I couldn't actually bring myself to post this on facebook, but....

I have tried so hard, but it simply doesn't matter. I've spent day in day out for months talking about music and people and pointing out every step of the way that i'm the problem when i don't like something.

There are no illegal people anywhere. That bullshit is made up. It's made up by people who value other human beings so little that they can't bear to spend one more second feeling like they are responsible for their own misery.

Sit down and imagine how absolutely miserable you would have to be to walk through a desert to get away from your horrible life. Imagine how desperate you would have to be to learn how to fly an airplane across the ocean just to inflict that same misery on people you don't even know.

If you have ever been offended by one of my posts, you deserve to be offended. I want to see pictures of your dogs. I want to hear you complain that today was tough because the personal problems you are facing became emotionally overwhelming. I want to see what you are DOING, and i want to support you with the limited resources i have.

But, those posts come every 12 or 13 or so, in between pseudo-scientific misinformation, fake friend requests from chicks with big boobs, nonsense self-help garbage, reasons to hate people i don't know. News flash, that's the stuff the rest of the world actually hates.

Part of me thinks "oh god you can't post that on facebook for the people you see in real life to read" and another part of me thinks "those people know full well what you think and very much notice that you don't actually conduct yourself like this in real life" and a third part of me thinks "just delete this post and say something funny about another album," and a fourth part of me thinks "if i see another pete buttigieg ad on a youtube chemistry video (i'm really into nile red at the moment) i'm gonna scream because if i wanted Sheldon to be the next president i'd write in 'Jim Parsons' instead of the name i'm going to write an entire fucking year from now because not a single one of you have any reason why kamala harris shouldn't be president," and a 5th part of me thinks "if you don't laugh, the pedophiles win" (an inside joke from the drive home from a lovely thanksgiving lunch), and the 6th part of me says "shut up, i'm trying to formulate my thoughts about the next christmas album from the 70s i want to make fun of," and the real joke behind bottle of beef is that "we're all dead inside" because the host of a t.v. gameshow somehow has a more cogent and applaudable argument than i do.

Kudos for reading this far. My point is that if this post isn't enjoyable for you to read, what in the wide world of sports makes you think your is? I'll tell you. Narcissism.

A philosophical quandary and the birth of p(nmi)t

To preface, this is not a rant or a self indulgent pity fest. This question has been on my mind for a long, long time. The question is, does a doctorate (or any institutionally conferred degree or licensure) mean anything?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is that it depends on what you think that piece of paper actually represents. The basic reality of any degree or license or whatever is that people who already hold that title generally agree that you should have that title as well. It does not mean that you are smart, or exceptional, or better than anyone. It simply means that you are considered equal without needing to reprove your prior accomplishments. That assumption may be completely wrong, but the degree nevertheless confers the benefit of that assumption.

In my particular case, i do not have a PhD because 1) i ran out of money to pay a group of people to read my book, and 2) i stopped caring. There were many strange events that led to that situation, including my dissertation advisor telling me that i should be at a much more identifiably prestigious university, several committee members actually quitting their positions, and the loss of an adjunct position at the worst possible time in the academic calendar (4 months after applications for teaching positions are generally due).  Again i stress, that is not the point of this essay. I summarize merely to point out that no one told me "you don't deserve a doctorate" or kicked me out or acted strange toward me in any way. Or, maybe they did and i didn't notice. Again, not really that important.

So, does my letting the time limit of completing a doctorate lapse erase that doctorate level education? The answer is definitely not. To any person at any company who looks at my resume, i have a PhD and am overqualified for any position to which i apply. From my perspective, that comes across as "you could be my boss's boss and i'm afraid to hire you."

Assuming i don't lie, i have to tell people that i have a masters degree and completed doctoral course work. If you called the university of north texas, they would truthfully tell you that i was ABD (all but dissertation) when i stopped enrolling.

This would seem to be a paradox. One world (academia) defines me as ineligible to hold a university level position, while another world (private commercial business) views my high level education as a liability. Financially i am both uncreditworthy (from sustained unemployment) and unpromotable (because any attempt at corporate advancement reopens the debate about my qualifications vs. the qualifications of the person reviewing my qualifications).

I am a trained theorist. The subject matter i am analyzing is of comparatively little importance. It is my reasoned opinion that most people do not feel comfortable in the presence of a person skilled in analyzing a situation and suggesting the positive AND negative effects of a particular action. That is frustrating for me because i simply do not care about the assignation of blame for any particular failure, be it human, mechanical, or systematic. My only concern is correcting a problem after it has already happened, and changing procedure is often the simplest solution; a procedure with more personal responsibility and fewer points of failure.

Yet, because i have no interest in gaining power or control, the natural inclination is to argue about the validity of my suggestions; an even more counterproductive course of action that leads to my having to point out my lack of sympathy.

