It’s disappointment that’s kept me from blogging for so long. It’s been holding my heart down so of course my hands have followed suit. I’m still battling this love-hate thing with blogging. I hate the fact that I have a record of my hopes and dreams and plans and it seems like they’re all still hopes and dreams and plans. Sometimes I think I’m asking for heartache when I take dreams, whimsical and wispy, and paint hard edges on them and try to fill in the details with a fine brush and stick them in a frame and announce to those passing nearby “This – this is my dream!”.

I’m tempted think that dreams are too delicate for that kind of treatment. They need to be nourished carefully in half-light, stroked and spoken to gently in hopes that they can grow strong enough to support themselves and emerge suddenly and delightfully, or else die in the privacy of their cocoon where none will know that they once lived at all… that they dreamed once of being. But I know that it’s not dreams that are that fragile. As intangible as they can seem they’re hardy. It’s me that is fragile. Maybe it’s ego. Maybe it’s my picture of myself that I dislike once the hard edges and details have been added. Maybe I prefer the fantasy that’s left when I forget as much as I tend to, to the sentences which can’t be challenged after they’ve been said – the ones that always will say how it really was.

So when the list is made of the things that can cripple a man someone make sure that “disappointment” get’s the prominent position it deserves. But something else insists that I write. It’s push is strong enough that I’ve interrupted my work (work that I actually don’t mind doing and was making good progress at I might add) to capture what it wants to say. I really have so much to be grateful for. And gratitude unexpressed… well… isn’t.

God has blessed us with a daughter. We’ve named her Maia Lisanne and I’ve been so absorbed in all that’s come with this gift – diapers and bottles and burping and vomit and crying and falling asleep and tiny fingers and eyes that follow my face. And I’m amazed at very small things, which I think is as close as I can get to be being born into this world again. And we’re settling comfortably into our new home. And God continues to take good care of us, of all of us each day. So thanks Dad for all you’ve done. I am satisfied with what you’ve given and understand that you give a peace which quiets the restlessness and recriminations.

I don’t think gratitude and disappointment are opposites. But I do know that gratitude has prised me from under disappointment this time. I think I’ll have to battle disappointment a lot along this journey so I’d better label my tools well. So I’m back. The writer isn’t dead. If only I could shape all of this stuff into song…

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…”

Hurricane Hits Holiday Hopes

Okay… so Gustav wasn’t a hurricane when it hit us, but I’d lose that wonderful alliteration if I had to call it a tropical storm. Artistic license? In any case, we didn’t go on our short holiday trip as planned, because of Gustav. So all my plans to write and blog didn’t happen. I think I was depending on some sort of a break to get some momentum for paper playing. At this point, I think I’m going to have to accept and adjust to the reality that I’m going to have to do this project while doing everything else. I can’t really “stop” anything in my life to facilitate this.

A part of the challenge is that I like uninterrupted hours in order to really focus my attention on a task and they’re really hard to get right now. So I’m going to have to find a way to carve out one hour at a time and make the most of it.

A River Ran Through It

By “it” I’m referring to our house. We live in a section of a house that has been divided up to make several “apartments”, but I do mean a river ran through the house. Gustav was spectacular. There’s a way, when you live in a hurricane zone, that the thought of facing a storm while it’s still classed as a tropical storm brings you a weird comfort. You think of it as a small, weak thing, compared to the wrath of the hurricanes you’ve lived through. But Gustav was a slow killer. I’ve never seen so much rain. I didn’t understand how water grows and changes and how suddenly it can make its move.

I saw the water just after it started coming in under our front door. By the time I could call Sam it was halfway across the room. You can try to fight water but it will win in the end. You find you keep making concessions. You give up the living room as lost and try to refortify in the bedroom. You keep retreating as it keeps advancing and you find yourself fighting for the lives of the few dry square feet of floor left. Our shower was the dryness floor space in our apartment when Gustav was done. I have however managed to salvage some good metaphors which I might be able to pour into my writing (pun unintended at first but milked on second thought). I understand some things about water that I didn’t before. I have a healthy respect for it now. To be honest, before Gustav water as a metaphor had become for me… well… a bit dry.

Where From Here?

I’ve been a bit distressed about the lack of momentum for paper playing. I’m dealing with that by continuing to trust God that I wasn’t wrong about trying to do this and trying to do this now. So I’m managing. I’ve had what I consider to be some good and important ideas about the project. I’ll blog on those soon. I’ve also jotted down what I hope will become some good lyrics. There are some ideas that are less welcome than others. They don’t paint the pictures that I want to paint. They don’t look to me like I want to be seen. But they’re true. I think a part of my becoming a good artist is a growing willingness to live with truth and not hide it. So we’ll see where that goes.

This week I’ll steal some time from myself to have some important conversations about the project and related things. I’ll also start blogging about my philosophy as an artist – as far as its developed up to now. And this week I will write.

I haven’t blogged in a bit… which in this case means I haven’t been doing much apart from work. The good thing is I’ve been in a good flow for work. I’ve been getting early, not so much because of the Olympics (I’m glad they’ve been there to keep me company though; early morning TV normally sucks!) but to get a start on all of the things I have to do. The work has been going steadily and going pretty well. The pile is still big though. I’m not sure what I can delegate either. These days I’ll work right through the day and I’m so focused on what I’m doing I don’t want to break for lunch if any preparation is involved. I’ll work right through into the afternoon and when I stop I’m usually exhausted. I’m physically tired of course but more significantly I’m mentally spent.

The problem with that type of exhaustion is that I have no energy for anything creative. I haven’t been able to write. I’m working from early in the morning and by the time I’m done there’s nothing left to put into songs. I know it’s a season (I don’t expect work to continue at this pace; It won’t go away entirely but it will slow down again) but it’s a frustrating season to be in right now since I want to get paper playing off the ground.

I’m looking forward to this week though. I plan to go on leave for at least a part of it. If God sends the money (read ad for prayer here) Sam and I should go out of town for a couple of days. Apart from taking a break and focusing some time on gearing up for parenting I’m hoping to spend some hours each day writing and blogging. I’m optimistically targeting finishing one song and laying out several other ideas. I’m also planning to blog about my philosophy of art making and my journey to where I am now as an artist.

So the pace of all my writing should pick up again this coming week.

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.

So, that’s the “why”.

“… It will not be perfect, but it might be good…”

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.

We can’t wait ‘till the wind is right…