So I’m doing Open Mic at Suzie’s Bakery tomorrow, and this being the day before, I’m second-guessing all my decisions. I’m second-guessing the songs – are they the right ones? Do they work well together? I’m second-guessing the instrumentation plans – will we be able to pull of guitar, piano and percussion or will it be too much? If we thin down will it work? Thankfully, I’m not second-guessing the whole thing.
I think I just need to give it a go, so that’s what I will do. Proverbs 16:3 says “Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.” I’ve never seen that as a blanket promise, that everything I plan and try will work out, but I definitely take it as strong encouragement to pray and plan and pray and try. So that’s where I am.
The second-guessing is understandable. When it comes to music I’m a perfectionist on steroids and when it comes to performances I’m a tad bit of a control freak. I want to be in control of all the variables and I’m not in this situation. I haven’t done my scouting so the confidence in having the “perfect plan” isn’t there. I’m just jumping in this time. That’s where I think I should be though. That’s been the general sense I have about this stage of my on-again-off-again relationship with being a performer. Maybe it being like this will bring out things in me that will surprise me.
So here goes. Stop by if you can. Seeing friendly faces always helps. It’s between 9:00pm and 11:00pm.
So after a bit of a break, here I am again, but that’s not the comeback I’m referring to. I’ve spent the last month and a half or so bunkered in my headspace – there’s been a tremendous amount that has occupied my mind, and some pressing things too, and I find it affects my desire to do other stuff like blogging. I’m trying to learn to “do it all” but I’ll talk about that another time. Let me blog about what this post is about.
One of the results of my experience of being mostly on the sidelines of live music for the last several years is that I don’t like to talk about plans or dreams that I have for my music career (“career” is a conspicuously aspirational word here). I’ve blogged about this before – several times and in several different ways – so I won’t wax on about it again. But a comeback is hatching again. It’s managed to chip a small opening in the shell around it, and it’s working on making the hole big enough to push its head out, spread its damp wings, and stumble out for the world to see. It’s still mostly covered though, so I haven’t been able to get a good look at it yet. I can’t guess what the plumage will look like or how wide the wings will be our how far it will fly. I’m just excited about the process.
I had a rehearsal last night to work on some songs to play live somewhere. It was just two of us, but I think any two including someone as gifted as Kamla Hamilton is off to a great start. When I work with Kamla I don’t tend to have to tell her what I want. She tends to have ideas that I could never ask for but want as soon as I hear them. Even on a Casio keyboard which seems more like a toy than a tool, she can take what feel to me like bare ideas and clothe them with a richness that makes them seem aged – like they’ve been here a long time even though you’re hearing them for the first time. Don’t get me wrong – I work very hard to write songs that are worthy of high-calibre musicians and arrangements, but I’m always awed to some degree at least, when I hear my work played by people who play a lot better than I do. It’s satisfying and surprising at the same time.
So it was just keyboard, acoustic guitar and my voice, which did a lot better than I was expecting. I haven’t really sang in a while. No disrespect meant to leading worship at church. That is just not a space in which I try to explore my voice in a certain way, and I don’t think it should be. But I was happy with how I was sounding in general and with how I was managing the range of the songs. The basics are there. I now need to work harder and push myself to polish the vocal delivery to move beyond “good” or “solid”, towards “really good” and then hopefully beyond that towards “amazing” or some such superlative. I want to push myself and see how far I can go with what I’ve been given to work with.
We looked at 3 of my original songs and 2 covers. It’s been interesting trying to select songs – both the originals and the covers. I’ve had to try to figure out which of my songs will shine with a acoustic guitar, piano and percussion instrumentation. Warren Harris should be joining us, hopefully next week, with a reduced drum-kit, and I’m looking forward to what he’ll bring, but that’s the extent of what I have in mind for this initiative. I’m hoping the “portability” will result in some opportunities. A lot of the stuff I’ve been working on is difficult to mount because of the instrumentation I had in mind when I wrote it. A number of those songs won’t work for this type of setup, in my opinion, primarily because of design. They would lose too many elements that I meant to be there. I had started working on a song specifically for this setup, but I’ve now changed my mind about it and I think it needs the kind of treatment it would get with a larger band. But I have managed to identify some of my songs that I think can thrive with this approach, and I have a new one I’m anxious to finish too.
