I wrote this song many years ago. I never published it with my EP or later as a single. The recent comments by a New York Times reporter regarding Obama’s birthday crowd being ‘sophisticated and vaccinated’ reminded me of some of the elitist lyrics. When I first imagined the song, I wanted it to have the energy of a big musical number set to Mozart-style chamber music. Had I had the production dollars, I would’ve put out the song in order to have an excuse for the music video; of course, I have it storyboarded already. My revived writing dedication has spilled over into music again, and I would very much like to go back in the studio: finish incomplete … Read More
Attention
You’ve come across a new song or album and immediately like it, and you become addicted to it, needing to play it and hear it over and over till you’ve memorized the lyrics and the music precisely. You’re enjoying it stuck in your head, and you find yourself humming the melody when it’s not playing. You may also annoy your friends when they ride in the car with you as it plays ad nauseam. It’s all you want to hear and sing and dance to. And in hearing it so much, you burn it out; it gets burnt out. You can ruin it for yourself. Eventually, it moves further down the list of albums downloaded. Through time and new music, it gets forgotten about. … Read More
On Poetry
We are all so polarized, now seems like a fabulous time to argue on behalf of something. There are two types of people in the world: those whom read-write-enjoy poetry and those whom do not. These ‘do nots’ haven’t even mustered disdain; it simply doesn’t exist. My relationship with poetry as a thing to tend to or enjoy has ebb and flowed. I have been under a misconception the bulk of my adult years, believing myself to not care for it. I can’t specify the recent trigger, but a lightbulb switched and I found myself admitting I’d been writing it the bulk of my life. I’ve written songs since I was a teenager. My brain had somehow separated song writing … Read More
The In Between
Well at least this blog hasn’t stopped accumulating spam! The Russians are everywhere, I tell ya. I certainly haven’t been here, so why am I letting it gather dust? Because it’s really hard to loosen the grip of an ideal. We need ideals for our better selves, even if they only become a cudgel, mentally chastising when we don’t live up to them. There’s never anything wrong with wanting to improve, but at some point you put up or shut up. [cue Phoebe Snow’s song Never Letting Go] As I’ve said, journaling – or simply documenting, is no proper writing, other than to build up a tolerance against hand cramps. But the music! Yes, there’s more of that too. If … Read More
Pardon
-as a statement, not a question. Sometimes it needs saying. I have never used the word pardon as an apology. I say pardon in the office to rehear what you said. Always better than ‘what?’ Here, now, I say pardon to alleviate myself. I only want to acknowledge where readers have felt a discordant pulse in what I may usually put out. It’s interesting where our insecurities lie, where I have found mine to rise: after I’ve expressed too much, shared too much, given too much. Immediately I feel an equal pull. I want to retract, regress, refrain. Under this debate… I feel a resonance and in moderate harmony with feminist: the when and the why we silence ourselves! This … Read More