365 Songs – Larry Lines

This week my writing has sucked.  In some cases, I knew what I was trying to say but couldn’t say it.  In other cases, I loved the song but wasn’t able to express it.  And there are hundreds of ways to explain this.  Some of the biggest excuses could involve new jobs, soul killing corporations, being busy, environment…  And maybe some of this is valid.  And maybe my writing has just simply sucked.  And I am embarrassed to read some of it, but I am going to let it stand.  I have a couple of points to make in the long run that will be served by even my worst writing.

I want to insist that every song I have written about I have loved.  This week especially.  I put together a CD this week, and it has lived in my CD player.  I could listen to these songs for the rest of the year.  I drive up and down the freeway singing along.  It has made me sad to move from one song to the next.  And that is one of those things I am learning from doing this.  It really is very hard work letting new concepts enter my consciousness every day.  Music becomes a soundtrack for our lives.  Especially when we are young.  But as we get older, that music that was the soundtrack of our youth becomes our daily muzak.

Then there is the issue of how many stories I have to write about.  I start becoming really critical of myself when I can’t come up with more.  And I don’t know why I would become critical to tell the truth.  But I was listening to this song that I am writing about right now (regardless of whether you know that), and I knew that I had failed yesterday when writing about a song that I loved.  I was feeling sad that I wasn’t able to express that, and kind of embarrassed.  And I knew that these two things, lack of stories left and feeling embarrassed about what I wrote, could totally kill me.  This is my whole life..  Writer’s block (i.e. not knowing what to write about) and not wanting to take a chance because I might suck.

“Life on the margins, little looks we have to steal”

Then there’s the idea that it isn’t necessarily that I don’t know which stories to write about.  There are real people involved in these stories.  People that could be hurt or that could see the stories differently than I did.  This isn’t necessarily a problem even when it is absolutely true.  I have found ways already to change the way I present a story so that I leave out just enough.  But there is a lot of energy that goes into that as well.

“I want to run like vagrants hand in hand across this field”

And all of this is metadata – data about other data.  And funnily enough that is my new job.  I deal with enormous amounts of metadata.  And like my job here in this forum, it is difficult to remain interested in the attributes rather than the information.  The meta-me is what I am talking about.  These songs are about me.  The artist’s stories are stories about my narrative.  Our common ground is difficult to recognize and live in on a daily basis.  And I hope I am being clear, because it’s very difficult to be clear with such an abstract concept.

“But I know the way you are I could fall into the star”

We like to celebrate our differences and our culture right now is all about dividing us.  I am trying to remain awake to the idea that we aren’t very different at all.  But my tendency toward isolation is really a pull that’s almost impossible to fight.

“It’s not easy for everybody to faill in love.”

And right now, one of the hardest things to do is remain passionate about this new music that is entering my life.  Because I compare the larger than life emotion of the expression in the music and compare it with the gray daily life of work that has to be done.  And I have to remind myself that this is one of those fantasies that just ends up making me ache.

“The city walls are reigning perilous and tall over dark chilling streets”

So while I have been awake, and I have written some stuff that has moved even me, I feel like I am missing everything.  I am missing the mark at work.  I am not interested in information about information.  The name is a name, not an attribute.  My clothes are not important.  The garbage on the floor of my car is not an indication of who I am.  This blog is not the music.  It’s not even a map.  My singular voice is my point.

“And I know I want to live my life”

We are all trying to find or invent meaning in our daily lives.  But there are more moments alone for me than in contact with the people that provide the deepest meaning in my life.  I think most of us are stuck with these circumstances.  Whether we are driving up and down freeways and sitting in cubicles for most of the day.  Developing laugh lines from our fake smiles that we give to people that we don’t really want to connect to.  Sitting in hospital beds alone trying to maintain a firm grip on the purpose of choosing this particular suffering.  Sitting underneath bridges.

“Don’t want to waste my time”

In most cases, there was a point to what we were doing that we can’t remember most of the time.  Something that made the pain or dull ache worth it.  And it’s so hard to keep that purpose in mind when I am not in contact with people that bring me joy.  That there is a larger sense of mission.  That I love my people.  That I love myself.

“Trying to strike the right lyrical density.”

And this can be the hardest part of the whole entry.  This is the part where I write a paragraph about the song itself.  As if I wasn’t writing about the song the whole time.  Really please!  I understand that the concept is abstract.  But every word I have written so far is about how kick ass this song is.  I am left wanting to change my whole fucking life every time I listen to it.  While writing this damn thing, I have listened to it about 30 times.  The attributes – the metadata – are irrelevant.  The relationship to progressive rock and Queen in particular.  The blues turn arounds?  The harmonic progression.  The incredible amount of time that went into this song.  It’s all clear.  I can hear Ramesh Srivastava suffering over all of the lyrics he has.  What to leave out – what to put in?  But he has so much of his life on the tip of his tongue.  Isn’t this all of us?  You sing every damn word you got.  Holy shit!  If I could write lyrics like that, my songs would be 90 minutes long.  And the connection to the music!  Usually you get this kind of lyrical density and the music and lyrics are disconnected.  An afterthought.  Voxtrot puts a lot of work into this concept.  And I am putting a lot of work into trying to express how it makes me feel.

“I used to be your biggest fan”

And I remember a girl that I don’t want to write about.  Who was very private.  Who was too depressed.  Who lived in Houston, Boston, Albuquerque.  Who follows me everywhere I go.  Who lives in a hospital bed.  Who walks free in her dreams.  Whose smile follows me everywhere I go.  Who are you?  Who am I?  And how I lose you when I am sitting here refreshing my fucking inbox.

“I used to be your biggest fan”

Yes I did.  I used to believe in myself.  I was a child and every day wasn’t a subject for my biggest critic.  The scrutiny of the peers in my head.  Every moment thrashed and dismissed.  I didn’t worry about whether I would fail.  I danced like a fool.  I searched for mud puddles.  I loved the rain and the wind.  I waited for the sunset.  I played the guitar like I was a rock star.  I wrote like I loved every minute of my life.  I spoke like a man possessed.  And sometimes, right here in this moment, I am connected to that madman.

“Now I find that you are slipping in my estimation”

Yes you are.  You disappointed me with your less than perfect blog entries.  The passionless daily existence of a job at the pinnacle of some career paths.  So ungrateful and arrogant.

