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October 14. The thing that used to hang me up was all the books I’ll never read before I die, whether for the first time or not. Lately it’s the music I’ll never play again with my own two hands that has me in fits. Every time I play one of my own songs or compositions these days, it’s almost inevitable that my thoughts will turn to finality. How can it be that there is a finite number of times that I will be able to play these prize possessions of mine? But whether it’s death or disease, the music will not play on.
October 18. Discipline is the only road to discovery.
October 18. My problem with country music from the ’90s on is that so much of it operates in the shadow of greater artists. I don’t feel that way with hard rock as much. Some of the past masters have been outdone on one level or another. Not so with country, it seems. Merle, Willie, Parton, Jones, Cash … untouchable. I think some musical forms attract huge talent when the forms still have some freshness to them, and then those genres kind of run their course because no one can top the early practitioners.
October 23. Plagiarism in art isn’t merely an act committed against someone else; it’s cheating yourself out of the miracle of discovery, synthesis, and allusion, the main ingredients of creation. How will this realization be inculcated in a generation that grows up using AI to perform almost every piece of writing, image making, and musical composition they engage in? These pursuits need to be difficult if they’re to have their desired impact on artist or spectator, whereas AI endeavors to make them easy.
October 29. Live performance is to a beloved studio recording what a film adaptation is to a favorite novel. It’s fun to see the thing burn with new life, but it doesn’t always work out the way you’d hoped.
In the end, though, the book remains on its shelf. The record is kept safe in its sleeve. All is right with the world.
November 2. I’ve sold another poem to The Literary Hatchet (issue 38). The piece is called “How-To Guide.” I believe it’s the sixth poem I’ve placed with them. Here’s hoping that readers connect with this work of dark speculation—but not too much (heh, heh).
November 5. I recently “completed” work on a ’60s playlist. It currently clocks in at 85 hours, 54 minutes (1,740 songs), and it’s been one of the most rewarding musical excursions of my life. Here’s why …
The popular music of my most formative years comes from the ’70s and ’80s. I was able to whip up playlists for those decades with ease. But what was interesting right away about delving into the ’60s was that it felt like I was connecting the music of my youth to the music that made that music possible. To go any earlier would start to feel a little archeological, I think. But the ’60s? What an explosive decade (in more ways than one)!
As a lifelong guitarist, and aficionado of guitar music, I also approached this playlist from that vantage point, and made some interesting discoveries. I’ve never been one to complain about fancy fretwork. By all means, give me a hearty diet of Yngwie, EVH, Vai, Satriani, Reed, Campbell, Travis, Hedges, Kottke and company all day long. But virtuosity has its constraints, even when fueled by legitimate compositional genius. Think of what the soundscape would be like if we only had bravura recordings to listen to. How many great songs would we miss out on simply because they’re not mind-bendingly difficult to play? It turns out we’d miss out on a number of easygoing instrumentals as well.
I have an example for you. Do yourself a favor and pull up the original recording of “Greenfields,” by The Ventures. It’s a beautiful instrumental, despite the lack of any kind of finger-knotting lead work.
The above-mentioned virtuosos are/were aware of the value of occasional restraint in service of the demands of a given song, too:
Yngwie Malmsteen: “Memories”
Edward Van Halen: “316”
Steve Vai: “The Boy Girl Song”
Joe Satriani: “Lifestyle”
Jerry Reed: “A Thing Called Love”
Glen Campbell: “Wichita Lineman”
Merle Travis: “Sixteen Tons”
Michael Hedges: “i carry your heart”
Leo Kottke: “Corrina, Corrina”
Building this playlist has also been a great way to develop a deeper sense of the artists who were more or less content to cling to the tropes of the previous decade and those who were driven to break into new territory—not that some in the former category didn’t grow wings eventually. It was also a very pleasant reminder of how many musical genres were at play in the ’60s, each of them producing great work.
A word or two, then, about how I constructed this enormous playlist. Like any good mason, I did it brick by brick. That is, song by song. In the beginning there were a lot of artists I already appreciated to one degree or another, but I was largely unfamiliar with their output in the ’60s. And then of course there were the easy targets. I mean, how can you go wrong with Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald or The Beatles?