So we worked on “Conversations” – which is the only full-length song I have on YouTube, and that is in fact, the only time I’ve performed it with a full band; “To Make You Smile” – a song which hasn’t seen daylight yet, inspired by my daughter Maia; and “Longing For You” – which I was a bit reluctant to throw into the mix. I’m not entirely sure why I feel the way I do about it, but one of the factors is that it feels too traditional to me in terms of structure – A,B,A,B,C,B – which translates to verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. That was, of course, by design at the time though. Kamla, for her part, seemed cool with it, and she really likes “To Make You Smile”, which is encouraging. It still needs one line and some editing but I’m trying not to over-burden it and let it be what it is.
I won’t say which covers we worked on yet. I’ll wait until I know what we’re doing with them. So the plan is to rehearse another couple times and finalize where and when we’ll play this stuff, or at least some of it. I have something in mind but I’ll say when it is more of a likelihood than a possibility. It’s really good to have started though. I’m itching to hear what it will sound like and to see all the colours and shapes as it emerges. Even though I’ve written most of the material it only lives in my imagination until it’s heard, and even hearing it in rehearsal is dramatically different from performing it for people.
So pray with me that the comeback will hatch fully and become all it should. I have no specific dreams or hopes for it. I think I’m learning not to do that anymore. I wrote about it in the song that was growing when I started this blog, and I’ll close with some of those lyrics.
Meant to fly, this paper plane was never built to take your baggage
Flattened under expectations weighing more than paper can lift
It could soar if you unload imperatives you have imposed
Then point the nose, when you let go
You’ll free your hands
To hold on to the prospect, of the flight delighting you
It will not be perfect, but it might be good…
The last time I blogged was January 21, 2009. Well, that’s not entirely true. That was the last time I wrote anything for my own blog. I did a couple of entries for a dream that died while being brought to life – a concert I was involved in planning (we had a website and blog associated with it) – in September 2009. I think a small part of me is still mourning its death. It’s as if it’s sitting on the shoulder of my shadow and it looks me in the eye sometimes when I look back. It stings from time to time but I’m convinced it’s an ally rather than an enemy. I’m not as afraid of failure anymore, having now done it in such style. So I walk forward with it in tow behind me.
Updates
Having not blogged in such a long time a general update is warranted. I’m still running my own business and, I think, getting better at it each month. It’s making me “responsible”, which is a big thing for a person given to being as sporadic and inspiration-driven as I am (I only claim an “artistic temperament” for myself when a situation makes it a greatly convenient stereotype).
Maia, me (Joel) and Sam - Nov 2009
Family and marriage is stable. I’m beginning to embrace how much work and attention it takes to make it good. Maybe its a bit like gardening, but I’m only guessing since I haven’t done much of that. It seems to me to be a good analogy, despite my near total lack of hands-on experience. But I am embracing the need for more work and I’ve started to work.
Maia is growing like a weed – a simile which now suffers an undeserved worsening of its reputation the light of the above paragraph. Growing like a pleasant, enjoyable plant or vine? That doesn’t pop at all. To quote some random client I don’t know, it ”needs wa-wa-woom!” “Weed” has that “wa-wa-woom” in my opinion, but it clashes with gardening completely. Suffice to say Maia is growing fast and learning fast – both very good lessons and some we’ll need to stamp out. She’s taken to opening the fridge and looking for stuff she wants (even if she has not idea how to prepare it). Parenting is challenging but I’m very grateful for her and for all I’m learning.
I’m trying to read through the Bible this year. I’m reasonable sure I’ve read everything in it but I’m trying to do so in a systematic way. So far so good. I’ve had some good times, and (maybe strangely enough) I’ve been enjoying the Old Testament more than the New. I’m still struggling to have a regular time that I spend with God, especially because getting up early seems completely unreasonable when you’ve been up even earlier negotiating with Maia. I’ve embraced the fight though. He rewards those who seek Him. Nobody said it was easy.
This blog was supposed to be about songwriting and music. It was supposed to chronicle a finite project, that I expected would have finished already. I’ve decided that is should just be a blog. I’ll still blog about music, but I’ve decided I should blog about life.
I might need to do a “how’s the music going?” post. I’m amazed a the number of people who still ask me that. I don’t feel like much of a musician, with how little I’ve accomplished in the last several years. Maybe I should take it as encouraging that so many people still see me as one. In any case the really short update is that there have been some songs and a lot of ideas in the last many months. I have new goals to pursue and people who are (hopefully still) interested in pursuing them with me. I’m growing as a writer and I’m curious to see what I’m becoming. Stylistically no two songs are that much alike now. But perhaps I’m too close to the work. Maybe if I can back off and hear it I’ll hear the similarities instead of the differences.
