Notes
Lyrics
Voice of an angel, I ain’t got one
Ya know the crew that cleans up the dead ain’t ever done
You gotta nothin to say, but you gotta say something
What else can you do but quote the king
You’re so young
No one’s told you yet
There’s beauty out there
And it needs all the help it can get
You leave in September to see your girl
A choir waits to sing your praises, cherubs to set her pearls
When your hero lets you down are you gonna do the same?
Quote the king, pass the blame?
You’re so young
Has no one shown you yet
There’s beauty out there
And it needs all the help it can get
There they go, church bells ring the evening hour
Swans come in on the water, the day is closing like a flower
This is the moment to listen to everything
This is the time to kill the king
You’re still young
You’ve got all you need to live
Find the beauty out there
It needs all the help you can give
Notes
It’s a dangerous time, when all seems well. I pause, I reflect, I notice, and I think, “Hmm. Well now. Everything sure does seem to be fine. Perhaps I have earned this moment of serenity. This ‘down time.’”
But that’s dangerous. And stupid. Shall we say, stupid dangerous. To be kind, let’s call it a moment of wishful weakness. Every moment of repose in a state of contentment is dangerous. Especially now, these days, this timeline, etc.
We know better by now, don’t we? It’s always something. Constantly something. Just cuz you’re not aware of it doesn’t mean it ain’t happening, waiting to pounce when ya least need it. Contentment is reckless. Only thing worse is avarice and desire. Not good things to have right now. Don’t imagine what could be had. Seek confirmation of all that could be lost. Gratitude? Sure. Go for it. Contentment? I don’t think there is a worse moment or greater delusion. It’s exhausting.
The Buddhist concept of nirvana is, as I understand it, not a place or a state of happiness or dopey serenity, but a freedom from desire. Life is joy and sorrow together, says the Buddha, like a fish and water, horse and hay, pancakes and syrup, I dunno, maybe some other kind of metaphor; but nirvana is an acceptance of it all. No ego, no wants, no seeking of validation, and not even an understanding of the big all; just acceptance. I’m not a Buddhist, I’m barely anything, but it makes sense to me. And the price of entry is completely free, you don’t have to buy shit, which is probably why we in the western world avoid it. We like to buy. We’re at a loss without something to buy. It’s a poor man’s doorway to validation.
So much of our society is geared toward manufacturing validation through a purchased experience; with influencers, FOMO, YOLO, what have you, nirvana seems like a million miles away. I don’t know why we’re so easily manipulated into it, why we crave validation, need it, practically die without it. I’m certainly not above it. I don’t think I’m crippled when it doesn’t come my way, but man, it sure feels good to get some. Who doesn’t want to know that their shit is working for someone else. Hearing it from someone in the form of a compliment or encouragement is one thing, I suppose. Seeking it via commerce is inevitably hollow. I’ve been there and done it. It can get kinda desperate. Bill Hicks declared a death sentence on all people in advertising, for capitalizing on our greatest weakness as a course of business and ethics being beside the point. I can kinda see his POV. And I’m sure he was joking. Aren’t we all. Lol.
Supposedly, there are people who get by on their own juice, self-validating, chugging along, nuclear-powered, with their 5am cold plunge, 9 cups of ferrett coffee, fasting, prayers, whatever. Or at least, it seems like it. Online, in particular, where one can curate the presentation of one’s existence, where the patron saints of self-doubt flourish unfettered, anything is possible.
But the only certainty I have, and I don’t got much, is that no one is truly self-sufficient. No one is self-made. There is always a measure of support from somewhere. And yes, validation = support. People cannot live without some degree of validation.
And by live I don’t mean physically, literally exist; it ain’t like water and they ain’t gonna die without it; I mean like, truly live. Getting the most bang for yer buck outta this life, and so forth. If you don’t have that validation, that support, that love, whatever, all you’re doing is surviving. And man there’s a wide spectrum of survival, ain’t there. It can clean up nice but most of it ain’t so pretty. Navigating this shitstorm of a culture we have ad hoc constructed for ourselves just isn’t possible on your own. It’s too brutal and relentless. And if someone appears to be doing just fine without, well, they’re compensating somewhere.
Humans, humanity, whatever you wanna call it, we’re all tied together, despite all the crazy divisions we have concocted for ourselves and all our horseshit sanctifying “individuality.” Your own mileage may vary but we as a people, society, species, whatever, are so far from where we oughtta be, need to be, in terms of oneness with each other, brotherhood, atonement, at-one-ment, however you wanna say it, that it’s genuinely, deeply discouraging if you stop to reflect on it. We desperately need help from each other and it does not appear that help is on the way.
So I try not to reflect on it, big picture. If you focus on individuals, look at the tree instead of the Endor forest moon, I gotta say, you can feel some hope. Ya buy yer banana at 7-11, ask how the day is going, say have a nice day back, so on. People smile, there’s a shared moment of something that is ostensibly nothing but is actually pregnant with quite a bit, like a redwood seed or something, and ya carry on. It’s almost enough to go on, these individual interactions. Be nice, get some nice back, and holy shit, ya feel good. It’s a crazy enough idea to work, I tells ya. The world does not need another entrepreneur, iconoclast, individual, or god help us, disrupter, blah blah blah; it needs a few more professionally, committed, dedicated, empathetic, plain old nice people. That’s all.
So I like to keep it microcosmic, cuz ya read the paper and whoa nelly. Shit is falling apart real fast. I can’t do it, truth be told. I try, but I get a pang in my stomach or pelvic floor, my inner lotus wilts; I dunno, and I gotta shut it off. Can’t read it. Makes me wanna take the family and move to Papua New Guinea. And sure, you will hear that shit’s always been like this, just read the news back in the day and you’ll see it’s the same shit different epoch, but man, that ain’t a consolation. Ya mean we’ve always been a train wreck? We never had it together? Those “golden days” were just as dumb, evil, and self-destructive, and all we did was sweep that domestic S&M under the carpet and tread the same fabric again? Who could feel better knowing that?
That said. I ain’t a dummy, I am well aware that America was and is a vast, towering, listing-in-the-wind scaffold of popsicle sticks built around a brick chimney of antipathy toward our fellow man, in all pigments of masonry. Once upon a time there was an experiment. Let’s enfranchise all these slave-owning guys with an economy on the backs of the disenfranchised and elect fellow enfranchised slave-owning guys to keep it up. Two centuries in and hows it going? Well, our entire economy is still powered by the disenfranchised, despite rather galactic efforts to the contrary, so I guess we’re nothing if not consistent. But the disparity seems worse than ever. Our culture celebrates quarterly earnings that are underwritten by overseas jobs we’d never dream of for our own kids. How that never enters the conversation is beyond me. Hire wage slaves, see stratospheric profits, and reap orgasmic praise. No ethics, just earnings and ejaculation. Capitalism is entirely underpinned by othering and dehumanization and we can’t pat ourselves on the back hard enough for selling it to ourselves as a digestible morality. A wise person once said that humanity is not rational, it is rationalization. Amen, fella, ma’am, whoever that was.
So not only are we myopic it seems we’re dumber than ever now. We’ve got all kinds of resources at our disposal and we’re racing to discredit or disabuse ourselves of them, or just monetize them down into atomic dust. At least in the industrial revolution we agreed on physics, science, whatever. Now it’s a cult thing. The opportunity to sway with facts has passed us by. The sky is poisoned? Nah, that’s a hoax. We got labor problems? It’s people sneaking into our yard under cover of night to pick strawberries when they take a break from mass rape. The world is an unfair and unjust horror? If the man upstairs dealt ya a shit hand, ya probably deserve it somehow. It’s a test and a trial and on and on. See? Everything is fine. Apple cart maintained.
And I get it, I guess. It’s all pretty scary out there if ya put down your phone for a minute or two. Terrifying to look at the injustice and indifference of the universe and realize we’re kinda just out there, nailed to the ground in the antithesis of a sensory deprivation chamber, while the rest of reality is a directionless void operating on a train schedule as fortuitous as it is barely comprehensible. Imposing order on that, as humans are wont to do, can involve some painful mental gymnastics. But even more difficult, apparently, is contemplating the amount of self-sacrifice it might take to make the distribution of fairness just a little bit more even for everyone. That’s a third rail these days: asking people to do or even consider feeling something uncomfortable regarding their property tax for the benefit of a buncha strangers like refugees and immigrants. That’s “radical.” Helluva racket we have going here.
