Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed

Borrowed from and many others; edited for stuff I care about answering. I linked to a lot of stuff throughout; my apologies if any links lead to where you, dear reader, cannot follow.

Ran a road race. It was the Park Forest Scenic 10, and it was quite the learning experience.

Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I did, for the most part.

I wanted to run a half-marathon (13.1 miles) but I only ran a 10-mile race. Still, it’s close.
I’m doing OK with the three goals around my nutrition.
I haven’t really made much progress on my guitar playing.
I have sort of made more time for songwriting.
The debt is effectively gone.
And I’ve done better with organizing my wardrobe, but I’m planning to address this in the new house in a major way.

What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?

More time with friends, more time for songwriting, more money to spend on fun things. I’m starting to get closer to attaining all of these, and I want that trend to continue.

What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Work dates come to mind first: March 29th, when we launched our product to the corporate campus; November 15th, when we shut down the legacy product.

And, of course, November 2nd.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I dunno, maybe writing 15 songs in 30 days, even if that fell far short of my 30-song goal.

What was your biggest failure?

I can’t think of anything significant. I feel good about that.

Did you suffer illness or injury?

I injured my knee doing a 10-mile run on May 31st. I probably already had an injury, but the long run flared it up. That turned into iliotibial band troubles, which led to hip troubles, which led to possible bursitis and a prolonged break from running. I stopped running for the month of June, but spent July and August training for the Scenic 10, and I wasn’t fully recovered. I laid off for the rest of September, October, and ran a few miles in late November before realizing I still wasn’t recovered. I probably won’t be running again for a few more months, much to my frustration and dismay.

What was the best thing you bought?

My Clie.

Where did most of your money go?

This year was all about finishing up the debt repayment. And since I’m such a Quicken addict, I can give you percentages. Aren’t you excited?

The vast majority of it went toward paying off a single credit card. (23.94%)
Another large sum went to taxes. (13.53%)
Then rent. (9.27%)
Then another credit card. (7.99%)
Then savings for future house renovations, 401(k), and downpayment, respectively. (7.67%, 6.20%, 5.79%)
Household expenses. (4.58%)
Another two credit cards. (3.06% and 2.59%)
Groceries. (2.11%)
Car stuff. (1.66%)

Ain’t we got fun?

WAY down the list, you start to see things like:
Vacation (0.99%) - but this includes the trips to Chicago for my dad’s chemo treatments. Whee.
Songwriting (0.66%) - we’ll spend more on this in 2005 when we record some more demos.
Dining (0.65%) - we don’t eat out much.
Entertainment (0.50%) - and most of that has probably been spent in the past month.
Recreation (0.12%) - this includes my race fees and running shoes. Whoop de doo!

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Our new kitten, Bopper.

What song will always remind you of 2004?

“Live Like You Were Dying” written by Craig Wiseman and Tim Nichols and recorded by Tim McGraw.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Take vacation time. I worked a hell of a lot of hours. All that overtime certainly helped pay off the debt, but I have serious knots in my shoulders to show for it. Our in-town vacation, while fun, wasn’t nearly enough.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

I wish there’d been no reason for all those trips to Chicago for my dad’s treatments. But I’m glad I was able to be there and help out, and I’m certainly grateful to for generously volunteering to watch our kitties during one of those trips. And when I say I want less of it in 2005, I mean that I want my dad to be healthy again.

What was the best book you read?

“About A Boy” by Nick Hornby. Much better than the film, although I love Hugh Grant (or “Huge Grunt,” as Karsten and his sister refer to him) in just about anything.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

I don’t know, really! Maybe it was the discovery that I can, in fact, write lyrics to existing melody. Not that I haven’t done it before this year, but I usually choke when faced with a melody I have a lot of respect for.

What did you want and get?

Pre-qualification for the mortgage I wanted. I’d say “a house,” but we haven’t quite signed the paperwork yet.

What was your favorite film of this year?

