Information overload is generally considered a problem which arose from mass media. Maybe you could track it as far back as the invention of the printing press. Back in the 15th century, when only the creme de la creme could read, most of the average joes got their news from scruffy minstrels wandering around with their lutes and a wineskin. As literacy slowly increased in later centuries, you would have broadsides nailed to trees and walls. From there it is just a short jump (in geological time) to lardasses like myself skimming the internet news sites over morning coffee. And here we are, inundated by information from print and broadcast media, everything from giant corporations beaming the Big Brother Show directly into our subconscious, all the way down to crazed street-corner preachers adding to the din.

Common complaints of this modern information age are 1) The power elites control and package most of the information we receive, shaping and limiting our awareness to suit their economic and political needs; 2) Information comes at us from every direction, swamping us in a flood of random data and errata, to the point where we can’t discern what is important and what isn’t, what is truth and what is lie, and ultimately we have to shut it all out to preserve our sanity; 3) All this random data overwhelms the brain’s ability to filter, organize and process information. If we don’t give up altogether, we fall back on generalizations, comfortable “common sense” and the opinions of various “experts.” This limits our ability to learn new things.

Obviously, no one can know everything…there would be nothing left to learn. But we don’t have to go to the opposite view, that there’s no point in trying to learn more, even though it is tempting to feel that way sometimes. Learning, acquiring new information, is a mental process but it is also an emotional process, involving curiosity, excitement, desire, anger and other murky feelings. When I read a news article or hear an interview, I want to feel stimulated by the information I’m getting. I want to go “I didn’t know that!” or “This jerk should be selling cars, or in jail!” or simply just “What the hell?!” If I don’t have any reaction then a warning light comes on in my brain.

Information should stimulate us, add to our lives, spur us to grow as people. When information acts as a numbing agent, placebo, or buffer preventing change, then something is wrong. Of course you need some kind of filter, some framework to process and organize information. But if that framework just neutralizes new information, a warning light should go off in your head. If your religion, your politics, or your philosophy causes you to mouth platitudes, to fall back on reassuring generalizations, to lump people, things and events into simplistic boxes, then something is wrong.

That kind of thinking may have been excusable 800 years ago, when most of humanity slogged through each day trying to grow, grind, pick or kill enough to eat; when evening meant the end of all activity because candles were an incredible luxury; when current events included a radius of maybe 50 miles; and when voicing your opinion might easily get you hung, burned or whipped to death. But in this day and age, the only excuse not to learn from new information is that there is just too much of it. It is a real problem, but not an insurmountable one.

I often have typical information-overload symptoms: I watch way too much TV, most of it crap. I consume news through TV, internet, newspapers, magazines, to the point where it becomes a wave of meaningless clucking from the media poultry factory. My mind is inundated with all kinds of input, from the smallest fortune cookie message to the scariest pronouncements by government officials. Several times each day my brain just wants to shut it all out, to say “Enough!”

But a basic, instinctive curiosity keeps me coming back. I want to learn, I want to fit together just a few more pieces of the reality puzzle, I want to grok (look it up, if you haven’t read “Stranger In A Strange Land”). If new information makes me depressed, frustrated, or worst of all bored, then something is wrong with the way I am thinking. Learning should be fun, or at least not boring. Of course there are people and groups out there whose main purpose is to inhibit our thinking, to feed us crap that numbs our brains, lies, distortions, misinformation and all that. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. No one said it was easy to find the truth. But it should not be boring.

Thinking is a skill, a game, sometimes a fight. The first mistake is to take it for granted. From there it is a short step to letting others do the thinking for you. You can’t grok if you don’t do your own thinking.

Here’s a little game I do when I feel the first twinges of information overload: I take two very different pieces of information and compare them, look in my own mind for a link between them. Sometimes the link can be corroborated in the objective world; sometimes it is just in my own imagination. But this game is a reminder that reality is fluid, multi-levelled, and one’s individual mind can see it from many angles, not just the straight (and often boring) line of mass media.

Example: Scientists discover a new dinosaur, an aquatic creature that swam in the cold waters near Australia. Mars will be closer to Earth on August 27 than at any other time in my lifetime. Just thinking about these two bits of information makes my mind marvel. We are just now discovering how much prehistoric marine life existed and can be found in the fossil record. For a brief time, mars will look as big in the sky as the moon.

