Tuesday, February 15, 2005
The Sensitive Type
How can you not lose interest? There are, after all, jobs, bills, relationships, household duties, and just more fun things do to.
You go to the movies, for Christ's sake. How can anyone begrudge you that? It's two hours, and a half hour walk each way. On the way back you stop at the coffee place. The Asian woman who works behind the counter has long hair now. It was short the last time you noticed. Her English is still not great, though; she still doesn't laugh at your jokes. The stack of newspapers contains multiple copies of the front section of the Wall Street Journal and not one of the front section of the New York Times. You settle for the arts section of the Times. You find it as parochial as usual.
And how can you focus on revising one song when there are so many that need it? The others, you decide, have more potential anyway. The one about everyone going upscale but the protagonist: Nashville loves that kind of stuff, or you think they do anyway. (You don't actually listen to country music: too sentimental, too polically conservative.) All it needs, you decide, is some sort of melody and a thorough revision of the lyrics. When you get home you plug in the four track and pre-amp/compressor and record a guitar track. Then you re-record it. Then you re-record it again. You decide you're a lousy guitarist. And anyway, you don't have a clue what the guitar part in a country song sounds like. At best you can manage some heavily distorted power chords, and there's no way that's going to work.
And then it's late afternoon, early evening, night, and you have a beer or two, eat some leftovers, watch some sports on TV, and get bored with that and read some from a book about art. You'll do more tomorrow, you think. Or the day after that.
You go to the movies, for Christ's sake. How can anyone begrudge you that? It's two hours, and a half hour walk each way. On the way back you stop at the coffee place. The Asian woman who works behind the counter has long hair now. It was short the last time you noticed. Her English is still not great, though; she still doesn't laugh at your jokes. The stack of newspapers contains multiple copies of the front section of the Wall Street Journal and not one of the front section of the New York Times. You settle for the arts section of the Times. You find it as parochial as usual.
And how can you focus on revising one song when there are so many that need it? The others, you decide, have more potential anyway. The one about everyone going upscale but the protagonist: Nashville loves that kind of stuff, or you think they do anyway. (You don't actually listen to country music: too sentimental, too polically conservative.) All it needs, you decide, is some sort of melody and a thorough revision of the lyrics. When you get home you plug in the four track and pre-amp/compressor and record a guitar track. Then you re-record it. Then you re-record it again. You decide you're a lousy guitarist. And anyway, you don't have a clue what the guitar part in a country song sounds like. At best you can manage some heavily distorted power chords, and there's no way that's going to work.
And then it's late afternoon, early evening, night, and you have a beer or two, eat some leftovers, watch some sports on TV, and get bored with that and read some from a book about art. You'll do more tomorrow, you think. Or the day after that.
# posted by Joe Conley @ 9:20 AM 