“I used to be your biggest fan”

Finding enough courage to create in the face of all these voices of criticism.  To be able to subject myself to the actual criticism beyond the tip of my nose.  Not the self-flagellation in my head.  It’s a wonder that I can get out of bed in the morning.  Maybe that’s why I simply don’t go to sleep.

“Now I know that you could never love someone like me”

How many opportunities do we have to truly express ourselves?  Probably every day.  So it really must take a lot of work to avoid it.  I’m not apologizing for the last time.  I am not re-committing myself to being forgiven.  I am not looking for a redemption that begins in the morning and lasts all day.  I won’t be a better man.

“I made a mistake, well I made two, one for me and one for you”

And I’m going to keep making this mistake.  I’m going to keep listening.  And expressing myself.  Searching for the thing that moves me about it all.  Searching for the weakness in my armor.  I’ll find it sometimes.  Other times, it’s just going to be a bunch of hollow clangs that miss the mark.  The music gets to me every time.  Every single time.

“The science of music is stupid and cruel”

And I don’t want to quit writing about this song, because it means I have to move on to the next one.  I love this song.  It’s the cruelest thing about this project of mine.  I want to pause on Voxtrot, The Morning Benders, Odd Nosdam, Ra Ra Riot and Hot Panda for a long time.  This is my favorite week of music since I started this thing.  And the lamest writing.  Hopefully I got this one and it makes up for the rest.  But maybe not.  It’s not important.  What’s important is that I hang myself out there regardless of how cruel I am to myself.

But let me end it with a great lyric that I wasn’t able to fit into this entry.

“I want to be the toast of the shanty town…”

He’s just got so many great lines.  It’s amazing that he is able to string them together into a single concept.  It’s amazing that the band maintains all of that interest through the whole piece!  That they’ve done it on more than one song…

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There’s this concept in sort of fringe American social and political groups that there will be a civil war in our lifetime.  This concept has probably been around since before the country was even founded.  Perhaps it’s even a human condition, but I don’t really know.  Mostly it seems like a bunch of white guys talking about the coming apocalype.  I have been around this scene quite a bit and even believed it for some time.

“It feels less important when you want to wait it out”

And really there can be almost nothing more ridiculous than this belief system, but it’s something encouraged every day in little fringe scenes, partisan talk radio and general water cooler talk.  I’m not sure why it’s so prevalent in the American democracy.  It’s really almost embarrassing to think about.  Every time a group of people does not get what they want from our government, talk of fascism and totalitarianism come up.  And people even start preparing for war.  Buying guns because the liberal president is going to make guns illegal or because the conservative president is going to jail all dissenters.  The details are amazing and true, and I have seen and participated in this kind of irrational behavior.  It took some doing for me to realize that when the government was doing things that I agreed with, I thought the revolution people were insane.  And when the government was doing things I thought preposterous, I was ready for war.

“I had enough, either give me what I want or put me on the streets”

Well the war isn’t coming.  At least not today.  And all of the people that think it’s coming won’t be proven right if it starts tomorrow.  If you make constant predictions about the future, eventually one of them will be right.  I am guilty of this as well.  And I certainly like it when I get my way, but I am pretty sure that the one thing that is true is that if there is some controlling mastermind wanting to take control of our lives and thoughts, the first thing they would want would be for us to be paranoid.  An easy way to do this would be to encourage any propaganda that was misleading – talk radio, fringe scenes, etc…

“I’m getting tired of living my life like nothing’s happening.”

The truth of our lives is much more obscene.  I wake up passionless and tired most days.  This makes me angry, but I don’t know what to do about it.  I want to blame someone.  But there is no one to blame, even the government when it does things I disagree with.  And most of my disappointments have been self-imposed by my own fear, self-loathing and malaise.  I don’t have what it takes in most cases to live a life I would deem worth living.  And the president, my neighbor, my strange family have nothing to do with that.

“There’s nothing left to talk about but there’s plenty left to do.”

So I’m pretty sure that in most cases, I am just trying to escape the fact that I don’t do the things that I want to do on a daily basis.  I seize so few opportunities and make such a big deal out of the opportunities that I do take.  And my definitions for success are so narrow and close-minded, and they are usually the definitions that were marketed to me by corporations.  I invent so many excuses for continuing a mythology that has given me nothing.

“And if it’s all the same to me then you know it’ll be different to you.”

The thing that makes me think of this is that when a real change is thrust upon my life, I really feel the passion for life that I think we all crave.  And right now that change is a baby girl that wants to come early.  And my recognition of all of the passion that we ignore is in my son’s eyes.  Even completely exhausted at the end of a day, the world is his oyster.  And yes it’s easier to do when you are young and everything is new.  But it’s also easier to do when you haven’t filled your life with the preemptive disappointment of “I can’t do that.”  Or the disappointment the pending civil war will bring – better not to try.

“I’m getting tired of living like I’m dying while the world is moving on.”

The Morning Benders have a deceptive garage band psychedelia going on.  Their music is tight and well composed.  There is a lot of musicianship in the band.  The instrumental performances are very impressive but you have to pay attention because whatever dexterity they put across is always in the context of the song.  The guitar, bass and drums are working on the same motifs and compliment each other without being boring.  And the vocal performances are catchy melodies with unexpected lyrical phrasing that catch me off guard.  It’s a lot of fun to listen to, and they put together a pretty complex tapestry of light hearted discontent.  It’s an ironic sound with ironic lyrics.  I’m not sure that they were after as much of the direct context that I have read into Waiting for a War, but I like where my head goes with this song.  It’s the idea that I am my own obstacle.  That the coming apocalypse is my own personal apocalypse that I am living right now.  I don’t need to predict anything.  My self-destruction is imminent and planned by the cabal in my own head.

“Here I am in a graveyard waiting for a war.”

And really part of my rebellion against my own malaise is this blog.  Rather than sitting around waiting for someone to listen to me, I am finding ways to listen to you.  I will make your music part of my soundtrack.  And I have to say it’s one of the more difficult things I have ever done.  But by far this is one of the most rewarding and optimistic highlights of my life.  I have discovered so much about myself and music that I didn’t even have an inkling about before.

“I’m here, I’m calling out your name.”

One way or another, my daughter is coming soon.  I am excited and scared.  And I should have it no other way.

“I’ve been here before.”

