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24 september 2000
sunday night's special I drove to Wamba's to barbeque and work on "Shake," which is sounding more and more like a real song everytime I sit down at the keyboard. Tonight I had a complete (if unpolished) set of lyrics with me, and the melody began to merge with the music for that magical moment in the genesis of every song where the creation crosses the line from abstraction into reality. It was an evening of discovery for me. I found that my singing voice can do things I never thought possible, prompting a comment from Wamba: "Wow, cool intonation there..." which immediately made me self conscious and back to sounding like the skinny white boy I am. But he was right for a moment. There was a point where I was singing and the tone sounded like it was coming from a deeper place than just my larynx, and all I could think was that it had to be the lyrics. This is the very first tune I've ever written in my own words. In all of my previous songs, I'd put myself inside a character and write a story, or I'd write a third-person story about other imaginary characters. This one, though, is about me, and my life, and my feelings, and it's already hitting close to home when I sing it, for I'm finding that it's a helluva lot easier to draw emotion from reality, as opposed to fantasy. And it is a _very_ personal song, so personal that I'm almost afraid to let it out in public for fear that the person(s) involved will recognize it and prompt me to turn beet red as I say "yes, that was kinda about you." I mean, what was that guy from Toto thinking when he wrote that sloppy piece of sap for Rosanna Arquette? And then she dumped him. Figures. At least "Shake" is a post-breakup groove. The dumping's already happened. Shall I take some solace in that? So, while I posted the lyrics for my last tune here for all to see, it ain't gonna happen with this new one. Not yet, at least. Would it shock to admit that it's already the best song I've ever written? It's probably why I'm holding it so close. The song first came to me months ago on Pico Boulevard, two lines and a cool melody that I couldn't get out of my head. And I slowly wrote a song around it. And tonight I found that those original two lines, that original melody -- it's getting in the way of the rest of the song. And I'm about 90% sure that the song would be stronger if I just yanked those two lines in their entirety. So I'm throwing out the baby, knowing that the bathwater is better without it. My reluctance to do this is strong, which is why I've given myself a few days to think it over. Wamba and I revisit on Wednesday, and that's when I'll finalize the structure and start writing out individual parts for the band. Who knows, we might be performing this thing in about a month... ~~~ Typing in a weird application called TextEdit (such original nomenclature) -- it's the replacement for SimpleText, and ships as the default text editor for MacOSX. I'm really beginning to love this new OS -- it's just unfortunate that it's still in beta, and a lot of the features I rely on (wireless networking comes immediately to mind) are not supported yet. On the bright side, I love the UNIX shell, and it hasn't crashed on me once. The AQUA GUI is phenomenal once you get used to it; the new finder in cooperation with the dock is intuitive to the point of "how did I ever live without this stuff" -- the large icons seem extraneous at first, but now I'm coming to rely upon everything they tell you about what you're about to click on. See today's pic/screenshot -- when you minimize a window and send it to the dock, the icon actually shows a graphical representation of what was in the window. So there, in the dock, is a mini-internet-explorer window containing this site. Even cooler, if you minimize a movie while it's playing, it keeps playing in the dock, so you can watch it in the icon. How cool is that? OK, I'll stop drooling over technology now. It's kinda pathetic, I know. But what's a geek to do if he has no woman to drool over? Um ... that didn't come out quite right. Please erase any mental images you have of saliva streams descending from my lips at the mere sight of my dream woman. What on earth am I talking about? Writing in circles, downward spirals, mind is dead, time for bed, got the picture, and the song is on it's way. 24 september 1999: : on a long hiatus 24 september 1998: : on a brief hiatus 24 september 1997: wasted wallet weather : I overdrew my checking account today, on a check to the IRS of all people. [ swim back | email me | swim ahead ] |
