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

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

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.