Play For Today: Five-Seven-Five

5 January 2009 | 12:31 AM

As the winter holiday season officially draws to a close, I’m having trouble summoning much creative energy tonight. But a resolution is a resolution, so soldier on I must. Yes, it’s another god-forsaken poem, but I’m going to go all haiku up in this biznitch. Not because the form is easier and will allow me to get back to bed and books, mind you, but rather because it adds a bit of structure to the random synaptic debris I’m trying to pull together.

In any case, without any further ado, let’s get to my damn haiku. Hey, that rhymed! Ahem.

Choice

some decisions are
made complicated by love
but this one wasn’t

Seriously, tomorrow I need to get cracking on this exercise before midnight. Though my ability to appreciate creativity remains strong in the wee hours of the morning, my ability to generate it clearly does not.

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Play For Today: Once A Film Major….

4 January 2009 | 1:29 AM

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned here on day three of this little slice of heaven is that man, I’ve got to start working on these things earlier in the evening. Tonight, I put this sucker off until 11:30p and I’m paying for it now. It’s like all of the pressure and anxiety caused by college, yet with no hope of landing a degree or sleeping with a hot coed. Oh well.

For this evening, I thought I’d exercise some of my incredibly creaky criticism muscles. It’s been a while, but given that I wrote my undergrad thesis on Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, I think I should be able to pull something that bears at least the whiff of credulity out of my ear. So here goes, my review of the film The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. Enjoy:

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Play For Today: Song Zygote #1

3 January 2009 | 12:00 AM

Though I tried to put it off, I was able to force myself to tackle something creative for day two of my little experiment. For tonight, I decided to get my musician on. Check it:

I mucked around with GarageBand for a bit, creating a sort of layer-cake of samples and sequences, most of which are culled from the built-in instruments. Then I did some noodlish stuff on synths and a guitar, threw a shit-ton of effects on them and called it a night. I’m not thrilled with it – the drum track is a little clumsy for the groove, and when it drops to the bridge it’s not the kind of jarring I’m looking for. Moreover, it’s a little too Floyd-meets-folk for my taste.

Then again, I made it, so maybe it is my taste. All in all, not too shabby for a first stab, I guess.

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Play For Today: Into The Breach

2 January 2009 | 1:53 AM

Since it’s 2009 and all, it’d probably be a good idea for me to get cracking on my new year’s resolutions. However, because my attention span and lack of stick-to-it-iveness have been an obstacle in the past, I’ve been hesitant to go on the record with any such decrees, if for no other reason than it seems to me being a fella with flaws is better than being a fella who doesn’t follow through on what they say they’re going to do. That said, I do think on the whole that such resolutions are important: they can provide a structure for self improvement that many of us (read, me) lack. So in that spirit, I’ve decided to go on record with a resolution that should be entertaining if nothing else, if for no other reason than it can be amusing to watch one make a fool of himself publicly. However, me being me, I was unable to come up with a really out-of-the-box, truly inspired goal for myself, so I’ve done the next best thing: I’ve nicked one from someone else.

A few years back, geeky musician Jonathan Coulton undertook a very interesting experiment he called “Thing A Week“, in which he challenged himself for a year to each week write and record a new song and publish it on the internet for people to enjoy. For Coulton, this experiment was primarily a means to establishing a sense of discipline as a creator, but I think it suits my purposes nicely, except for the fact that I can’t really create anything. Be that as it may, I’ve decided to co-opt the Coultonian (look it up) model as my own. with two key exceptions:

1. rather than weekly, my goal will be to produce something daily, and
2. I’m allowing myself to consider any creative output posted for public consumption – a song; a poem; a review; a joke; a lyric; a photograph; a short story: you name it, so long as it is original and at least marginally creative – a success.

When thinking of a pithy catch phrase that encapsulates my new resolution, I discarded the idea of using “Thing A Day”, thinking that this might increase the likelihood of JoCo’s legal minions nailing me to the wall for IP infringement. So instead I elected use “Play For Today“, believing in my heart that being sued by The Cure’s recording label will undoubtedly earn me some sort of street-cred merit badge some day.

As this resolution/experiment unfolds, I would ask you to please keep in mind that I am anything but a highly-trained creative professional. My degree in film criticism, certificates in criminal justice and women’s studies and minor in Russian history have not really prepared me for this sort of endogenesis. Furthermore, my career as an IT professional has hardly served as a means for me to hone any particular creative craft. While I’ve been a musician in a past life, those skills are dull and rusty at best, and perhaps were never all that sharp to begin with. Moreover, I’ve had no training or instruction on or around any aspect of creative writing, photography, or comedy. And yet, for reasons both simple and complex, this feels like something that I should do, and better yet feels attemptable, if not achievable.

And so, without any further ado, I humbly present to you my very first installment of Play For Today:

Today’s oeuvre is a poem, or perhaps a lyric. Actually, this is only a fragment of a longer piece – hey, this is my first time, so forgive me for being a little too timid to dive in head-first. Anyway, here goes….

Cinema Svengali

As I sit here
watching this
I can’t help but think that
if I told you how brave you are
you’d just laugh
and tell me that it doesn’t take courage to be happy.

So I laugh instead,
finally understanding the joke.

Wow, while the poem itself took me less than half an hour to write, this blog post has taken me almost 45 minutes to craft. Let’s hope that improves, or else this’ll turn into “Thing A Year” or “Play For This Decade” or something.

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