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My six year old son’s favorite song right now is Cold Hands/Chapped Lips by Hot Panda.  He makes me drive around in the car so he can listen to it over and over again.  He calls it the “yeah yeah no no” song.  And I’m not just humoring him (although I am humoring him but not ‘just’), I like driving around and listening to a song when I’m into it as well.  And there’s something detoxifying about the song which seems very necessary for us right now.

“Saw a girl I used to know.”

I had a friend in Houston that we all spent a lot of time with.  We had a lot of fun doing ridiculous stuff.  And really I almost don’t where I’m going with this because I was a lot wilder at that time too.  But we would hang out and do dumb things like mixtures of mystical readings.  Like two people did Tarot readings, but they had different decks.  I did the I Ching.  Her thing was numerology.

“She’s got a job that’s so adult.”

I don’t remember a thing that any of us talked about but none of it was very serious.  It was just something to do when we were all broke.  Sit around drinking tea and coffee in someone’s living room and do stupid readings.  She was in law school at the time.

“Now we’re shaking hands.”

Years later I ran into her, and I didn’t see any remnants of the person I knew.  We had a very polite conversation and went our separate ways.  And I always thought of it as her being the one that changed.  By that time, she had graduated from law school and passed the bar.  It never occurred to me until just now that maybe I had changed just as much by that time.  I was no longer wandering around the country.  I had a haircut, and I was working as a programmer.  Maybe my change was far more dramatic.  She had actually been in law school the last time I had seen her.  So becoming a lawyer had been on her agenda even at that time.  I went from anarchist nomadic rebel to oil and gas programmer.

“Yeah yeah yeah yeah…”

And even now in my haste to get from one place to another, it’s only me that’s changing.  The world hasn’t gone anywhere.  It’s still round.  The sun still rises.  The moon and the stars were still there the last time I checked.  I can do my best to make the circumstances worse by focusing on how I can’t relate to all of the changes.  Or I can bring one of my biggest rules to live by: All organizations are defined by my involvement.  I can shake things up as much as I want.  Or I can decide to feel persecuted by every sidelong glance.  And really, that’s not my style.

“No no no no…”

And I can’t see where Iggy is right now.  He’s playing all of his cards pretty close.  I know he’s going to be fine, but I also know that he’s going through some life defining changes right now.  Everything was one way, and now it’s another way.  I could make all of that mean something too, or I could let him define it however he wants to.

It’s easy to make situations worse as a parent.  When they fall, you have to hold off your reaction to see if they are actually hurt.  They are constantly looking to you for reassurance, so if you freak out before knowing if they are actually hurt, you could actually be the cause of the trauma as well as the comfort after the trauma.  But I can’t help but feel a little sad.  He’s having to do some growing up right now that I hoped could be put off for a few years.

Hot Panda seems to have taken every dramatic rock and roll presentation style that’s available and morphed it into a single style.  David Bowie, The Who, Iron Maiden, Daniel Johnston, Genesis…  I guess I could go on but it’s pointless.  There’s something indescribly familiar, adolescent and comforting about even their most chaotic songs.  And the final comparison that keeps popping into my head is the artist, Cy Twombly.  On the surface, everything looks like a child did it.  But with further observation, you can tell that the child like nature is measured.  There’s a specific point to the metaphor.  And maybe it’s a simple message, but it’s still powerful.

So during the crazy bridge that happens in the middle of the song, I was looking at Iggy in the rearview mirror.  He was very thoughtful.  He saw me looking at him and he said slowly, “That’s so awful.  But I love it.”

“Yeah yeah yeah yeah…”

And really that about sums it up for me.

“No no no no…”

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I keep having these waking moments where I am half dreaming about Lucy in a sort of twilight between one world and the next.  And I feel myself reaching for her, but I can’t get to her.  She’s almost here.  She just needs to be led by our voices, but she can’t understand what we are saying.  She’s just almost here and almost there.  Sometimes our voices startle her.

“When every little thing”

I was at the beach with my brother this weekend.  He kept telling me about stone crabs down at the oyster reef in the bay behind his house.  He kept describing their claws and that you had to know how to find them underneath the rocks.

“You own is looking back”

So I remembered how when we were kids, my brother would find all of the living things everywhere.  There was a little stream by where we lived in New Jersey.  We would go there and he would spend hours finding the crayfish buried in the mud at the bottom of the shallow water.  Then he would observe them closely for hours.

“At you and starts to mean”

He did this everywhere we went.  At the beach in North Carolina, he found the sand crabs and the sand fiddlers in the tidal sands.  Blue crabs in the sound.  Little living things are everywhere.  And he would find them.  So we were fishing on the oyster reef, and the tide was very low, so he calls to me, “See I bet there’s a stone crab under here!”  Under the first stone is a medium sized crab with giant claws bigger than its body.  He stuck a small board down into the crab’s face.  The crab reached up and grabbed the board.  My brother lifted the board and the crab came with it.  Hanging in the air.

“Less than it ever did”

Apparently stone crabs can grow their claws back, so you can rip off a claw and throw the crab back to grow another claw.  We didn’t take a claw as we aren’t sure whether it’s such a great idea to be eating seafood out of the bay around Galveston right now.

“On every, on every inch of stone”

And I kept thinking of him turning the stones looking for the crabs.  All of this life hidden everywhere, and most of my day is spent oblivious to it.  There ended up being giant crabs buried in the mud under rocks I had been standing on for hours.  How much life is right in front of my face?  How close is Lucy?  I mean I see her.  There she is in the physical belly.

“Skin and cloth”

But we are skin and cloth.  Like the unpracticed notes of nature on a dry drum, we don’t make any music.  Just noise and reflection.  Static matter.  And somehow even this is breathing life.  The universe expanding.  Breathing.  Pushing us back and forth.  Even living in death.  Immortality in the close intimacy of mud underneath a rock and the empty caverns of blackness between us.

“Made to leave you”

And I feel myself digging in the muck for life.  It’s a creation ritual.  And how many rituals do we miss even as we perform them.  When my son was born, I didn’t recognize that I was part of this rite until it was almost over.  No less profound, I am deeply affected by it.  The universe split open all at once like a bolt of lightning and handed us a child.

