material

So why keep churning out the lyrics, though, that is an enigma.  Is it anything more than that old devil Sunken Cost? Almost four years in, what does it mean if I stop now?  Failing inspiration there is nothing but persistence…  I’m behind at the moment, a few songs backed up.  At this point it is basically a matter of catching up or it starts to get into feedback territory.  Why bother writing two songs if you’re still going to be two behind?  Worse, five? Ten? A couple or a few years ago when I was on jury duty I got in something like a month or more backlogged, climbing out of that hole in a sense confirmed, for some time, my commitment to the project, but lately it hasn’t been a matter of falling behind, much.  It’s something else…

I had a motivation when it all started in the first place, which was the band, such as it was…  But whatever that might have been it is about as done as a thing can get.  I really can’t remember what got me started again.  I remember it swimming into my head, and a sense of urgency and rightness about it, but any specifics of motivation are long gone.   I’ve never felt less engaged in any  intentional pursuit to make actual music (as opposed to merely generating piles of small, cryptic (or merely dull and pedestrian) lyrics); the main lesson of the most recent endeavor has been that in recording music at home there is a gulf of work between pushing out the kind of thing I push out in a day or less and ascending to the next level of polish and confidence and it just isn’t worth it, not for this hobbyist stuff. And professional grade is high above that, lurking in some orbital system forever beyond my reach.  Hardbound books of lined paper and ballpoint pens remain easy to come by, and it seems I can persist in this level of production indefinitely (I took a break in the midst of writing this and knocked out that backlog of lyrics, caught up with today, again.

I don’t even know why I’m talking about it.  Not ready to talk about anything else, I guess.  However, as Stephen Crane put it, the Swede found a saloon. What can I say: for now, it goes on, again.

originally posted at spiritofsalt.com Apr 11, 2009 at 12:24 AM