But I found myself doing a lot of side research on songs and albums that came up in people’s discographies. This inevitably led me to still more artists, some known, some not. What started as a project where I kept a few performers on deck in my mind as I proceeded to build out the playlist quickly turned into a cascade of names I had to keep track of in an online document.
The streaming platform I used for this made the whole thing a heck of a lot of fun, somewhat to my surprise, and there was no end to the suggestions and prompts the algorithm fed me every step of the way. One of the indicators that I was nearing the end is that I started diving into discographies and coming up empty handed in terms of music that truly engaged with me. That was not the case in the earlier stages.
This brings us to the topic of criteria. What parameters did I put down for myself? Damn few is the easy answer. No genre was safe. We have everything from Steve Lawrence to Burl Ives to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas to Creedence Clearwater Revival. I really became kind of obsessed with the notion of quality as an almost objective measure. If it was good, I wanted it in my playlist. And now you know.
November 8. An interesting way to assess a movie is to imagine it having started as an idea being bantered back and forth across a diner table by a couple of young hopefuls with almost zero access to money, even if this is far from the truth. In this imagined context, how far does the movie stray from such wholesome beginnings? Where does it prove itself to have accomplished something special against all odds? Why did this choice work and that one not? What role did budget (or lack of) play?
I find that this kind of hypothetical analysis often increases both my appreciation for a film that has real heart and my disregard for soulless money grabs.
November 8. It’s possible to learn a great deal from virtuosos without actually mastering, or even incorporating, all of their virtuosity.
November 10. Home isn’t a geographical location, or even a house. It’s a state of comfort and plenty, trust and love, guidance and hope. This is why, once you leave, you can never return. You can only carry it with you as you go.
November 12. Since the election, I’ve entered into a state of controlled apathy. My opinions and beliefs about what makes a country worth living in haven’t changed, but my engagement with politics is going to have to be very targeted going forward, in order to stay informed without blowing a gasket. I’ll be watching where I spend my money more closely than ever, and I’ll look for opportunities to make small differences from within the tight sphere of my life, but I cannot, for the sake of my family and my health, be the voracious news hound I’ve been in the past. It’s going to be hard enough observing the downfall of America in real time without reading the play by play.
November 15. It seems that most people would rather pillory the untried than the convicted. I mean, I get the idea that someone who’s paid their debt to society deserves to be left alone, but it also makes me more convinced that they actually committed the crime they were prosecuted for. Seeing Mike Tyson interviewed by a young girl recently got me thinking about this.
November 15. I sometimes wonder if almost every novel could be reduced to a single message: Memento mori; therefore, live well.
November 17. The downside to the era of having to buy albums/cassettes/CDs was that it pushed many of us into silos. You can only afford so many records on lawn money, after all. Chances are you’re going to gravitate to a genre or two. Not great for a budding musical outlook. (Thank God for radio!)
The upside, however, was that we were forced to leave well enough alone. It’s easy to see that there are too many options of everything available to us nowadays, but it was true then, too. You couldn’t afford (money-wise or time-wise) to listen to all the music in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80’s, or ’90s, so you settled for what grabbed you the most and built your taste accordingly. If you happened to be a musician yourself, it made it that much easier to break away from the immediate influence of your heroes and find your own voice. I suspect it must be difficult these days to stop learning the techniques and songs of others, with the Internet making it more possible than ever for musicians to petrify into lifelong students.
November 21. There is no necessary progress in any human endeavor. In fact, maybe there’s an obverse tendency when it comes to the arts. As we come to rely less and less on films, music, paintings, music, books, and photography to understand the world and our place in it, the very art of those things resists relevance and evolution.
After all, poetry written hundreds of years ago can be far more powerful than a poem written today. Music from the past can rock harder than a current banger. And paintings of yesterday often hold us in thrall.
