Sea Change

It figures that during a week that's seen a bunch of argu-, er, disagreeing, with our manager about some of the final album details and on a day in said week when I've been at it since 7:00 am without a break doing a number of exhausting things... I can't sleep and I find it almost midnight with no shuteye in sight and the alarm clock set for 6:30 am.

Of course.

Yet I feel like I'm on the verge of something... the album, regardless of these final skirmishes, does sound great and will go out into the world and connect with a wider audience.

This morning I performed the Odyssey out in Hinsdale at 9:00 am... then again at 1:00 pm, and a third time at 2:00 pm. I haven't really put down enough here about the Odyssey, but it is tiring to perform it just once so... three times in a day is draining.

From there, I hopped in the car and wove through the nearly rush hour traffic on the Tri-State up to Deerfield where I taught from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm without a break, ten straight students. Whew... 

When I say "on the verge"... I have no idea what I mean. I just know that I think I'm hitting a pivotal time. A bunch of things, from the album to the Odyssey to my songwriting are reaching a point where they could go either way.

Either the album does well and we continue developing as band or it doesn't and we lose momentum.

Either I get serious about the Odyssey and turn it into the legitimate business it could be, or it fades into a hobby.

And in all this, I've found that I'm literally oozing music. It's not as gross as it sounds. It's just that every time I've picked up the guitar over the last month or so, I've found myself writing something I like. It's productivity and quality that I've never seen, ever, in the 5 years I've been really serious about writing music, and I haven't even had much time to write recently... it's just been almost effortless.

I've got 6 tunes done and a good 6 others in the works. For those of you scoring at home, that's almost another album worth of material, and Bottle Boy isn't even out yet. Similarly, I hit the end of my third Odyssey performance today and, even though my voice was frayed from and hour and a half of singing, the last couple songs just flowed out of me... I could here it in my voice, how easy it was for me, how confident I sounded.

Which is strange because singing is still, in some ways, very hard for me. I've gotten to the point where I know I have a good voice, but I'm still figuring out how to use it, how to have good performances. 

Today... it was happening. The voice, the guitar, the whole thing. And it just felt effortless. I guess that's the theme here: working hard, feeling like it's effortless. That's what people who perform at the highest level in any discipline do. Maybe I'm starting to get closer to that from an artistic standpoint... maybe that's what this is headed towards.

Case and point: last Thursday, one of my students didn't show up. So I had a spare half an hour to practice and write. Almost immediately I stumbled into this delicate guitar pattern that just hit me as being... worth some attention. I started kind of humming some words and I realized the words were actually good.

Soon I has two verses and part of a third. On Monday on the train, I spent 15 minutes tweaking the lyrics and now I've got almost three verse of what I think is one of the most poignant tunes I've ever written...

It just... says exactly what I want it to say. I was thinking I would add a chorus, but after playing it today, I think I may keep these verses back to back and develop the song in a somewhat unorthodox way from there. The third verse, specifically the third and fourth lines, isn't quite there yet, but the rest is golden.

Maybe if I can finish it tonight, I can sleep.

DECEMBER STATIC December static streaked the sky The streetlights blinked as we walked by I didn't mean to let you down The darkness came without a sound You took the train, it made you cry I let the how destroy the why I didn't mean to leave you there To taste the salt hanging in the air The winter left us black and blue And the drugs don't work like they used to We try to make the embers flare If electrons stir, you had better beware

jbg