It may be 10 years old, but I just saw “Before Sunrise” a few months ago, and I loved it so much. “Before Sunset” was very good, too, but it felt a little contrived whereas “Sunrise” just felt spontaneous and beautiful. Wow.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

My birthday hasn’t come around yet in 2004. I’ll be 31 on 12/23.

What is at least one thing that would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Not having to deal with my sister’s ridiculous crap on top of everything else.

Who did you miss the most this year?

My good friend and former co-worker, Tom Johnson. He’s a nut, and I love ‘im, and I miss hanging out with him.

Who was the best new person you met?

No one but Karsten has ever made more of an impression on me in a shorter span of time than has. I was hoping to find good friends this year, and he’s a great find and a definite keeper.

How very amusing. I was trying to find information on when The Mattoid will be playing anywhere in town next, and I stumbled across this review of the “Hello” CD, which starts with the heading “Definitely Not Lionel Richie” and concludes with a question: is it a joke or isn’t it?

Um… hello?

What must be said about my experiences with The Mattoid is that, like perhaps a fair few Nashvillians, I first heard The Mattoid perform when he was using the name Urban Peasant and he played the open mic at the Bluebird Cafe.

Did you catch that? He was playing the Open Mic. At the Bluebird Cafe. Get it?

The Bluebird! Billed as “the legendary Bluebird Cafe.” Where all kinds of famous country singers have played. Where the biggest songwriters in town play every night.

Karsten and I were practically on our feet for his performance, it was so hilariously absurd and out-of-context. Meanwhile, the folks at the tables near ours were unrepentantly holding their mouths agape. Literally — jaws hanging wide open.

It was great. Performance art at its finest.

We’ve gone to see The Mattoid a few times since then, and he puts on a great show. If you don’t take it too seriously, you might just laugh out loud during the performance. And — hello! — that just might be the point.

I missed the CMA Awards show last night. We were going to go work out and watch the show on the cardio theater TVs, but my knees started hurting and I didn’t feel up to it. Now that I’m reading the press release about it, I’m so bummed to have missed Randy Travis singing “Sunday Morning Coming Down” in a tribute to Kris Kristofferson. That is one of my favorite songs of all time, and Randy Travis has the perfect voice for it.

On the other hand, I’m a little glad I missed “Live Like You Were Dying” winning song of the year. I’m thrilled for Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman, who write incredible songs and truly deserve this kind of recognition, but if I’d seen them winning, I’d have lost it. In this press release, Tim McGraw is quoted as saying backstage, “The song came to me around Thanksgiving. That’s when we sort of learned that Tug [Kate's note: that's his late father] didn’t have a chance. We cut the song three weeks later and it wasn’t sad. It was something special.” I have a hard enough time listening to that song without crying; now it’ll be waterworks every time I hear it.

The real upside to having missed the show is that by staying home I was able to focus on writing, and I wrote not one, but two songs. One of them was kind of a throw-away piece of dreck, but as soon as I finished it I started on the second one and it was much sharper for having sort of “warmed up” on the first one. I read the second one to Karsten when I was done, and he said it had real presence. So yay! That makes five songs total this month, and at least two of them are real possibilities for serious development.

Five down, 25 to go.

I’ve been a total slacker on songwriting this weekend, but I forgot to mention that on my way home from work on Friday, I came up with an idea for how to finish a song I started months ago. True to my usual auspicious beginnings (which mostly end up sitting around unfinished), I had come up with a great hook and a tentative chorus for it, which, when I showed it to Karsten, got him excited enough about it to write a truly inspired chorus melody. To which I said,

“Oh, shit.”

Nothing seems to freak me out more than having to write lyrics to an existing melody — especially when the melody is so fantastic. ‘Cause then there’s no wiggle room, no way to say, “Well, I can’t think of an eight-syllable way to say ‘I wish I knew the real you like I know the fake you’ in pentameter with an ending anapest, so I’ll just go with that line and he can rewrite the melody to accomodate it.” (What a weird example. I wonder what nether reaches of my subconscious that little gem just came from.)

Anyway, this one was freakin’ me out big time. And Karsten kept dropping hints that if I wanted to work on this song, he was open to discussing anything or helping me talk through how it was going to go, and all that.