“Here you are you are breathing life into”

This is a little different.  I feel her coming.  I can hear her voice.  I can see her little body in the graphs produced by the heart and contraction monitors.  Her digital face.  Her hands that never stop moving.  Twisting back and forth.  Her body is impatient.

“Ghost under rocks like notes found”

And she can hear us.  Our concern.  Our worry.  Our impatience for her arrival.  Her mother’s gentle and loving chiding.  Her brother – already long past disbelief like she was Santa Claus.  He probably believes in Santa Claus more than her.  The nurses in and out.  The endless discussions about the river of giving that is our community.

“In pocket coats of your fathers,”

She is tugging at my pant leg.  She is 14 and sullen.  She is 8 and incorrigible.  She is an enormous healing.  An open wound and the bandage.  An infant smiling.  A newborn red and puffy, unready for the world.  We are willing slaves to her instincts.

“Lost and forgotten,”

She is preparing us for an enormous disruption.  Her brother exhausted, expectant and disbelieving.  Her mother quiet and brooding.  Her father pouring his heart out to her.  I am digging in the mud for your claws.  Take a hold of me and pull yourself into the arms of the universe.

“all all all your soaking wet dreams,

Belief only a spark.  Listen to our music, thrashing in the dark.  We are here.  All of what you are is breathing and growing.  Groping in the dark.  Can you hear us calling you?  Let us lead you home.

“you’ve spent them”

Ra Ra Riot has this tendency for the dramatic.  With dense harmonies and instrumentation.  Complex vocal melodies and interesting phrasing.  It’s a maximum approach.  There is so much to hear.  So much worth hearing.  I had a hard time choosing a song to write about, which brings up another point of unfairness in my single song per artist rule.  Ra Ra Riot has so many good songs.  But Ghost Under Rocks is gigantic and multi-faceted.  Unclear and open ended metaphors and this grasping for the ritualistic.  The song wants to dance in the moonlight and sit in a smoky hut.  Groping in the mud for hope and deliverance.

“you have gone and dreamt them”

And you reading.  When is it time to live?  Creation doesn’t ever end.  We are stone crabs.  Ghosts under rocks.  Waiting for our turn in our lives.  Our own time.  We are the road on which our children walk.  So much is left up to chance except the passion leading our children out of the dark.  As Lucy coalesces, I can feel that she has been there all along.  Piecing together our shattered hopes and aspirations.  We are only shadows of her dreams.  We toss in her restless slumber.

“Dry, now you ask your babies why, why, why?”

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I had this idea in my head in high school that I wanted to go to Princeton and major in English. Each year of high school took me further and further away from this goal. I could not keep it together for more than a week. Eventually I got kicked out of public school. St. Thomas gave me a chance after seeing my grades and test scores. They told me that if I could prove myself during summer school, then I would graduate on time. So I pulled it off. Of course, summer school went fine. If there are crises or rapidly changing scenarios or bizarre challenges, I can do just about anything. It’s the normal, consistent routine that’s the problem for me.

As the regular school year progressed, I started missing school and getting into trouble again. But the school treated me like I would pull it together in time. They had this college week thing where representatives would come from a bunch of colleges and universities. You could set up an interview with them where you could go through your interest in the school. Then they could tell you what you needed to do to enhance your chances of being accepted. I set up an interview with the Princeton representative.

Just the idea of meeting with someone from Princeton was a sobering thought. I really did pull it together for a short time leading up to this interview. But I was definitely nervous as the time approached. And so I went to the interview. And we got through the formality of meeting, shaking hands and sitting down when the man doing the interview interrupted me to tell me my nose was bleeding. So I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and I never went back to the interview.

So I told myself all kinds of stories about this. And it has become part of my drug addled teen mythology. But honestly, I hadn’t done any drugs in months. I used this perceived failure as an excuse to go on a self-destructive binge that got me kicked out of St. Thomas and into a treatment center. For years, I have been telling the story the other way around. Like right before the interview was when the binge started, and that’s why my nose bled.

So I heard this song for the first time about two weeks ago. And something about it made me think of this story. And it seemed so out of character for the tone of the song, but maybe it isn’t. There something sad happening there. And the noise that it starts with is probably the feeling I had about the whole thing. Just wanting to run away.

So this morning I am on my way to the new job that I am fairly nervous about, and I’m listening to this song. It’s a big company. I don’t seem to do well with big companies. I find them kind of stifling I guess. Or maybe I just like to make things more difficult. I always feel sort of rejected by the whole corporate environment. I do much better with start up software companies. More freedom. More creativity. More impact on the overall direction of the company.

So these are my thoughts while I am driving in today. And it occurs to me that a startup sounds an awful lot like a band. I don’t want to get into an established commercial music venture or cover band for the same reasons. I want the freedom of controlling my own creative ventures. And then it occurred to me that the motivation behind a startup is the same as an Indie band. You follow a set of principles based on a mythology that is awfully similar. A startup has merely to have a good idea and some people that are willing to devote 70 or 80 hours a week to this idea to be wildly successful.

And this is all tied into this thing that has been becoming very clear to me as I have been writing this blog. The concepts behind this mythology are lies. And I have been saying something pretty similar to the thing I was saying the other day in my entry for Make You Sing when I have been going on interviews at startups during this round of unemployment. I keep giving this little speech:

“This would be my 6th time at this stage of development for a startup. And none of them have been successful. They all have good ideas and then something happens like a downturn in economic conditions or a lack of capital keeps the company unresponsive to the changing needs of the customers.”

No wonder startups haven’t been interested in me this time around. My experience is like a reality check that they aren’t going to be the rock stars that they think they will become. Because this little Indie company doesn’t have the connections to the people who will invent the new inflated value that gets them over the top. We are all being duped by major corporations that we will have this corporate success, but the truth is they don’t even have to kill our dreams anymore by telling us that we don’t have what it takes. If we are still on the hook with the corporate mythology that we will become start up moguls or Indie band crossover rock stars, then we will run up our dreams on our credit cards. Being in an Indie band is no different than being in a software startup. We see the Trent Reznors and the Microsofts of the world and it makes us dismiss all of the more modest stories as losers that just didn’t try or believe enough to make it happen.

So I am pulling into the parking lot and I am messing with my nose because it itches, and I pull my hand down and I’ve got a handful of blood. I’ve got a ridiculous nosebleed. I start feeling that ‘gotta run’ panic. Like I’m just going to turn around and go home. And then I start laughing. “What the fuck difference does it make?”

