Now I had really wanted to run but apparently it wasn’t in the cards. The whole concept was to go into hiding for 30 days—on the lam—anywhere within the US and evade the Repo Men, who are trying to hunt you for a $7,500 bounty. If the runners evade the hunt, they win 10k. According this month’s issue of Wired the hunt starts today. You can enlist to be a hunter here (which I did) but I really feel that it’s against my mentality. It might break my general principles to turn in a runner—being a hunter is not my nature. I’m too DIY. The best way to follow the contest is via the Twitter hashtag #repomen. The four runners are going to have to be creative and resourceful. The hunters are going to have to pool their heads via the Net. This was the video I had sent with my runner app—it’s a bit of humor.

Image: flickr/deiby

Barring logic, I knew from deep inside that writing music was one path I needed to follow. I began learning to program HTML in 2003 mainly because I wanted to use the web to share my music with my friends. You know to me, reading source code is like plain English, because I always view the source code on sites so that I can figure out how they were made—you might call this reverse engineering.

No longer am I jaded. I want to discover. My audio production skills—often learned by trial and error—have improved greatly through the past six years. But now, equipped with better knowledge—and the wisdom one finds during 30 years on Earth—I wonder if I’ve lost some of the fire that drove me to write music in the past. I think I made the mistake of looking too far ahead. In what we call reality, my body cannot keep up with my imagination, which is timeless. I’m taking the days as they come, and keeping faith that what is meant to happen, will happen. I’m making decisions for fundamental reasons.

Barring worldwide disaster, alien invasion, or Terminator-like machine takeovers, it’s likely that digital media—mp3’s, videos, websites—will be archived long into the future for the generations to come. Like the web, music is an infinite universe—we are inside it and it is inside us. I want to be a part of music that lives on. At times I’ve felt like every song I’ll ever write is already written inside of me. I’d like to believe that my best songs are unwritten but I feel they are already part of the universe.

At other times I think that music is a living part of the universe that we all can touch. I think songs are alive each time they are played or remembered and can be reincarnated through our minds, hearts, and souls. Right now I can’t identify my own path or purpose in life, but I’m optimistic to find out.

Two years ago today I was in New York to have The Spin Arounds’ debut album Black Light One mastered at Sterling Sound—one of the world’s top mastering studios. I had spent the months leading up to that date recording my heart out (in my apartment), mixing, mixing, and mixing my songs. It was a peak in my musical creativity, and I was easily writing song after song. I experimented with double-tracked vocals, and—since I sequenced all the drums in Fruityloops—there were some unique beats. I was aiming for the album to have 10 tracks. Because I had recorded so many songs that year, it took me several weeks to decide which ones made the cut and fit on the album. On that Saturday morning when I walked into Sterling Sound I had my list narrowed down to about 12.

Lesson 1: People are great to meet, and even famous people are often down-to-earth when you meet them. We’re all in the same boat. It was my first time in such a high-end studio, and I didn’t know exactly what to expect. But of course I knew that Fiona Apple’s “Tidal” was mastered there by Ted Jensen, so I knew it would be something good. I had the chance to have Justin Shturtz as mastering engineer. Being that it was Saturday the studio was virtually empty, and we pretty much had the run of the place. I realized that Justin and I weren’t that different, and we got along great.

Lesson 2: Be prepared, but don’t second guess yourself. I made the choice to title the album Black Light One, named after the song that had been one of my greatest memories from the previous two years, and the album included a new version of it as the title track. When we began the mastering session, the first thing Justin asked me was which track was first on the album, so that we could have a road map to follow. But I had only loosely mapped out the track order, and like I said, I still had only narrowed the list down to 12—not 10. I wrote the order on the spot, and we adjusted it slightly as we went. Justin was in the zone, and he breezed through the tracks. I was amazed at how efficiently the mastering was done. Justin is an absolute pro. We even had time to master seven extra tracks and still finish an hour earlier than estimated, which was great because it meant the price would be less than estimated too. Let me tell you, it was expensive, I had saved for months to afford this, and it was well worth it. The end result sounded better than I had envisioned, and it was true to the music. To this day, I still love it. All the decisions that I made that day worked out for the best.

Photo: Justin Shturtz (left) and Ryan Van Etten (right) at Sterling Sound on 7-14-07.

