It's a giraffe without color!!!

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So I've been trying to learn Photoshop a little better. Thought I'd share the fruits of my labor. Cheers.

It's a bug!

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So I'll make a departure from my usual nonsensically wordy blogs and give you a simple one. Look at the bug I saw tonight!

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So I'm just about to send out prayer letters to anyone and everyone. Thanks for everyone's patience. They shouldn't have taken so long to get out, but it's been a busy few weeks. I haven't yet learned exactly how much financial support I'll have to raise, but word on the street is that it's going to be $2000+ which is a little intimidating, considering my pool of rich friends is quite shallow. However, I know that God is good, and that it'll come in all at the right time. Thanks for your patience. And while you're waiting, you can check out my latest Kenya video below.

God bless.

The latest video I've put on Youtube

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Part 2 of my trip to Kenya... 1.5 years ago. Meh, better late than never... maybe...

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Punched Up

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From the time my sister Daylan first showed me Nickel Creek, I’ve been a fan of Chris Thile. Not only is he a master mandolin player, he’s a master musician. He is the reason I ever considered taking up the mandolin. And he’s one of the handful of musicians who ever lent any credibility to bluegrass music in the ears of this musical snob. And now I can say, with no small measure of glee, that I’ve seen and heard him in person, and I was not disappointed.

Chris Thile has been producing solo albums from before Nickel Creek was in existence, the last of which was entitled “How to Grow a Woman From the Ground.” So take the exact musicians from that album, give them the name Punch Brothers, and you have the group I saw at Portland’s Aladdin Theater last night. First of all, they’re extraordinarily tight as a group. More than once, a group note of unusual syncopation was so well executed that I uncontrollably grinned from ear to ear. It was the closest I’ve been to aural utopia in a long time.

The only album Punch Brothers have under their current guise is entitled Punch. Thematically, the album circles frontman Thile’s troubled marriage and ultimate breakup. While the album has a couple near-radio-friendly tracks on it, the majority of the album consists of a four-movement masterpiece entitled “The Blind Leaving the Blind.” Having grown up playing and listening to non-vocal jazz and classical music, I nearly always prefer instrumental over vocal music. For my taste, this piece is the ultimate combination of instrumental and vocal music, probably 70% instrumental, 30% vocal. The piece is a complex musical journey rich in virtuosic opportunity, an astonishing feat for a 28-year-old mando-player.

Most of Punch Brothers’ album was performed as well as a smattering of songs from “How to Grow a Woman From the Ground,” and a few traditional bluegrass-style pieces. Each instrument was individually miked, and two large-diaphragm mics stood at the front of the stage, used for vocals and solo parts. Because of the microphone setup, the band-members were forced to play like a real ensemble, utilizing real dynamics, and even physical positioning to play as a cohesive unit. Coming from a classical background, I hugely appreciated the fact that the band felt natural, like instrument and vocal levels weren’t being puppeteered by the sound engineer. A very natural and basic sound.

The set was split in two, with the first two parts of “The Blind Leaving the Blind” mixed into the first half’s performance, and second two parts mixed into the second. Due to the depressing nature of the piece as a whole, this split made the piece much more palatable in a live setting. The show was an enjoyable mixture of music from their two albums: Watch ‘at Breakdown, Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, The Eleventh Reel, Punch Bowl, and The Blind Leaving the Blind. After playing two entire sets, Punch Brothers received an ecstatic standing ovation, followed by an encore of three songs. Following a beautiful Wilco cover, Punch Brothers brought one of Portland’s local fiddlers to the stage for a couple of traditional bluegrass songs.

One of my favorite parts of the show was the fact that they really played like a team. Like a band. It was great to see people playing dynamically with each other without any one person hogging the spotlight. It was true musicality in action. A pleasure to behold.

The entire show was a delight. Not only to hear live what I’ve listened to dozens of times on my own, but to see true musicality in such a young group. I didn’t think it was possible, but I’m now a bigger fan of Chris Thile and Punch Brothers. Well done guys.

Thoughts on growth

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So I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

This summer I'm planning on recording my first album, something I've thought about before, but finally the timing is right. My journey as a song-writer has been relatively slow. I don't often play with other people, something all musicians need. I also have taste in music that far exceeds my ability to play. And to top it all off, my personal journey has retarded my growth as a songwriter.