So I went inside. I had a conversation with the security guard about where I was supposed to go while holding my nostrils. He kept looking at me like I was a nutcase. So I laughed and asked where the bathroom was. It took me about 10 minutes to clean up and make it stop. Then I went upstairs and met the development manager who had been waiting on me for a while. I told him and the other new guy the story. They didn’t find any humor in it.

Odd Nosdam has these great techniques for bringing life to electronic sounds.  Even the parts that sound disjointed and robotic have an organic element.  And it’s odd to think of the tools he’s using as instruments like a guitar is an instrument, but everything sounds so analog.  And yes, he’s using a lot of loops of analog devices, but it’s not like the end product isn’t an original song.  It’s even heavier this way.  A bunch of recycled sounds from the piles of audio refuse.  It’s more collage than sampling.  And most of the work has so much more emotion and depth than I would normally expect from music like this.

Then I realized that this song makes me think of that story because the sound has all of this irony packed with sadness. Like here you are human. Have another human experience. The pillars of salt are all around you. The eyes of stone peering out from the lost.  You can find the eyes of Medusa to stare into, but it won’t be because she tricked you into looking. It will be because you had to know how you were going to lose. So have a fistful of blood. All roads lead through the corporation.  But laugh because even the snake headed corporation can’t have your soul if you don’t let them.

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Back in 1991, I was in Ear Training 4 at Berklee.  The teacher was awesome.  He had a lot of energy and he organized trips to Africa every couple years to study rhythm with an African tribe.  He was very exciting and dynamic.  One of those teachers you want to impress.

Ear Training gets pretty arcane after a while.  At first, you are just identifying scales, intervals and simple rhythms.  Then you move on to identify complex harmonies, harmonic tension and complex, sometimes odd, time signatures.  This particular teacher used familiar songs to identify more complex structures.  Like Changes by Yes.

And for those of us used to just picking out things by ear, detailing the documentation for a complex rhythm was pretty hard work.  Honestly, looking at this song, it doesn’t seem so hard right now.  But back then, when I was just being introduced to a lot of these concepts, this was incredibly difficult in the way that a new riddle is difficult.  Of course it seems easy when you know the answer.

“I look into the mirror”

We would take a song like Changes, and five others, home and try to transcribe a few of the instruments and what the time signature was.  Then we would come back to class and discuss the outcome of our analysis.  The riddle would be exposed at some point, and we would either have it or not.  But it was pretty likely that we would get it from that point forward – lesson learned.  The teacher encouraged us to learn the songs thoroughly which of course meant more work in an already busy semester.

“I see no happiness”

At the time, I was getting burnt out.  Berklee does three full semesters a year.  You can take the summer off like normal people, but the school doesn’t really attract normal students.  Four semesters in a row was taking its toll on me.  I still studied hard, but I was really tired and just wanted Ear Training to be over.  And Ear Training 4 was the last ear training requirement.

“All the warmth I gave you”

As the semester came to an end that Spring, there were a bunch of auditions happening.  Berklee always did a bunch of international outreach with jazz and R&B bands going on foreign tours to promote Berklee.  I really wanted to take some time off that summer.  There was an audition for a rock/funk band going to China.  All instruments needed.  I was doing auditions a lot so I was getting good at it, but auditioning sucks.  It’s like doing a 15 second job interview.  The programming equivalent would be standing in line, when they let you in, they sit you at a computer and they say, “Okay, write a file parser with a team of people you have never met in 15 seconds.”  GO!

“Has turned to emptiness”

I actually really wanted this particular gig.  It would have been quite an experience.  So I showed up early and sat where the line would be forming.  I knew even then that being the first person at any type of interview was the best.  People remember the first person.  After that, you better really be good.  If you are both, the first person and really good, then you can nail it.

“You’ve left me here believing”

So the door opens and the audition starts.  And as luck would have it, the guy in charge of this ensemble, even managing the whole trip, was my Ear Training 4 teacher.  He was pretty excited to see me and greeted me warmly.  He ushered the first group of us in.  One instrumentalist for each part in the band.  Then he started handing out the sheet music as we all set up.  He caught my eye as he slid the music in front of me pointedly.  Changes by Yes.

“In love that wasn’t there”

I hadn’t learned the music.  This was a guitar part that if I had learned it, even by rote, and pulled it off in an audition, then I would have looked really good.  It was really just a turn of bad luck for me.  But it was sort of a crushing blow.  Given the opportunity to focus on one thing that could accelerate me into a pretty decent performance career, I just simply focused on the wrong thing.  That’s pretty much my professional life in a nutshell.  The designated path to success is never the one that I could follow.  I don’t know whether this is good or bad.

“Change changing places”

It seems like such a shame that this is the story I have about Yes.  Their music captured my imagination at a very young age.  Roundabout is a song we would listen to over and over as kids.  Mood For A Day, a flamenco classical guitar composition by Steve Howe, I learned on the guitar while in treatment when I was 17.  Starship Trooper is a progressive rock masterpiece.  Owner Of A Lonely Heart got me through some brooding teen and early adult years.  Changes is a complex and well orchestrated composition that showcases Trevor Rabin in the band for the first time.  I prefer the Steve Howe era of Yes, but Trevor Rabin is such a great addition to the sound.  There is so much more of Yes because of this time with Trevor Rabin.  And the name is represented metaphorically by the music.  There are a lot of time signature changes.

“Root yourself to the ground”

I have since learned that these on the spot kind of interview/auditions are not for me.  I used to take these tests during the interview process for programming languages.  I have stopped taking them.  If someone insists on a test, I tell them they need to find someone else.  If they want someone to ramp up quickly and figure out their system overnight, that’s me.  If they want someone who is an expert at this one thing, then they need to find that person.

“Capitalize on this good fortune”

I actually think that a lot of people are like that.  Innovation is discouraged as a matter of fact in our daily lives.  From our education system through our entire professional careers, the question is loud and clear, “Do you know how it has been done before you?”  It’s a relevant question and it’s necessary for society to foster this for the purpose of consistency and security in our society.  For a creative person with lots of ideas, it can be a crushing blow.  “You want to wake up every day at the same time and do what?”  But even then, creative endeavors are anchored in the past or else we would have to re-invent the wheel every time we wrote a song.

