The Last Transcendence

It's come to this.

The end.

In the end of 2008, I attempted to embark on a project, a personal project. Document something of note for every day of 2009. I wanted an MP3 blog filled with audio clips, streaming videos, tons of photos, my own edited videos, whatever. It was to be a media frenzy. In the "my own edited videos" department I have a few works, a few blogs with them. But to be honest, my computer crashed to the point where I lost Adobe Premiere Pro, my video editing software, and I also lost my video camera capturing software. I am basically SOL on that front.

Thank god the audio aspect of my computer is intact, though. This is the most important aspect to my computer. Everything seems to be in working order on this front.

I think I did well in the media department.

The main crux of the blog was to document the daily trials and tribulations of Patch. Where was I a year ago? Where am I now?

Truth be told: not in a very different spot.

January 2009: I was recording Schematics tracks. Three more were to be fleshed out for the project. "Typosgraphy" was the current track, and I was having a hell of a time working with it. "In Hopes to Mend" was also a doozie, and if I remember correctly, it took two and a half months to record that one song. "Switch" took two weeks. Go figure.

I sent the tracks over to Schuyler for mixing and mastering in May 2009. He worked for two weeks then told me he had to stop and start over due to him not being happy with the results of his mixing, and because of a large three month trip to Europe he was to be on for the entire summer. I basically sat on my recordings for this time, playing with Taylor's Lizard People project in the meantime. After Schuyler returned, we started on the project again. From late September until early December he mixed. During this time, I was also finishing up Lizard People recordings as a tit for tat with Taylor for Schematics artwork that he had agreed to work on. I finished Lizard People in late October and immediately set about getting the live band together for Patch.

November and December were full of band meetings, lunch meetings, changing members, rehearsals and seeing how everyone interacted.

Where am I now?

1) I have to move out of my practice space due to noise complaints by my neighbor. I have a new space ready for our moving in in January, however.
2) I have four members of Patch intact. The lead guitarist role has once again been left vacant. Matt Anderson leveled with me yesterday and thought that he wouldn't be able to do both his band, The Engagement, and Patch. I'm currently looking to fill the last slot.
3) Schematics will be finished in mastering the week of January 11th. The artwork will be finished in the next couple of days here, as Taylor will be bunking up at my house for the next week. During this time, we will be finalizing all of the artwork for the CD, and starting to work on the Patch website art.
4) To coincide with the Schematics release, I will be recording new songs to be released as free MP3's for those who buy the physical Schematics EP. Simple and minimalistic in nature, the music will focus on Ommission, a loss of words, a loss of my intact nature. It's based off of some recent personal events in my life that would most likely cause some mayhem if I were to describe them here publicly.
5) Patch Live 1.0 will be onstage early March. Schematics and Omiss will be released at that time as well.

Patch will be public March 2010.

It's been tough. Constant uphill battles. My day job mixes with Patch in the afternoons due to so many calls that have to be made, plans set in stone, coordinating schedules without losing my mind.

So, Patch is still brewing. It's farther along, of course, but mainly in regards to having a lot of it out of my hands. "Hurry Up and Wait" is the main line heard in the popular music world. Deadlines are met and then you sit on your efforts for awhile. You think, "Did I really need a deadline in the first place?"

With this blog, I also wanted to document my personal life. One last attempt, since I'll be setting all of these aspects of my life to private once Patch goes public. I wanted to talk about my work with children, my relationships, my family drama.

One of the interesting developments in the personal life realm was the realization of friendship I had with the Brotherhood, the people who all lived in a little house on Monroe Street in Northeast, Minneapolis. It started from Citizens Banned wanting to share a house where we would all live, breathe, and create together in one nucleus. This fell apart, and Taylor and I brought home two women that we had picked up at a dance club downtown. We had these two meet another close friend of me and Adri. We became inseparable in 2007 and 2008.

2009 brought an end to everyone living at Monroe. Everyone moved away, leaving me with the house for Patch purposes. Now that Patch has been given the boot . . . this will most likely be the last year for me at Monroe. It still offers me recording space, but at 25 I've grown and procured too much stuff that my room is stifling and suffocating. I need to move on.

