bio

And the serpent said, "Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." [ Genesis 3:4-5 ]

it's good to be writing about my favorite topic ;). i'm going to assume nobody gives half a rat's ass about the varying idiosyncracies which have converged to make up my present self. this 'bio' is about how i came to make music and why (i damn sure don't do it for the money...chances are i'm poorer than you are).

i've had music around me through most of my life. i learned music theory from two years of orchestra and three years of marching band training, but frankly, i've never been happy playing to someone else's tune. i got ahold of my first guitar at the age of 14, but didn't really get serious learning how to play it until two years later. i was in bands on and off through high school, but none of them ever really got off the ground. it was mainly just an excuse to yell, make noise, and get drunk and stoned back then (don't ask...)

in my younger years i lived in the poor side of town, but then we moved across town and i found myself surrounded by snobby rich kids who seemed to think their shit didn't stink. i got picked on a lot, needless to say. i never fought back. i just let the rage fester. at age six i went through anger management. it didn't rid me of the anger--just taught me how to force it down. later i began martial arts training, which helped me deal with my natural sense of insecurity, but i had to give it up after high school for lack of time.

i was raised in the catholic faith, but i never much bought it. i thought there was something wrong with me for not believing, so i read the bible. i got to genesis 3:4 (see the quote above) and instantly realized that christianity wasn't for me. i also read the newspaper, and a variety of rather elementary works in philosophy, religion, and the social and political sciences, and through this i began to let go of my childhood view of the world, and with it religion. i just couldn't side with a religious tradition that had brought so much suffering into the world 'in the name of God', regardless of what good things it had also done along the way (i have always been rather cynical.) rather than rejecting the notion of faith entirely, i went through several stages of doubt and skepticism in the process, but in the end retained a personal notion of God quite different from any i have thus far read about.

but i digress.

so there you have it, another story of teenage angst fueling creativity. the first song i ever wrote as a solo artist was written my junior year of high school, when i was sitting in a dark corner behind the gymnasium under the supervision of multiple teachers (call it being suspended from being suspended). the song is called 'season of suicide.' i stayed up all night learning to play the guitar, neglecting my homework and sleeping though my classes (somehow i still passed). i was constantly in trouble, in detention at school, catching heat from my parents, or running from the cops. there's no way to count how many times i almost got killed, or ended up in boot camp, jail, or in therapy back then.

when you're young and stupid, you think you have it figured out. when you're still young and arguably less stupid, you realize nothing is as certain as it seems--even 'truths' which so many of us take for granted. i think one of the hardest things for a person to do is not to believe in something, nor to believe in nothing, but to have the humility and clear-headedness to realize that you're probably wrong either way.

in youth i was told it was immature to go against the grain. i've since met plenty of brilliant, mature, and sophisticated people who not only go against the grain, but can readily justify the wisdom of doing so. question authority. keep it all in perspective--when some idiot starts preaching about how the world is (or is supposed to be), keep in mind who you're talking to. it serves me well, to this day.

that's how i first went out on my own. i went to college and worked full-time to pay for it, so i didn't have much time for other people (or didn't make the time), so i started seeing what i could come up with on my own. i bought, borrowed, or traded for the necessary equipment, and finally saved the money to buy a digital recorder. i met my current girlfriend, charline eoff, at a club, and she had been a source of inspiration and support to me to this day.

i took a few of the songs i had been working on and began to play with them, centering them around a theme of sorts. painstakingly i began to record them, take after take, still wondering if i was just wasting my time. surprisingly, however, i showed them to people, and received enough positive input to justify spending the money to get a full-length album pressed. i released the work under the title 'singularity' and called the album 'ruins'.

the world changed for me irrevocably at that point. knowing nothing about how to promote an album, especially without the primary tools used by other artists (playing shows, etc.), i began to become disheartened. and everyone's a critic, telling you what could be better and what you should have done. no, i've never taken criticism well. the first three months almost made me give up completely. what's worse, i had to change the name of my project to 'infinite singularity' after running into copyright problems (it does have a nice ring to it though, and i've become more comfortable with it than i ever was with 'singularity'.

later on, some promising things happened, and i was eventually able to get the music out to a number of people here and there. i knew i needed patience to make a career for myself in music. trust me, it's not easy.

i have since gotten enough feedback to release a second album, 'silence'. the album, released jan. 2, 2004.

and i still run across the nay-sayers, who keep telling me it's impossible, that maybe i should just go join a band, change my style this-or-that way or even give it up. occasionally i allow myself to think this way, that maybe i really can't do it. it has been tough, and it's slower going than i hoped. but then i realize that someone always has something to say, and talk is cheap. besides, i like to prove people wrong. it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

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