I realize full well that not everyone has this kind of antipathy. But all evidence indicates that there’s more than enough.
Anyhow, it’s well past being a slippery slope; it’s a cliff that we’ve already gone over but we’re still in the car, shit’s floating around like a vomit comet and impact is anyone’s guess away.
So. To the point. This song.
I get home from work, I get about 30-35 minutes to play some guitar, after making dinner, picking up kids, dropping off kids, what have you. This was a C chord to F chord thing. Lazy shit. I was talking to my daughter. She was telling me about a song she wanted to write, and we started recording something for her. But right before we did, like, the moment before I pressed record, I played the opening chord change to this song on my acoustic. I think I was even talking to her while I did it, not even thinking, strumming out of habit, capo on the third or fourth fret. So even though mechanically it’s boring and routine, it sounded different. But nothing transcendent, you understand. So’s I strum this thing and who knows why, but somewhere inside me, a fox’s ear twitched 120 degrees. Caught it. The sound stayed with me. And I knew, I was gonna be all right for that day. I had it. And I don’t mean to go on about it like it’s a stroke of genius. It’s nothing I hadn’t played a zillion times before. But that day, that time, with the barometric pressure or humidity or who knows what, it got a hook in me, and even now, typing it here, it seems miraculous to just say it, but I sat down with that delicate ribbon of tinsel and a few days later, crash boom bam, bun comes out of the oven.
And this bears a moment of digression. It needn’t be something earth shattering or original. It’s not about producing something good or amazing. Or even about feeling good or amazing. It’s about producing. You gotta make something. You gotta sit down and connect with that part of yourself that isn’t eating shit all day, that part of you that will never buckle under pressure, never be affected by validation, or status, or how much money you have or ain’t got, the part of yourself that is deep inside ya, that doesn’t care or even fucking know about Microsoft Excel, TikTok, yer step count, not getting a seat on the train, or whatever, and just needs to tap the vein of the goddam universe, whether it’s a Jungian archetype or Jessica Alba, or the dream you had last night or a myth you’re fascinated with but don’t quite know all the details to, or some memory that makes you crumple or an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or subway missed connection that just sticks with you, and for the love of god don’t judge it because ain’t none of it don’t gotta make any fucking sense at all, just tap into it and process it like only you, with your DNA and BMI and ear and eye and hair color, like only you can, to make use of the experiences and equipment life has given you, to make some new shit outta that shit that was not there before.
And once it’s done, it’s you and you are it. Now you’re a little different, and the world’s a little different, because you put something new into it and yourself. And maybe no one knows but who cares. You know. And you gotta do it, or that part of yourself that makes it possible for ya will just take a siesta, not because it’s vengeful or vindictive, but it will hibernate for goddam decades if you don’t put it to work. It needs you, and you need it. And you gotta make this shit, even if it’s shit, because that is why we were put on this earth. Not to get famous or to make money or kill mosquitos or evangelize on behalf of cast iron skillets, but to know ourselves and make our shit.
That’s the only way to slough this insane culture we didn’t ask to be born into and no sane person would sign off on if it was put down on paper in front of them as a plan. You gotta have your own shit and believe in it, because that shit is you and no one else is gonna. That connection with yourself is how you matter in this goddam frickin universe. You ain’t being yourself spending your precious, finite human bandwidth on a store locator trying to find an energy drink.
And every single person has this in them, this I believe more than anything. There ain’t no god out there checking his list for your arrival at the end of eternity; it’s all inside, and our world makes it incredibly difficult to find it for some reason — no reason, actually — and it is a tragic conundrum. But it’s right there. You, my friend, are all you got to work with. Simple, but not easy. Like most things. Just an opinion.
So anyways. The riff itself is gossamer. I wasn’t feeling heavy drums. I default to reverb. It felt right. I wanted it to sound like a Dylan bootleg from the 80s. Raw, not too affected, but like it was happening not just in front of you but in the room with you. If you reached out and touched it, or you put the right cheat code into the console, you could play or sing along with it or join the band with your little noodling there. You’re in it. The chorus is a little hokey but fuck it, that’s how I feel sometimes. Whaddya gonna do.
Anyway, that’s what I was gunning for. I think I got it. Maybe not. But there’s always next time. Thank you.
Lyrics
Driving by such beautiful devastation
Hey kids, look, there goes heaven
Not a creature stirring but just wait
That’s where Mother Nature and the train line terminate
Everybody out there is working so hard but it won’t ever be enough
Ain’t that the story of every single day?
You think this life is yours, fair enough;
But try to give it away
(Sha-la-la-la)
This country puts a pistol to your temple and dares you to move
While it poisons the reservoir
And spits on your food
It’s killing me slowly but I don’t mind
I’d do it myself, but who has the time?
(Hey hey)
I see your silhouette against the setting sun
I often do
I don’t like to remember how things were, but that’s how I remember you
I think I could be happy every now and then
If I knew you stll thought about me, just as a friend
But nothing ever changes til it ends
Nothing ever changes til it ends
Notes
I had the line about the country with a the pistol to your temple for some time, as well as the line about being too busy to kill oneself. (It ain’t about me, it’s just a lyric. Everything’s fine.) Some broad idea of America, its potential, its waste, its wasted potential. And so on. Just a note in the iPhone that had been in there a year, maybe longer, waiting for the correct moment. And that line about being happy cuz ya thought of me now and then, man, that pulls the heart strings even now writing this, just thinking about it. Had that one for ages; it also, too, as well, needed the correct moment to come out. Not all moments are correct moments, as we know. And even the correct moments can be missed if yer not keeping abreast of that shit. I dunno how adroit I am at keeping abreast, but I’m doing the best I can. Doing ok.
The rest of this song came about from detuning my guitar. Drop D tuning with the G string tuned to F#, and everything all of a sudden gets moodier, darker, and janglier. Dumb chord progressions you’ve played a million times suddenly have depth and complexity and are just a little off-kilter, deeper, darker, like Raw Sienna or Burnt Sienna or Van Dyke Brown; and such oddities must be a dinner bell for the Muse, because whaddya know, you take some weird chords, a philosophical bouillon cube, couple or two lyrical ideas, and there ya go, you got a stew goin and before ya know it you’re burning down a whole tree house. An idea that had been on the launchpad for a year gets to the final countdown. It took a while to get the chugging, tremolo rhythm guitar right, the guitar solo is my favorite that I have ever executed, and I wanted the end of the song to have mile markers like the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth where it takes the guy thirty-five frigging perfect minutes to say goodbye. All said and done, it could have been easier, but mother and baby are doing fine.
What else about this song. I am one of the morning commuter migrants. It goes like the tide. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but shit don’t stop, ever. I catch a morning train, jump on another train, to the subway, etc. I used to have a backpack with my employer’s logo on it. It was a gift, a good brand, and durable. But a little small for all the stuff I need to schlep to work. I have to prep a bit for my commute as it seems like it takes forever. Being adrift at sea, not close to home, is a weird feeling that I’m still not quite used to. There’s a passage in Life of Pi where he gets on a little raft tethered to the boat with the tiger because he doesn’t want to be in the boat with the tiger, and envisions his little raft as floating on the roof of a giant dome and it’s terrifying so he pulls himself back in to the boat with the tiger. I feel like I have a little rope on my raft that I can pull myself back in at the end of the day. So it ain’t so bad. Lots of people do it. Doesn’t mean it’s healthy or advisable, but hell. Ain’t that the story of every single day.
Don’t get me wrong; I love the city, it’s a good job, I’m a grownup and everything, but still. I think I have a healthy, necessary detachment from the identity of a worker, an employee. I’m not what I do. I think this is probably a good thing. I like my job, however; it’s meaningful work and the people are all smart and personable, so I feel pretty fortunate.
Used to be I was running a small business, and it permeated every facet of my life. I think of it like the chyron that runs across the bottom of the screen on CNBC or CNN, always there, 24/7, whether I was out for a run, playing with my kids, or taking a shower. It never stopped. Couldn’t be bargained with, reasoned with, and so on. Endless, bottomless, unquenchable, and ultimately, unsatisfying. And the worst part was, it didn’t feel like me but I wanted it to feel like me. I wasn’t a business guy, a ladder-climbing guy. Some people are, some people ain’t. I don’t think it’s coincidental that as my business started doing well, my music output dried up. Can’t say that it was my responsibilities as a dad or husband that did it; I’m a dad and husband now and artistically I’m doing just fine, better than ever; I think it makes me a better me, and so forth. But being a career guy, even on that small a scale, that ain’t me babe.