Where from here?
More blogging, more songwriting, more Bible-reading (and more reflections coming from that), more opinions on the things that catch my interests long enough to think about them seriously, etc. Let’s see what this becomes. I’m back.
I was with some friends last weekend and they told me the story of their turtle. Apparently the turtle decided at some point that it wanted to leave the relative safety of the pond in the backyard and seek his fortunes in the ravines and bushes of Stony Hill. On recognizing his absence, my friends presumed that was the end of his story, but one day several months later they spotted him making his way across the back lawn towards the pond, ladened I’m sure with stories that he’d never be able to tell them. And this is me coming back to blogging hiding behind the turtle.
I think I needed some story to sneak in behind and this one appeases me even though it’s not my own. I’ve been battling failure in my mind. It’s very hard for me to blog when I feel like there’s nothing to report. There are no headlines… weeks upon weeks of footnotes and sidebars but no headlines. I have had some important conversations, had some great song ideas, spent some useful time shaping work-in-progress but there’s no trophy to show from any of it.
And I’ve been fighting with myself. Fighting the fact that so much of me seems to be satisfied day to day without this project happening. Several years ago I thought that I was a writer because I was a writer. I thought it had to happen and what I needed to learn to do was to facilitate it better. I no longer think so. I think the writer can get buried under the rest of life – the phone calls to and meetings with clients, the washing of dishes, the comfort of computer games, the work targets that seem to get up earlier than me and go to bed after me to the effect that I can never quite reach them, the weeks which seems to race to their end once Wednesday morning arrives, the tiredness and the tedium and the search for meaning and understanding in it all.
When I’m in contact with good art a part of me wakes up and itches… I feel my own desparation to create… all the songs singing inside that are scraping to get out. But when I get absorbed again into the everyday, that part of me is stifled and grows weaker.
The interesting thing is that I started paper playing because I felt like God was saying “Go!”, so the days on which I just don’t feel like it speak with less authority than before. It still so hard to get going and keep going though.
Admittedly, the “lack” is discouraging. I have no access to my recordings on minidisk – my player was stolen some time ago. I can’t access soft copies of songs that I wrote over the last couple years – my laptop isn’t behaving. Add to these things the general lack of working equipment for recording ideas or trying out licks on electric guitar, and the absolute lack of money to fund recording and it all feels like now is not the right time. We don’t watch the sky to make our plans though. We know that the moment God is ready, clouds appear and we suddenly the rain is more than we can manage.
What I need to do is to learn how to be a writer in the middle of everything else – the phone calls to and meetings with clients, the washing of dishes, the comfort of computer games, the work targets that seem to get up earlier than me and go to bed after me to the effect that I can never quite reach them, the weeks which seems to race to their end once Wednesday morning arrives, the tiredness and the tedium and the search for meaning and understanding in it all. And the truth is, “everything else” is the soil from which good songs grow.
“I keep some lyrics alive, like a pilot light,
Hoping that one day it will ignite,
And burst into flame and fire…”
It occurred to me, in deciding to take on this project, that I’d need to get serious about several things in order to do this well. Things like voice practice (which I haven’t started yet), guitar practice (I’ve started playing more but I need more structure), exercise… let’s pause right there.
I’ve started playing squash again. I much prefer sports to jogging around the hill I live on. The jogging seems pointless (especially when I’m alone), but getting my ass kicked at squash seems much more sensible. I’ve played twice in the last week or so. My record is a perfect 0 – 8, with scores of 5, 3, 1and 0 (wonderful pattern, huh?) last Friday and 6, 1, 1and 3 on Wednesday. Congrats Richard. This blog (and therefore the world that reads it) will know when I finally get one over you… mind you that could be a while from now, but I plan to be blogging for at least another 3+ months, so beware!! What do you do when you’re unconvinced by your own threats?
Back to where I was. The other discipline I’ve started again is object writing. It’s an exercise I learned at Berklee College of Music Summer School (a decade ago… gasp!) and it is detailed in Pat Pattison‘s book “Writing Better Lyrics“. It involves writing about an object, i.e. something tangible for a set period of time, e.g. 5 minutes or 10 minutes, and trying to use all of your senses to describe the object and your memories around the object. The theory is that doing it consistently will help you to get to the good stuff quickly when you sit down to write (I hope I got that right Pat). It also useful for exploring ideas when writing.