“One word can bring you round”

But for most of my life, change has been the only constant.  There are some clearly defined ways to achieve success in some careers.  I don’t see anything wrong with this.  But I don’t seem to be able to follow any of these paths.

“Changes.”

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I didn’t want to play commercial music.  Like actual songs for commercials.  It’s not what I got into music for.  -  I got sick of being in bands with flakes.  You work your ass off on rehearsing a band and then someone quits or just stops showing up.  -  All of the drama around working with other people.  -  The work of getting a band on stage is exhausting.  Even when it’s going well, you still have to get up in the morning and go to work.  -  And right now I can tell you, I hate this entry.  There’s so much I love about music, but my actual pursuit of music has made me feel terrible about myself.  Some of my internal chatter around musical pursuits is almost debilitating.  Why did I spend all of that money on music school?  I’m not that good.  What a waste of time!  I am not consistent enough to actually put together a real effort.  I’m not good or could be better at promoting myself.

And really with what I am doing right now, it would be easy to say to myself that I was just pursuing the wrong thing.  I seem to be doing the right thing by writing about music rather than playing music.  And it certainly would put a nice bookend on a lot of creative suffering.  “Ohhhh…  I was a writer.  Not a musician.”

But let me tell you, I have been here before.  I have written so much on so many different subjects with different styles and different voices.  I have written poetry, tried freelance journalism, short fiction, essays and political commentary.  Some of it was pretty good.  Some of my music is pretty good.  I love creating.  I love moving people.  I love knowing that I have touched people in some way.  And you don’t have to be a prodigy to reach people with music or writing.  There is some kind of spiritual synergy around breathing life into art that can’t be taught.  And when you hit it, you know you’ve hit it.

“Put your hands together and we’ll pray.”

And I have written and performed music, when I wasn’t very good at singing or playing the guitar, that moved people.  Just before moving to Boston, I played regularly at Downtown Grounds in Houston.  We played there the night it opened.  A lot of the time I was playing there just to fill time.  The owner often didn’t have anyone to play.  Sometimes bands would cancel.  I always had my guitar with me.  Sometimes we would just start playing if no one else was.  There were a couple songs that people started requesting.  Sometimes people would call me when there was no one playing and request a set.

“Memories coiled tight to spring.”

There is a mythology in our culture around music.  That somehow you put together a band and develop a following, and then a major label notices you.  Then you are a rock star.  And perhaps that translates into many different forms of art.  Visual, writing, music, drama…  We have merely to have some talent and ‘go get em’ bravado to get on our path to the stars.  This mythology is so strong that if you work your ass off and fail, most people will believe it is something about you that is the cause of  your failure.  No one will believe this more strongly than you.

“And make you sing.”

But I think perhaps that this a mythology that is everywhere in our culture.  You went to school for what?  Why aren’t you doing that?  Oh you must just be lazy.  You are a musician?  Oh why aren’t you famous?  You aren’t happy?  Well you know maybe you should just decide to be happy.  There’s not very many people I know that are satisfied with where they ended up personally or professionally.  That’s why a song like this speaks to me.

“Such a simple sickly thought of mine.”

There’s a vision of the world that’s encouraged when we are children, and the reality of even the simplest childhood dream is so far removed from the fantasy that’s encouraged.  If we aren’t supposed to reach for these larger than life realities, then why do they exist as ideals?  And I mean the simple child like ideals.  You want to be an architect?  I can see you building great buildings.  We conjure images of I.M. Pei and the seeds of the mythology of greatness are planted.  Of course, the alternative is ghastly.  I don’t think it would be a good idea to limit our children’s expectations by telling them about the realities of CAD drafting electrical conduits.

“I’ll always be a loser but in time.”

The Sleepover Disaster has been doing what they do for a long time.  They are really good at it.  I am always impressed when a band has been together for so long.  But I love the whole idea and the giant sound of the guitars, the plodding beat and the patience with the arrangement.  The emotional impact is timed well throughout.  I obviously feel deeply about the message.  There are a lot of disappointments in life.  But it’s a really great accomplishment to be able to move people.  What else do we have to live for?  Our connections to each other and our world, our universe should be emphasized more in our daily life.  That’s why I’m doing this.  I want to reach you.  I want to reach myself.  I want to reach a group of musicians like The Sleepover Disaster who have been working their asses off for longer than I was able to handle it to let them know – I heard you!  We heard you!

“I’ll make you sing!”

We didn’t expect to become adults just so our passion for life could be killed.  We didn’t dream about what we would do with our lives just to grow up to be disappointed with ourselves.  I didn’t spend thousands of hours alone honing my craft to have someone off-handedly tell me that I needed to be able to promote myself better.  That I needed a more corporate sound in my music.  A more marketable message with my writing.  We have become a culture of critics in the worst sense.  We all have an opinion about the apparent failure of some peers and a ready excuse for the dizzying success of others.

I’m not saying that we should all be rock stars.  I’m not saying that anything should change.  And some of my failures, and the failures of others, have everything to do with a half ass effort.  But I think we would all be better served to spend a lot more time consuming the creativity of those around us.  We are all Indie artists.  And there’s no reason to try to break each other down because we are at the bottom of the ladder.  Can you make me sing?  Are you afraid to try?  Are you afraid of failing over and over again?  I know I am.

“You’ll learn to love yourself if you just kill your pride.”

Hell yeah!  In idolizing the fantastically successful.  In putting aside the creativity to focus on the impossible puzzle of self-promotion, I forget why I wrote anything to begin with.  I forget why I love music so much.  Music made me want to live when there was no other reason for me to live.  It’s the connection to creativity.  The connection we have with life.  The connection we have to our children’s passion for living and growing up with hope.  For learning and teaching.  For being able to articulate what is going on with us in such a way that…

“I’ll make you sing.”

That I make you sing.

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The Kinks are one of those bands that I could sit around all night fighting with myself about which song to write about.  It kills me in a way.  Because when I look at the reams of music that they have in my head, I wonder how it is that it has been at least 20 years since I owned anything by The Kinks.  It’s like 30 years of music that has some enormous influence on who I am.  Which song do you choose out of all of that?

“They put a parking lot on a piece of land.”