Still, no progress for months.

And then Friday, boom! The story flow occurred to me, and as soon as I had that, I knew how to write the song. So I raced home, nodded hello to Karsten, made a beeline for my desk, and wrote the whole thing out.

It’s not Lennon, it’s not Simon, but it’s a start. And it’s good enough to give back to Karsten so he can finish the melody.

3 down, 27 to go.

(Side note: Happy birthday, and !)

Absurdity du jour:

I ninja
you ninja
how does the rest of the world ninja?

NaSoWriMo rationalization du jour:
I did finish a song last night. However, it was called “Stupid Song” and was a completely and utterly pointless exercise. BUT! I’m counting it. Because the whole point of this 30 songs in 30 days thing is to get me writing songs, and even writing “Stupid Song” is practice for the real thing. ‘Cause here’s the thing: I was totally joking when I sat down and started typing lines like “this is such a stupid song” or whatever, and I wrote a verse and chorus from start to finish, occasionally rhyming lines spontaneously. By the time I got to the end of the chorus, I thought about turning away and starting something else, since this was obviously just a joke, and then it hit me that, for my particular weakness as a songwriter, finishing “Stupid Song” would be the best kind of practice. No pressure to make it commercial, just the exercise of starting a song at the beginning and writing it through to the end. So I did. I wrote a second verse, rewrote the chorus, improving it as I rewrote it (which is one of my tried and true techniques) and, when it was done, sat back pleased with myself. It may be a “Stupid Song” but I felt very smart for letting myself finish it and include it in the total for this month.

So. That’s 2 down, 28 to go.

I was flipping radio stations while driving home this evening and came across “Live Like You Were Dying” so I stopped and listened for a while. Man! Not only does that song pack a particularly powerful punch in my life at the moment, what with my dad’s situation, but it’s just airtight, musically and lyrically. Great production, great performance by Tim McGraw. I felt overcome with envy. So that got me thinking about other songs I wish I’d written, and I decided to start listing them. After all, I can always refer to this list when I need inspiration.

I also decided to limit the list to songs which were probably written in Nashville, and probably intended for the country market, since that’s where we’re aiming and I sometimes find it so stifling that it’ll be a good reminder to see a list of great songs that stayed within the “safe” limits of country radio acceptability.

So this is the beginning of it…

Live Like You Were Dying
(James Nichols / Craig Wiseman)

I Hope You Dance
(Mark Sanders / Tia Sillers)

A Little Past Little Rock
(James Brown / Brett Jones / Tony Lane)

You’ll Think Of Me
(Darrell Brown / Ty Lacy / Dennis Matkosky)

Bring On The Rain
(Helen Darling / Billy Montana)

[Edit: additions since original post]
Every Light In The House
(Kent Robbins)

Yesterday was another peaceful morning of organizing MP3s and writing songs. Finished a draft in the morning — that felt good. Organized my office and closet somewhat.

Then it was off to a god-awful lunch at U.S. Border Cantina, a party-hearty Mexican place apparently popular with Vandy frat boys who drink too many margaritas on Sunday afternoons to leave peacefully. Ugh. Never going back there again.

A little grocery shopping at Wild Oats, and then home again. I was determined that it would be a restful day, in spite of the efforts of Vandy frat boys.

We ate pasta for dinner and watched America’s Sweethearts, which is one of the DVDs we bought for cheap at The Great Escape. It was better than I remembered. The ending was a little smarmy, but I laughed out loud several times prior to that.

I’ve been using some of this vacation time to rip the rest of my CD collection so I can sell it and be done with it. I’ve made a lot of progress, but I have probably over 100 to go.

I’ve been skimming through “Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal: The Art of Transforming a Life into Stories” (what kind of book, I ask you, has two subtitles?). I think I don’t use this forum enough to be honest with myself.

Today, for instance, I had plenty of self-doubt about whether I really have what it takes to be a songwriter. Why is it I so rarely seem to be able to finish anything? I’m much better at starting out ideas, even getting them written in part, but following them through or coming back to them to finish them is something I would rather not do. Actually, I want to do it intellectually. But whatever force drives motivation, whatever means the difference between saying “I should do something” and doing it, that’s what I think I lack.