Is it true that any attempt to remain objective is more harmful than manipulatively or arbitrarily choosing one side of an argument? I don't know. That question is beyond the scope of my intellect, however high or low you evaluate it.

Altogether, this would imply that a degree (etc.) is only as meaningful  as one's willingness to capitalize on that title at the expense of others. To elevate the prestige of a title one must persecute or subjugate anyone not holding that same title.

However, such a historically conservative view of the relationship between intelligence and power is clearly inconsistent to my previous explanation of my own situation. To the world at large, i have a PhD, and no amount of explaining that i do not will ever remedy that situation. Collectively, you think that piece of paper is completely unimportant, but you demand that i act like i possess it even though i don't. You want the assurance of leadership in the face of anarchy, but i hand you more anarchy.

Every man, woman, or child is a universe unto themselves. That does not frighten me, or confuse me. What confuses me is the desperate need to be lied to that i see every day. The need for a proverbial adult to keep you going, to assure you that there is any order to the coincidence of existence. Someone to make up rules that you can choose to live by or ignore, as though you are incapable of making a decision based on your experience of the world around you.

That took an esoteric turn, didn't it? My point is simply that when you look for meaning where there is no meaning, you will find an infinite array of coincidences. We are all making it up as we go, and we are tragically unwilling to let any of it fall to the ground, even when it gets too heavy to carry.

Cheers?

The quest for bad, a continuation of my aesthetic.

All jokes aside, you might be wondering what my actual goal is with all the silliness i produce. To be blunt, i am fascinated by "badness." What makes a piece of music bad? What makes a performance bad? Can an artist cultivate a world where "bad" can function without any sense of irony? In short, is it possible to document the mundanity of failure as an intrinsic part of the work itself?

Such an endeavor would require a lack of pretense. I would have to tell you that i'm trying to let myself be bad, point out the places where i am actively "not trying," and explicitly show you when and where other artists would stop and try again, or "fix" it.

I would have to search for new ways to screw up, or recontextualize these failures: introduce some chaotic mechanism, consistently do things the wrong way, sing songs i have no business singing, use sub optimal equipment, etc.

The downside, quite obviously, is that you might not believe me. You might confuse my performance for reality, imagine that i am in some way delusional, or lazy. Yet, that would also seem perfectly acceptable to my goal. I'm not demanding that you find me clever, or funny, or anything else. I am simply inviting you to observe and/or participate in the performance. I am after all, simply amusing myself in my spare time. You could tell me to stop, but i would just respond by asking which part annoys you.

"But WHY?," i hear your brain scream. Well, because it's a form of rebellion, a confrontation of prejudices, a rebuke of the capitalization of artistic value, a big middle-finger to everyone who thinks that they are better at being human. The value of art is not in how much some group of unnecessarily rich people pay each other to pass it back and forth amongst themselves, but in how it affects your personal engagement with the world around you. The older i get, the more different i want to be. I want to show the world that success or failure is an illusion, a false recognition of patterns in the chaos of reality. Quite literally, i want you to decide whether or not your opinions are true or false or fair or important, and act accordingly.

Now, if you'll excuse me, i've got 360 more chorales to record in a perfunctory manner wink, wink.....

Why improvisation?

When i dove head first into the swimming pool of p(nmi)t, my goal was simple: make as much music as physically/mentally possible. It quickly became apparent that the process of making music is much more interesting to me than being able to play a particular piece again, or caring if people like it, or trying to trick people into giving me money.

It occurs to me that the act of composition is itself improvisation. We conceive of an idea and attempt to realize it; the process of refining and rearranging that idea is simply reimprovising upon that idea, performing that piece differently each time. If i were to attempt to capture this act of composing, i would of course be improvising but i would also be building a catalog of ephemeral musical thought. In essence, i would be recording the actual creation of music, and that is terrifically exciting to me.

There are, of course, some logical sticking points in this way of thinking. To refine the recordings would be anathema to my goal, but there is a limit to how terrible i am willing to let the finished piece be. So, some compromise is necessary: "good enough" is the motto. Over production would also be unacceptable; let the music be, let whatever timbre i'm using be the music, let normal mistakes stay, favor feeling over perfection. More to the point, let the process itself be my autobiography. Take whatever i'm thinking or feeling or reading or whatever and make a musical statement about it. It doesn't matter if anyone else understands it; i've been told many times that i am a difficult person to understand.

The p(nmi)t discography is me. I think all those gloomy, silly, garbled thoughts, i make those mistakes, i hear those "unwanted" sounds (that hiss, those thumps, those mechanical glitches are part of my engagement with music), i spew out 2 hours of music then dry up for a few weeks, i make jokes about myself, i don't want to SELL anything, i just want to be mentally stimulated and watch the images flash on the back of my eyelids. It is both intensely personal and completely foreign to the me that walks out the front door into the world.

