jarringly discordant while being amazingly pleasing.

Long story tedious, I composed and arranged this music on an iPad and wrote the text on my iPhone in a matter of a few days. I decided early on to make this a recitation rather than a song. Recording went smoothly, the toughest decision being which phrases to edit together from the four takes of my recitation. That and how much reverb to put on my voice.

Collecting, processing, and editing video images has become a passion with me—an island of sanity amidst a world titling off its axis. I enjoyed putting this project together very much.

The crazy signed photo of myself at the conclusion was an experiment I found amidst the thousands of images stored in my iPhone. I designed that two years ago. I’m glad to have dug it up. It’s the real me.

Enjoy!