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02.17.12 : Rules

Today was a day of recovery. No caffeine, lots of tea and water, vitamins, food, rest, and even a trip out into the world for dog food and groceries! My appetite came back (hooray!) and I took it easy until almost 8:30, when I realized I should probably start today’s song.

The last few songs were pretty intense, emotionally, and took a lot out of me. I never really thought of writing songs or being creative as something that could burn calories or drain my energy, until I recorded “Saboteur” last fall. If you were a Kickstarter Backer, then you read my daily blog posts during that process and I’m sure you picked up on how exhausting the process was! Three weeks straight in the studio, working day-in and day-out, in total concentration.

But it’s not the the hours or the performing that’s the most tiring — it’s the actual effort it takes to think about the songs and feel the emotions that the songs evoke. Sad songs are particularly draining, if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing (which I am). Sad music hits me in the center of my heart and squeezes it like a boa constrictor.

So anyway, these past few songs (actually almost all of the songs) I’ve written and recorded (meaning: listened to over and over for hours each night) have taken a lot out of me and today I just couldn’t bear the thought of trying to write another song that might force me to think about the meaning of life or the existence of true love or outer space or something.

I decided that I would set a few rules for myself to make today’s session a little bit more fun, and take the pressure off. Rules have always helped me in songwriting, to not get too caught up in finite details or spend too much time over-thinking things. They also help me branch out creatively and try new things. It would be like someone giving me a blank canvas and a bunch of random paints and tools and telling me to paint a specific picture. For tonight’s song, I gave myself a two-hour time limit to write, record, and mix the song (usually it’s taken me anywhere from three to seven hours). I decided I would start with the beat rather than a piano or guitar part, and I told myself that I had to go with whatever the first thing was that I played. So the first part you hear in this song was the very first thing that my hand did when it touched the keyboard.

The bottom line is: Sometimes you just need some techno music to help you break out of a mood.

02.16.12 : Soundtrack to a Soundtrack

A few days in a row, now, of staying in the house. A few phone calls as human interaction. I’ve been spending most of my time thinking, reading, walking my dog, and of course working on songs.

Yesterday was a very dramatic day. Some extreme highs and a couple of extreme lows. It was exhausting. Not good, not bad, just exhausting. It takes a lot of energy and burns a lot of calories to go through extreme emotional swings like that. I know I’m being cryptic; the details aren’t what matters as far as this post is concerned.

The other day I said I really enjoy spending time by myself. That’s true, in the sense that after being around other people all the time, it’s nice to have some “me” time to do as I please and just be myself. But that doesn’t mean that I want to be alone. I think the past couple of days have given me an idea of what it would feel like to really be alone, to live alone not knowing my neighbors, not having friends or family nearby, not having a partner who loves me and cares about my well-being. I joke about wanting to live alone in a cabin in the woods; well I need to stop joking about it, so that it doesn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People need other people. We need to feel that connection, so that we feel like there is a reason to keep moving forward, keep trying to survive. And it’s important not to rely on just one person for that connection; no, we need to be surrounded by many different people with whom we can share many different types of connections. This is something I’ve been missing these past couple years of running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I don’t have that sense of support, a handful of people who know me and can meet me on a whim for lunch, or take me out when I’m feeling down. I miss being part of a group, a community. I miss hosting dinner parties and poker nights. I long for an evening with a girl friend of talking and drinking wine and watching silly movies.

On the other hand, this alone time has really opened my eyes to a few (more) personality “flaws” — or should I say “disadvantages” — of mine that I don’t think I truly recognized until recently. I had a minor breakthrough about this yesterday, in the midst of all those highs and lows. Another realization I had yesterday was that I have not been eating enough food or getting enough sleep or drinking enough water during this first week of The Florida Sessions, and for someone who is always on the brink of a chemical imbalance, this is actually a very big deal. I have the food, the time and the liquids; I just wasn’t getting as much as I should have been. I think I did a bad job of scheduling my days, and I’ve been starting the recording process just before dinnertime each night, only to get lost in the process and find myself full of adrenaline at 11pm not feeling hungry and being so exhausted from the creative process that I just go straight to bed, missing dinner.

So today I started to change all of that. I made sure to eat breakfast with my coffee this morning; I read for quite a while and even worked on a couple of poems, which I haven’t done in a very long time; and then I started recording today’s song around noon, rather than the usual 7 or 8 o’clock. I finished in time to walk the dog, take a shower, and actually prepare an entire meal for myself for dinner, salad and all!