What do these two bits of information share? Or rather, by thinking of them together, what ideas are triggered in my mind? Well, the scale of geologic time is comparable to the scale of astronomical distance. Or, events in the distant past and events in distant space, neither of which impact my daily life, can serve as reminders that we are constantly adding to and revising our human understanding of the universe. Or, these two exemplars are a reminder of the ongoing debate in NASA and the scientific community about spending priorities: A manned mission to mars, or better understanding of our own planet’s history and environment. Which is more important? Are they mutually exclusive?

Once you pose one question, more usually follow. Try it. The next time your brain feels numb or crushed by the weight of inane chatter flooding it, as you stand in the supermarket checkout line, or sluggishly work through cable TV channels, or drag yourself through another oppressive day at the J.O.B., pick two bits of information, compare them, and see what you can grok.

People outside of Texas often ask me how I can live there. There are several ways to answer that question, but the main thing I try to say is that Texas offers you a kind of freedom that I haven’t found elsewhere. It’s not a political, economic, artistic or even emotional freedom. Far from it. But it is kind of a “Gatsby” freedom. You are free to imagine who you would like to be, and then invent yourself that way. People may question you, doubt you, test you, but they also will accept you. To me, this is the spirit of Texas, and why I continue to stay here.

Having said this, I have to qualify it. Everyone knows that Austin is not really Texas; it is a little oasis that somehow emerged in Central Texas. But I think this quality of Gatsby freedom which permeates Texas is strongest in Austin. Austin isn’t completely different than the rest of Texas - it’s just moreso.

So, I have spent over 20 years inventing myself in Austin, for better or worse, and it does feel like home to me, as much as any place on earth does. But I still have that wanderlust, like so many other people I know. Being a touring musician infects you like a virus: once you have that bug it always stays with you (okay, bugs are bacteria not viruses, but the analogy is the same). I get together with other former and present road warriors and we share stories, and we all have that same paradoxical feeling: the road chews you up and spits you out, you come home exhausted and grateful to sleep in your own bed, but after a few weeks you get that restless energy and you want to get back out there on the highway, going somewhere.

This year, so far, has been more settled than previous years. I spent the first 5 years of the new millenium touring with various road bands - Seth Walker, Nick Curran, Janiva Magness, Malford Milligan - but I have settled into a nice groove with Memphis Train Revue, which plays mostly in Texas, and gives me time to work on my own musical projects. Around Austin I perform with my jazz band PK SAX, and my R&B band Manteca Beat. I get various sideman gigs with fun bands (it’s always good to play with new folks; keeps your ears fresh), and I have been able to make time for new recording projects. I am planning a follow-up CD to my experimental “Man In Chamber” which will continue The Klemperer Group trajectory of musical experiments which reflect social issues. I also hope to have my Manteca Beat CD finished by the end of the summer.

I could stay busy all the time in Austin, but that wanderlust virus creeps up on one, so I have to get out on the road from time to time. I had a great trip to L.A. in June, where I recorded some new jazz compositions written by Tommy Kay. The final mixes of that session should be out before long.

Summer gets kind of long in Texas, so I was happy to make a little run up to New England, visited family there, checked out some new jazz clubs in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, NY, and then met up with my old boss, Marcia Ball, at the Green River Festival in Greenfield. It was a lot of fun playing with her band at the Festival, although the moths wouldn’t leave us alone: the stagelights drew them in by the dozens and they found their way into our mouths, eyes, ears, down our shirts, and pretty much any other aperture you could imagine.

Back in Texas, Memphis Train just finished filming a video. Much thanks to all the friends who showed up to participate. Hopefully it will lead to bigger and better things: Halliburton office parties in Iraq, wedding receptions for billionaire trust-fund babies, Four Seasons banquet rooms on the moon (although the moon doesn’t really have seasons)… the Cinderella stories have no end.

MTR has gigs around the region through the summer; Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. Wherever it is hot and humid, we will be there! There’s nothing quite like standing onstage in your tuxedo in 100-degree weather, under the stage lights, playing an outdoor wedding, mosquitos, gnats and other biting insects - some of which I have never seen before outside of a science fiction movie - swarming around you. That’s showbiz!