Lesson 3: It’s never too late to say thanks, but you don’t have forever either. I had always meant to mail a letter to Justin to thank him for the great job he did. But I kept putting it off, because I was waiting until I had the printed CD to include with the letter. But that day never came. Black Light One became a digital-only release (available free via last.fm or mininova). I couldn’t rationalize spending the cash to print real CD labels in the days of mp3’s and the internet. But if I had printed them, they would have looked like this: Front/Back/Lyrics/Lyrics. Justin, thanks for the great mastering work you did on Black Light One!

Lesson 4: Don’t look back too long. Move on. Think bigger. I’ve spent the last two years working at a dead-end job. It’s drained my energy day after day. I was never very good at managing my finances. I had credit cards that destroyed me for years. I’m making a turn around. I’ve even been learning how to trade. I’m still not far from living paycheck to paycheck, but I am out of debt and confident enough to risk my cash flow while I reinvent my creative flow. In the words of J. C. F. von Schiller, “Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing.” I’m focusing on my strengths such as writing, and I’m ready to make an imprint. I have faith in life, people, and the world around me.

So here’s the news: I’m launching a new website community called VirtualMusic.tv. It’s not about me; it’s about us, our world, and our culture. The focus of VirtualMusic.tv is to share ideas about virtuality, and discuss how virtual technology is affecting us, our future, and in particular the future of music. But I can’t do it alone. I’m calling all writers and video-makers, and seeking people willing to contribute editorial articles or videos. I’m really excited to see what we can dream up.

Crimson Road version: mp3 or Last.fm.
2004 original version.
my headache lives in your basement, painting x’s on the faces, in the magazines, that come for free, on the pages that free the streets, black-and-white photo, red underline, images folding in section five, this waiting room’s a little too bright, for my eyes that try to hide, on the table electric holiday, all the faces that we’ll never see, black light one: conversation, we’ll take five for indignation, my errant mind has left the building, and our white lies are quickly turning black.

Exitlevel version: mp3.
This is the version I recorded with my band Exitlevel in 2005. Vocals and bass by me (Ryan Van Etten). Rhythm guitar and backup vocals by Julian Sylvester, who now fronts The Voxys.Ryan (left) and Julian (right) in New York in 2005.

The Spin Arounds version: mp3 or Last.fm.
2007 Black Light One album version. The structure and lyrics are new on this one:
My headache lives in your basement, painting x’s on the faces,
In the magazines that come for free, on the pages that free the streets
Black and white photo, red underline, images folding in section five,
This waiting room’s a little too bright for my eyes that try to hide,
On the table electric holiday, all the faces that we’ll never see,
Black light one: conversation, we’ll take five for indignation,
My errant mind has left the building, and our white lies are quickly turning black
Black and white photo, read all the time,
Maybe it’ll all unfold, and we’ll be safe tonight
Black light one: conversation, we’ll take five for indignation,
In this waiting room a little too bright for my eyes that try to hide,
On the table electric holiday, all the pages that free the streets
When you take mine, I would change forever,
And our white lies are quickly turning black, black, black.

N-E-U-T-R-A-S-U-I-T-E.  I don’t need your police.  I get up in the morning at 12 midnight.  I like my girls extra nice.  By 2 am, I’m on cloud nine.  Till the sun comes up, I do my rhyme.  You go to work, while I hide inside, in my penthouse suite, that’s up so high.  I got no gravity for me to see.  But I got a radio, and I get real active.  Like a nuclear girl, I bond with myself.  You want the world.  I want reaction.  By 5 o’clock, I get connection.  And I didn’t vote in your election.  9 pm the clock says L, I get real loud, and lose my memory till 12 midnight.  N-E-U-T-R-A-S-U-I-T-E.  I don’t need your police.  N-E-U-T-R-A-S-U-I-T-E.  I don’t need your police.  N-E-U-T-R-A-S-U-I-T-E.  I don’t need your police.  If you think your neighbors make a racket, then wait till you meet Neutra N-E-U-T-R-A-S-U-I-T-E.  Yeah that’s me, Neutra.

VirtualMusic.tv: Where changes to anywhere in the virtual realm, and the technology is breeding as fast as we can imagine it. The clubs and venues of today will have to embrace the technology to survive, and they could be some of the best portals for connecting to the virtual space in a hybrid mix between the techology and the old-school dance floor. By the way, these clubs will recycle their electricity from the music. It’s only a matter of time before video chat goes 3D and beyond. Imagine how people will connect from club to club, venue to venue, and party to party in the virtual space. [...]

A few days later I brought the mixer tracks to Jamie Simpson at SMR Studios, who finished the mix and mastered it. Five Seconds appeared as a hidden track on my 2006 self-titled album Crimson Road.