Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed

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.

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.

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.