My plan has been to do object writing for 10 minutes six mornings a week. That hasn’t quite happened but I’ve been going at it. It’s been tough. Some days I’ve just had to slog through. Other days I get lost in one part of what I have in mind and the time runs out before I get to some great ideas. In any case here’s one I did on August 1st for the record. I’m probably going to use it as raw material for a song I’m working on. Oh… the endings are usually abrupt. You’re supposed to stop when the time runs out.
Paper Plane
We were low-tech. If you needed a straight edge you’d either have to work with the one supplied by the 8 ½” x 11” paper (sometimes we’d use the legal size) or you’d measure and crease as carefully as possible and use a ruler to hold down one part and carefully tear the other. Straight edges were a must in our minds. They made the difference between those that would dive immediately and those that would fly so far they’d cross the fence and we’d lose them to the neighbour’s yard.
And we’d sit with raw material spread and our latest prototype forming in our brains. And we’d fold – usually starting with a long crease down the middle of the sheet. And our creations would take shape – pointed noses to cut through the air, built for speed, blunt noses where we folded the point back and tucked it inside, built with some weight for stunts. We’d see how small we could make them and still get them to fly rather than just fall gracefully.
… fingers running along the edges, forcing consistency into the creases. The sound of sheets of paper sliding against each other, sometimes flapping a bit as if they were eager, bristling and anxious, waiting to be shaped and take flight…
And we’d throw from the driveway, warm asphalt under our bare feet, aiming down the lawn which gently sloped towards the rusted wire fence and we cry with delight if they stayed in the air for 5 seconds or more or if they swooped unexpectedly, threatening to land but grabbing hold of a gust and leaping up again… and the excitement if they landed gracefully…
I haven’t blogged in several days because I imagined it would feel like work. Ahhh… the strength of my aversion to work. I also made the excuse that I needed to sort my thoughts out so I could write about one thing and not the many threads that I’ve been weaving and chasing over the last few days. Too late for that now – I’ve started writing.
I felt very discouraged about paper playing several days ago. I took out my electric guitar (I play a Hamer Duotone) and plugged it into my amp to work on some music ideas for a new song. I haven’t sketched on electric in a long time. I often can’t bother with the setup time and I don’t want to have good ideas waiting on me while I untangle cables and power cords. What was frustrating was not being able to get the sounds I wanted. My amp (it’s a Laney GC50A acoustic/electric combo) is in desperate need of repairs so the electric channel is next to useless right now. So I was trying to work with the acoustic channel, which really doesn’t give any help to guitar effects – everything sounds a bit dry and muted. I even tried to work with headphones, just plugging straight into the output of my effects pedals (I’m working with Visual Sound stuff – a Route 66 and an H20) but the levels were impossibly low. In the end I couldn’t really test my concept. I couldn’t really hear how good or not good it sounded.
When I add equipment shortcomings to the thought of the scale of what I’m attempting it’s very discouraging. I feel like not bothering. I guess there will be days like that though so I need to try to remember why I decided to do this in the first place.
I didn’t get much paper playing related stuff done this past week. Work has been demanding and I haven’t yet figured out how it make the most of the several hours that I’m not working. I much prefer having long blocks of time to having 1 hour between activities. I think now is when I’ll have to learn how to grab the moments though. Work isn’t going away or promising to get any easier anytime soon.
I did have a good writing session yesterday morning (Emancipation day). I was able to lay out ideas for this new song and explore the perimeter of the concept. Interestingly enough I didn’t write many lyrics – as in lines that I expect to keep for the song – but I generated a lot of good ideas and images… at least they seemed good at the time. We’ll see when I look back at them later. It felt relaxed, which I think I needed. I tend to pressure myself to come out with more tangible acheivements – a verse (our at least most of one), a chorus – just something that I can say is done or 1 or 2 lines away from being done. It was nice to explore without putting that pressure on the process.
So I push on. I’m harbouring dreams of meeting with some musicians on Wednesday (Independence Day) to sell the vision for the project and to play a couple of songs. If I’m doing that I need to organize it today.
“Starting from zero got nothing to lose…” Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”
I’ve been threatening the world that I’ll start a blog for some time now… in my mind (Cue diabolical laughter)!!! That is, the threats have only been issued in my mind… not that the blog would be in my mind… erm… maybe I should start this post over. Oh whatever!
