My belly’s full and my body just doesn’t want to move.
It’s a strange day of departure. We can’t arrive at our stop for the night until 1.30am or so, which means we don’t depart from Maryland until about 9.30pm. It was sort of how I’d initially imagined our travels – moving around late at night and avoiding all possible rush hours, but in practice it just sort of gets me in the mood for a lazy day, and I’m all too mentally unprepared for driving off tonight.
We’ll be out for about a month, and my brain’s sort of fatigued by the prospect. For all that I Love how I Live, travelling from town to town, exploring and wandering – there’s a certain melancholy to packing up my toothpaste AGAIN, finding my hairbrush, not even having to pack my clothes because I haven’t unpacked them since I washed them wherever I was when I washed them. The transience of my current Lifestyle is losing a little bit of its appeal.
I’m not saying I’m planning on giving it up soon… it’s just that sometimes you need a real kick in the ass before you change your pattern, and I can feel the first little impetus growing, niggling at the back of my head.
It would be nice to own a bed again. There are vague house possibilities in my future, and it might be a smart thing to start planning towards. Hell, even if I’m not Living in it, it might not be TOO much trouble to rent it out in some way… though the legalities and the paperwork might seem too oppressive for a while, I’m beginning to bend some tendrils of thought in that direction.
Inspiration, direction, purpose… that sort of leads me back to Heather’s question: “How do you think you’re writing style has changed over time? What are your goals there? What are you aspiring to?“
That question really IS caught up in my overall sense of purpose. Heather and I come to songwriting from totally different places – Heather is a craftsman, and perhaps because of that, is actually better suited to our chosen profession. She sets herself projects, goals – I
really admire her work-ethic when it comes to song-writing. She has a slow but consistant rate of musical excretion, and generally I’d argue that her quality keeps getting better and better.
I’m the passionate one. I came to this from the artists’ stand-point… I have to produce and shit out a song when the issues inside my skull are squirreling in one on another with such rapidity that the friction forces something out. It’s why my music is less structured, less law-abiding, perhaps. I’m not good with choruses and little, fiddly, easily-labelled bits, and it shows in the songs I write.
I’ve become slowly more structured, perhaps. I might even write something with a “hook” someday – but it’s something that I’m evolving towards organically, rather than consciously working towards.
I feel sometimes that a lot of trouble with my constant and only occassionally broken writer’s block is that my writing style is almost completely opposite to that of the culture I’ve immersed myself in. The Brian Gundersdorfs, Richard Shindells and Heather Lloyds of the world – I admire what they do… frankly stand in awe of what they do – but sometimes the product is too tidy and too trite. The problem with telling stories all the time, other people’s stories at least, is that the lack of personal investment will eventually show. You have to find a REASON to tell the tale, I feel.
I tell stories that are mine, and slowly I’m evolving into someone who maybe can tell those stories a little clearer. My first songs were written as cautionary monuments to dead friends… then they were Love songs, and loss songs, and all sorts of creatures in between. I’d like to be able to tell a tale as detailed as Heather can, but with my own textures and dynamics.
Musically, I’d like to be able to write with the rhythmic complexity of the more progressive metal bands, inventing time shifts like Tool uses. Drown actually comes close, switching up to a Soundgarden-esque 7/8 during the chorus, but it was something that I’d stumbled across as opposed to something that I’d consciously pursued.
I guess in answer to Heather’s question, I’d really like to continue in my current style, continue the direction that I’m headed – but I’d like to be able to be more consistant. Write when I damn well please and about what I damn well please. I’d like to push out songs with a more political bent, and heavier music as well. I’ve been toying with my electric guitar some, and though I never want to push ilyAIMY away from its acoustic roots, I’d like to think that my own metal origins may become a little more evident in the near future.
Ok. Enough of my rambling. My machine is virus checking and defragmenting and spyware hunting… the poor beast is running slower than a bantha through molasses in a Rura Penthe winter. When I get back, I think Rowan and I are going to have a little reformatting party. And that’ll be geeky too.
Sigh.
