verändert sich durch Sein und Zeit

Gute Abend, 

Things are changing so much and so rapidly it's almost as if time itself is a blur. In the blink of an eye, we are born, we grow, we live, and we die. 

Mortality and fate are intertwined, although the moderns have never been able to quite explain or understand it no matter how far they get in doing so. The Ancients had an easier way of trying to understand it, but they too failed in this fundamentally human question. 

I've lived in Los Angeles for ten years, have had a great life, made some friends, partied and chilled with a lot of people, became a better musician, and even became a part of these rock and roll after hours parties by playing Hendrix for drunkards and druggies. 

Life is good. But fundamentally I realize I'm right back where I started when I first got here. Trying to make it in Los Angeles through music, my own wits, and whatever talents I may have in any other areas. It's rough. It's rough for anybody out here. 

The pandemic made life for a lot of people much worse. Their children have become stay-at-home malcontents that can't handle working, or worse, they just do drugs and alcohol and have no hope of ever succeeding in life, let alone holding onto a job without switching every 2-4 years. 

There are new strains of corona out there and there's more of the threat of respiratory diseases for infants and young children. Politics have become embroiled and republicans are content to make fun of Pelosi's husband pretty much getting murdered. 

To be alive in the bitter sea. 

What's a guy to do?

Run the changes again. 

Play the same old song but in a different way. In order to live in this decline of western civilization, you must learn to find a new way to live. 

For everyone, this will mean something different. For me, I had to learn to stay away from problem people and their problems, and stay focused on my job, music, reading, eating better and losing weight, and maintaining, making, and improving relationships. None of it is easy. In fact, it' grueling and mind-numbing. 

For years and years I used to be content to sit in my room and play video games, not caring about anything going on outside my window. Then the pandemic kicked in and somehow I became more serious. I realized how fickle life can be. 

I started taking music more seriously, deeply trying to understand everything I read, rather than just reading for pleasure. I started learning languages like Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. I learned how to play jazz guitar so I could get out of my rock guitar virtuoso lizard brain. I started playing piano and drums and even singing. I even did a lot of open mics where I was playing electric guitar plugged into a PA, and singing along to my guitar. Scary! 

Today, I took the bus to guitar center and bought a pair of drum brushes, brushes, used to play more mellow soulful jazz patterns and ballads, even swing.

So there you go. Find your way to live. The meaning of life is that it is meant to be lived. 

You got this. 

[photo is ai generated, created with stable diffusion, android playing jazz saxophone] 

Siegfried comes to save Los Angeles

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

It's been a long time. Hello world. 

I've been okay. C'est la vie, as the French say. There's a lot going on in today's rapidly changing world. A lot of it is terrifying, especially for a 33 year old American male, but really, for anybody, the times they are a-change-in. 

We just came out of a terrible presidency by one of the worst people on the planet and Americans are still supporting him even to this day like he's God's gift to woman. America is becoming more and more totalitarian in every way, shape, and form, and believe me folks, its not just republicans who are Attila the Hun fans, it's democrats too. My work has cameras locked onto every cashier and in every aisle to make sure nobody steals anything. Sound familiar? 

On top of that there's record inflation, soaring gas prices, we can't afford rent, we can't afford groceries, our kids are continuously getting gunned down by madmen in schools, we can't afford children we already have, the climate has gone to the dogs, and the white people have decided to ban abortions but secretly allow their women to get abortion pills and stuff like that. Don't forget climate change. 

Covid isn't going away, and rather, is evolving faster than we can create vaccines for. The workforce doesn't quite know it yet, but they've been decimated by long covid and we don't know the full extent of the long term symptoms but one of them is being tired all the time and continuous brain fog. These victims can't even read a book, I'm afraid, they wouldn't have the attention span. On top of that, other countries are taking more control over the world and America has become a lesser. Trump made our country weak and Biden couldn't fix it. And now we're stuck. Interesting times. 

Companies are becoming less and less employee focused, even Union shops, and rather, instead, they've become more like sweat shops. Ironically, more like China. This has been happening since the American early days of the robber barons. 

Welcome to America, we're the gestapo now, and we support Atilla the Hun, and my name is Siegfried, I have blonde hair and blue eyes.

But seriously, what can one do with a mess like this one? 

There's nothing you really can do except vote Democrat for the Mid Terms. They're the lesser of the two evils, they at least attempt to do the right thing, although they're no angels either.

Part of the problem is that everybody is living in a separate world in this moment of time. Nobody reads the same news, nobody watches the same tv shows, nobody plays the same video games, nobody reads the same books, nobody can agree on anything, and most people aren't smart enough to take news, facts, and information and think for themselves, rather they believe what they hear and just naturally assume that's the way it is, that it is truth, that everything they see and hear is a fact. What happened to thinking for yourselves? 

I told my friends I take the bus in LA. They said, "Be careful! There's criminals on the bus who will rob you."

I said, "What criminals? Where? Did somebody rob you on the bus?"

They said, "No, but I just heard about it on the news."

Are they all really that scared? 

That's beside the point.

What we really need is a remote coalition government that isn't controlled by government, republicans, democrats, libertarians, socialists, communists, or our parents. We all need to come together to vote Democrat, a New Great Society, but only the true believers in the good are allowed in. Are you one of us? 