I figure if I’m going to give paper playing a go for the next few months, it would be worthwhile to blog about it. Most people who aren’t involved in the process of creating art, view art mostly as a finished product. Some get a look behind the curtain, whether it be a band rehearsal or a visual artist’s studio. I think it could prove useful (and hopefully interesting to someone other than me) to journal about and during the process.
Whenever I’m interested in an artist I’m curious about how they do what they do. I want to know what went on, how they came up with that concept – it’s hard to explain how much really great concepts piss me off and inspire me at the same time, how they crafted that verse, how they play that riff. The curiousity is stronger when it comes to music because it’s the art form I use, but it happens with poetry, prose, film, painting, etc. I guess art does that. This blog is my opportunity to record the “behind the scenes” without it being doctored, cleaned up or decorated.
I’m guessing it might help me as an artist if I journal my own process; to see where I started, where it took me and what it ended up being. I’m convinced art has a life of it’s own and it leads you just as much as (or more than) you lead it… but let me abandon that train of thought before I start sounding spooky or mystical. Too late?
It also would help me to see myself through the lens of paper playing. I think I’m finally not afraid to see myself and to capture a snapshot of a “now”. I’ve always disliked journaling because when a “now” becomes a “then”, the raw realness of who I was is very uncomfortable and sometimes just ugly. My memory has a wonderful way of self-sanitizing. There are benefits to forgetting as much as I do but I’m sure they’re drawbacks too.
This blog will serve as a history. It may only be a history of an attempt but God-willing, it will be history of a successful project and the story behind an album. And if God is willing, it will be the story of a miracle; maybe a small and specific miracle but a miracle none-the-less, because when I look at what I’m attempting and the comprehensive lack of resources I have to pour into it I’m sure miracles will be required.
It feels like this could be my last attempt; my last go at being an artiste in this sort of way. I realize I could be wrong. It could be that I’m just reading the signs and believing the odds. I might be thinking this way because of a sense of how things traditionally play out. With Zachary’s arrival (again, do I know or am I going with my gut?) drawing closer I’m anticipating the kind of change that will remain for many years. I don’t know what the future will look like. I don’t know what God will engineer. My life so far has been a story of Him doing things that haven’t been likely so it wouldn’t surprise me too much if He continued to defy the standard expectations.
What I do know is that (almost all of a sudden) I feel the energy rising to give this another go. Not however, the slow, careful, methodical building that I would have tried 10 years ago. I feel like I could sprint for a bit. I think it’s time to do as much as I can, as fast as I can and as well as I can. And there’s something very liberating about how I see it working. I’m not trying to build a band, with the right blend of personalities and the type of synergy and shared vision that would keep us together during trying times. I’m throwing something together – with attention to detail, love and expertise of course – and I want to see how far it will fly. I’m not hoping it will last. In fact I’m expecting that it won’t. I just want to see what it can do right now.
It’s actually wonderful to contemplate investing in something where won’t have to focus a lot of my energy on the vehicle (i.e. the band) because I’m not trying to build a vehicle that I plan to drive around in for the next many years. It’s more of a push cart or soapbox car than a proper vehicle. It’s meant to be disposable. If, for some reason, it lasts longer than I expect it to, we’ll figure out how to cross that bridge. The best part is that I, and really everyone involved, can focus our energy on the process and the product and that becomes the common object of interest. In other words people can commit to this thing not some much because they could see themselves working with each other for a long time, but because they want to work on this thing.
For the part of those who would participate in this project, I don’t think that they need to feel like this is who they are or are becoming artistically. This is who I am right now. Even for me that will change over the next few months to years. It’s like taking a picture. It will show what you looked like at that point in time and may foreshadow what you’re becoming, but it won’t represent you and in fact will represent you less and less well as time passes.
And it needs a name. I have “paper playing” in mind. It’s going to be interesting to see how people react to the name. I didn’t conceive it as any deep and meaningful metaphor. I actually though of “paper plane” first and then though it would be nice to play with word sounds by replacing “plane” with “playing” (at the risk or nobody being able to find the website), with the wonderful coincidence of introducing some musicality to the name. And that’s really hope it will be – songs that I sketch out, we assemble and we throw out there and see how far they fly. Songs unburdened by dreams and expectations and carried by our joy in seeing them go anywhere at all. And when we throw one out and watch it for a bit, we build another and see what it does.