Looking back, I wasn’t listening to myself. There was, as I call it, The Dread. Constant dread. I could ignore it sometimes but it would come back now and then and hit hard. I wasn’t forceful enough in advocating for what I truly wanted, although it’s probably helpful to know what you want in the first place. Nowadays, it seems pretty clear: be one of the good guys, make some music, to thine own self be true. If I’m checking those boxes, meeting my own standards, I’m invulnerable. But back then, I think I branched out into a lot of areas in kind of a death blossom of redirection, because Resistance (Steven Pressfield’s concept of Resistance, see his book War of Art) was plundering my poor little village. Its job was/is to distract me, and distract me it did. I baked, ran, helicopter-parented, grocery shopped, I obsessed about a lotta little shit, did self-help books, social media accounts, stopped drinking, started drinking, went vegan, did keto, gluten-free, built shelves, and I was consumed with running a business. A family business, no less, that had been around for decades and decades. So I felt some pressure to live up to it, possibly imagined, possibly not. I had a lot to prove to no one in particular. And it was a decent business, I had a knack for it, but still. It was satisfying only at a subsistence level. Resistance smiled and nodded and tossed me a few seeds like a demonic khan. Mind you, no one was stopping me from finding me but myself. There was no one else to advocate to. Resistance is me, I am he and they are we and never the twain shall meet.
So there’s this fella Joe Campbell who talks about how nowadays we read our scriptures like prose instead of poetry. We don’t believe Icarus literally put on wax wings and flew to the sun, but we do believe that Jesus literally multiplied fish and loaves. Also, that Heaven is literally a place, up there, out of our reach, not on this update of Google Maps. We’ll get there through good deeds after we’re gone. Big mistake to read things this way, says this fella Joe. First of all, we’re not creatures who can handle delayed gratification. We just can’t. Not anymore. And we shouldn’t. If you read this stuff as poetry, Joe advises, heaven is a place you ascend to within yourself. You rise to this place of peace, not by dying but by stripping yourself of all the nonsense that pulls at your brain — namely, ego — but lots of other ancillary business, as well.
And that type of interpretation, according to Joe, was how it was intended to be read from the start: as a guide for personal improvement, how to cope with the chaos and unpredictability of life, the human desire for instant gratification and capacity for self-destruction that’s been part of our OS since the beta version. It’s a big cope. And to express the inexpressible, our ancestors wisely counted on our ability to comprehend metaphor, symbolism, allegory and so forth, in order to fill in the blanks and impart the sense of wonder and transcendence required. It ain’t something you just find in a gilded book. It ain’t building a birdhouse or baking a cake, where you just follow the instructions and poof ya got yer thing there. It has to have that something you find and feel for yourself and if you’re doing it right you can’t really describe it. It’s a journey of spiritual umami.
So it certainly seems like I am going on about something here, and I imagine there oughtta be a point. Heaven, nirvana, enlightenment, zen. Yer run of the mill LinkedIn gurus have lowered the bar to “flow state” as if we’re blessed by simply being able to achieve uninterrupted concentration for twenty minutes at a time. Western religions call it heaven. That’s the goal. Everything you do here is to arrive there. And how do you do it? Death but not suicide. Ugh. Some ticket price, and no reviews online. In Joe Campbell’s interpretation, however, heaven, enlightenment, whatever it is, it’s inside you. Most important, you don’t put it off until you’re dead, outsourcing your happiness to the afterlife squad. You get to live, this time for reals. And you already have your ticket, what Joe refers to as “finding your bliss.”
Now, what does that mean. It doesn’t mean sitting under a tree by a brook and emptying your mind. It means to find something that brings you deep, replenishing, life-defining happiness, an engine, or a well inside of you. Think of an Olympic skater pirouetting into the finale of a medal-winning performance, with that smile on her face, and you’re lookin’ at it. That person would be pirouetting with that smile if she was in a community rink on a Tuesday night in Hackensack. She has her “bliss.”
None of this means, by the way, that belief in God, or the Bible or Koran or any kind of faith, is wrong or misguided, nor is reading things literally inherently bad. Faith is sustaining; how you navigate this world is a personal decision, and you gotta do what you gotta do; so long as ya ain’t got some kind of vendetta or are on some kinda conversion mission, I say, godspeed. Our fella Joe himself was a deeply spiritual guy who saw the hand of a creator in everything. I myself wouldn’t go quite that far, I’m a bit less optimistic, although hey it’s entirely possible I’m wrong about everything. But this is my blog, my journey, and it’s what makes sense for me, so thanks for reading with an open mind. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
So. I think a lot about that Winston Churchill moment when his advisors put the question to him about cutting the arts to fund the war and his comment was well then what are we fighting for. Imagine any leader in America today saying that.
Our country and/or culture is not advancing towards a vision of “bliss” for all, or anyone. It seems quite the opposite: to make life a thorny, hellish experience, curated to individual pain points, for as many as possible, as thoroughly and incessantly as possible. We know what it means to be fair and actively ignore it. No support, no empathy, no sense of continuity; just insecurity, grievance and superficial connections. All emotional sustenance is outsourced, reliant on some demagogue, lifestyle, merchandise, network, political cult, or all of the above in order to feel anything. Nothing comes from inside. There is no country or heaven to provide you with Joe’s of “bliss.” But no country or heaven ever can. It can only provide the support for you to discover it for yourself. Like they wrote in the Kama Sutra, or maybe it was the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the final moments of Casablanca: the pursuit of happiness. Not the pursuit of heaven. They were on to something there and I think our fella Joe would be on board. I imagine the idea was (and very much was) you’d have the societal structure to keep you from worrying about starvation, and that’d be the loam from which we could develop a culture to provide serenity, discourse, and evolving thought. The pandemic gave us a glimpse of that possibility: when they paid people to stay home, you saw folks made bread, painted, played guitar on YouTube, etc. Their inner cultivators came out. Wasn’t that way for everyone, I know, but still. A glimpse of possibility.
So, couple hundred years ago America had the right idea, in theory. In reality, it excluded just about everybody so it got kind of ridiculous. In any event, moot point, all of it; if we ever had a chance at a “good run” as nation and/or culture it’s long over. That moment is gone. All kinds of moments are gone. And yeah, some people might say WWII or whatever, when we were riding high and fighting the good fight, but it was also an era during which if you weren’t a white guy, you were quite likely to be treated like a droid in the Star Wars cantina, at best. And at worst, much worse.
So, now more than ever, with this vacuous, never-ending, shit-parade of external stimuli we call a “culture,” that looks to monetize everything down to the quantum level, any serenity or happiness has to come from inside, from a foundation of internal strength, integrity, awareness, standards, and decency; all of which is really just impulse control, long story short.
The sad thing is that we don’t have to look far at all, it’s in each of us, but most people don’t find it. And it ain’t really their fault ya know. It’s hardly a fair fight. It’s almost impossible to find your inner bliss, when from a young age we are pummeled with religious dogma, systemic racism; remorseless, psychotic capitalism and its cyclical, dumpster fire economies; advertising and its deliberate stereotypes and bullshit lifestyles; a gazillion flavors of social and cultural prejudice; not to mention cinematic universes, raw milk, Stanley cups, ultraviolet beauty routines, intermittent fasting, cold plunges, flared jeans, line-break LinkedIn gurus and sleep guards; all of it coming at us like galaxy-wide gravitational waves, invisible, suffusing, against which we have no defense and to which we nevertheless turn for just a little tiny semblance of control and/or contentment. When it comes down to it, we’ll listen to anybody but ourselves. And who could blame us? With an inbox like this it’s a wonder we can hear a thought in our own head.
Not too long ago, I had a pretty bad back injury while starting a new job. I was alone most of the time in an unfamiliar environment way out of my depth in terms of experience, with nearly unbearable nerve pain to boot. Lemme tell ya, that kind of pain will set ya straight, right quick. The chess board of all my plans, so-called priorities, and intersecting relationships was swept clean; the table was taken up and reset, far away, with a little tiny nightlight on it, and my goal was no longer to figure out ten moves ahead but to get to that tiny little nightlight in the distance, and touch it. Zero pain. That’s it. I wasn’t worried about being a vegan, or gluten-free, or keto, or social media, optimizing, multi-tasking or any other bullshit. It was clarifying. I think my ego gave up in the face of interminably delayed gratification and either split town or committed seppuku, because now, with hindsight, I wouldn’t give back those horrible few months for anything.
