Category: General

I was reading this transcript of a conversation with Warren Buffett today and read this wonderful bit:

We did an informal office survey by looking at the total tax footprint versus the total income. I earned 46 million and paid a tax rate of 17.5%. My rate was the lowest, the average was 33%, and my cleaning lady paid 40%. The system is tilted towards the rich. The Forbes 400 total net worth has gone from 220 billion to 1.54 trillion, an increase of 7-to-1. You see in legislature that there is lobbying carried on by the powerful over issues such as the estate tax and carried interest for private equity investments. We need to flatten income and payroll taxes, and those making under $30,000 shouldn’t be bothered.

 Let’s imagine that 24 hours before you are born, a genie comes to you and tells you devise a social and economic system. The only catch is that after you designed the system, you would choose a paper from a barrel which would determine your demographics. What objectives would you want? You need to devise a system that creates prosperity. It needs to be a meritocracy, to put the right people in the right place. It needs to have a strong education system, and throw off lots of goods and services. It also needs to not discriminate against women or minorities. Even though the per capita GDP is $47,000, 20% of the population makes less than $20,000. We need to eliminate that fear of sickness or old age. A tax code is the codification of a country’s values. But you can’t kill the golden goose of prosperity.

The past few days have been delightfully relaxing and refreshing, the weather as if it was spring: warm, bright, clear and strikingly beautiful.  This weekend has made it easier to recall the spring and autumn days that seem to bring the Bay Area to its richest colors, the times when one can easily awake and marvel, observing the world as the daytime passes by…

January passed quickly; the beginning of the month was full with a writing project taking all of my attention, followed by a great deal of work for my day job to meet an approaching deadline.  The deadline for the work occurred two Fridays ago and was met in time.  All of the hard work put in during the weeks preceding was rewarded with a full but non-stressful week this past week as now things are being tested.

It was only on this past Friday did I really feel the demands of work had finally eased to the point where I could fully relax and begin to direct my attention back to my personal work and life.  This weekend I have been catching up slowly with emails and notes I had written to myself, reviewing the state of my personal work, as well as looking at how life has gone by since the new year began. Thinking about all the things I had sought out to focus on for this year, I knew going in January that I would have to commit myself to these other tasks first before attending to my goals, yet it seems like a great deal of time has passed now…

This weekend was fantastic for taking a look at it all, though was only the beginning of the process. Again I’m faced with looking how to balance the day job, tai-chi, music programming, composing, general learning, and all the rest.  I feel that one thing that was definitely missed during the busy beginning of this year was a daily life filled with reflection and observation, so that will certainly be on my mind this coming week.

Regardless of how it will develop from here, I can say that I have enjoyed catching up the past few days and getting back in touch with all of these very important concerns of mine. Looking forward, I do not know how it will all happen but will be interested to see how it all goes…

Sitting here alone in my parents’ home, watching television, a gray sky outside, the light muted… it could have been any Saturday from my time growing up here, sitting here I am flooded with images of myself watching television, studying for high school classes, falling asleep on a Saturday afternoon…

Ever since returning from Warsaw earlier this year I’ve found myself more and more lost in memories. At first it was memories of the life just lived, the impressions of Warsaw that I found myself revisiting often. When a few months passed after living in Berkeley, I found whenever we went to San Franciso, walking around the city brought back scenes from a daily life that is now only a memory from a past now gone. When I visited New York in the Fall, again the experiences of my life there were so deeply present…

I see almost as many differences now as I see similarities to the Georgia I grew up in. It’s curious to me to see the things which were new to me since I left here are now things that people know as something which has always been here… already I am lost in memories as new experiences and memories continue to form…

Reading the news that Stockhausen has now passed away, I was struck with a certain sense of emptiness… perhaps more for his ideas and spirit than some of his music (though there are certainly pieces of his which I much admire), I found many aspects of Stockhausen very inspiring. Such a unique human being now gone, I am sure he will be remembered and respected for a long time to come.

Today begins another December, a very special time of year for me… Looking at my December welcome from the previous year, it is incredibly interesting to see how how much life has changed since then, and yet also to see how many things have stayed the same. The changes in life from living abroad to returning to the Bay Area and working full-time once again have been quite an experience. I feel that in many ways I have grown over the past year, yet still I find myself wanting more time to focus on deep musical work.  I will have to spend some time evaluating my current personal projects to see which ones really are essential, though somehow I am sure that they are all essential in some way. Perhaps it will just take time and completing these other tasks first before I can really devote the kind of attention I would like to the musical experiences I feel myself currently distant from…

December is usually a very reflective time for me.  Ever since coming back to America I have often found myself lost in memories: Warsaw, Paris, Dublin, Berlin, California, New York, Georgia…  These recollections have been so vivid, I wonder how much this December will be spent lost in thought…

Beyond just the memories are the realizations of the passage of time between the memories and the present.  The experience of time has been quite rich in this way, in experiencing not only the present now but as well as the past in the present.  These experiences of past and present as well as expectations of the future are all very much related to ideas I have worked on in music for a long time, but the recent experiences of being with my memories have given me much to think about…