Speaking of science fiction, the movie “A Scanner Darkly” is out now, and doing well by all measures. It was a lot of fun working with Graham Reynolds in his funky home studio on the soundtrack music. It’s pretty amazing to think of the sounds you spit out in someone’s house in East Austin eventually coming out of surround-sound speaker systems in movie theaters around the country. We live in a strange and wonderful world. I don’t know which is more science fiction, the stuff we see on the screen or the stuff we live through each day. They seem to be converging quite nicely.

So, July is spinning on into August, which always feels like the halfway point of summer, even though summer here lasts through October. The world, as always seems headed into worsening crisis. Cowboy W is making the world safe for armageddon. Onward through the fog of war. But we continue on, finding hope in the small things, trying to make art, a living, and a sandwich. As the song says, you have to “snatch and grab it.”
Words to live by.

No matter what musical tradition you train in, there is a logical sequence to developing your skills: 1) Learn the basic techniques of your instrument, 2) Learn existing material, 3) Develop your own style. This sequence is just the way humans learn things in general. You have to crawl before you walk, etc.

Within this sequence of learning there are a lot of different possible paths to take. Some musical traditions emphasize one path over another, some are more rigid than others. High art traditions (schools of training that are very formal) tend to have rigidly prescribed ways to learn, tend to be conservative and discourage innovation or incorporation of new material. European art music, Indian classical music, Japanese traditional music, these are all examples of such formal high art traditions. They are tough traditions, elitist, conservative, but they produce high caliber musicians.

Folk music traditions are often contrasted with high art traditions, because it is easy to see major differences. Folk music is taught less formally, usually orally and passed from the older generations to the younger, in social or family situations. There is greater room for part-time, amateur, and individualistic participation in these traditions, so they seem less rigid. But they can produce highly skilled practitioners. Folk music traditions may be more inclusive, but they still have their building blocks, and if an individual invests time and concentration into these building blocks, the result can be highly skilled and artistically deep music.

The jazz tradition occupies a unique place in music, I think because it defies definition as a particular type of music. It has characteristics of folk, popular and high art music. It is American, but it is international. Structurally it is linked to traditional African music, but it is also so adaptable that it draws from musical traditions around the world and through the years. But, like every music, it has its building blocks.

Let’s look at some specific building blocks. Music can be broken into 4 basic elements: Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Timbre/Tone. Different traditions approach these 4 elements differentally. For example, many traditions have only incidental harmony, rather than functional harmony. Some traditions have a very narrow range for acceptable timbre, while others have a broader range.

In the European tradition, students learn basic musical skills by practicing scales and arpeggios. These are your building blocks. Once you have the basic elements, you expand them into increasingly complex combinations of patterns. Look at any music method book and you can see this learning sequence laid out. It is logical and it works.

But there is another way of thinking about music, and by extension, about life. Learning isn’t merely linear; you don’t just start with simple things and get increasingly complex. Learning is also cyclical. As your knowledge deepens, you gain greater perspective and this influences how you see all music, from the simple to the complex. Thus, you can go back and see the building blocks in new ways, appreciate the possibilities inherent in them in ways that you previously didn’t. I think it is important to emphasize this view of music, and life, because it will make you a more complete musician and human being.

Here’s one example: We learn basic music intervals, like a major third, a perfect fourth, and so on. We train our ears to recognize these intervals. Then we can recognize combinations of these intervals which create basic harmonies, major and minor triads, diminished chords, and so on. As we create more extended chords, with 5 and 6 notes in them, the sound gets thicker, more ambiguous. A jazz pianist hits a complex chord, and we say “Oh, that’s C7 with a flat 13,” or something. But the chord itself is still made up of basic intervals, 3rds and 4ths, and if we listen a certain way, our ears can hear those basic building blocks at the same time as we hear the thick totality of the chord.

It is possible to hear the simple components within the complex totality. Likewise it is possible to hear the complex possibilities implicit in simple building blocks. This keeps music fresh, and keeps our outlook on life fresh. Building blocks don’t have to be heard as unchanging, static and formulaic. Of course, they can be used that way, and a lot of the time they are, to produce formulaic music. Music made this way is similar to the other things we surround ourselves with: cubicle offices, fast food huts, treeless parking lots; functional but so much less than they could be.

Listen to the musical building blocks in new ways. Your other senses will thank you.