Clockface

Back from LA, whoopee.

Haven't been feeling the need to share irrelevent life details since I got back. Probably because to sit down and hope to write anything of your life, no matter how cryptic you try and make it, forces you to accept your own reality. And you can mask it, use creative ways of saying things or even use someone else's words, but you face your own reality just the same. And I frankly haven't been feeling up to that. Because I don't like my reality. I like where its going, I like its potential, the track I'm on. But the right now, the actual day to day life and consequent situations are so motionless it's maddening. So I've been losing myself in music, and tv, mindless but occupying nonetheless. Can't think of any better way to kill time.

REM

So here I am, trying to think of something profound to write, and I have "Shiny Happy People" stuck in my head. Hm. I suppose that'll work for tonight.

Poetry, pt 2

Okay.

With music and poetry, there are those set aside as the greats, the classics, and are immune to any sorry criticism I assign to the art in general. In music, for example, it's the Beethoven, the Mozart, Bach, Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, etc. In poetry, it is all the aforementioned greats in Whitney's rather vocal response to the previous kaleidoscope entry.

I was of a more contemporary mindset when I made my claim that 98% of poetry isn't all that great. I still hold that a majority of it is crap, but a majority of songwriting is crap too. People have lost a sense of the beauty of language, and have gotten into the business of manufacturing something commercial (or lazy), rather than create something of worth.

Music and poetry both suffer from similar ailments in the world- some is far more beautiful than most will give it credit for, or take the time to understand, but there are also those songs and poems (novels, movies...) that are heralded as "great" and are totally over-rated, sometimes just plain weird. It's not my place to be on the front lines of preserving the beauty of language, but it bothers me that so much mediocrity is so readily accepted by the consuming public, as far as any art is concerned.

We live in a society of wasted words. With songwriting I do my best not to contribute to that, but I am nothing great. And I don't claim to be.

Inadvertent thoughts on poetry

I've hit a new kind of writer's block. Lyrics and music generally come at the same time, paired up in some unexplainable way, and it's very hard to break out of the original music I have in my head. I did have a few months of true writer's block where nothing was coming a little while ago, but this is different.

I feel like I'm writing great lyrically, but the music sucks. Totally forgettable, sounds even worse when I try to put it to the piano. And what are lyrics without music? Poetry. And I am NOT a poet. To my view, about 98% of all poetry is just lazy songwriting.

Something's off.

I saw a sign

Bean Truck
Pull over at Bob's
we want beans

(hand-written cardboard sign taped to a streetlamp me and my mom saw today)

For some reason that struck us as being really, really funny. Thought I'd share.

Flipping ties and radio

I couldn't bring myself to sacrifice humor entirely for the sake of being polite. So I'm here, at the kaleidoscope.

I was attempting to talk to our resident health nut who will remain pointlessly anonymous about, well, anything, when the subject matter turned invariably to food (or in my view, the lack thereof). She was excited because she had found someone to guide through weightloss (which I commend her for) via internet, and explaining to me all the benefits of a total fruit/veggie diet, mostly fruit. Somehow it came up that this unknown internet woman with a weight problem was generically spiritual, which prompted the following statement from our aforementioned slightly anonymous health nut: (refering to Adam and Eve) "...that's when their life span began to decrease, when they introduced meat into their diet". Reflect on that a moment. I know- I'm not making this up. And what I wanted to say was "Actually, I believe the fruit was responsible for that one."

I couldn't think of a graceful way to end the conversation at that point and not be totally awkward about it, so I just kind of smiled and made a mental note to skim over some Genesis later. The other funny of the day came flipping through the radio stations (while I'm there, I will never understand what my dad is looking for exactly on the radio... he'll flip through a bunch of crap we've never heard, finally come across something decent that we know, and skip over that too because "I can listen to that anytime!"... ?). Anyway, I'm getting off topic really easily tonight, so he was flipping through stations, and do you ever do that and catch some random sentence fragment that out of context (or maybe in- will we ever know?) makes next to no sense whatsoever? Our family still quotes "Hostility" from that very thing about a decade ago. Tonight, it was .... something rap that I'm sure is the number one song in America right now... *flip* ...some country crap... *flip* "All confusion has been eliminated" *flip* some Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes... Wait. Hold it right there. All confusion has been eliminated... Seriously? Well that's pretty cool. I couldn't wait to rush home and tell somebody. But really, it was one of those moments where you look around to anyone that happens to be there, wear the "did you just hear that?" look on your face and laugh about it. Maybe you had to be there. Maybe you were.


Tie-flipping statements? Does anyone remember those?

There are those every once in a while who come up to me after a show and tell me how they could never do what I do. How they would be so scared to get up in front of people and be so vulnerable in a spotlight. Personally, I don't think they give themselves enough credit, but I also think there is something to be said for finding what it is you love to do. It took me a little time to grow into music, but really has become a relationship, and I feel my strongest when I'm performing and right after I write a good song.

But these people see me at my best. What many of them will never grasp is how much I struggle in the day to day things. I feel like I walk through everyday holding my breath, trying not to let anyone else know that I'm usually on the verge of panic. Every night I think about the conversations I had, and kick myself for all the stupid things I said. I'll get off the phone (the rare times I use it) and my hands will be shaking. I don't know how to shop for groceries, or drive, or do my taxes. I have an incredibly guilty conscience and cut myself off from society entirely too easily. Until this job, I had never been successfully employed at any one place for longer than three months, maybe two. And the only reason I still have this one is I don't have a choice.

Just trying to find where I fit. Can't live on stage.

Another month, another bus pass

School starts tomorrow for three of us here, with Logan moving to the downhill side of high school, Madison finishing up middle school, and Mom headed back to the second grade. And I start working 25 hour weeks instead of the previous... well... it was supposed to be 40ish (I don't know how anyone does music with a real day job- it's a nightmare). I'm all for a change of pace, usually am, so this week will be good. I can sleep in a little more, only totally hate working for five hours a day instead of eight, and have two easy stress-free logistically simple shows to look forward to this weekend (with really good food involved for one of them).

I'm in a good place right now. Yes, I wish a lot of things were different, but I'm still in a good place. Now that we're in the fall, I have shows booked for the next couple months, then Christmas shows and various other holiday festivities, then my record comes out a) February, beginning of or b) gets pushed back a little because a label is involved. All the time I've been doing this and this last week or two was the first time I've ever had any real time frame, any real idea of time it will take to be successful in the real world. These next 6-8 months will really determine so much about the rest of my life, my label, management, etc... this is the launchpad I've been waiting for. I have a really calm sense of exciting inevitability about the whole thing. Hooray.

Finally got some time and quiet (both of which are absolute requirements) and wrote two songs yesterday. One of them I've been kicking around in my head for a couple weeks, but the other one was a very new concept. I close my eyes when I sing, and after one of my shows this week, my Dad said I should write something explaining what I see when I'm performing. My dad has offered many opinions on material ideas over the years, but this was the first one I liked so I ran with it. It turned into a here's-some-idea-of-what's-going-on-in-my-head type of thing, going back and forth between reality and my own imagination. It was really fun to write. Because I know I sound crazy, and it doesn't even matter. There's a fantastic freedom that comes with writing what you could never say or explain in casual conversation. Puts it all out there and still leaves it open to interpretation.

It wasn't something I was planning on, but I even found the opportunity to use the line "eye to the kaleidoscope".