has the ink run dry?

Past two days -- I'd say about five hours of sleep between the two, and those five hours have all been from last night. It's currently 4:40 am. Looks like no sleep tonight. yaaaay. I might have decided to sleep tonight, but I have to be up at 9:00 anyways, so really, what's the point?

Man, I'm pretty sure that tonight, as a six person band and Andrew (our merch guy, i guess), we're probably totaling about 15 hours of sleep. No lies. Matt and Andrew left Washougal, Wa tonight at about 9:00 for some place in Southern Oregon to pick up Eriq. So I bet they're all not sleeping. Dan's mixing the AHFH album right now, so I bet because of the time he goes to bed, he's really not gonna be sleeping all that long anyways. I have no idea what Ian and Nathan are doing, but who really knows what they do anyways? I know that Nathan doesn't really sleep all that much and Ian probably has to wake up for work in the morning. We are one unhealthy band.

By the way, I've been tearing my brain apart the past few days trying to get some album art done because I pretty much have to have it done tomorrow, [By the way, I just realized that the sun's coming up outside] and I finally think I might have something. But anyways, doing the art for our album has definitely proven to be a much harder task than I had originally thought. I've been definitely having the most trouble with finding the right way to personify the concepts brought up in the album. This has been especially difficult because our album is about concepts that are definitely non-physical, so I've been bashing my head against the wall in hopes that some sort of perfect symbol or character or design would fly out and into my hands. Eventually I did find some ways to personify our concepts, but it definitely took more time than I had planned. But this whole "album art" and "personification of conceptual ideas" and whatnot has really got me thinking a lot about what a symbol is.

How do we actually create symbols? My guess is association. Like I said in my last post, we are told one thing, and we as humans can associate that thing with a million others. Such as water. On my last post, the images that came to my mind were splashes of blue and and green colors, and coldness, and darkness. And a tree for some reason. [and I actually just looked back at my last post to see exactly what I had written and I just realized that I had written that, stopped, deleted it all, and just posted what I had. haha, So I apologize for lack of reference. But on again with this whole thing...] So I can see someone creating a symbol for water by putting some of these things together along with the other qualities of water. But what about conceptual ideas? How do we create visual, and/or tangible symbols for things that are not physical in the least bit? I have been looking a lot at symbols that people have used (especially in ancient times) to personify concepts such as these. It amazes me at how the human mind can work -- that we can take simple objects, and display them with the simplest peculiarities and create, vivid, deep, meaningful, and powerful concepts from them. And for some of the symbols that I have seen, although I sometimes may not be able to come up with it immediately, after being shown what the different meanings could be, I could legitimately see almost every single concept that it represented. I am jealous. I want to be able to create vivid symbolism that can embody any idea or concept that I would like. It frustrates me how hard it is to do this, and how simple the best symbols are.

By the way, somebody should buy me a giant book about symbolism. :)


With my ears:
A Hope For Home - The Everlasting Man (rough mixes)
Sigur Rós - Agaetis Byrjun
Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
Giants - myspace player
Means - To Keep Me From Sinking

With my eyes:
Arrested Development
Wikipedia

With my tongue:
Lots of Mac n' Cheese

With my hands:
A Hope For Home - The Everlasting Man (album art)

With my nose:
stuffy.

recordification

I have the worst hoarse throat ever. I seriously sound like an 87 year old woman who's been smoking since she was 12. ugh. Recording has definitely taken its toll on me. I am tired from staying up late and working on interludes and whatnot, my voice is gone from recording vocals when I am not a vocalist, my pride is shot from trying to record the same part a billion times and getting it wrong every time, my fingers hurt from playing guitar with fingertips that aren't ever supposed to play like that, and my tummy hurts from being at Dan's all day where there is never any food to eat. Oh, and I smell bad.

That's about it. I kinda just felt like complaining. Thanks for listening, internets.


With my eyes:
(reading)
House of Leaves - Introduction

With my ears:
Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
A Hope For Home - The Everlasting Man

With my tongue:
Taco Bell - Beeny Cheese & Rice Burrito, Cheese Quesadilla

With my hands:
A Hope For Home - Outtro

first impressions

Hey there, my name's Tanner Morita.
It would be great if I could actually get this thing up and running and to be able to consistently post on it, but ya know, I'm really not that great at sticking with these things. Anyways, I guess I'll just start with the basic things about myself.

I'm currently 18 years old, though if for some strange reason someone is reading this after 2008, than that information is false. hah. I am out of school and not really sure what my future holds. You see, I'm kinda doing this whole "music" thing where I write music with five other fellows and see how many people we can force to listen to it. If you would like, you can listen to my band, A Hope For Home, at www.myspace.com/ahopeforhome

Other than that, you can pretty much just ask me anything else you'd like and I'd be happy to answer. I'm not really sure if this site has any sort of messaging system or not, but if not you can contact me either on my myspace at www.myspace.com/mysoliloquy
or email me at tannermorita@gmail.com

Not really sure if anybody will ever read this or not, but I'm still gonna write this as if everyone is reading. haha.

toodles.


ps. I know I'm completely stealing this from my friend Taylor over at http://theclassicloop.blogspot.com/
but I don't really care at all. Anyways, I think I'm gonna be posting random things that I'm looking at, listening to, feeling, tasting, and/or smelling.

So here we go;

With My Ears:
Means - To Keep Me From Sinking
Feist - The Reminder
This Will Destroy You - Young Mountain
Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Iron & Wine - Boy With A Coin & Carousel

With My Eyes:
(Reading)
House of Leaves - Just the cover so far
(Seeing)
Pan's Labrynth - again, hah

With My Hands:
A Hope For Home - "The Everlasting Man" CD art

With My Tongue:
Chicken Wraps
Mac n' Cheese