Two Old Songs

Two old songs. One of the most devastating things someone said about my CD which came out in 2001 was, "It’s so nineties." And I thought, shit he’s right. It was outdated because most of the songs had been written in 1995 or even earlier but I didn’t get around to recording it until years later. The second half of that guy’s review was the extremely stupid/still deflating, "The eighties are really big in New York right now."

Case in point, these two songs, which no one’s heard until now even though I wrote them when I was around 23, which is going on ten years ago. They’re about the same girl as "Succeed or Fold" who I only went out with for six months. Motor Beds is only about her in part. Long time ago now. The point of putting music up here is to get it all down no matter how dusty.

I think the lyrics to "Be My Wife" are kind of cheesy. I’ve thought about rewriting the lyrics but I’ve gotten used to them and they did come from some place honest. I didn’t know at the time that there’s a David Bowie song called "Be My Wife," from the "Low" record. That’s just how old the song is.

SONGS:

Motor Beds

Be My Wife

The Ladybug

Good news: When I was walking back from daycare with my daughter the other day we discovered a ladybug crawling on the driveway. I let it walk onto my hand and I showed it to her. Later that night she drew this picture: the first real picture of me and the first scene she’d remembered. She called it "Daddy and the Ladybug." It’s another record cover in the making.

Bad news: I was all set to upload two old, old songs--something a bit more straightforward than the last one I put up. The server keeps telling me, "Unknown Connection Error." It’s been one problem after another. Tell me this isn’t weird. I wonder at what point I should just give up. Or, rather, give in. It’s better to believe that my equipment is trying to tell me something than it’s arbitrary bad luck. Maybe I'll put all my efforts into fiction.

Tortilla Curtain

I’ve started reading T. Coraghessan Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain. So far it seems like another Bonfire of the Vanities type novel. Rich man hits a poor man with his car, social commentary ensues. I once had a whole theory laid out that The Bonfire of the Vanities is a straight retelling of Richard Wright’s Native Son, down to every character. I wonder if this has been written about anywhere. Instead of a black man killing a rich white girl, a rich white man kills a poor black kid. Native Son begins with the indignity of rats in a project apartment. Bonfire begins with the indignity of a man walking a rich wife’s dog. It’s been a while since I’ve read either of them. I’m sure Tortilla Curtain is going to go in another direction.

I’m glad to see that it’s been making fun of liberals. These days, reading liberals makes me want to become a conservative and reading conservatives makes me want to become a liberal. Whining self-righteousness about politics is annoying no matter who’s doing it, including myself.

So I was reading the novel and I came across a sentence like this: "The windows cut holes in the fabric of the night, bright rectilinear slashes against the black backdrop of the mountain." I shouldn’t pick on T.C. Boyle because he’s hardly the most guilty of this kind of writing. And this sentence isn’t even the worst example, but it got me wanting to write about it. Never in my life would I write a sentence with a word like "rectilinear." This is what I think dicks me as a writer in the eyes of the literary gatekeepers. I don’t play the game of using heady words which people think makes good writing. To me it’s not at all how people think, or talk, or feel. Maybe there are people out there who look at something and describe it to themselves as rectilinear but I really doubt it. Perhaps fiction is supposed to transcend reality, but reading words like rectilinear takes me out of the prose, not deeper inside it.

Cement & Sky

I am going to follow the example of the Empty Drum and put up music with flaws in place. He’s got some cool new stuff up. Hope he doesn’t mind the attention. I bought a new digital cable this weekend and the distortion problems still remain. I don’t know why. I can’t go out and buy a new CD burner so I am going to stick with what I’ve got. It’s probably not as bad as I think.

So here’s a new song. It might get redundant to some of you. If you get bored, just know that there’s a second part coming at the end--one of my favorite things I’ve written recently. I’ve rewritten some of the lyrics, especially in the beginning, but I’d rather get it down and out there than keep working on it. Some of the lyrics sound like they were written while stoned--which I was. Not on anything I smoked but on the books I was reading at the time.

Here is Cement & Sky.

Good Parents

Despite exposing our daughter to deranged clowns, we’re still good parents. We just got her the complete set of "Yellow Submarine" toys. She’s a "Yellow Submarine" freak. Amazon has these toys on sale for 50% off. All this was only around $25.

And then I found out there are others.

On another note, the world hates me. I set out to record some new music only to find out that my CD burner has a terrible hiss. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Mysterious timing just as I started this online project. More ghosts are out to get me. I’m only partly kidding. I had a great time working on a song but for the moment I can't mix anything down. I could take this as a sign, but I won't.