I can remember about a dozen stories before I moved from NJ when I was 12 that involved a Kinks song.  And for some reason I remember very clearly a girl in 7th grade that used to sing Destroyer all of the time.  The late 70′s hard rock era of The Kinks was how I first got to know The Kinks.  It seems unfathomable now to think that I hardly knew anything about The Kinks before Give the People What They Want.  And how the hell does a band stay so relevant and obscure at the same time?

“Where the supermarket used to stand.”

There are all of these Kinks songs that were popular in the 60′s.  Then they were covered by bands in the 70′s and the performances were so iconic that these are the performances we remember like You Really Got Me when Van Halen covered it.  And it’s funny because I was just sort of drifting toward sleep a little while ago.  My brain started toying with what I was going to write about and Come Dancing just popped into my head.

“Before that they put up a bowling alley.”

Now here’s what really got me writing about this song from this perspective.  You Really Got Me came out in 1964.  In 1978, Van Halen did their cover version.  In 1983 at 13 years old, I had no idea that You Really Got Me was written 20 years earlier.  I thought it was a Van Halen song.  So sometime in 1983 I was living in Houston and bought State of Confusion with Destroyer in mind.  I was surprised at its lack of hard rock edge, but I was into it anyway.  And I played Come Dancing over and over again.  The video machine wasn’t as polished in the early 80′s, so I didn’t see the video for months.  It took me a few more years to make the connection between the string of 60′s hits and The Kinks of the 80′s and the Van Halen version of You Really Got Me.

“On the site that used to be the local Pally.”

And why was Come Dancing carving a place out in my head?  I wondered at this even then.  I was really into a fantasy life at the time being that my connection with the real world was intensely depressing.  I couldn’t connect to anything or anyone in any meaningful way.  But I had no connection to the nostalgia that he was singing about.  I didn’t even like dancing.  And I remember wondering how he had any connection to what seemed like 50′s bands.  Certainly he wasn’t that old.

“That’s where the big bands used to come and play.”

And thinking about that now makes me nostalgic and seems kind of funny in a normal way.  I loved The Kinks and thought of them as somehow relevant to my time as a teenager.  Like Van Halen and The Kinks were the same age.  And maybe that’s something that I forget a lot of the time when I am telling stories about my misspent or misguided youth.  Some of the events were significant and sometimes disturbing in an adult way.  But I was a child.  Sometimes I forget that about myself.  And this song makes me nostalgic for that.

“My sister went there on a Saturday.”

I love Ray Davies vocal style with a talking sing song approach and how it differed from other songs.  For some reason on State of Confusion, his British accent was apparent on every song.  His singing on so many earlier albums is actually singing and not a styling that often uses spoken word, so you can’t really hear the accent.  But it seems intentional along with so many other things that The Kinks changed over and over again.  The guitar sounds are so updated on State of Confusion, but that could be heard from album to album throughout their career.  And then there’s this keyboard carrying the main hook, and the horns in the bridge.  Obviously nostalgic for a simpler time in their own lives and a sister they missed.  I think we all forget sometimes that we were children.

“Come dancing.”

And maybe with so much to prove as adults we forget about the simplicity of the song.  So concerned with the deeper significance of everything.  And this isn’t altogether new for me.  I needed songs like this at 13 years old to remind me that I needed to slow down.  Sometimes the deeper significance is the simplicity itself.  Sometimes it’s good to dance even when you generally don’t like to dance.  Sometimes it’s good to refuse to worry even when there’s something to worry about.

“That’s how they did it when I was just a kid.”

Tomorrow is another day with a whole new list of problems.

“And when they said come dancing.”

Iggy’s sister dancing away in the womb.  I guess we are all going to come dancing.  Because you are rolling away in there.  Hang on little Lucy.  Hang on.

“My sister always did.”

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Sometimes I might get caught up in my loftier goals with this blog.  I have a very important point I am trying to make.  I am actually being very anti-corporate and trying to make a pretty extended academic point about the ignorance in academia about Indie media and it’s importance.  In the larger scheme of my approach to this, I don’t care if I make those points.  I am really trying my best to give my very best appreciation of the artist.  A work of art derived from the original work of art.

“People put pictures of places in frames.”

But right now, the side project of documenting some sort of anecdotal memoir is being sidetracked by the very large distraction of my wife being in the hospital.  So the first thing I think about when I am trying to write about something is that my wife is in the hospital.  It’s a little too relaxed to be sitting around with some kind of smug bull shit about “I remember when…”  Great Larry.  Maybe I can subscribe to your newsletter.

“I remember someone’s face but then I forget their names.”

So then there is this idea, and I should continue it, because truthfully I feel like it is that important.  Maybe not for it’s original intention, but maybe for the idea that I seem to be reaching people.  And maybe the first person that I seem to be reaching is me.  I really believe in what I am doing for the first time in a very long time.  Maybe for the first time in my life.

“I have a book for writing down who I meet and where I’m going to,”

And it may be that I am reaching one other person that it is critical to reach.  My wife.  She is in a hospital bed and completely isolated from the daily life that brings her comfort.  From any feeling of connection and viability in her own family.  The discussion of the daily difficulty of life is too stressful for her right now.  She has to be quiet and meditative.  Pulling energy and calm from the spiritual.  Her quest has me as close as I get to not being an atheist.  Without being able to discuss the daily stations of the cross, we are left with each other’s presence as comfort.  But since I have so much to take care of to continue our daily lives, proximity is limited.  The only way I can reach her is by creating.

“but my home is nowhere without you.”

I was a little hesitant to allow myself to like Herman Dune.  And I have a problem.  If I can’t write a dissertation or engage in a ranting monologue about why I think something is important, then I can’t really like it very much.  So I was toying with the idea of continuing to listen to this music and never writing about it.  But then it occurred to me that there is something very important happening here.  Herman Dune is offering up a simplified style that gets deeper with each repetition.  There’s this quality production style.  And this laid back beach bum sound.  And a strange French accent.

“There is nowhere like the ocean to breathe.”

David Ivar is a vocal stylist.  It almost sounds like a way of saying, “The guy can’t sing but I like his music anyway.”  But really there is something a little more complex to his rambling style than just a bizarre voice.  It’s a really accessible metaphor for a deeper spiritual simplicity.  I am not going to get into a whole lecture about other examples of vocal stylists.  But there are plenty.  And comparing them with David Ivar is going to cause an argument with myself.  So I’m just going to have to agree to disagree with me.

“And the world is wonderful as it is.”

