Play For Today: Second Verse, Same As The First

23 January 2009 | 1:00 AM

Believe it or not, I actually have been keeping up my end of the ol’ creativity bargain the last few days. I’ve been coding like a banshee (come to think of it, do banshees code?) in an effort to bring a really awesome extant web application into the Facebook sandbox, but sadly because I’m doing that work under the auspices of a non-disclosure agreement with the folks behind the site, I can’t very well publish snippets of my code here for y’all to see. Take my word for it, though: it’s awesome.

Tonight I’m forcing myself to take a little bit of a break from programming so as to actually live up to the spirit (if not the letter) of my resolution. While I’ve got a couple of embryonic musical ideas, they’re not even well-formed enough yet for me to commit to audio yet, so I’ll have to do one or two of those this weekend. Instead, as a change of pace, here’s a lyric (or, at least, part of one), some loosely-connected scraps of sentences I’ve been clinging onto for a quite some time. Now before you read this, keep in mind that, after twenty-odd years of adoring The Cure, the lyrics I come up with tend to be incredibly overwrought and self-indulgent. Others – read, Robert Smith – pull this sort of introspection off very well. I, on the other hand, usually pummel it to death with my bare hands (or, in this case, my pen and journal). I wouldn’t exactly call it autobiographical in the conventional sense: the theme of this jumble is not focused upon any one incident from my past, or rather if it is it’s also at least tithing to several other periods of my life as well. Hence the (unintentional) disconnectedness of it all. My hope is by actually exposing these things to some air here on the inter-webs, I’ll be a little bit more likely to gain the perspective needed to polish up this turd or call it dead.

Sleep

Twenty-four hours ago
you didn’t know
and everything seemed so easy.
I’d made my bones about you
snatched every breath that they drew
and buried them deep
in the ground somewhere.

Now it’s all been said
we’ve raised the dead
and this thing is making me queasy.
Funny how such simple words can
throw the doors to hell wide open.
Bury me deep, please
in the ground somewhere.

I’ve been living hand-to-mouth
I’ve been staring at my feet
I’ve been hiding from myself
I’ve been lying through my teeth
I’ve been sitting on my hands
I’ve been trying not to breathe
I don’t want to go to bed
I just want to go to sleep

Now that I see it in print, I think I’m going to go ahead and preemptively call time of death at around 12:59a, CDT. I dropped “queasy”? Seriously??? Yeesh.

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Play For Today: Better Latte Than Never

19 January 2009 | 11:55 PM

OK, before you start yelling at me for taking a breather from my resolution, let me first attempt to excuse it by pleading exhaustion after an impromptu series of school closings turned last week into a scene out of Mr. Mom. And if that doesn’t placate you……look over there – it’s something shiny!

In all seriousness, thank you to the hundreds dozens several of you who publicly and/or privately for admonished me for falling down on the job. I needed a swift kick in the virtual ass to get into a groove again. Anyway, I figured I’d get back in the saddle tonight with another stab at being a bard, with “stab” being the operative word, since after reading this you’ll surely either want to stab me to death or your own eyes out. But, as the poet once said: “Ye doth not liketh? Getteth thee thine own blog, swine!”

With Room

(“101 Sex Secrets That Will Drive Him Wild”)

(What television show features Superman in every episode?)

(Maybe Eva Mendes is the nice one?)

(What’s the difference between “saddlebacking” and “saddlebagging”?)

(“If your life before you became a Christian was a movie, which movie would it be?”)

I shudder to think of all I would not even dare to consider
if you were not there,
with room.

It occurs to me I’m nowhere near good enough at this to be tinkering around with form so much, but frankly sometimes I need a bit of a device to loosen up the ol’ creative logjam. And at least it kept me from busting out yet another haiku, right? In any case, there it is: feel free to stab away.

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Play For Today: Ownage

16 January 2009 | 12:28 AM

I know, I know – for the second time now, my resolution skipped a day. Last night I wound up being wiped out by the remnants of a flubola bug which had previously darkened our doorway around here – the only thing I was creating was more shares of stock for the Pepto Bismol people. That said, I’m back tonight with some music, and as promised this time I did it without stock-loops, by gum. All the tracks are created by yours truly, which I can’t quite tell if it’s a good or a bad thing.

There are some inherent issues with the recording – I basically spent zero time mastering it, so all of the tracks are pretty much forward in the mix, leaving some stuff to either be way too exposed or buried – and I’m not at all thrilled with the transition into and out of the chorus/bridge part. I might not even be all right with the tempo. However, ultimately my goal was to get something which was rattling around in my head, well, out of my head, letting it breathe on its own a bit to see if it’ll make it. At this point, it’s touch-and-go.