Recording during the day brings up a lot of new factors that are missing from nighttime recording sessions. These factors could easily work against me, but I decided today that I would embrace them and make them part of the process. Plus, I wanted to capture the sounds that make up the soundtrack to my time here. Enjoy!

02.15.12 : (Untitled)

The most important goal in life is to find truth.







Goodnight ♥

02.14.12 : The Blank Canvas

I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm — but that’s a lie. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, disheartening, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off easily. He wades in and does something.

- Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo (October 1884)

02.13.12 : My First Love

My first instrument was the piano. My mom signed me up for Suzuki lessons when I was three or four, in St Petersburg, FL, where I was born. I remember having to sit on phone books on the piano bench to be able to reach the keys. I quit taking lessons after a couple years, when my teacher forbade my mother to reward my practicing with candy anymore. I was like, “Peace!”

The only things I retained from those lessons were the ear training, which was the core of the Suzuki method, and a deep connection to and love for the piano.

When I was 10 or 11, in Wisconsin, I tried getting back into piano lessons. There was always a piano in our house — along with guitars, banjos, basses, drums, mandolins, violins, dulcimers, recorders, saxophones, trumpets, and pretty much every other kind of instrument in the world. The piano lessons didn’t last long; reading music was stressful and I nearly had a heart attack during my first and only recital. But it got me going again, and I wrote my first song when I was 12, called “Window Snow.” So emo, right?

Piano would continue to be my main songwriting instrument for years, though I played alto sax in the school band and taught myself to play bass (thank you, ear training!) when I was 14. I didn’t teach myself to play guitar until I was 17 or 18, and I can still only do a limited amount of stuff with that instrument.

There’s something about having a piano nearby that calms me down and makes me feel at home. When I was living in Los Angeles and couldn’t have a real piano, I got an 88-key digital piano with weighted keys, and that made me feel a little bit better, but it still wasn’t the same. There’s something about the character of a real piano, all that wood, the hammers and strings, the cold ivory keys. It’s an instrument that feels like it rose straight out of the ground. I feel connected to nature when I play it.

When I found out that there was a piano in the house I was going to be staying in during my “winter migration” here in Florida, I was beside myself. It had been years since I lived in a place with a real piano! When we got to the house, there was nothing in it but the piano. It has been sitting here for years, and is out of tune, but I don’t care. I love it anyway.

…

Today was really “off” for me, for some reason. I don’t know what was bothering me, but I just had a heavy heart. My stomach hurt all day and I felt truly out of it. I drank too much coffee and ate not-enough food, which I’m sure contributed, but it was more than that. I was totally caught up in my head, obsessing on all kinds of negative thoughts, feeling really bummed and trying to find something to blame for it. No matter what I tried — bike ride, Netflix, reading — I couldn’t shake it. I just wanted to go to sleep. At around 6:30 I decided that eating something might make me feel better, even though I had zero appetite. I finally decided on a frozen pizza, took it out of the freezer and set the oven to pre-heat, then walked back into the living room.

Suddenly, something came over me, and a voice in my head told me that I should go to the piano and start playing. I thought, “Well maybe this will burn some calories and get my appetite back.” I set up my laptop and opened Garageband. I couldn’t get a signal from the mics, so I restarted my laptop. Normally I wait to start playing anything until I can record it, but that voice in my head told me to start playing immediately.

If there is such a thing as channeling, then what happened next was almost four hours of musical channeling. It happened so fast that I forgot about the pre-heated oven, and food, and everything around me. I was working on the second piano part when I remembered, ran to the oven, turned it off, and ran back to the piano. I didn’t even put the frozen pizza back in the freezer. No time!

The lead piano line for this song came to me in one full blast of inspiration, and when it locked into place, my eyes welled up with tears. It was a moment of real, true, pure joy. I could barely see the keys for the three or four times it took me to nail the part. The rest of the song spilled out around the three core parts: piano chords, drums, and piano lead. Suddenly it was 10:30 and I was not only starving but shaking with adrenaline. My terrible day had dissolved into thin air. My blood was pumping, my heart was beating, I was smiling, and I couldn’t even remember anything that had happened before those hours at the piano.

If I had to describe True Love, I’d say it’s a lot like how I feel about the piano: it’s a connection, a longing, an appreciation. Something that has the power to erase a bad day. A release, a surge of adrenaline, a moment of bliss. Feeling like the entire universe is funneling all of its energy into your veins, giving you the strength to do anything and be anyone. These moments are fleeting, but they’re worth all the shit we have to go through to find them.

If I have ever doubted the existence of love, it’s because I wasn’t near a piano.

Happy Valentine’s Day!