I have a lot of lofty goals. My aspirations have always been large and have been the main motivator for me — I don’t really have the work ethic some folks think I do. I want money, I want comfort, I want recognition.

“Everybody always laughs at love
but what they want is to be proven wrong”
- Allen/Hall/Oates, “Did It in a Minute”

It isn’t just that this is a great lyric (though I certainly think it is). It’s the way they wrote the prechorus/build melody to go with it: drawn-out, punctuated, really driving home the meaning by making the listener wait for it. That must have been one hell of a cowriting session. I would love to have been a fly on the wall.

It’s tougher, in some ways, to write lyrics in a void. Sure, I always have a working melody while I’m writing lyrics, but it rarely ends up being anything like the melody we end up using for the song (thank goodness). Something like the Hall & Oates example above would be nearly impossible to achieve in the kind of writing arrangement we primarily use.

But there are advantages to our arrangement, of course: I’m unconstrained by any existing melody as I write the lyrics, which leaves me limitless room to move and turn around, change my mind, scrap whole sections, and invent new structures. Of course, when I do the latter, as I recently did, I make it very challenging for Karsten. But hey, that’s what he’s good at, so I’m comfortable leaving that to him.

And we do the real-time co-writing thing every once in a while. Enough to remind us that it’s not the way we prefer to work. I think we learn a lot from each other and from the experience whenever we do, and I hope we never stop doing it, but I never plan for it to be more than an occasional change of pace.

So perhaps the greatness of the above example of collaboration will forever elude us. Or maybe we’ll find our own ways to attain greatness. Maybe we’re already finding them, and they just need enough repetition to produce quality results. To paraphrase the line, everybody always laughs at Hall & Oates, but what they forget is the 6 #1 singles, more than a dozen top 40 singles, and 19 gold and platinum albums. I’d like to be that laughable.

Last weekend, at a houseboat party thrown by my employment agency, I met a guy who works here in a department called “Collaborative Services” which basically means he works with servers. (Don’tcha just love corporate department naming?)

Anyway, he emailed me this morning, and I emailed him back trying to figure out who he was:

Are you the one who’s been here for three weeks?

His response:

Yes, Are you rubbing it in or searching for lyrics ?

My very silly response:

Either or.

I Live To Service Servers (The Collaborative Song)

(verse 1)
It’s been a long three weeks
Since I started at this job
And every day I’m more inclined
To run off and join the mob

(verse 2)
But somehow I stick with it
And maintain these machines
‘Cause we’re collaborative services
And we all know what that means

(chorus)
I live to service servers
I serve them very well
But if you’re not Amir
And you tell me what to do
Well, you can go to Hell
‘Cause I live to service servers
Yeah, that’s what I do
And you may hate the word collaborate
But then we don’t think much of you

and so on.

soaring_phoenix wrote about PIMs. I replied:

I love love love my Clie NZ-90. I’ve previously owned a Palm VIIx and a PalmPilot Pro. I’m a diehard Palm OS user. It would take a lot to convince me to go with anything else.

I’ll admit I’ve had a major challenge to overcome with PIM software because up until a few months ago, I was living and dying by ACT! at home and Outlook at work, wanting to keep my songwriting biz and my day job separate, not to mention take advantage of the great functionality ACT! offers for tracking leads and opportunities. The synchronization between two very different desktop PIMs was daunting at best. I tried the Palm ACT! client, but I found it too limiting (and didn’t really like having ACT! data live in a separate database from the original Address and Date Book app). Since then, I’ve basically abandoned ACT! and now use Outlook for everything at work and just use Palm Desktop at home more or less as a backup. I’m still not thrilled with the arrangement, but it’s getting easier to live with.