Also, I lost my keys. And I’m sick. But the toys are nice.

The Complete "Curcus Town"

The whole thing w/ frame. Needs an ironing but I’m afraid of messing it up. This is hanging in our living room across from where my daughter’s high-chair is set-up. It occurs to me--too late--that it’s a fairly fucked-up thing for her to be looking at while she eats. She still seems sweet and well-adjusted. I’m not going to put this in the header just yet cause I’m liking the blue simplicity.

Smash Your Head

I was listening to No Means No, my favorite band in high school. I don’t put on many of my old punk rock records these days--mainly because I don’t have that many. Most of them were on LP and they’re gone. There aren’t that many that I’d keep listening to after the fact, but I keep listening to No Means No. They had the best musicianship of any punk rock band. John Wright’s one of the best drummers anywhere. His brother Rob’s the best bassist. They’re kind of like a much harder, darker Devo. I discovered them with the record "Wrong" and then I bought everything I could find.

I always liked the weirder, jazzier punk rock. Victims Family was another. Their records were produced by NMN’s John Wright. Listening to their CD got me thinking about the statement I made about Richard Yates hating my writing because it’s too explicit. He would also hate punk rock pretty severely. The man loved show tunes. My fiction writing comes out of the music I grew up with as much as what I’ve gained from reading Richard Yates.

My favorite punk rock drummer was Bill Stevenson. Played for Black Flag, Descendents, All. I learned to play drums partly by playing along with Descendents records. In high school, I was in a punk rock band called Caustic. This uplifting picture was our tape cover--drawn by the guitarist/singer. I was the drummer and wrote some of the songs. Many lyrics about "the government." One line I remember is "The end of culture could prove the end of time, even if we’re still alive." Punk rock youth. So my literary outlook comes out of this, even if it was a lot of years ago.

Really Richard Yates was pretty conservative, like Kerouac who let it show later in life when he became a reactionary drunk. Kerouac’s first novel The Town and the City is almost right wing: pro small town, anti-city, anti-beat in a weird way. It sheds some light on his later descent. Richard Yates would probably hate Philip K. Dick’s writing too, and science fiction in general. He’d hate Bukowski and other heroes. Probably wouldn’t call it real writing. So I shouldn’t feel so bad.

That’s how I’ve justified my writing style recently. It feels better than being hated by a ghost.

Contemporary Press

I’ve been told that the people at Contemporary Press are going to be discussing my novel in the next two weeks. Maybe I should start an email campaign. Everybody send them waves of positive feeling about the serial killing celebrity novel, "North of Sunset," which almost none of you have read.

Behold! Again

Another template work in progress. I was thinking that I wanted something a little more understated than the last template, especially since I’ve started putting up music which is pretty lo-fi. Sometimes I loved the banner in the last place and sometimes I thought it was too much.

I’m thinking of putting some of my own graphics in the banner, eventually. Such a lovely shade of brown on the right. I thought about putting up this clown that I made when I was 7 or 8 years old. It was made on cloth with hot wax and tie-dye. I had a hippie art teacher. There’s more to it than the clown. A plane’s trying to shoot it down like King Kong, and a little person, probably me, is yelling "Help." It’s called "Curcus Town." I’ll put up the whole thing at some point when I manage to get a decent picture. I always wanted it for an album cover.

Let me know if the site doesn’t work. Or if this is a drastic mistake. I’ll be surprised if everything went smoothly. I’m going to try to make this the last change for a while.

Screw

All right, screw this. I like writing here. I just have to train myself so it doesn’t matter so much. The man takes things too seriously again. You have to take writing seriously in order to write an entire novel, but I shouldn’t have to give up something I’m enjoying. Not justification--I’m hoping. I’ve made some good progress on the book. I’ve made a point of working on the book at night, after my daughter goes to bed. If I get at least a page done a day, I’ll be satisfied by the end of the year. If I duck out again, you’ll know why.

I think I just needed a vacation from blogging, or at least the knowledge that I could take one if I wanted to. I was feeling tethered/shackled to the thing. I can put up one post a week if I feel like it--without making a big show about it, there’s no obligation. A blinding glimpse of the obvious. I’ve never been very good about keeping a journal and I’ve always regretted it. Just the thought of having an audience gets me writing here.

Maybe this blog will become something else. The journal of a novel, rather than the journal of a writer. Whatever it is, I don’t want to end it.