November 22. Musical taste is largely subjective, of course, but one thing that points to there being a certain objectivity to it as well is note choice. A musician can play a phrase and it may or may not grab a person, but what does he do next? Does he just repeat the phrase? Maybe, but then what? What comes next? How does what comes next relate to the initial phrase? When a piece feels perfect—either to the composer or the listener—it’s probably got something to with the order of the notes. If they all feel inevitable, the composer or songwriter has paid attention in a way that a lazier musician might not (lazy = standard chord progressions, trite lyrics, predictable structure, etc.).
November 22. The biggest difference between composing and performing a piece is that while engaged in the former you have to operate within yourself and the music, and when you’re engaged in the latter you have to serve the listener, whether imagined or actually present. And of course you’re a listener as well. The listener in you shouldn’t get in the way while you’re puzzling out a new piece, and the composer in you shouldn’t get in the way while you’re listening. When both states are satisfied, I tend to feel that I have a good piece of music on my hands.
December 11. Reactions to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson have been disgusting, even when you factor out trolls and the strange refracting lens of social media. Murder is suddenly A-okay in America. We’ve lost our souls and our minds in so many ways. I don’t see how we recover from any of this decay.
Oh, and I’d be super curious to know how many of these murder advocates would claim to be against capital punishment. The absolute hypocrisy of it all …
A recent TikTok shows a man driving his newly purchased used car through the front entrance of the sales building as a result of a dispute about the terms of the purchase, and guess what … most of the comments reflect the same mentality being used to justify the aforementioned murder.
The acceptance of violence as a viable solution to life’s problems is a disease, and it’s spreading like Captain Trips across America.
December 17. The successful artist opens himself to the world. This allows pain to come in, as well as joy. So yes, a certain amount of pain is probably an ingredient in most good art, but it’s nothing without the discipline that comes from love of craft and the desire to achieve an intangible competency. Getting good sucks as often as it rewards. You need to keep wanting it, prioritizing it.
Too much pain, by the way, is only an impediment to creativity. As with so many things in life, balance is key.
December 17. No doubt, nostalgia can blind us to the flaws of those writers we’ve been reading since we were young. But something else is possible, too. Sometimes what catches us in a writer’s prose isn’t simply the inventiveness of his stories, the genres he writes in, or even the characters he’s introduced us to. Sometimes it’s his voice, and when a writer’s voice catches our ear, we’ll follow it into any forest or urban center it chooses to lead us into. Some of these writers may labor with a flawed hand; others will prove more unerring, but our connection to the voice is what matters most, and such connections are often made in youth.
This is where writing claims its kinship with music.
December 17. An effective collaboration isn’t made up of people who’ve figured out how to play each other. It’s made up of people whose self interests align.
December 18. I suspect that the most legitimate spiritual life is one that’s self-discovered and nurtured on one’s own terms. Anything borrowed, copied, stolen, or imitated is, by its nature, lacking in authenticity. Of course, this doesn’t allow for the sense of community that stems from conformity, so nothing’s perfect.
December 18. “Setting the table” is a good metaphor for many of the things required of us as human beings. A set table, after all, is ready to accept nourishment. It opens us to options and allows us to exert our own tastes as we fill our plates.
But if you accept the “setting the table” metaphor, you probably have to consider that “clearing the table” is equally important. Plans need to be relaid occasionally. New options have to be considered. A thought needs to be given to the needs of others.
December 20. In Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld discusses the economics of restaurant ownership and guitar sales with one of his guests—Fred Armisen, I believe, or maybe Neal Brennan. Whoever it was, they mention that it’s the restaurant supply companies that make all the money in the restaurant biz, because so many restaurants fail but will have needed equipment from the outset. Seinfeld and his guest then apply this logic to guitar sales, but the comparison is flawed, in my view. Sure, guitar stores make money off of people who dream of being professional musicians, but we can’t write off all guitarists who fall short of that goal. Many of them will continue to play and write meaningful music on their instruments. This is not the case with an industrial dishwasher or a pizza oven.
December 22. Maybe our lives, taken in their entirety, are the truest expression of our beliefs. What good does it do to ask someone what they believe at any given moment? Will they tell the truth, even if they know what it is? I say the next time someone asks you what you believe, tell them to look upon your life’s work if they truly want an answer. It’s no easy thing, belief.
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