Anyway, here are the productivity apps I use most on my Clie:

Date Book and To Do List. Both original, sync’ed through Intellisync with Outlook at work and Palm Desktop at home.
CLIE Memo. Came with the Clie. Not as good, in my opinion, as BugMe! but the latter costs $20 and I’m getting by with the free one for now.
PocketQuicken. Absolutely indispensable. I love Quicken. See previous post.
TealDoc. Handy for editing text files directly on the Memory Stick, but I’ve found occasional file corruption as a result. Very disappointing.
Address. The original. Not thrilled with it compared to what I used to be able to store in ACT!, but it is what it is, and it’s fine for a lightweight address book.
AvantGo. Such a cool app. I’ve been using it for years, and I’m still impressed with it.

For a long time, I’ve been making notes for a songwriting book I hope to write someday after I’ve achieved enough success to be credible as an authority. I certainly don’t want to show my hand in any kind of public way, but I think it’s a focused enough topic that it hasn’t been written about yet and probably won’t have been written by the time I get my chance. And if it has, maybe I can still get it published.

Anyway, I’ve been working a little on it this morning, and I made some good progress. I put together practically one whole chapter and a portion of another one.

It’s really helpful to me, of course — that’s the beauty of the whole thing. The topic I’m writing about is one of my biggest weaknesses as a songwriter, so I’m forcing myself to articulate all the really useful things I’ve ever learned about this process. And in compiling examples to illustrate points, I’m having a few “aha!” moments myself.

I’m hoping it kicks my butt into actually internalizing some of this stuff and making it come more naturally.

but here are some things I’d like to accomplish this year.

Run a half-marathon, at least. I had hopes of running the Country Music Marathon in April, but between the weather and my wicked work schedule, I lost a lot of valuable training time in November and December. With only three months left to train (and at least two months of bad weather left, and still a fairly wicked work schedule), I won’t make the marathon. I’m still hopeful about the half-marathon, though. And even if I don’t manage that one, I’m intent on being able to do it by the end of the summer.

Increase the amount and diversity of raw veggies I eat. I already do fairly well at this, but I’d like to be better about it.

Increase my nutrient:calorie ratio. Same as above, and will certainly be aided by implementation of above.

Decrease the amount of useless fat I eat. Again, I’m pretty good about this, but I still munch a little too much chocolate a little too often, and french fries never did anything good for anyone, even when they’re only eaten once in a great while.

Improve my guitar skills. I let this slip because of my wicked work schedule, but I really need to work on my guitar playing. It could be such a valuable songwriting tool, and I just haven’t taken the time to practice and improve.

Make more time for songwriting. My day job has been top priority for a few months, and that’s fine because it pays the bills. But once the big push is over (and it should return to normal by the end of March), I need to get back to spending serious amounts of time on writing songs.

Accelerate debt reduction plan. As of yesterday’s session with Quicken, my… our… THE debt will be paid off in May 2005, which is thrilling (only a few months ago I was excited to think it would be paid off by September 2007!) — but I’m a never-settle-for-less-than-everything kind of person, and I want to see if I can make it go away even faster.

Organize my clothes. This seems so minor in comparison to the others, but it’s really such an annoyance. I have a fairly generous closet space, but I have a lot of clothes because I basically have four wardrobes: my smart-and-professional work clothes, my sexy-and-stylish out-and-about clothes, my ever-growing collection of workout wear for all seasons, and my comfy-and-hip stay-at-home clothes. I need to find a way to make it all tidy and easy to access.

I posted an update on the song demos as a comment reply to therealjae, and it occurred to me that it’s really a separate post, so here it is.

From the AP - Long before his days as billionaire premier, Silvio Berlusconi used to croon on a cruise ship. Now, Italy’s leader is coming out with an album of love songs.

My favorite part is the lyrical excerpt:

“One verse penned by the premier goes: ‘With my heart in my mouth/Because your love is everything to me/I know you may make me suffer/But I’ll never let you go/Even if I have to fight/I will love you until the end.’ ”

Gee, he should write boy band songs.

Kate performed tonight in a round with Lair Morgan at the French Quarter Cafe.

Kate performed tonight at the Hall of Fame Lounge in a round with Lair Morgan and others.