Everything I Tell you is Hearsay

New Favorite

I didn’t write this song, but I could have…

Hilariously, my favorite song is called “Favorite” and at least right this second, this one is giving it a run for my money..

i had an idea. it came to me in three parts; as follows…

part the first: i have often mentioned before how much i love explodigdog

Sam, the illustrator, works with the following model; he uses the ideas that are running around in his head, but also solicits titles from his fans and then makes pictures to match the titles. i have always found this very charming. once, i even had one of my titles turned into a picture. this was gratifying almost beyond expression.

part the second: today, while looking at my facebook feed, my friend Sara posted a note that the first 5 people who responded could expect an offering made by her.

part the third: within the last 24 hours my good friend Lyza re-launched her website with an incredibly gorgeous and content-dense makeover that makes me feel simultaneously very proud to know her and incredibly sloth-like creatively.

i was touched by Sara’s idea, inspired by Lyza’s results, and sensitive to the value of external input ala Explodingdog.

sometimes i write songs. occasionally they are kinda good. usually they are really fucking sad. they are also not a little self-indulgent. so i have decided in a Sara Mahan cum Lyza Danger cum Explodingdog manner to offer/request the following:

your song here!

send me titles. and i will humbly try to turn the ones that strike me somewhere, into songs. i will do this with no less than one, but no more than three (trying to be realistic about my time constraints here) and post the results on my website by May 1st. i don’t promise they’ll be good, but i will make my very best go of it.

anyone? anyone? Bueller?

i went into the studio today and recorded this song. i don’t think it’s my best work. i had a bit of a sore throat and a scatterbrain. my playing, which isn’t my strong point anyway, was a little less accurate than average, and my singing, which is usually my saving grace, wasn’t.

which is too bad because i think the song itself IS some of my best work, and getting to the studio is tough. hopefully next time i’ll feel a bit better about the outcome.

How You Don’t

(if you click on the song title, it should play for you)

there are those songs, you know.

those songs which contain those words, those phrases, that spell out the aching truth of however you experience life and beauty and pain.

we all have a soundtrack. songs that bring us immediately to a place or time or feeling. without preamble or fanfare. and sometimes, they make no sense or, they make a sense that only your insides can interpret. and they are often profoundly unglamorous and leave us raw and exposed, but in the best possible way.

and today with my speakers up louder than i can usually have them at work, i heard again the line from a song that most says LOVE to me while i listen. it is contained in a song about stumbling upon love while not yet free to have it. it is not a scenario i have ever found myself in, yet it cries out with the most beautiful poignancy what i most feel… and want to feel from someone else, about love.

there have been others: they tell a story about the way my concept of love has changed

Ghost by The Indigo Girls “of all my demon spirits i need you the most”

i always felt like this song was about being in love with the idea of someone, rather than their actual person. about idealizing someone past the point of all reason so that you could have no real hope of loving them in actuality. and this is something i know well how to do. this was my idea of love when i was a sophomore in high school. it still tugs at me though…

Do What You Have to Do by Sarah McLachlan “and i have the sense to recognize that i don’t know how to let you go”

some part of me is convinced that love has to hurt. that it isn’t real if you don’t ache for the lack of the other. probably too large a part of me indeed. the quality of love i most readily recognize is the sort that causes me to lose myself so completely in the feeling that i become someone else as a result. the person i was before ceases to exist and so, in a very real sense i struggle with the notion of losing anyone i come to truly love, for it would result in becoming Not Me, at least not the Me i’d been ever since falling in love had made me someone new. plus also, i just don’t like to let go.

Steam Engine by My Morning Jacket “you’re skin looks good in moonlight, goddamn those shaky knees”

this song was just eerily appropriate for the love i was falling in at the time i first heard the song. i had never had someone so enamored of me as was the boy who was the object of my affection at the time. i had never had anyone speak with such fervor about how beautiful he thought i was; about the effect i had on him with the mere fact of my presence. this was the lesson of being adored as an aspect of love. it was a good lesson.

and finally…

Challengers by The New Pornographers “whatever the mess you are, you’re mine”

this, oh this, is what i have come to believe is really what love is about. not that we do not see, or that we are made perfect by our love, but rather that we are seen, and known, and absolved, and loved nevertheless. i think i like this notion best. it feels more true, and wise, and likely compared to the illusions and self-sacrifice of the past.

and i wonder, as i always do, about the quality of love that others feel. how it is spelled out across their lives.

i’ve always been a little obsessed with my vision, or more precisely, my lack of vision. by which i do not mean to imply an impaired imagination, or failure to plan, but instead, very literally, the physiological contraints on my abilty to see. some time ago now, i consulted with a neurologist who told me all sorts of interesting things about my vision, how it might be impacting me, and what i might do to change it.

this revelation concurred with some other fairly important evolutionary events in my life; not least of which learning how to play the guitar, and becoming able to perform music i wrote, as opposed to just having songs trapped in my head. all of this resulted in my being able to think about myself and my music in a very new way. so, when i started working on my first album, i decided to call it diplopia  in deference to the impact having this condition has had on my personality and temperment, and how it seemed that in a very real way, images i perceieved frequently fell in disparate and noncorresponding points.  plus also, i liked how it sounded.

yet now, my diplopia is beginning to resolve. vision therapy has wrought a change i thought impossible, and i begin to see… in a more typical way. sometimes this is incredibly distracting and strange, but mostly, it is exciting and wonderful. there are still many moments where i stray, where there are multiple realities to confront in my line of sight, but with greater frequency, things are beginning to look like one, and only one, version of reality.

 there are enough songs and then some. Diplopia  though unfinished, is complete.

what’s more, other things have changed. evolution continues apace. i’m an older person, with more experience. a better guitar player, in love with a different person. its time to begin the next album.

so, then…

Paused

The Archtype

Pushing The Pedal

All Fall Through