Paul Bryant

On the morning of July 16th Rivka noticed a crowd of emergency vehicles across the street at Lucky Penny the gas station run by an Indian family. Fire truck, ambulance, bunch of cops. Eventually some yellow tape went up around one of the gas pumps.

Those places stock mostly items you can put in your mouth. Not one of them is food.

Paul stayed with Lilian or rather Miss Lilian around the corner in the house Rock used to live in. The house where once Rock and an old man were on the porch and the old man called across the street to me, “must be nice to be a vampire. I’m a garbage man.”

We’ve known him for about fifteen years. He cleans up around Lucky Penny and mows the weeds we call lawns or more frequently refer to as “yards”. Since our un-yard we leave mostly wild and overgrown he just did the strip between the old chainlink fence and the street once or twice a month. He and Ashirah share(d) a birthday.

He’d been born in fifty-seven which makes sixty seven years breathing. Sometimes you’d see him pulling his mower down the sidewalk at nine or ten pm. Cigarette hanging from his mouth. He’d always stop for a quick catch up. Gruff voice. “Tell everybody I said hello.” “Have a blessed day.”

His memorial was at a community center a few miles from here. Bunch of family. A couple of preachers. Someone had brought a Kurzweil organ. Gospel. Come to Jesus or else. You never know when you’re in the fourth quarter. You might be in the last minute of the fourth quarter.

Dreampt about audio mastering. There are dBs which are decibels each of which is ten bells which represent how much air is moved and there are LUFS which represent how “loud” something “sounds” to the human ear and involves a chart called the Fletcher Munson Curve. Scott Anthony is guiding me. There are seventy dream-based recordings eligible for mastering which would be expensive to send off to a pro. He and his intern Ben may end up doing a quick cheap version of mastering or maybe this Python script which uses a couple of libraries wrapping around the open source FFMPEG tool will do the trick.

It’s all about the story.

Terry Spears is slowly passing on his record collection. Bunch of Earth, Wind and Fire. The vocals, harmonic movement, instrument playing are frighteningly good. Beautiful work. Sly Stone and Brides of Funkenstein on the other hand not frighteningly good. Not beautiful work. Universally unexpected. Odd. Confusing. Perfectly flawed and unique.

Sly Stone puts pop, rock, blues, gospel, cartoon, do-wop, military march all in the pot together and performs it with a tripping vaudeville troup. Reminds you to go all the way. This could be the last minute of the fourth quarter.

Loudness unit full scale. Car motors that hurt suck by the way. What are people thinking?

Miss you Paul.

3/08/2024