The end of the beginning. More work to be done tomorrow! 

Live Jazz! Guitar and Saxophone! 10/6/2022!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0Km9rjsh8w&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

Featuring Jason Tomas on alto saxophone and Orlando Figueroa on guitar

Improv most of the set, and Blue Monk by Thelonious Monk

Live Jazz Trio! 9/14/2022!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4eRvDbS88&t=218s&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RhMMStW7-8&t=1715s&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

Live Jazz Trio, recorded live from Facebook on 9/14/2022

Feather Robley on percussion

Jason Tomas on alto saxophone

Orlando Figueroa on 7-string guitar 

Thank You

Live Jazz! 9/9/2022!

Listen to it or be square! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq57g1C2fWA&t=868s

The Summer Drum

Summer's almost gone, you Doors fans, dang hippies!

The summer is almost over. And what a hot summer it was. Too hot. The planet is experiencing the worst global warming ever. But that's not the point of this blog. 

Today I went to guitar center to play some real live drums, a real drum set. The first week or so I've only had a practice drum pad, which was too expensive, 30 bucks! For wool. 

Okay, so I've been intimated by drums forever. 

In fact, when I first played drums the first day at guitar center I was so self conscious that when people came into the room I stopped the cymbals and silenced them with my hands like Bill Bruford LOL.

But you can learn to get confidence on a new instrument. I just started playing the best I could and somehow they were impressed. The guy even asked to hold my stick to see if there was magic in it. He tried it and he wasn't that good. 

Two weeks later I went back more determined but when I sat on the kit I was still self conscious and fearful. 

Then I remembered some rock song with a 16th note hi hat pattern, it was like a Zappa thing or something. Or like Deep Purple's Ian Pace. So I hit the 16th note pattern on the hi hat, then copied it across the entire kit, from the hi hat, to snare, to toms, to cymbals, and walaaaaaaaaaaah, polyrhythms are born! 

Then suddenly I was playing lighter and faster, and I was starting to get more jazzy. 

Just goes to show you that you need practice really to have the confidence. They go hand in hand. 

I don't have much time to practice, what with working 48 hours at the retail gig, but the time I do use, is spent with great listening and patience, that I sort of can copy things somehow. Must be all the practice from guitar. 

Get me a different drum for every different emotion, it's go time. This is like therapy lol. Cathartic. 

Primal Instinct Ready for Deployment

Hello, World. [computer science] 

No, really. Bom gia! 

Here I'd like to write a short update on life and some ideas that have reverberated throughout my memory. 

First, I'm starting to start to ditch my electronics more and embrace nature. I've been experimenting with playing a lot less video games, and now I've finally reached the point where I think I can stop and not feel like I'm missing out. How did that happen? 

Well, you see, I was having extreme computer issues. Minor problems, not hardware issues, just software issues. In the process, I learned a little bit more about software and how to fix them when things aren't handshaking. I had more fun learning and fixing the problem than actually playing the game. Therefore, I don't really need to play the game anymore. Capeesh? 

I even started turning off my phone and not leaving it in my pocket when I'm on the work floor. Much better, mucho gusto. Why? Less distractions. Less anxiety. Better performance.  

Second, I'm starting to enjoy nature more, despite the 100 degree California heat. If you haven't read my post on what its been like being on foot in the hot sun all the time, look no further, and read this post here here. There are a lot of good mentions in that post about how to deal with 100 degree heat, on foot, working, eating, and more. 

My body is starting to respond. The first couple trips of adventuring in 100 degree heat were so brutal, so brutal in fact, that I could hardly really walk without feeling the weight of a thousand suns. [Lol], no, but it was fucking hot and I felt like a ton as a result. The answer to this problem? Well, you might not like this, but you just gotta fucking man up and not wimp out and just fucking overcome it like a boss you fucking weakling. 

Your body feels weak and sluggish in the 100 degree hot sun because its hot, yes. But also, you've grown fat and weak, living on the American fat of bougies society, and now you can barely walk in 100 degree heat. That's the truth of the matter. The answer is to go primal and go back to nature and ditch video games and porn marathons, your endless cable news TV, your VR, your alcohol. Stop being a fuckin' biomass. 

If you want some inspiration, I recommend watching this cartoon on cartoon network called Primal. It's really cool and shows what man is really like when he isn't weighed down by the limitations of the 21st century and its bourgeois rulers. 

But what do I know? I'm a guitar player hippie who should've been around in the 60s, not now. Yet here I am, and there you are, reading this for some reason, staring into the either.

I see now the limitations put on myself and others and am pushing through to the other side of human activity and intersubjectivity through my armchair sociology. 

I see nature as something I've always loved, even as a child mediating under the stars. But I also know that nature is nasty, brutish, and short. So the long and short of it is, yes, nature is good, but it is no replacement or substitution for God or food for the soul. It's just something out there for you to enjoy. To really get spiritual healing you have to go much farther and do much more. 

Go do something you beautiful goon. And don't forget the water bottle this time. 

p.s. time keeps moving but its always in a circle, endless, starless, until it disappears within being and nothingness, and the cycle begins anew

-your friendly neighborhood retail philosopher