I’d say I was broken down and rebuilt but it’s more like I was clipped or pruned like a clematis or something. Whatever level of sophistication and clarity I thought I had beforehand was actually just a small part of the stem. I needed the old thing to get to the new thing. But the new thing is pretty good. I feel more like me, and it’s a me who I really like. I learned to live without all the stimuli. Jerry Seinfeld has a joke that pain is knowledge filling a void. You stub your toe, and the location of that bedpost is instantly crammed into your brain. This was kinda like that but on a quantum and cosmic scale all at once. Knowledge about myself was screaming in like neutrinos through a hydroelectric turbine. By the time all was said and done, I think I figured out the important stuff. About me, at least. I became a genius of myself. And yeah, that might sound self-absorbed or navel-gazing or conceited; but if you ain’t good with you, you can’t be much use to anyone else. So I got some start there on this particular road. I ain’t saying I’m perfect, or achieved nirvana, or that I’m the Buddha or the last Jedi. But I got to that place where I figured out what was important, was able cut out the other bullshit, and machete hack through the jungle and find the clearing of my bliss. And what is my bliss? Writing songs that ain’t nobody gonna hear and writing stuff I fully expect no one to read. It brings me satisfaction on a level I can’t really explain, although it seems like I’m accumulating quite a word count in the attempt. But the lesson is, I lived without outsourcing my well-being to any other shit for a while and found out I didn’t need that other shit. And so far, I haven’t lost it. That’s the part of the work, too, ya know. It ain’t over and done, it ain’t ever over and done, and if ya ain’t diligent it can go bye-bye like nice abs or the ability to touch your toes. You fight for it, ya get it, and ya gotta keep it. Cuz this world gonna burn down your world if it can.
So, barring horrific injury, how do you get it to come from inside? There certainly isn’t a formula as far as I can tell. I was lucky, from the get-go. Lucky to be born a white male in America, lucky to have good parents, they had some money, they loved us, etc. Not a bad place to start. Had the support to pursue a good education and the encouragement to be creative and intellectually curious. Had the good fortune to find a partner in this life for whom I actively try, always, present tense, to be better. And I was lucky to have an injury at a critical turning point of my life that totally humbled me, knocked out the floor of what I thought was a good life and made me realize I could go a helluva lot deeper.
OK so how can someone else do it. We all have different paths, how does this apply. Well, if I had to pick a step one: delete all social media accounts. Unthinkable! Well, then. Stop reading now. Don’t blame ya, but I’ll see ya. Step two: get into something — anything — analog and solitary. Refinish your floor, paint, bake bread, write poetry that no one will read, walk with no headphones on, quite literally anything that will have your brain talking to itself and figuring shit out for you. Do that for a while, and do it badly if you must, and do so unfailingly. It’s gonna feel anti-social and weird, which it is, by today’s standards, and which is also kind of the point. And then get into something out of your comfort zone. Whether it’s a book club, martial arts, rock climbing, calling your old friends on the phone, go for it. Challenge your ego and make it realize it’s not the engine in charge of you. You don’t have to have a mantra or do deep meditation, although that’s not bad either. But it’s gotta be something for yourself, to create something that you don’t post about or share or upload or whatever. Not that there’s anything wrong with all that, but you gotta have something in you that no one else can touch or harm or even be aware of, if you, me, we, or anyone, is to truly find happiness in this short span of time we have. Not heaven. Happiness. Fella Joe might quibble with my distinction, but hey. Mileage always varies.
Ah but where to find that kind of time? No one can answer that for ya. Like I said, this society of ours don’t make it easy. Go, go, go, is what they tell ya. I guess it would help to have a pandemic and debilitating injury one-two punch that clears out your ego for ya and reboots your entire slate of priorities. I got lucky. Or maybe I had the firmware to view all of that shit as a positive, glass half-full with all the death and the trauma there. I carve out 10-15 minutes a day to do my writing. Somedays more, somedays less, and it don’t sound like much, but it adds up. Alls I knows is, it can’t be found on a phone, in an app, a premium podcast subscription, or a church, a nutritionist, a tv series, or Minecraft, or new kicks, likes, follows, avocado toast, burnt coffee, a dog, a goldfish, a TED talk, commissions, KPIs, BMI, your kid’s RBI, MMO, FOMO, YOLO, or god forbid, multilevel marketing. Those things can all make ya feel good, they can feel like an escape, but ultimately, ya can’t escape yaself. Take a tip from one who’s tried. It’s literally, completely, and utterly, in your own hands. And the work ain’t ever done. Which is good, cuz what else is there? You already know the answer, and you don’t need another answer. Happy hunting.
Lyrics
I got a picture in my book
And I need another look
But I know it does no good
Or does it?
What a sacrifice to make
You’re just so far away
And it wasn’t a mistake
Or was it
Just a dream
That I dreamed so deep of you
I can rise to the meter maid patrol
I can abide by the fines I’ve tolled
But if I wait around for who knows when
How long will it take until—
Oh, here they come again
But I stay in bed and don’t move
So I take another look
At the picture in my book
Of memories
And fall back to sleep
So I can dream so deep of you
Notes
This is a song from the “old days.” Here is the original version.
I wrote it about fifteen years ago when I lived in an NYC studio apartment with a kitchenette and could hear the morning traffic 13 feet from my head. There were honking horns, impatient drivers yelling, tow trucks wheezing and lemme tell ya, it was Russian roulette if ya hadda park a car on west 30th.
Most likely, I was recording this on my futon into the laptop screen mic. Singing low was to keep the lobby oblivious to the goings-on in the corner closet apartment. Apparently I hadn’t yet discovered a capo bar, a USB interface, or a higher register? I guess.
The creative spark for this song is lost in a haze. I have always liked songs that sit on a chord for a while, it makes ya get creative with the melody, your syllables, your cadence, and gives any chord change a bigger wallop. So there’s that. I was pretty smug with the “does it/was it” rhyming and its little twist. But looking back on it, this song is about control. I wouldn’t say I was out of control at that time in my life, but to say I was in control…well, I wouldn’t say that either. Ah the old days.
Nowadays I feel aged enough to have several epochs of “old days,” and I am inclined, because of my penchant to make everything boring, to think of old days as just “formative days.” I think when we (royal we) refer to old days, we are really thinking of formative days and don’t realize it. We’re learning new shit, and everything is more vivid and real because it’s wiring our virgin synapses and we haven’t yet developed our routines, so we’re much more impressionable. I look back on my old days with some sadness because I feel like I could have done everything better: been a better friend, been nicer to random people, more judicious about my future, certainly more self-aware, and so forth. Some people view “old days” as synonymous with “glory days” but I never bought into that. My old days feel certainly more formative than anything else, and definitely not “glorious.” The glory is now, and to come. Not in the afterlife or some shit. I mean, here. With me, and people I know and love, on earth, while we have the time together. Otherwise what is the point?
Now, although I view my formative days with a generous dusting of melancholy, on the other hand, whatever I did or did not do back then put me where I am right now, and if a change in the past would have taken me on a different path where I would not have met my wife and formed the family we have, with the friends we have, then I am happy to have avoided that change. This isn’t a humble brag; just to acknowledge I’m very lucky in that regard. Which isn’t to say there aren’t areas of life I’d like to improve, but as I mentioned, there are glory days yet to be had. And it isn’t to say I don’t have regrets, but that’s a moot question, we can’t redo shit and it’s pointless to let it get you down.
But I think at the time I wrote this song I was in some kind of regret haze, but it doesn’t matter. The guy in the song definitely has some issues. He’s looking at a picture and kinda like that fella in the Proust novel having his bagel, memories begin to swirl.
As fruitless as it might seem, I think people grapple daily with the concept of regret and of what could have been, on a second-by-second basis, perhaps subconsciously or unconsciously or meta-consciously, and it’s reflected in how our culture is obsessed with the past and attempts to force order, top-down, on so many present and future situations that continually elude such efforts. Maybe that’s why fascism and the multiverse are having such a hot mess of a minute. We’re hurtling toward an always uncertain future and the only certainty we have is what has already happened, and we’re desperately trying to repeat it or picture what could have been, and thereby exercise some control but, as the poet said, the finger has written, and no matter how much you bawl, it ain’t gonna unwrite, and you ain’t never step gonna in the same river twice. Or something like that. We’re supposedly looking ahead, and yet everything takes us by surprise. I think what’s actually going on is we’re so obsessed with looking back at the past, that we never see the future coming. Ah. Could be huge if true.