Time passes strangely these days: in some ways it stands still and in other ways it moves quite quickly now.  Although I listen to the last draft of my current piece daily, it’s been some months now since I really worked on the piece, with only a handful of sessions of real work happening in that time.  My job has been extremely busy and has taken quite a lot of the my mental energy, the evenings often left too tired to continue to work any more on music or much of anything else but to watch a show or two before retiring for the night. Every company has busy and light periods and this is probably the busiest in the history of the company; I also had to learn quite a bit and was made responsible for a fair amount quickly which was a stressful.  As much as I tell myself it is only temporary and that it is just the stress of joining a new company, I still find it hard to think that so much time has passed since last really working with sound and music.  It does seem to have started to settle down, at least in my mind, as I have gotten much more acquainted with all of the work and the business, but there is still much I can do to keep focused.

Since starting this new job, because I am working from home and starting early at 8AM every day, I have found that I generally end my work day earlier than I ever did before.  The days can feel quite long this way when one starts early and does not need to commute to and from work, something which I do rather like. This experience has been very interesting and in some ways is very natural to me when compared to my existence in Warsaw the year before this summer, though of course working a full-time job is a completely different experience than living and working on one’s own interests. On the whole though I can say I am enjoying telecommuting for a job very much at this time.

Before I came back from Warsaw I thought about how life would get when I returned; I have been thinking about how life is going now and seeing things which are good about my situation and seeing things I’d like to change to better support my more personal interests.  I have been imagining what the ideal life for me would be, seeing images of myself reading, observing life, composing, writing, and just living quiet, timeless days.  Something to actively think about and aspire towards…

It’s been a long time since I felt the sense of daily life… from the last month in Warsaw with all the traveling and visits from friends, to adjusting to the culture of America on returning, to returning to California and looking for a place to live while working as a contractor and also interviewing for jobs and finally getting a new job, life has felt as if it has been floating by.

Two weeks ago at the yearly Tai Chi camp we go to I realized how much has changed in life between last year’s camp and this year’s camp.  It wasn’t really until camp this year did I begin to finally feel as if life was beginning to settle back down.  After traveling to Atlanta this past week for my job, I feel as if now I can finally get around to finishing up setting up the apartment with Lisa and getting on with with the business of living life.

I did pick up a new PDA (Palm TX) a week and a half ago and it has been a wonderful tool to help me sort through my old life on my previous PDA to get an idea of where I am (still working through this process) as well as become an invaluable tool for keeping records of how I’m spending my time now.  I think it will be a very useful means to help return back to music making and other things.

So here we are, back in California, life again proceeding on.  I’ve been excited by all that’s been going on but glad to return to a simpler life now, and am looking ever so forward to how time will pass from here…

It’s been 5 days since we left Warsaw though it seems like a lifetime away. It’s amazing how quickly distant a place and a life there can become when you don’t wake up to the same sights and sounds you would see every day…

Georgia is as strange to me as ever, though I think that having traveled a lot and having guests in Warsaw the past two months has made coming here not as much of a shock as it was when we visited during December. I certainly feel the same sense of not belonging here as I have felt as more and more years go by since I lived here, though I think that the thing that makes me feel most strange is the change from city life to suburban life.  After living in New York, San Francisco and Warsaw, being able to walk to places and take public transportation seems like such a natural way to go about things when compared to having to drive whenever going anywhere.  Even when visiting others cities for the first time like Berlin or Dublin I felt a degree of comfort that I do not quite feel here.  (When I first moved to New York I felt a real connection with city life; since then I have gone on to enjoy quieter places, but I think city life is still very deep within me…)

On the road, I look out and see the cars around and think that they are much bigger and shinier than what I grew accustomed to in Warsaw.  There is something odd about the scale of the cars to me, that perhaps they are too big for the single occupant of the car or too large for the road on which they are driving.  The shine on the cars seems strange to me as well, as if a little dirt on a car somehow connects it to the rest of the world around it.  I do not know what to make of all of this.

Last night before I fell asleep I closed my eyes and saw Warsaw.  With a smile I walked all around the city, sat a cafes and bars, watched concerts at the various venues, attended the opera, and wandered all around the parks…  The memories are still so vivid, the images of people, the memories of time spent in all the various places we frequented.  Sitting here I realized that I could close my eyes and see New York, Berlin, Paris, Dublin, Manila, Gdansk, Krakow, and many other places I’ve been to.  I can see Lisa, friends, and family I spent time with when I was in these places and smile.  I hope the memories will not fade too quickly, if ever…

Life has been somewhat floating along the past two months and life in Warsaw already seems a distant dream.  Tomorrow we will once again go to the airport, check in our bags, and fly, but this time it is a one-way ticket back to life in California.  I do not know what will happen once we get there: where will we live, where will I work, what life will we live returning to a familiar place and familiar people.  It will be nice to see old friends and to once again be in the part of the world we called home for years.  I am looking forward to seeing how life will unfold…