01252011

When I come up with a new musical idea, I give it that day's date in lieu of an actual title.  That way I don't have a million projects labeled "Slow C thing" as the working title.

I've found throughout my musical creation history that I'm very grateful that I chose to do this.  It gives me a lot of insight into what I was feeling and thinking at that time.  For instance, late August and early September of 2008 was a very creative time.  There was a lot of energy in the music I created at that time.  This is very strange because that was right around the time that the band I was in (Hodgepodge) broke up.  Maybe this was my way of spewing it out unedited.

Conversely, September of 2004 was very relaxed-sounding, almost melancholy.  Sort of a surprise.  I had to come to terms with moving away from California to Minneapolis to start some semblance of a new life.  I had a lot waiting for me in the way of expectation, or so I thought.  In December of that year, I would be driving halfway across the country with Jeremiah.  Those who know me even fairly well know that I'm not a religious person in the least, but some of the music and lyrics seem almost religious in nature.

Slow-forward a month into late October and there is a very strange mix.  One of Hodgepodge's most energetic songs stemmed from October 24th, a song called "Just Friends."  What a Sunday that was, for not only was there that very empirical song about rejection, but another track, this an instrumental, forever titled as "10242004" is a dire mix of phased guitars interspersed with a bongo/piano outro.  "10242004-1," which would later be named "Just Friends," starts with my voice over saying "Hold on, you know I'm drunk, right?"  I wasn't.  Here's the first verse's lyrics:

"You spill your guts and man, it hurts
You try to take it back and it just gets worse.
You tell yourself you'll just be friends
And hope that it was worth it in the end.

She hasn't called; it's been four days.
Seems like these friends went their separate ways.
We said we cared and "keep in touch,"
But being just friends is really tough, oh yeah."

High class lyrics, you have to admit.  I have hundreds of songs I've written in various forms of being, from about ten seconds of an idea to fully-produced and -mastered stuff.  Like all art, some are good and some are bad, although that's subjective.  Even the most derivative of my songs had something to say at some point, even if it was just restating something a previous song had already beaten to death.

The best of my songs are very simple in terms of music yet tell a good story.  There were the six songs I wrote for a pretend movie that later turned out to be a real (but never made) movie that later turned out to be an unfinished manuscript about being pretend for real.  But hey, it's got a soundtrack, and I am proud to say that I've written it.

Not to brag, but I feel like I could sit down and show someone how to write a song in a couple of hours.  It wouldn't necessarily be a good song, but it would be a song that they could say they'd written and could then use as an impetus for writing another, better song.

Some of my favorite songs that I've written have just seemed to flow out of me.  Inspiration is funny like that.  Very recently, I've come to believe that when you're sufficiently inspired, you will feel like almost nothing is out of reach.