To wrap up my summer vacation–to frame it, really–I have decided to write another seven songs in seven days. I didn’t come up with the idea, actually. I was talking with my wife’s aunt Jewel up at Lake Tahoe Thursday, and she gave me the idea.
Jewel is a good listener, which means I end up revealing more of myself to her than I do to normal people, I think. We were talking about my career choice–teaching–and I guess I was complaining, actually. About the bureaucracy, and the paperwork. She asked me what I would do if I could have any job in the world, and of course I said I wanted to be a songwriter. “So be a songwriter,” she said. Or something to that effect.
Easy for her to say, right? She doesn’t have to buy shoes on my salary…haha…just kidding…Wendy has a job, and she buys her own shoes and a good deal more. But I can’t just up and quit my job to become a rock star.
No, but I can indulge myself for seven more days. Let’s just see what comes out of it.
The beautiful part is the kids are both away at summer camp, so I’m not robbing them of any paternal affection.
I actually started my challenge on Sunday, and I confess I’m not really going by the book this time. Whereas my first time out I was strict about writing a blog, penning a song, and then recording it and putting it up on rapidshare, each day, this seven days I am giving myself some latitude. This is the first blog I’m writing, obviously, and I’ve only recorded one new song, which, as usual, is at rapidshare.com (sign in using my username tommydean, and password songwriter). But I’ve already written a total of four songs–or I’ve mostly written four songs. I plan to get them all recorded and online by the end of tomorrow, and I’ll be more consistent for the second half of the challenge.
Let’s see, what are the songs about? The first is entitled Will it all Come Together in the End? and sounds a bit like a John Prine ripoff. Okay, how about tribute? In the style of…
Funny, another of the songs is in the distinct style of Merle Haggard. Is this what pressure does to me? Turns me into an imitator? Mmmm?
Anyway, the first song is not about my insecurity about life-after-death. It’s about the modern world, and how fast everything goes. Perhaps it is more about my mind, and how fast that goes, moving from thing to thing, trying to figure everything out. And not succeeding. And it’s partly about the randomness of my/our experiences, how disconnected everything seems. A good analogy would be a house: what each person does is separate, unconnected, irrelevant to what everyone else is doing, until it is unified by the overall project. In the end, it makes sense in the context of the whole.
I’m hoping what I do today makes sense to the seven (now fourteen) day project. And that the whole is worth all the trouble.