Apparently, also, I had just discovered reverb at his point in my life, because the original version of this song is drowning in it. I’m gonna navel gaze a little bit here, but this is one of the first songs I wrote that hewed to a classic song form, more or less. Not so much verse, chorus, guitar solo, etc, but that there is a story being told, and it’s got some lyrical razzledazzle and a turn of phrase and so on. But all that made me a little nervous, putting something out there with such clarity. I had hidden behind oblique lyrics in previous songs to avoid such putting out there of one’s self. Why? Who knows. What we don’t understand, we fear, and what we fear, we try to avoid thinking about, but we think about it nevertheless, obsessively but not critically, otherwise we probably wouldn’t fear it. And the walls of fear are paper thin to begin with, so WTF. The human condition. This can change with age. But anyway, yeah, reverb is a comfy mumu to drape myself in when I am almost kinda close to possibly baring my soul.
So: control and fear. Elements of songwriting, or at least, this song’s writing, and the human experience as a whole. Bear with me for a bit now. A theory: our minds can’t process that there is no organizational principle to the universe besides the forces that hold atoms together. And from what I understand, that force is itself a statistical anomaly that we only know succeeded because we’re here to see it. We’re the roulette ball instead of the number on the wheel, for only this once. So we prefer to operate as if *we* can hold shit together, that we have a semblance of control, because the alternative is unthinkable. So we make narratives, craft lifestyles, engage in multi-level marketing schemes. On a grander scale, we talk about avoiding our fate or finding our destiny, a topic of human philosophy since forever. But there is no way to do any of it, of course. You can only hope to find yourself, who you are; and even then, you’re not finished, cuz you gotta love who you find, and like any relationship, that takes honesty, communication, and patience. People who get hit with the thunderbolt and are instantly, unswayably in love with themselves at first sight are, in my opinion, at a disadvantage. And most likely assholes.
Now, given the barrage of socioeconomic pressures put upon us daily, the baseline of existence is hard enough. Our technological advancements surpass our evolutionary capacity to cope with said advancements by orders of magnitude, and whatever fraying and faults we see in our society, I believe, are the result of that. There’s too much stimulus and it scrunches up our capacity to be present, to focus, to be emotionally detached when it counts, to quell impulse and hold off instant gratification, and puts it all through a wood chipper. As a consequence, adults act like children, or at least, not like adults; and as a culture we are obsessed with the past, or regard it as a glory day, when we were younger and things were, at least to our recollection, simpler, because there was a parent taking care of 70% of the responsibility of survival. The privilege of a simpler life was the water we didn’t even realize we were swimming in, like David Foster Wallace’s fish. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone but it seems widespread enough that we had to create the word “adulting,” as if it’s trade work, like being a plumber.
So ultimately, you can only work on determining who you are in the face of this constantly mutating culture and its vast apathy; and to brace for the impact of whatever this dispassionate, godless, faceless, sky-sized beast of an existence sends at you. What happens is out of your control. But you have choices in the face of random happenings. You can control your destiny and/or what your “fate” will be. Not that you are *in* control, but you *have* control, less like the driver of a race car, more like the pilot of a tanker ship. You can turn the wheel, you can hit the brakes, but things don’t happen in an instant.
So: how can you avert your fate, the silliest question in all of civilization and the biggest waste of time to ponder. But let’s waste. Our fates are determined only in the past tense, ya ever notice that? And it’s always bad, always a lament. “His fate was to die a banker.” Was that truly his fate? Well, it is now that’s he’s dead. When he was alive, though, not so much. If you are a banker, for instance, but don’t want to die a banker, or more specifically, be known as the person whose fate was to be a banker, then you can stop being a banker, if that sort of thing is important to you.
“How can you say that, Tony? Oedipus was told his fate and yet, could not avoid it.” Oedipus is fiction, and never happened. Taking shit literally is horrible for us; it’s like we’re addicted to botching important lessons, despite our magnificent capacity to communicate and interpret complex meanings through allusion, metaphor, and symbolism. No wonder we pay our poets dogshit. Sorry about that, guys.
Fine, Tony but it’s not that simple, to change our fate. It’s so easy for you to say. You’re not a banker. Well, it is simple. But not easy. Nothing is easy. Love isn’t easy, hate isn’t easy, life ain’t easy, death ain’t easy, nor is science, nature, gardening, arson, birdwatching, budgeting, whatever. But it’s all pretty simple: when you can’t change the circumstances, change your approach to the circumstances. Like the poet says, we are entitled to our labor in this life, not the fruits of our labor. Now, that guy didn’t make the rules, he’s not even the ref, he’s just reading to us from the rulebook, as good poets do. Accept that, and things become simpler. Not necessarily easy, but simpler. You shall always grind. What shall you grind for?
Like most things, the only answer we receive regarding our fate comes too late, and before that, we fret. As if an arrow has been fired into the sky, and no matter where we move, it will be into its path. Cue the worrying and philosophical discourse. Perhaps the success of the thinking mind is to begin considering the present moment as our “fate.” Not defined by our glory days or formative days. The arrow is always above us, always at apex, but we are aiming it. We can change our mind and then change our fate. I guarantee you 100% that if you quit your job as a banker and go start collecting butterflies and teach children how to collect butterflies and educate little children about butterflies and you plant flowers to attract butterflies and become a friend to the butterflies, when you die absolutely no one will say your fate was to be a banker. A man’s character is his fate, as a fella in a toga once said. Amen, pal.
This is not to say “what could I have done differently to avert [x]” is a dumb question. We can learn from our experiences and not repeat them. Which is vital, because everything else around us in this godforsaken culture is inexorably, endlessly fluxing, but our ego wants everything to be the same because that’s nice and comforting, so we’ll try to act the same out of wish fulfillment because that’s an exercise in control. “I know what I’m doing, I’ve done it [x] number of times.” That feels good. And it was probably sound strategy a dozen millenia ago when day-to-day survival was not quite as multi-faceted and full of useless bullshit driving us slowly insane.
Otherwise it’s best if our reaction to similar circumstances is not to do the same thing as last time, especially if the previous outcome sucked. But to ponder our grand “fate,” of which there is only one, which is determined by our actions and yet indeterminately scheduled, is to try to answer the question before we have finished asking it. So how do you determine your fate? Through decisions, now. Right now. Not back then, and not in the future. Controlling your moment and being — as every LinkedIn guru will tell you as they try to shred your serenity with their humble brags and dumb ideas — “present.”
Simple enough, right? Yes! Can we go home now? No. We’re not quite done, because science. Is that capacity to make decisions in the moment free will? When we make a decision, isn’t it just a combination of electro chemical reactions that even “we” don’t have control over? Is it truly free will?
Now hang on, because we’re into 210- and 215- level discourse here, and/or the Times’ Science section every four or five years when the news is slow. Free will, another bullshit eternal question. And yes, I’m kinda switching topics but not really and anyway, I’m on a time-wasting roll, so roll I shall.
I guess making choices that feel like our own choices apparently isn’t enough freedom for us? What if we’re in the matrix? What if it’s all a simulation, etc., etc. So we must dig deeper. We really want to be sure we’re absolutely 100% in control, with no margin of error. Because if that’s not free will, then what is?
Sounds like ego to me, but I’m no scientist. Fine. Again, we want to control everything. But knowing what little I know of humanity, my guess is that if someone handed us the reins to our electro-chemical processes and involuntary squishy machinations we would be dead in seconds. Most people don’t know how to maintenance a bike, and even when they do, they don’t.
But OK, so true freedom, I guess, means independence from our own biology, not to mention the glacial wheeling of the stars, cycles and rhythms that have conducted life for unfathomable ages, just so we can do whatever we want, and not die a banker, or not kill our dads and bang our moms, or deny whatever so-called “fate” is terrifying to us. Yet most of us can’t spend 5 seconds without looking at our phones, just to briefly connect with whatever godforsaken distraction we’ve selected for ourselves. The concept of free will is so important to us that we will concoct an unanswerable hypothetical that gives so much significance to where we end up, yet we are yielding our present in an endless series of micro-surrenders that we don’t even recognize because we have become conditioned to this giant pile of shit that is our culture and its tolerated behaviors.