If you've read my blog for a while, or know me well, you probably know that I've been undergoing some serious life change in recent years, though this hasn't really been apparent to me until the last couple years. As I stand now, I am painfully aware of many of my own limitations, areas in which I need serious work and attention. I'm also at a point where I'm willing to own those things, willing to talk about them, willing to make them known. (For a list of my shortcomings, send me your mailing address and one of my close friends or I will be happy to send you Dayn Arnold's Shortcomings: Volume One for three monthly installments of $29.95 plus shipping and handling.) So due to my own state of denial, most of the songs I have written have been very impersonal, or masked so that the listener would think I was singing about someone else. And sure, a couple of those songs have been decent, but very few of them really meant anything personal to me. As I have progressed in my own life journey, and as I've progressed in my songwriting ability, I've discovered a different side to my writing. A side that's not as pleasant and quasi-utopian as some of my previous work. But a side that is far more real.

So the album I'm working on is tentatively called 9-Years because it is a musical journey through my last 9 years of life. As some of you know, I've had my share of ups and downs in the last 9 years. Bouts of nearly unbearable depression, anxiety, bitterness, anger juxtaposed against those few incredible and irrepressible moments of euphoric clarity, like poking my head above the clouds for a split second before my own self-pity dragged me back down to earth. My musical idea is to take a particular moment in each year, or a year's impression, and use a song to show that point in my own history. Some of those years' defining moments were awesome, and some were scrape-your-face-in-the-dirt-awful. Some were filled with despair, some with incredible revelation. So while much of this music is much better in the fact that it's more personal, some of it seems bleak. However, like all of us, we must take these life-snapshots in the context of the entire story. I'm a little afraid people will take songs out of the context of the entire album, like taking one scene in a movie as its own unit, unrelated to the rest of the story.

Anyway, I've been working on writing some new lyrics, and noticed that some of them are more hopeless than anything I've ever written for public viewing. But in the context of my life, these dark times defined where my life was to go, not where it was to stay. It's the contrasts in life that make the good times good. Without the bad, how would we know what was truly good? Or WHO was good? Think about it.

Extra free Young Dubliners

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I would like to say that a Sunday afternoon in Bend with a free concert is awesome. A free concert with the Young Dubliners is stinkin' awesome! Traditional Irish music fused with rock. Oh man. So good. Plus, the guy playing whistles and uilleann pipes is the same guy who was the featured soloist on the scores for Braveheart and Titanic. He busted out a little Braveheart at one point, and I thought that my goosebumps might become so intense that my pores would stay that way permanently. Fortunately, with a little coaxing, they subsided to a normal level after a couple minutes. I'm one of the few guys I know who's a sucker for celtic music, so to hear it played so energetically and tightly was awesome. And it was free. Daylan and I even rode our bikes there, so it was extra free. Good stuff.

Update

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Guten tag meine freunde

My apologies for the previous entry (or next one if you're reading from the top of the page down). Every now and again I feel the need to rant about something silly.

So a couple weeks ago I moved to Bend, Oregon from Portland, a stepping stone of a move before I head out to Orlando, and then to Thailand. The day after I moved the lion's share of my belongings to Bend, I drove to Seattle to pick up sister Daylan and friend Kendra at the SeaTac airport. They had just come in from London/Kenya and driving the distance saved a lot of money for the both of them. That was on a Monday. On Wednesday Daylan and I drove out to a friend's wedding in Heyburn, Idaho, another nine or ten hour drive. We got back Sunday night, and starting Monday I worked on editing the video I had taken at the wedding. The next couple days were spent working on the video stuff and trying not to be overwhelmed by the load of stuff in my parent's garage waiting to be unloaded. Found a great coffee shop here called Thump that serves Stumptown, so I can rest easy knowing my coffee snobbery can be satiated at least every now and again.

At the same coffee shop I accidentally met up with the guy who was going to give me some work, an arrangement that hadn't been solidified, but was close. So we worked it out that I'll be working as a sort of sub-contractor delivering his rental A/V gear and providing my own video production skills on top of it. So basically I'll be sort of self-employed and be able to have super flexible hours, which is great. We'll see if I can make any money with this. So anyway, that's the long and short of it, I think. Waiting for God to provide the support I need to go out with Pioneers. Oh, and support letters are soon on their way. Again, if you wish to receive one, email your mailing addy to me at daynarnold@gmail.com.

Vielen dank und auf wiedersehen

Co-dependency and the dysfunctional couple: a study of frustration in the twenty-something American male

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So I'm continuing to wonder what ever happened to certain social norms, little courtesies that I don't notice when they're being practiced, but REALLY notice when they're not. And yes, I most certainly do have a specific incidence in mind. Thanks for asking.