That is why i can say take my music and do whatever you want with it. I have already given it away. You aren't stealing anything from me. I would love to make money from it, but it requires you wanting to give me money; you placing some value on getting to experience what i've chosen to do with my life; financially supporting me the person instead of just buying some intangible product of dubious merit. That is what i do, i give other musicians as much money as i can afford simply for having created something i find valuable. If that has no value for you don't feel guilty, but if it does then feel free to give me as much or as little as you can afford. Either way, thanks for interacting with me and cheers.

https://paypal.me/pnmit

All over me and the dirty work of interpreting song lyrics

One of my pet peeves is reading poorly constructed song interpretations on the internet. Slapdash is fantastic, but not for textual interpretation.

Actually, this essay about live's "all over you" will be less an interpretation than the scaffold for an interpretation. I am a structuralist at heart....

First and foremost, this is not a metaphorical song. It is a simile song. You can tell by the words "is like." Go read some tragically absurd metaphorical analyses if you really want to, then come back. I won't wait.

"Our love is like water/angels" is a non-conclusive simile. Your interpretation of those nouns determines the shape of your analysis for good or for bad; so don't do it. Leave them open ended for now.

Every simile requires a predicate; it can be a punchline, or a straightforward explanation. "Pinned down and abused"  is neither of those things, it's part of the unfolding contextualization for the song as a whole. Also, songs happen in time, so "water" changing to "angels" is important, or our intelligent friend ed wouldn't bother doing it.

The next section is a metaphor, but it's used as further elaboration on the simile that proceeded it. It tells you something about the character of the narrator.

"Pay me now, lay me down": what are things a prostitute might say? But seriously, this is not the narrator you've grown to know in the last minute or so. Whether it's the person he's talking to, or himself in a different mindset, or something else entirely isn't important right now.

Foreshadowing: this song is a lyrical spiral (a common pop song structure that modifies it's repetitions and each turn gets smaller and smaller until the end is just fragments of the idea whirling faster; like flushing a toilet, or those cones you roll spare change around).

Now we get to the shift in predicate nominitive. Whatever "water" meant wasn't precise enough. "No, wait, it's more like angels! Yeah, angels...."

Maybe this song is starting to take shape in your mind now. If not, that's ok. My point is that there are two very different voices not having the same conversation with each other, and it happens repeatedly into eternity (that's actually a larger theme of the whole album, by the way). Any particular interpretation must take place inside this actual structural context, or else you really are just babbling self-indulgant nonsense.

Cheers.

The aesthetics of p(nmi)t and bottle of beef

My name is paul. p(nmi)t is my musical alter ego. Over the last few years i have created a fairly large body of music available at http://paultompkins.bandcamp.com and
http://bottleofbeef.bandcamp.com

This is diy stuff, made in my basement in my spare time. Some days i'm a passably good musician, other days i suck. I think it's worthwhile to hear both sides of that story.

I have no inclination to create commercially acceptable recordings. I don't think the world needs pop production or epic anthems, or even political stances. I think the world needs more people creating art. It doesn't have to be "good." It doesn't have to be likable. It doesn't have to be profitable.

I am a musician at my core, but my self worth is not tied to being incredible or having people like me or making lots of money. Those things are nice, but they don't motivate me.

Genres do not appeal to me. Brick-wall compression doesn't appeal to me. I listen to whatever music crosses my path and i don't feel guilty for liking or disliking it. I am just a person. I'm interested in the doing, not the being entertained side of life.

I don't play live, because noone would want to sit in a bar and watch me make shit up (improvise) for hours. I use whatever cheap gear i can obtain. It's fun to turn what's in your brain into audio, or at least i think so. It's not fun to listen to other people argue about things that don't actually affect me.  The more people argue, the more music i create. That's not really cause and effect, it's just me avoiding the argument by putting on headphones and smacking a guitar for a while.

Musicians tend to hide behind the goal of perfection and production. I take the opposite approach. I want you to see me make something, good or bad, intentional or by coincidence. The music is real, the "business" is pretend. All the image and posturing and distribution and selling is pretend. Record contracts and royalties and copyright lawsuits and unionizing (bmi, ascap, etc.) are the enemy of people like me, but it's a pointless war that i don't want to fight, so i just ignore it.

Yes, you can give me money if you want to, but you can't own my life. You can't "employ" me to entertain you, but you can watch me work and if that's entertaining then awesome!

You can take my music and use it to make your own, chop it up, listen to it, share it with your friends, learn how to play it, make it "better", give me money to support me and by extension my family of real people. You have my permission, if you feel you need it.

All i ask is that you try not to be a douchebag to the real people in your life. I think the world would be better if we all tried to not be jerks to each other.

Again, i'm just a guy who makes music and i don't plan to stop. Come along for the ride if you like.

Cheers