All of this is to say that the grand philosophical debate about fate vs free will is silly. Yes, in a perfect universe you would be master of your fate: you would have ultimate freedom, manipulating your electro-chemical reactions so that every decision is truly yours; and be able to sculpt the wind like Gandalf so that the universe bent to your will and nothing was out of your control. How conforming, unexciting, and predictable that would be. At first. And then I’m sure with our in-born capacity to cultivate satisfaction we’d never get bored with getting what we want all the time. Sarcasm. But why debate, it’s a moot point, that’s all make believe.
It is my experience that our roulette ball is a quite indifferent universe in which we do not have control over anything but our own actions, and barely at that, apparently. The upside is that there is no indignant, child-like, petty god turning us into a horse if we fall in love with wrong priestess. The downside, if you want to call it that, is we have a tremendous, almost limitless amount of responsibility and freedom to navigate through an onslaught of obstacles which it seems we can’t help but to take personally, and which apparently leads to people being all flavors of asshole to one another. The freedom to steer our ship is there, but the size of the ship is daunting. No matter how many times the universe tries to hint otherwise, our ego insists that life is a sexy little black and white race car instead of a barnacled, dull, grey tanker, and we’re upset when we look down and see a wide expanse of controls, levers, and knobs instead of a nice petite steering wheel. But how much range we have. And how much cargo we can carry.
In short, life is hard; immeasurably harder if you’re not a white dude, which is probably why philosophers throughout history have had the time to wonder about dumb ass fictional problems like our fate, and everyone else who is working three jobs off the books for bread crusts or avoiding eye contact with various incarnations of the man already know that life’s default setting is “difficult” and couldn’t give less than a shit about semantic, millennia-old stoner debates. Which is where we are today, I guess.
Anyway. Like I said: just a theory. Thanks for wasting time with me. Moving on.
Now, when I wrote this song I didn’t quite realize I was treading well-worn ground. Dreams come up again and again in songs in a very specific way, as in an Inception-like attempt to escape reality to be with someone who is gone, ditched ya, or just not there at the moment. See the Everly Brothers, Van Morrison, Dan Hartman, and me.
Another desperate pitch for the control that we all want and need so bad and ain’t never gonna get. But let’s keep dreaming, shall we? Good night and good luck.
Lyrics
I got caught in the rain, fell in the creek
I wasn’t reborn
Instead I got sick like a dog and ran off to war
You laid your hands on my face
It wasn’t enough
They took me home, I kissed the ground.
Got dirt in my teeth. I spit it out.
I looked to God. No one looked back at me.
I show devotion down on my knees
When do I get to stand up?
I hit the bars, they reciprocated, and laid me out good.
I saw stars. The universe waited, and let me in on the truth:
“What you think you deserve is just one man’s opinion, and most nobody cares.”
I felt the pain, never saw the wound
But I can still touch the scar
If something hurts you over and over again, well then, that’s who you are.
I look for reasons and explanations but nothing is there
The countryside burned, so I took some wine
And went to see the sunrise
It came like hot blood through the trees
And then the beating heart died
I pray for resurrection, I pray for rain
Then I say good night
Notes
I don’t play this song live very often, mainly because it’s so reliant on instrumentation and I don’t have a band. So revisiting it to write about has been a nice surprise. The lyrics are better than I remember, my voice sounds really good, and the guitar lines are sparkling. At the time I wrote it, I thought the opening lines were the finest poetry I had ever written, ever. I was pretty high on myself. What can I say, you get caught up in a moment, ya know?
I have a 30-year old acoustic that is my daily driver, and more often than not it’s in drop-D tuning with a capo on or about the 3rd fret. It’s an Ovation Celebrity 12-string that I had permanently fixed up with 6 tuning locks, so I never use the full 12. As such, the neck is a little bit wider than a standard 6-string, which works for my hands. The action on it has always been miraculous. It’s a cracked and buzzy, loyal companion, and a thing of beauty.
Stapled to the corner of this song is a fond memory of a summer night in the waning days of Covid, sitting on the back steps watching the kids in the yard doing their thing, making their noises and bird calls and what have yous while I’m finger-picking out little nothings on the guitar, and recording everything in my iphone’s voice memos app. The riff for this song came out of that noodling, and I probably have a million variations of it from that night, recorded in my iPhone, of which I hope to revisit .01% before I die.
So out of all the variations, this one jumped out from the pack. I say this quite often, but when you have something good, you kinda just know it? There’s a tremor. Somethin’ in ya moves, and ya kinda stop the presses for a second.
This was an early stage in my friction-filled re-entry into the airspace of “the practice,” and the giddiness of finding something good was an ancient, vestigial memory, from before not just the pandemic, but the cataclysm itself, when tribes wandered the desert, when there were rotary phones. It rocked my world. I used to work like this all the time, but when it happened in these months as Covid wound down, I cradled any creative “something” like the frangible egg of a vanishing species.
Equally important, however: whatever flavor of extrasensory perception it might be, it seems to activate on the condition that I wade through a bunch of duller, not necessarily bad — although it is sometimes horrid — but lesser, stuff. As Steven Pressfield says in the War of Art, you beckon to “The Muse,” but she is judicious and patient and she does not come immediately. She wants to see that you’re working first. You earn her presence.
Looking back from this vantage, with a few more songs under my belt now, I see it as just another part of the process. You hack your way through the weeds and you find the swan’s egg. It’s special, but also, nothing special. Do the work, yield a result.
I have also learned that when you find a good riff, or the colors start to work on your canvas, or shit finally starts to gel in whatever it is you’re doing, it is a crucial moment. Resistance will try to fool you that by just finding the egg, your work is done, go have a hot wing or a tofu dog; the pressure is off. Resistance will tell you all kinds of shit to get you away from your work.
Case in point, my little swan’s egg: I was so happy with it, I took the iPhone voice memo of this riff and played it during my commute, over and over again. How giddy was I. After all, by repeatedly listening to this little snippet, I could let it sink in, and I’d come up with new ideas, inspiration, and be able to make use of my time commuting. I was “working!” How sweet the smell of bullshit can be. “Working” like this, I didn’t make any progress for two weeks. See how Resistance does its thing?
The real shit happens at my desk, I know it, we all know it; Resistance knows it, and that’s why it wants me in the car listening instead of working.
But why does Resistance want me in the car instead of at my desk? Why do I (and I think, most artists) have this potential for self-sabotage? Because we also have an internal engine that, for lack of a better term, we can call the ego. That ego likes things the way they are, wants things to be predictable, wants to maintain control and does not like to give up the reins. It likes things easy and self-serving. And it manifests in all kinds of ways, whether it’s finding excuses to not go to the gym, having a third glass of wine, making us believe we have earned “down time,” and so on.
When you write, draw, dance, learn a new language, etc., you are entering the realm of the unknown, with the chance for growth, yes, but also all the associated accoutrements of frustration, discomfort, and failure. Your ego doesn’t go for that. It’s a basic, elemental, pre-Cambrian part of every human brain — or mind, more specifically – that doesn’t like change. It’s neither conscious nor the sign of weak morals, it just comes with our software.
I should make clear that none of this is scientific and none of it is my own original thought: Steven Pressfield talks about this in his book the War of Art and all I can say is that is makes a helluva lotta sense to me. I can’t recommend that book highly enough for anyone who tries to do anything creative.
OK, so, eventually I sat down and started working on the lyrics. I have a little tiny obsession with the novel Gravity’s Rainbow, the one in Knives Out that Benoit Blanc says no one has read. I’ve read it three times, once with the aid of a companion book and a book club podcast, and I also read critical analyses, and less-critical analyses of analyses, and I think it’s a masterpiece and one of the greatest works of art ever attempted. Lots of people think it’s overrated and unreadable and I can’t say I blame them. If you’re looking for a satisfying linear novel where everything is tied with a bow, avoid this one. And like certain male authors of various eras, Pynchon has a pubescent fantasy thing going on with his female characters in which their legitimacy is determined on their sexual potency. If you can get past all that, there is amazing prose experimentation, crazy-ass inventiveness, and a vast structure of themes and motifs that is mind-boggling.
So, there was one analysis of the book that went into how often the ostensible protagonist came in contact with water. As the novel progresses and makes less and less sense, the protagonist changes identities, and goes out in the rain, falls off a boat, and other experiences which are supposedly symbolic of birth and rebirth and so forth.
Rain and bathtubs are fairly common birth and rebirth vehicles in movies, tv, etc., so like, whatever? I’ve been caught in the rain a few times and it served only to make me feel like a dope. So that got the ball rolling with the opening lines. I still think they’re good but man at the time I thought I was writing Shakespeare or something. I guess that temporary delusion is healthy in that it gets most of my shit off the ground.
