dear reader,
it’s been a while, truly. august is largely a month off, which for the first week has meant a combination of rest and working steadily at all sorts of things i’ve meant to do for a long time.
one thing i’m not doing is songwriting. for me, that creative process is a pretty long pipeline, generally begun in this sort of sleeper phase where the world is unequivocally inspiring and provocative, and ideas seem constantly to swirl around me. during this time, my facility for language seems to increase, and i largely do nothing to work on songs. intermittently i’ll get a big chunk of music that feels urgent, and i immediately work it out on some instrument, but in these early stages it’s more often than not forgotten.
it’s only in the last stages of songwriting that i actually say, ‘ok, let’s write the verses, plan the structure,’ etc. since the writing timeframe for our single releases was so condensed, the spring and summer felt like one long session of this last phase, often with no early stages preceding at all.
if you have no idea what i’m talking about, just imagine some kind of weird groundhog day in which you repeatedly write a research paper in one draft without having actually done any research; alternately, you might picture yourself starring in a movie, only you have no idea who your character is, where the plot is going, or even the title of the film, and haven’t read the script. you read your lines off cue cards as the scene is being filmed. shooting goes on for months in this fashion.
all that to say, i’m experiencing a prolonged feeling of relief to just have a few weeks off to let some words tumble around in brain, work on my guitar rig, and spend time with people i really like who are not actually members of good, night states, like my wife. this is the break i thought i’d get in july, but didn’t.
the world is exciting again. i’m rediscovering positive emotions, and even, perhaps, a modicum of optimism (at least one of my bandmates undoubtedly just read that and came to some harm, perhaps by coffee traveling through his or her nose).
as evidence of (and segue from) this, i found myself in a political discussion of sorts with a good friend yesterday in which i appeared as the hopeful, ideologically relaxed one. (for those of you who haven’t met me, understand: karl marx is more ideologically relaxed than me, and he has a manifesto.)
the one sensory experience that seems consistently to burst in on my happy, conceptual peace is the constant barrage of evidence and indication that our country has completely lost its fair-mindedness and most of its rationality. mostly, i’m talking about the trend in political rhetoric of just about everyone using moral terms to describe a need for the government to make laws that benefit him or her. special-interest government is fascism. totalitarianism is still totalitarianism even if it’s the will of the majority.
granted, those coercive means of distributing resources (whether to the many or the few) in our country are not likely to change, but for goodness’ sake stop talking about them in terms of right and wrong. this is not a partisan complaint. everybody needs to shut up.
the last straw of late, it just so happens, are these preposterously undertaken congressional hearings with oil company executives. basically, if you haven’t followed them, these sessions have consisted of various congressman attempting to make some of the most powerful businessmen in the world feel bad or something. (don’t worry, it’s all being paid for by you and me.) congress may need to make a bunch of laws to take money away from oil companies and spread it out in camden or whatever (although i might suggest they start by just removing the inappropriate tax breaks for said corporations, i.e., stop GIVING them money), but once again, i submit: we have no need for political maneuverings in which nothing is done, blame is ritually assigned and re-assigned, representatives preen and posture and demonstrate their apparent concern for constituents, and the highest of horses are led out to bear political interest more disgusting than the lucre on trial.
we are quickly becoming a society that protects the opportunities of its populace to make money, and attempts to punish people who take advantage of those opportunities. a more schizophrenic premise i can barely devise.
if only, if only, if only my annoyance could somehow serve a creative purpose. it seems a waste, as an artist, to not write some hallowed protest song. somehow these feelings, equally as strong as the euphoric ones, find a different channel in my brain and never end up in the ‘hey, maybe i should write a song about this’ category (actual name of mental folder).
at the end of the day, though, i’m glad that’s the way it is. ultimately my complaints about our country and government are just that: complaining. the action, the reality, the change we hear so much about these days, is not and never will be legislated. it’s person to person, nuts-and-bolts, voting-with-your-wallet-and-putting-your-money-where-your-mouth-is.
the hope of these days is that in a few weeks i’ll have some songs to remind myself, and maybe a few other folks, of that.
in the meantime, thanks for reading.