So there's a coffee shop I like to frequent due to its power-packed duo of great Stumptown coffee and convenient proximity to my home in Portland. The Bipartisan Cafe is not one of those uber-trendy coffeetoriums wherein all patrons have carefully coiffed bed-head, wear the latest in anti-mainstream garb, listen to "indie" music on their iPhone which is syncing "This American Life" from their black MacBook. (Though I'm now one of those Mac users and just got some snazzy new trendy-looking glasses, so I'm teetering on the fence of hypocrisy. Fortunately I am good at balancing on narrow things like fences... Boy it's been a while since I allowed myself these sorts of rabbit trails. How I've missed them... And the usage of three consecutive periods... Over... And... Over...) So most days after work, I stop by Bipartisan for a cup of coffee with my laptop and decompress for a couple hours by emailing, chatting, and simply wasting time before I head home for dinner. It's an enjoyable and relaxing time that I can either use to accomplish real tasks or just waste time. Well, it's enjoyable UNTIL this one particular couple comes in.

I don't know these people, names or anything, but somehow they often end up sitting in a nearby table. Mind you, I may complain in my blog about certain people, but generally it's pretty tongue-in-cheek. These things don't really bother me for the most part. It's just fun to play the sarcastic curmudgeon. (I've discovered, though, that in certain Christian circles, talking about people like this can all be excused with one little phrase: "Bless his/her/their heart," though I'm not convinced of the true totality of forgiveness afforded by one phrase.) However, these two people actually DO bother me a bit, which will make playing the sarcastic curmudgeon a little more natural. So the man in this couple is probably in his late fifties, early sixties, with a lefty earring, slicked back mostly-gray hair, and a short-cut gray goatee. One of those guys who wears intentionally-faded tee shirts under an unbuttoned button-up shirt. Kind of a greasy, smooth-talking playboy. The female counterpart looks to be in her mid to late thirties, business casual, usually looks like she had just come off of a day at work, something office-related. Not a completely unlikely pair despite what appears to be a significant age discrepancy between them. They LOOK like they'd just come in for come coffee and chit chat.

So on a typical day they're in there, like the other day, they'll come in, order their caffeinated drinks and sit obnoxiously close to my table... and proceed to make-out for a minute or so. Now, I don't know when THAT became socially acceptable, let alone Dayn-acceptable in such close proximity. So they go at it for a while, not Dayn- acceptable, then share within-earshot-sweet-nothings talking with their faces fractions away from each other, undoubtedly staring passionately into each other's eyes. All of this at a convenient distance of three feet, or within throwing-up distance, if you prefer a relative term.

After this time of greeting, they settle into a dialogue about the matters of the day. Yesterday, for example, I got to hear a discussion about how on their last bike ride, her bike seemed to be broken, and he kept leaving her in the dust, making her paranoid that he was going to forget she was biking behind him altogether. This discussion never quite becomes heated, but gets awfully close as she grows more and more frustrated with him and the bike she had been riding. This is certainly the adult conversation I would expect from the grandpa-granddaughter lovers sitting within my shared-bodyheat-zone. So then, when she's expressing any sort of frustration, he leans in and erases her anxiety by initiating another make-out session. Good grief. Tantamount pictures presents, in association with Awkward Proximity Pictures, "Healthy Relations 101." On that same day, the conversation took an ironic turn as the two of them discussed a twenty-something couple they know who were a little too "lovey dovey" in a dinner party kind of setting, which was obviously due to their immaturity, being so young, you know. (I've had this discussion before, but there really should be a type-setting which denotes sarcasm. Come on English language!)

Anyway, this goes on for an hour or so, long enough to negate any sort of relaxation I may have achieved in my after work decompression time. I just don't understand when this all became standard behavior for anyone. Obnoxious and just a little creepy. Nothing like watching two middle-aged co-dependents not communicate, unless they can somehow speak through their saliva. Gross. Bless their hearts.

The latest scoop...

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So last Friday I had a phone conversation with two members of the Pioneers communication team, and got some clarification for what's coming up for me. So here's the revised plan... well, the only solid plan so far. So once I raise the support I need, prayer and financial, I will be moving to Orlando to begin doing video work state-side. I have some training to do, at least one survey-trip, and there's already some work lined up for me to work on once I get there. There appear to be some timing issues with going straight to Thailand, my ultimate destination, which means I will be in Orlando for a bit before I can make a home overseas. However, I'm very excited things have worked out this way. This will allow me to build relationships with more of the Pioneers people in Orlando, especially the people heading up my team, CommNet. Right now I still don't have a real figure for how much monetary support to raise, but I definitely need at least 100 prayer partners before I can head out. I should have my prayer letter approved this week, which means that any of you can get one if you so desire. If you would like to be a part of the team, send me an email at daynarnold@gmail.com and I'll get you hooked up ASAP. It's coming, and I'm stoked about it. Cheers.