Anyhow, I don’t think it was a conscious thing but looking back I can see myself working out some issues: 1) what is the lived experience vs the grand existence we are “supposed” to have; and 2) what I think may be my life’s mission, articulating the impartiality and indifference of the universe.
As for the title of this song, initially it was a placeholder. I was meh about it; it didn’t have that “whatever” I felt a title should have, and it was on the list of things to change. But as time went on, it endured. The line it concludes is one of the better lyrics I’ve written, and for some reason its banality and lack of poetry just works for me.
A bit more on the title, and maybe, well, everything: the world does not give a shit about me or you. Most of us will die without making a mark on it. Most of us also live in ignorance and perhaps delusion about how monstrous history has been to nearly all of the people who have existed. I guess we differ from animals in that we try to build civilization, language, ethics, etc., and rise above the callous disregard of nature, try to make some kind of “arc” in the universe toward justice or progress, but then we go and do horrible shit to each other. I’m sure it’s been a net gain over an animal existence but I’m also pretty fucking sure we are capable of better. Regardless, looking at a historical record of evidence, the world as we know it, collectively, is far more apathetic than sympathetic to the human experience. I think Covid broke a lot of people’s brains because it showed that regardless of money, faith, or one’s own image of self-worth, we are all just numbers on nature’s roulette wheel. A lot of people pretended that wasn’t the case, and they had to assert themselves in tragically comic ways, but I won’t get into that; we were all there.
So anyway, to think otherwise, to think we are entitled to some kind of pass from anonymity and/or history’s brutality because of our sophistication, wealth, faith, or the one awesome whatever we might have done ten to fifteen years ago, well, that’s ego, a little coffee pot engine within us all, eternally putt-putting away, aching for recognition and validation from an incomprehensibly vast and unsympathetic void that has none to give. So we build narratives to distract ourselves from our own vulnerability and insignificance in the appallingly indifferent universe in which we live. Whether it’s faith, wealth, success, etc., we hang on to these things because it’s tough to swallow that we’re not special and no one is paying attention.
OK so this is fucking bleak, right? Yes and no. Joseph Campbell put it pretty well: the world is a mess; it has been, and will always be so. Our job is not to fix the world but to straighten out our own lives. This sounds selfish, and it is, but without fixing yourself you can’t do much for anybody else.
So let’s bring this bleak, uncaring universe back to the creative process. If you lose, the world doesn’t care. If you win, the world doesn’t care. It doesn’t even notice.
And within that structureless, safety-net-less void, resides a vast amount of freedom.
I could extend this to morality, ethics, personal philosophy, but let’s stay focused on creativity: most people do not care about your art. Nobody’s watching if you make mistakes, post your projects to the web, embarrass yourself (artistically speaking) on social, or whatever. So do all that: make all the mistakes, and fail as big as possible under the armor of anonymity. The world is not paying attention to your false starts and dead ends; make the most of it. Everyone else is as involved with themselves as you are with yourself, and regarding the adventures of others with the same amount of curiosity that you have for theirs, most likely even less.
So the world has given you a gift: tons of space to find your inner artist and shuck off the ego. Make mistakes, rework old ideas nobody noticed to begin with, go where you must in order to produce satisfying work for an audience of one: yourself. If your goal is some kind of fame or glory, I think that’s a hollow motivation but you have plenty of open road to crash and burn before you get there. Whatever your goal is, churning away in anonymity is far more often the rule than the exception. Case in point: a long-winded blog about minor-key dad rock recordings that no one will ever read. Whether or not it leads to “success” ain’t the goal. The goal is to do.
OK, so. Back to the lyrics. So maybe I started out on a high horse. Well, I definitely started out on a high horse. But the funny thing is this song turned out to be about casting off pretentiousness, artifice, whatever, and grasping at the real stuff. And it was oddly much easier to write pretentious sounding crap, which gives me the willies when I read it back now. It bears repeating but you just gotta face up to the fact that some of the stuff you produce is shit. It’s OK. It gets you to the good shit. That’s the process.
“If something hurts you over and over again, well then, that’s who you are.” I feel like I nailed it with this line. Can you change yourself in the face of what is coming at you. If you think you can, or think you can’t, as the saying goes, then you’re right. If there is something more true about the human condition, just let me know.
On the other end of things, I was reading Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan and this set of lines caught me.
It has been raining here now for two days, and through the trees, the heart stops beating. The trout in those telephone booths were good fellows.
Makes as much sense as anything else in that book, but I liked it. It felt grand, a dramatic visual that could finish things off. Steal a little here and there, put it in your pocket. No shame in it.
Initially, drums went though the whole song. Because the structure is so repetitive I was very conscious of adding and taking away elements to keep things dynamic. Ages ago I enrolled in a “Brand Writing” course and they gave us a cheat sheet that warned you a good idea is not enough. Once you have it, turn it backwards, upside down, reverse the word order, replace words in the order, change the color, on and on. If it’s good enough, it will stand up to a lot of tinkering and you’ll be better off for it. Songs are the same. Hold something back, add it here, take it away there, turn a sound inside out; there is no formula to a right answer, just keep at it.
This is where things started.
At some point I tried working in a bridge or a change. Didn’t take.
Anyhow, drums and the guitar solo were the first things I got done. I knew there was a country-ish kinda twang I wanted and I worked that out first. I am not a soloist so this took forever. But it got to where I wanted it.
Despite what I consider to be a really good set of lyrics and a really crisp sound, this song nags at me. I got locked into the structure and couldn’t break it. It’s too repetitive. The song needs a bridge, or some kind of break down. I tried at it several times, I failed at it several times, and at some point you gotta move on. The universe does not care, but the muse is tapping its watch.
“We’re not in forever territory here, kiddo. Keep things moving.”
Yes, ma’am. Time to go.
Lyrics
Should I feel so young when clearly I’m so not
All the time I planned to waste is all the time I’ve got
Maybe it’s a cosmic joke
Perhaps God misspoke
His work is overrated either way
Other than that I don’t have much to say
I know what it means to feel for someone
And I wish that I could
Cause right now I think I’m feeling it for everyone
They all seem so lost
Confounded at the cost
Of figuring out the lowest price to pay
Other than that I don’t have much to say
I take great offense at this mess we call existence
If you seek out meaning or justice
You will only find resistance
And all the evidence says it’s random nonsense
I present myself as exhibit A
But other than that I don’t have much to say
Every now and then I can’t help but to think of where she’s gone
She’s a spirit in orbit coming around again on the horizon
I carry her in my heart
Which is the old man’s art
Choosing what to toss and what must stay
Other than that I don’t have much to say
Notes
I know these lyrics aren’t setting the world on fire or anything, but I am proud of them. I feel like I attained a level of directness and succinctness that I don’t often get, and kept it cute, clever, and serious but not melodramatic. I like the vocabulary, not too pretentious; still manages to tap into bigger things while keeping it pretty down to earth…and also the melody and chord structure are simple but I’m satisfied with the way I worked them into shape.
The germ of this song was an audio note taken in the car: “other than that I don’t have much to say.” I call it “the germ” because that note was all there was: no chorus, no chord structure, nothing else in mind that would eventually become this song. I drove to work, and I don’t think I got back to it for another month or so.
So you know it’s good when a little meaningless line with no real poetry or transcendence sticks with you. And at the time I was (and still am grateful to be) in the zone where I don’t let Resistance push me away and I start doing dishes or making a snack for the kids that they don’t want.
Instead, I sit on the edge of the bed with the guitar and the iphone, and see if I can make something happen. And, this time, something happened. I got the little tingles that people supposedly find in ASMR, but I find in whatever this process is.
Good enough. So I move to the desk with the notes app open and start futzing around, still have the guitar on my lap, it’s awkward but I type and play, type and play, and bit by bit the iceberg starts moving.
I write variations of lines where I’ll change a word, or repeat a line with another verb or ending. I try not to delete anything, so my notes have lots of repetition. What I’ve posted above is not yet close to the final product, but you have to be comfortable with producing a lot of shit. And stuff that’s worse than shit; because not only is it shit, you know it’s shit, and it’s shit of such toxicity that it makes you feel like everything you produce is garbage and what are you even doing, you might as well stop right now.
So you have to be cool with that feeling and not take it personally. God willing and I keep this thing going I will often talk of “Resistance,” a concept from the author Steven Pressfield and his book The War of Art. Resistance is the thing inside you that tells you that your idea is dumb, your lyrics are meaningless, no one cares (well, this part is mostly true, but that’s for another post), and why are you wasting your time, you’re better off listening to a podcast and doing the dishes or making the kids another snack they aren’t asking for and won’t eat.