With everyone coming back for the holidays, though, this blog ends. Karmath was a term I came up with relating to Citizens Banned, and it since has been ingrained as the story of the Brotherhood. The songs on the Karmath EP were all written at Monroe, they are all about the Monroe residents. Karmath the Blog is a written testimony to their existence in prose. And how much I love them.

A basic need in my life, one that I've searched for since I was a small child, has finally reached a climax, a resolution. I've found a group of friends that will remain the closest soulmates to my own soul until the day I die. People I will always call on. People I will always visit. People who will father and mother my children, and help out my own true family. They're all going to be at Monroe tonight for a massive New Years party. A true homecoming. A true hurrah.

My brothers and sisters. This was my document to myself that this is where it all became realized. 2009 was the beginning of a new era. Schooling stopped in 2006, leaving the Brotherhood. The school of the Brotherhood stopped in 2009. Now, for me, it's Patch. School: check. Friends: check. Career: ?

2010 will be a very important year. My dream will become reality. I will most likely change and grow in a way I never imagined. It's a strange frontier, putting a new voice out in the world like I want to do. But I'm ready.

I've got the friends to back me up. The people to call on when I need help and a break. Support. Everything has led to this point. 2009 is the climax to my youth.

2010 will be the separation of the man from the boy in me.

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To fully wrap this project up, I've linked some of my favorite entries below. These represent some of the more seminal 2009 moments, an entry I'm proud of, something special, etc. Most days' entries I'm proud of, but these stand out to me. I've had three quasi-official relationships in the past year, great successes, great moments of fear and stress. Here it is, a recap in Karmath the Blog form of 2009:

1. 1/5/09: Polish Sausages
2. 1/6/09: Pi
3. 1/7/09: A Call to Arms
4. 1/21/09: Brigade of Mascots
5. 1/22/09: No Longer Striding
6. 2/7/09: Finally Striding
7. 2/8/09: Slithers and Dust
8. 2/21/09: Metafiction
9. 2/28/09: A Prologue to an Epilogue
10. 3/1/09: Mustaches and Mayhem
11. 3/6/09: Casualties of War
12. 3/28/09: Marathon Sprints
13. 3/31/09: The Sandwich Crust Epidemic
14. 4/2/09: Yo'plaited
15. 4/13/09: I Hoped to End
16. 4/24/09: Army of Darkness
17. 5/4/09: SUCCESS!!!!
18. 5/17/09: Broom Stick Revolver
19. 6/28/09: Liquored Truths and Glittered Booths
20. 7/30/09: The Coma Child Incident
21. 8/4/09: That Girl Interrupted My Great Balls of Fire
22. 8/8/09: My Visit from Beelzebub
23. 8/13/09: The Foreskin Debate
24. 8/14/09: Rats and Revenge
25. 8/17/09: One Dollar Baby
26. 8/21/09: Lizard People IV: The Final Showdown
27. 8/28/09: Fine Print of Obligation
28. 8/30/09: Polish Sausages II
29. 9/4/09: How the Swedes Kill Kittens
30. 9/18/09: West's Dead End
31. 9/23/09: The Missing Beak
32. 10/5/09: Hair o' the Dog
33. 10/18/09: Tainted Love
34. 10/31/09: Mainstream Mania
35. 11/12/09: The Cost of Noise
36. 11/14/09: A Day of Firsts
37. 12/6/09: PATCH LIVE
38. 12/9/09: Hi, My Name is Robert
39. 12/12/09: Smokey and the McMuffin
40. 12/30/09: The Anchor-age

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And now, 2010.

Karmath the Blog will exist, but nothing will be added to it. This is the last blog entry.

Welcome to Circadia will now be the main blog. I will most likely have another personal blog, but it will be pretty private, pretty exclusive. For now, Welcome to Circadia will have to suffice.

It's been a good blog, this here Karmath. But I'm tired of working on it everyday. But I fucking did it! I . . . beat . . . you . . .

2010, bring it on. Time to step into the next era. A scary, strange, foreign era of my life.

This is Peter . . . signing off.

Ennio Morricone -- "L'estasi Dell'oro"