One of the recurring metaphors is driving, and this song came from what you do when you’re driving away – thinking about what happened, what you did wrong, what you should have done differently, and the confusion of it all when you’re still too close to the situation. The one comfort is knowing that the last time you did something stupid, clarity eventually came, you figured it out, and at least next time it won’t be the same mistake.
Music
I wrote a song called “Peacemaker” today. Just the lyrics, but there’s something about it that is screaming “title track!” We’ll see what happens when I sit down at the keyboard with it, but I’m already excited about the art concepts it evokes…like this album cover idea:
No artwork today – my hand gets so ridiculously sore working all day, and isn’t healing nearly as fast as I’d like (instantly). I’ve spent a few minutes at the piano tonight, but mostly arranging, not recording, as perfection is just not going to happen like this. By the weekend, though, I’ll be working pain or no pain. I can’t handle idleness. In the meantime, here’s a photo of my new studio space, a.k.a. a corner of my bedroom where I have to trip over cords to get into bed! But I love my tiny new house, and I love my new neighbourhood, and wouldn’t trade it for my big old studio any day!
I often forget that I am the exception, not the rule.
I forget that my brain, my heart, and the cooperation of the two are a unique formula that is sometimes a blessing, but more often, it seems, a curse.. The way I am wired is what has made me an artist and a songwriter, typically described as the sensitive type. But sensitive does not begin to cover it.
This song is an attempt to explain what that means, but also inevitably a failure to explain. Only those who are wired this way will ever fully understand what it means to experience life with such acute sensitivity, to always feel the pea under dozens of mattresses and have lasting aches and pains afterward.
Only the artistic soul can comprehend the process of learning not to react proportionately to the impact experienced. The properly-wired and practically-inclined can’t quite comprehend the task of mimicking the expected response until it is no longer possible and the only thing left to do is move halfway around the world.
Call us unreliable, unpredictable, unreasonable or just bat-shit crazy… but we are the ones that make the world look and sound beautiful, and we’ll do it unpaid, unthanked, and unnoticed, because we don’t know how to be anything else.
(Un)drastic
I will probably leave you
That’s just what I do
Disappear halfway around the world
It’s nothing to do with you
Cut eighteen inches off my hair
And dye it blackest black
Tattoo someone’s name on my arm
And eventually come back
I don’t know how to be untroubled and untrue
I don’t know how to be undrastic like you
I’ll weep when you’re not looking
That’s just what I do
Fall apart on the inside
When you leave the room
I’ll say what won’t alarm you
I will not explain
Why I wish to walk alone
When it starts to rain
I don’t know how to be invulnerable, immune
I don’t know how to be undrastic like you
Undrastic, unhasty, unextreme
Unfoolish, insusceptible, unconcerned with anything
I don’t know how to be untroubled and unmoved
I don’t know how to be undrastic like you
Sometimes I envy genre-specific artists. I mean, if you’re Metallica, you know each song on your next album’s going to have one of three or four drum beats, a lot of distortion, and James Hetfield growling at the end of most of the lines. If you’re Faith Hill, you know you’re going to have steel guitar and fiddles, a few rollicking tunes and a few ballads.
But if you’re me, with genre ADHD and multiple musicality disorder, putting together a cohesive EP is an interesting task. I have 15-20 unrecorded songs, most of which have been played in drastically different styles depending on what band I’m using. Choosing five songs and making them musically relate is commitment that I’m a little afraid of. Thus, I have four songs chosen, and have changed my mind about the fifth several times. It has to be good. It has to be awesome, in fact. I can’t put out anything I don’t love – can’t pull the big label trick of a couple of singles and a lot of filler. It’s a waste of my time and yours.
So hang tight. November’s going to be killer.
My good friend Steve Cinti, an incredible guitarist, just sent me a rough guitar track as a starting point for arranging Black Guitar, and true to his kick-ass-ness, his first shot at it is brilliant. This is badly mixed and not the final product, but I just wanted you all to hear how Stevie puts the sex in sexy!
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Here’s a little bit of the rough scratch track I recorded for the guitarist. It gives you a little idea where this song is going, which is not exactly where I expected it to go, but it’s frakking awesome!
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Little bits floating in my head, perhaps the beginning of something new…
How many leaving songs do I have to write
Before I can write a staying one
When can I write a love song
Instead of merely playing one
Just a thought. May be a song. May not be. That is how this goes. On and on…
A taste of things to come…
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