Resistance isn’t just limited to dads trying to write songs on their computers; everyone has it, and I imagine most people experience it when it’s time to go to the gym or meditate or open Duolingo. It’s you stopping you from doing what’s good for you, and when you’re a dad trying to write songs at his computer, trudging through demoralizing shit lyrics with your awkward-ass guitar on your lap is apparently very, very good for you, because lemme tell ya, Resistance is waging siege warfare.
I was nervous about the chord structure and melody being too simple. The i-iv chord change is so common I thought if I sing on the change instead of through it, maybe that would subvert things a bit. The second part of the verse reminded me of “Sante Fe” by Dylan. And the chorus is more of a Dylan-like refrain than a proper chorus. This is another manifestation of Resistance: a little voice that says, meh, this has been done before, it’s all been done before, you’ve subconsciously assimilated something you’ve heard as your own, and it’s a rip-off, and every one will see it clear as day, except you. But whatever, doubt comes with the territory: so I played around with melody and the chords a bit to see if it all felt genuine enough.
Here is a primordial version.
In this version I’m not really concerned with the lyrics, just working on a melodic line. Very lazy, letting the music take my voice to places, try syllable patterns, make horrible noises. Never meant to see the light of day. Sonically, the guitar part is actually kinda pleasing, but I thought it sounded too jangle-rock 101, not quite right. Also it’s a little too busy, not giving enough body to the song. I worked the riff into the bass line instead, and let open chords ring out.
The sound I really wanted for this song was inspired by Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland, 1945,” an amped up acoustic that was sparkly, fuzzy, and dense. You can get a really full guitar sound by playing along on a second guitar track but using a capo. Same key, different chords, so it fills out a lot nicer than just playing the same chord progression twice.
The keyboards at verse four were a lot of decisions. In GarageBand you can lose yourself in the options you have when it comes to synths and keys, oh my lord. This section probably took as long as the songwriting process itself. In my mind every instrument track needs to have its own story arc, so that it’s not just looping and taking up space for no reason, which leads to obsessing over little details that no one will ever hear. But there are worse things in life than getting lost in swirling keys for a weekend, and when we’re coming out of the bridge and land back into the verse with that extra chord change tucked in there, with all those keys ringing and the harmony vocal, man, that’s a chef’s kiss.
The zooming whirly loop introduction was a last minute addition because I wanted a better kick off than just a drum fill, and also, to make it sound “live,” like the take was happening in a room with everyone all together. Also, it sounds a little magic shop-ish to me, as if to say, we’re headed into something quirky and not quite serious.
The first line of the song captures how I was/am feeling, after an 11-year drought, to be once again productive creatively: putting the work in and getting something out. It’s invigorating. I’ve played this song on guitar by myself a couple dozen times, and that first line is like sliding down a boat launch and takes me right into it. Every lyric rings true, I stand by every word. I sometimes get overwhelmed by life, its breadth, its harshness, and its contradictions. And I’m definitely not young anymore. But rejuvenated is good enough.
Lyrics
There was something in my cells, waiting
Patiently for the notes of your voice
Living silently with no air in the dark
Listening through the blizzard of white noise
Something beautiful is ready to bloom
There is sunlight trapped inside what you bring
A soul in every stone, a dream for the waking
Something beautiful is ready to bloom
And what was buried there will be renewed
There’s a tide rolling between you and me
Traveling deep through the earth, endlessly
Something beautiful is ready to bloom
And what was buried there will be removed
Notes
The pandemic broke my brain. I lost my father, I lost my business, and I went into a tailspin. Some people, apparently, drifted through the pandemic like it wasn’t happening. I was not one of those people.
However, it turns out, a broken brain can be fixed. Better than before, even. No shit? Yeah shit.
Now. With a few notable exceptions I hadn’t written anything since 2012. Or better to say, I hadn’t written anything that turned me on. I had been in a few bands in the early 2000s, started a record label, toured the country a few times, and I figured in my current role as a father and husband and business owner and otherwise responsible adult, that facet of my life was over. Add the trauma of the pandemic, and I had pretty much given up. On many things.
So. My broken brain. Not quite post-pandemic but pretty close, I had finally, thankfully, blessedly, caught Covid and recovered, been deemed immune for 60 days, and ventured out into the world for the first time in a few years to re-meet friends I’ve had for decades. GBV at Irving Plaza with the ole gang, guys and girls I had met while seeing the band in NYC in the 90s. I figured I would slip right back into action. However I quickly realized I couldn’t remember names of songs I loved, people I knew, or even bands I had been in. When the first notes to familiar songs rang out, I didn’t recognize them.
It was terrifying. I thought I was having a stroke. I think of it now as a tunnel: there was a vague, distant light from which clarity beckoned, but there was no signal where I was, and all the synaptic communication that would normally occur instantaneously was either delayed or just not getting out. Eventually, as the night progressed, I emerged from the tunnel. I don’t give myself much credit for breaking through on my own. Maybe it was being in a “normal” setting again, or hearing so many songs I associated with the before-times, maybe it was the mosh pit (it was probably the mosh pit); but I was able to finally surface and most significantly realize I had been living in that tunnel for far too long, and what a gift it was to have even a fairly conventional sense of perception. Amen.
Weeks and months of therapy and medication followed, and helped to truly right the ship. Moving on.
So, this song. Following that experience, I had a lyrical idea about dormant cells, waiting for a signal to re-awaken. The signal: a song? Too on the nose. A vibration? Vague. A voice? Better. Maybe it’s a lover, a mother, a messiah, a penguin calling to its chick across an Antarctic ice sheet, or an obscure, aging, indie-rock demi-god come to earth with the pipes of an angel; one can see it any number of ways, interpret it into one’s own shit. Much better. At the time I was commuting to my first post-pandemic job — or as I like to think of it now, the daily drive to the denouement of my former life — and having Siri take audio notes. I saved it there. I liked it. I had taken many notes before, which I quickly forgot. This one stuck.
Other imagery I was toying with at the time: I had recently finished Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and the final scene of Don Gately coming to on a beach with the tide way out…whew. The inevitability of tides, the impartiality of the earth, the universe; but inside a person, flowing through a person, and who they find and love; when it is fate, destiny, meant to be, and when indeed it is, that it is as natural and inexorable and immutable as anything else natural, incalculably stronger when it’s between two people who have the real thing, true, down to the core of the earth; a mountain, running so deep and wide it follows you and connects you where ever you go.
The main chord was your basic E-minor fingering formation, but up on the 7th fret. Paul Simon would know what the chord is called. Whatever it is, its jangly, slightly sour, dissonant tone got me. Could have been that time of day. When a lyric or a chord gets me like that, that’s the shit, pal.
So now I had a lyrical idea and a guitar chord, both of which were exciting in a way lyrics and guitar chords had not excited me in a decade, and from somewhere, I had the motivation to thread them all together. I just hung on and workshopped it. I had forgotten that I knew how to do that, the method to making art, and calling the muse; that might sound hippy-dippy but I will probably talk about it in some other post, god willing. This is crucial: you can’t wait for the muse/inspiration. I think most people confuse that with writers block, when they wait for inspiration to hit. I certainly have. You must sit down with what you have, even if you have nothing, and work. The muse will come if you earn it. Inspiration as a bolt from the blue is vastly overrated, and I don’t know if anyone knows what inspiration truly means anymore and how to use it. Inspiration is just the first step of many, and hardly a guarantee of anything. This maybe a little too inside my own head, but hey, we’re blogging here, let’s go.
I do everything in Garageband on an imac, using a Scarlett box; a generic, no-name bass; a Gibson Studio 335 with no f-holes, and the fuzzed out guitar on this track was played on my daughter’s 3/4 Ibanez. All the drums are the Garageband “drummer.” You can spend a whole day, easy, finessing drums in GB, but it’s worth it if you have the time. I don’t know how to EQ or compress things yet so I’m sure there’s a lot of clipping. But not bad for a demo.
Here’s an early take on my iphone, when I was scared shitless the idea would leave my head like a dream.
I don’t tell myself narratives anymore, but that this was the first song in a long time that the muse kinda handed to me on a platter (or I handed to myself, however you prefer to see it), well, that feels good. And so far, since then, whatever block I had put on myself has lifted. Way better than before in that regard. No more waiting, y’know?