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03 december 00
the beat is on me I've never had a big vocabulary, and I often feel stupid when I don't understand a word in the context of a colleague's speech, or writing. Some I know will speak as if they sleep with a dictionary, seemingly spewing obscurities from the pages of Merriam-Webster simply to impress the lowly me's around them with their vocabularic brilliance. Then there are the writers who live with thesaurus at side, abiding by the mantra "if it isn't hard to read, or difficult to comprehend, it isn't worth writing." And I get it -- just because I have to read a sentence three times before understanding it makes it a good sentence, right? I remember my ex used to read stuff like that in grad school. Back when she thought she wanted that PhD in English -- I'd be cooking and she'd be reading and she'd sneak up behind me in a reverse hug and put the book in front of my face and say "left side, second paragraph, first sentence, does that make _any_ sense to you?" And I'd stare at it, read it three times for good measure, and reply honestly "not a bit," which elicited a peck on the neck and a "good, I'm not that stupid" from her. Of course, there are also those writers who, exhausted or bored by their many trips into the thesaurus, like to make up new and even more obscure words. Similarly, yet in converse to the analectic dimorphism of the prior paraphrased prose, the above surhypothesis may also be applied to the practice of creatively placed sonics, umm, where did that thesaurus go? (yeah, just like that) Or, like, y'know, it's kinda like that with music too, but in this case it's possible to a victim of that which I complain... I'm getting into trouble with music -- anticipating a giant roadblock to my playing, and hitting it dead-on with my songwriting. For if a verbal vocabulary contains the building blocks of writing, what constitutes a musical vocabulary? It's mostly applied memories of songs heard, liked, loved, listened to, over and over, an eventual inheritance of style, embedded in the soul, and begging for application. And just like there are those writers that thrive on unreadable thoughts, so there are the musicians that create with inaccessibility in mind. Once again, it's all about the large vocabulary, throwing as many musical metaphors together in a masturbatory mess of sonic something-or-another. These musical wankers often call their product "jazz," but some of the historically verified "masters" of jazz may disagree with the new nomenclature. Me, on the other hand, well ... I'm more about accessibility, and I've been called a sell-out, most often by myself, for trying to write catchy tunes that people might actually enjoy without having to listen too hard, like staring at one of those "magic-eye" posters in the shopping mall. I could never see those fucking things anyway. I've been listening to so much music lately, craving it, addicted as if to a drug, and I feel my vocabulary expanding, almost dangerously. It's too much for my mind to process, as a songwriter, as a player, I'm stumbling over myself more than ever. And everytime I think I might have a grasp on the shear magnitude of that which I must grasp, my ears throw something else into the mix, and the process begins again. I already have enough "building blocks" to keep me occupied for eternity. Why complicate matters with more? To prove the depth of my knowledge and influence? To who? In the music store this afternoon, picking up some cables and spare parts, it would have been so easy to get sidetracked for an hour or two with the latest in keyboard instruments. And yet I purposely steered clear of that part of the store, heading direct the rotating cable racks to locate what I needed. I was in and out in five minutes. In the wake of musical idea overload, I came home and fucked around with my new tune "Shake" a bit. I somehow shortened it by 90 seconds; am I thinking "more radio ready" here? Funny, considering I haven't even heard the tune outside of my own imagination yet. I messed with the words as well, and now I daresay the song is less finished than it was this morning. I think that's a good thing. Tonight I watched the John Lennon bio on NBC. It was strangely disappointing, concentrating more on soap-operatic melodrama than the music itself. But then, John himself said something like... "It's not about music, it's not about marketing, it's about money, and if it'll make money ... I'll put on a bloody monkey suit but you better have the money for me, and I mean a LOT of money." However cynically Mr Lennon have been speaking, the music industry really hasn't changed a bit. What worries me most is that Lennon believed what he was saying, and that I'm starting to believe it, and play to it. I'd rather think I'm playing to global accessibility and not money. Fame as opposed to fortune? Can we separate the two? Suffice to say that the "wankers" I mentioned above, deliberately creating the obscure in both music and writing, tend to remain uncompensated, unheralded, and unsung. Most of them I meet are proud of this fact. Fame and money aside, I'll never be proud of creating the incomprehensible. Another potential hit song, coming right up... 03 december 1999: : relaunch on the 18th 04 december 1998: mamalopenga : And that's the story behind how I found him today on the balcony outside my office, washing my windows, and unzipping his fly as if expecting something from me. Such is life in the California workplace. 03 december 1997: tiered tiring of tires : "Do I fucking LOOK LIKE I CAN GIVE YOU A FUCKING QUARTER????!!!!" [ swim back | email me | swim ahead ] |