And on some level he reminds me of Jacob Holdt in the idea that he seems to be holding up a mirror as his only commentary.  This sort of leaves a blank page where he should be.  And just as I was about to dismiss him completely, I found My Home Is Nowhere Without You.  It’s like he’s doing Tarot readings.  He repeatedly offers the same cards in the deck.  It’s almost a joke.  We expect the fool.  He appears to be offering what we expect.  Then you look closer and it’s actually the hierophant.  A hierophant styled as a fool with a mask on the back of his head.  Suddenly there is a candid challenge to explain myself.  Who are we and what is happening to us now?

“Now I might try to settle down on some beach in Malibu,”

And the action of time is being held at bay – the blacks and whites of negative space.  I am a bolt of energy in a cross dimensional melodrama.  The only importance in the narrative is my own emphasis.  The tension hovers and breaks apart in an Ambien haze.  The messages reach me from across the distance between us in the middle of the night.  They are incomprehensible and completely clear at the same time.  The hours of the night will inch toward dawn, and Herman Dune has thrown the dice into the future and the fool has returned with a reassuring answer that only the hierophant can interpret.  Only time will tell.

“but my home is nowhere without you.”

And somehow this is all so necessary.  There needed to be some ritual that ushered in a new era.  An era in which Lucy could exist.  Nothing could possibly be the same from this point forward.  And we will climb the mountain and dance around the fire to prepare the way.  To answer the call of the spirits.  With all of the irony of the fool and the gravity of the hierophant we open our eyes in a liquid dreamworld and find the wide eyes of the hermit staring back at us.

“My home is nowhere without you.”

Herman Dune keeps throwing those cards at me.

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There are miles and miles of concrete in Houston.

“It was a moment for the books.”

And while I just discovered Little Hands of Asphalt the other day, I was searching for a story in the past to write about.  And I wondered why it was Oslo that was so gripping to me.  It’s such an intimate story about a small city.  I racked my brain for something to relate to the song out of Albuquerque.  Some synonymous elements and regional contrasts and a clever spin on the story.  Meanwhile I’m driving nearly 100 miles every day.

“The calendar looked”

My wife is in the hospital.  The doctors are trying to keep her from giving birth early.  No stone will be left unturned toward this end.  It is a noble cause, but there are hospitals and shift nurses.  A 6 year old in Kindergarten.  Family and friends that need status updates.  Errands to run.  Homework to be done.  Lives to be lived.  After school programs to register for.  Ash Wednesday to acknowledge.

“just like the novels we had only skimmed through.”

Daily rituals to adjust.  Spirits to assuage.  And all of this driving to be done.  Space and time to massage until it’s putty in my hands.  This is a story as important as any in my life.  I am the reporter.  Here is my live feed.  And somehow a sentimental song about a small town is the soundtrack for the leap into light speed my life has taken.  Somehow it seems appropriate.  With all of this chaos, an environment of stillness has to be maintained.  Lucy is after all, a baby.

“So I circled out the dates that I’ll skillfully waste.”

And I was searching and searching for the story that would bring this song home for me.  Some clever segue into an existential experience.  When I realized that I am here having a human experience right now.  And there is nothing that has come as close to seeing into my heart as it is right now than Oslo.

“For now that’s going to have to do.”

And the miles of concrete become just sidewalks in a small town that I happen to be traversing at an enormous city pace.  And thinking of how many experiences get us here.  So many bridges that I thought were burnt.

“It was the brightest summer day, after we swam into the lake,”

In the past month, online social networking has brought all of these segments of my life back together.  From elementary school to junior high to high school.  All of these personas that I have presented throughout my life must be resolved.  Maybe something I haven’t wanted to do.  Maybe something I need to do before my daughter is born.

“that you told me our luck is gonna end.”

And the backdrop of this is a world in chaos.  War, economic collapse, corruption, partisanship…  People are angry beyond description.  My existential tendencies might get me wondering why we are bringing another child into this world, but our personal circumstances won’t allow this.  Our little crisis is the center of our world.  Our love for each other in our corner of this troubled world trumps any global concerns.  I’m going to have to plug back in later to see what happened out there.

“So we better be concerned.  We’re where the subway turns.”

And then some part of me has to know.  I have to have one foot in each concern.  I have to provide, so I start a big job next week.  My miles traverse the chasm between these worlds.  There is electricity to deliver.  Natural resources to plunder.  Negotiations to extend.  Somehow we must reach a truce by 5 o’clock.  Live to fight another day.  Then I cover another 50 miles making sure to transition my emotional state to one of caring parent and compassionate spouse.

“We need a camera and some cash to spend.”

And this baby delivered from the sea.  Her brother delivered to the trees.  The ashes of his prayers on our foreheads.  We  wait another day and experience the tiny miracle that is our love and peril.  The phone calls from the concerned.  The generosity of the able.  And still show up to put ourselves down for the evening and nourish our souls.  Each day a phenomenon in giving and a lesson in receiving.

“And our picturesque blame, we’ll put in Ikea frames.”

Somehow we will bundle the experience in some cohesive narrative that we can recall at dinner parties into the future.  That I can somehow fit into a few hundred words in a blog.  But each mile is a an experience.  And this enormous city gets smaller and smaller each time I drive down its gaping freeways.  The arteries pushing me like a blood cell with a payload of oxygen.  Breathe in, I am home.  Breathe out, I am in Fulshear.  Breathe in, I am in the medical center.  Breathe out, my son’s elementary school.  The church.  The freeway.  Clear Lake.  The grocery store.

“Up on the wall it looks profound.”

Little Hands of Asphalt is a new discovery for me.  With a conversational style and a sentimental approach, this is some very thoughtful music.  With impressive instrumental performances and measured vocals, all of their songs are so intimate and reach beyond their simple themes.  Spit Back at the Rain is their EP that I have been listening to for a while, but Oslo is on a compilation from the Oslo, Norway Indie music scene called Oslo!  And somehow the song has wormed its way into my present circumstances.  Such a compassionate approach to the human condition.  And a reminder to me to stay calm.  I present the compassionate persona.  I give the gifts of the magi.  The scents of a king.  The trappings of a queen.  Hope is all we have.  And the freeway gives and receives.

“and reminds us Oslo is a small, small town.”

Yeah Houston is a small, small town.  Breathe…

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