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Play For Today: Hook, Line and Sinker

13 January 2009 | 10:57 PM

Tonight’s opus is remarkable for at least one thing – I was able to get cracking on it before the wee, small hours of the night for a change. To be fair, it’s really just a snippet of some disastrously bad poetry I wrote over the summer, my hope being that a critical trimming of the fat will upgrade it from “disastrous” to “wincingly bad”. Progress is progress, people: don’t knock it!

Bait

I think about those fishing boats
(you know the ones)
who set out on vast, unending seas
in search of one catch or another.
The ocean is so big,
their trawlers and nets so small,
yet experience and instinct tell them
where they should look for their prize, and
what they should offer as bait.

I think about them and realize
I am a terrible fisherman.

The thing is, I appreciate poetry (and art in general) which can be taken any number of ways, in any number of contexts, but that’s a skill I have yet to cultivate. I am, as it turns out, only proficient in the art of single entendre.

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Play For Today: Make The Kids Do The Work

12 January 2009 | 9:58 PM

Due to a flu bug which briefly descended on my house this weekend, en-sickening both adult and child alike, I was forced to have a brief hiatus from my daily slog at self-improvement. So tonight I went all-out and got the kids involved. Or rather, I happened to be around with a low-res digital video camera when they were, well, doing what they always do. That is to say, being adorable and cracking me the hell up. Anyway, here’s the resulting masterwork:

Hrm, this making-the-kids-do-the-work thing is a great idea. It sure makes my job a lot easier. I wonder if I’m flouting any child-labor laws?

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Play For Today: Worst Boy-Band Ever?

9 January 2009 | 11:36 PM

Tonight I’m feeling tired, uninspired and short-wired. Hell, I even considered letting that rhyme suffice as my creative output for today. But even someone as lazy as I am has standards, so for tonight’s fit of creativity I will make an attempt at humor by captioning a photo. Observe:

So whattya think, fellas? Should we start things off with “Hangin’ Tough”
or just jump right into “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”?

I know, I know. Most of you are either too old or too young to get the reference, and those of you who aren’t are shrugging your shoulders and thinking, “You call that a joke?” But look on the bright side, kids: at least I didn’t toss off another blasted haiku, right?

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Play For Today: A Little Loopy

9 January 2009 | 1:37 AM

I didn’t get much work in tonight, so this particular snippet is sort of brief. It’s not really intended to be even close to fully formed – I just liked the mixture of almost glib acoustic guitar with trance and rock beats, and wanted to see how dense I could get it before it collapsed under its own weight. In retrospect, the inner synth loops I pulled for this are not quite right, but cut me some slack, I was tired. Anyhoo, enjoy:

OK, I promise that the next musical item I post will either be loop-free. Or, at the very least, I’ll go out and buy some loops that improve upon the stock ones. Cripes, this resolution’s getting both tiring and expensive!

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Play For Today: Haiku #2, Electric Boogaloo

7 January 2009 | 11:18 PM

OK, tonight I’ll admit it – I’m resorting to another haiku in the interest of time. I’m fucking knackered, frankly. In any case, yes, I’m going the chump route, but it’s enabling me to keep my resolution intact for another day, an achievement unto itself.

Anyway, here’s a little something which sprang from a conversation with my kids tonight about death, one which went from pedestrian to existential in 5 seconds flat. The moment was sweet, hilarious and everything one dreams and fears about being a parent all rolled into one. Here goes:

like a playground

tonight you asked me
‘is heaven like a playground?’
um, yeah, sure…why not?

I’ll begin holding my breath, awaiting my Frost Medal and parent-of-the-year award…..now.

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Play For Today: A Shallow, Trance-Like State

6 January 2009 | 11:23 PM

I went back into GarageBand land for today’s opus, once again messing around with the built-in loops and adding a few of my own. This has a little faux trance-like edge to it, but I’m far from an electronica maven so it’s a facsimile at best. Also, when the ensemble comes back in after the bridge you really notice how buried the natural drums sound in the mix – there’s no pop at re-entry. That said, even though it gets to be repetitive after a while, I like the overall groove: sort of laid-back and propulsive at the same time. Anyway, let ‘er rip:

I think it’s probably time I invest in an actual electric guitar again – some of the loops I’ve been creating while ham-fistedly sampling myself noodling on a twelve-string acoustic don’t really cut it. Ahh well, dare to dream…

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Play For Today: Rest In Peace

6 January 2009 | 1:01 AM

Today was very difficult – this is about all of the creativity I can muster for the night.

Apologies. Good night. And goodbye, Lucy.

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