Here’s a rough cut of a new track I’ve been tinkering with over the past few days, Hanoi. I’m not entirely happy with the mix, but it’s coming along. I hope you enjoy it. It is, I have been told, “crazy beepy.”

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There are only two more days in the year; it feels natural on some level to look back and see what’s happened. It’s a feeling I have been resisting in some way, because such a retrospective draws lines that are too firm. “It’s been a difficult year, but it got better,” for example, leaves out too much. In the midst of that difficulty, there was a lot of joy, and even as things got better, there was still a deep well of sadness.

I don’t, however, know a better way to talk about it. Which is, in a way, why I haven’t done much talking in the second half of this year. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, but every time I try, I get wrapped up in the act of telling a story that’s far bigger than me, and end up having a hard time saying anything. I feel as if I actually do the world a disservice to simplifying it enough to fit it neatly into this text window.

I’ve thought more than a few times about giving up Tinctoris, letting it rest after so many years, but I’m not ready to do that. I believe that there is still something good about this site, and that I have something worth communicating.

So, what can I say about this year, heeding the disclaimer of the first few paragraphs? If anything, the image that keep coming to me is that this year has been about emptying. If you looked at my studio at the beginning of the year, and now, you’d see a physical analog to what’s been going on internally. Some things I let go, some things just drifted away, and some left before I had a chance to say goodbye. I feel emptier than I did at the beginning of the year, and if I sit quietly I can still feel the ache from many of the absences. I don’t know if that will ever truly fade.

On the other side of the duality, many things have been brought into me this year; some of them so joyous and wonderful it makes me cry with happiness, some I’d rather not have invited in. But all this newness is a part of who I am now, and I must accept it with open arms.

This might sound depressing or fatalistic, and it may be, but it feels comforting to me. Life is full of gain and loss, pain and joy, and every year is like this. Going through my past year-end posts, I read a lot of “this year was pretty bad, but next year will be better.” Well, next year will be what it is, and I’ll be there with my eyes as open as I can make them.

I hope everyone had an emotionally appropriate Christmas. Mine was very quiet, and today was spent lying flat on the couch reading fiction. I have a smattering of work to do between now and 2008, but most of it is on an organizational nature, and starting the year sane and refreshed would be quite a good thing.

Today is the shortest day. I hope you all have done what you can to chase away the dark. It only gets brighter from here on out!

As usual, the week before Christmas is a bear. I’m cranky, my back is sore from sleeping badly, and it feels like I have a million things to do and no time in which to do it. I know that I’ll get it done, and it’s not as bad as all that, but I’m taking just a moment to publicly revel in my crankiness.

I ended up installing Vista on the boot camp partition of my iMac for testing purposes. It’s my second encounter with it, and I must say that I’m not super impressed. I’ve been using OS X for so long now that the “Windows Way” seems very counterintuitive at the base level, and Vista’s slightly redesigned UI seems hell-bent on making everything just that much more inconvenient.

I’ve updated the Orb application, after months and months of procrastination. All it does is change the color of this glowing orb which is sitting on my bookshelf. It updates kind of slowly (maybe every 30 minutes or so), so it’s almost useless, but there you go. Colorize away!

Karlheinz Stockhausen died today at age 79. His music simultaneously drove me mad and made me deliriously happy.

Goodbye, Karlheinz. I hope things are good for you on Sirius.

I was peeling a huge hunk of ginger root this afternoon, in preparation to freeze it (ginger grates so much better when it’s frozen), and got wrapped up in the act. Peeling ginger is a challenge – to start with, it’s almost all weird angles. Even if using a knife, it’s not easy to get to every bit. Some parts of the root are very thick, and some are so soft that it can break apart if too much pressure is used. It thwarts perfection at all opportunities. In short, it’s engaging, infuriating, and absolutely wonderful.

My online portfolio is finally, well, online. I’ve been working on this for the past few weeks in the cracks between other projects, and am pleased at how it turned out.