mr dave

So here we are again, another 2 weeks and another 1000 words. Is it really necessary? Considering it's happening on the internet I think it's safe to say probably not, but whatever. This whole exercise was less about achieving anything and more about pushing myself to attempt something. My hope is that by addressing it directly and stripping myself of the excuses and back doors that something would change. In a sense I am noticing some change, but it's not necessarily the one I wanted to present. The longer I work towards typing this journal thing the more I realize I'm less of a musician than I ever thought. Sure I've got gear, sure I could play full albums worth of covers back in the 90s, sure I jammed with friends and played on a stage a couple of times in the 00s, so what?

I've come to realize I'm a very objective oriented person, if there's no practical goal or purpose I'm really not likely to put any effort towards something, and let's face it, there's little to nothing practical about playing music. That's not to say there isn't a point or value to it, but it's not a necessity to survival. Without food or water you would die, without music you would have to develop the mental strength to address the voices in your head, whether it's simply boredom or reflections of a more sinister issue, the music generally serves as a mirage to draw the attention of the conscious mind away from the elements of the subconscious it doesn't want to deal with.

There was an article on Cracked recently about the bad habits formed by growing up in broken homes. I'm exhibiting one of the main ones right now. It's apparently very common for people who grew up without traditional support structures to set themselves up with major projects that always invariably fail. It's like a bizarro Field of Dreams situation except none of us live in movie land, even if we build it, we're still broken. We lack the ability to follow through, then again when the people who created you were unable to maintain the collaboration that resulted in your own existence is it really any wonder that there are issues with completing things? On the other hand by never actually finishing anything we never have to deal with ending it and closing it off. In a sense never finishing something is a way of assuming control of the situation, a control that was never afforded to the individual when their base support structure crumbled around them during childhood.

On the other, other hand, I'm still able to keep writing these words every other week so I am making some progress on the whole issue. Though I'm debating with myself now as to whether or not I'll keep this going next year. Who knows.

In the meantime I should dust off one of my guitars but instead I'm pouring another cup of coffee. Fact is when I try playing the lines in that last blurb there's still something missing. When I stop looking at it like individual parts I can't play that bass line all the way through to something that feels like complete whole, I'm pretty sure it's just minor transitions but it's lacking something. Then again I've never tried composing either, and most definitely not with the current attempt of mentally conceptualizing the music then trying to write it out with letters and numbers before really picking up the instruments.

For the most part the guitar would be alternating between reflecting and accentuating the bass line. I added the notes last time to make it easier for me to figure out what chords to play, but what I really want to try is mixing up the voicings for those chords. Not entirely sure how I'm going to approach that yet though, especially where I feel the bass line is unfinished.

One thing I find myself missing is the spark from playing with another person. I find it rather boring to play music entirely by myself, there needs to be another person involved in order to help create some kind of motion within the music. Without a muse there is no music, only organized sound. In my youth I didn't necessarily have something to say but I had a desire to be heard, as I enter middle age that desire has faded as I've come to accept that anything I might say could never be more valid than any other person's message. But deep down I still miss -it-. That feeling of weightlessness when it all clicks in place. The point when what is said through the music is simply the feeling of the sound resonating through your soul and your conscious mind takes a break and allows your being to exist in the moment. That's not something that can be planned, only something that happens, and only recognizable when it's over.

I'm not abandoning my attempt to refine and reconstruct an old jam. I'm just avoiding working on it this weekend because it would honestly feel like work rather than something I think I should enjoy. As someone who fancied himself an artistic rather than commercial musician I think it's a necessary decision to take. Though as a broken person attempting to address some cracks in their psyche I think it's a cop out. Heck I didn't even have a song picked out for this entry until right now, looking back at all the back and forth duality going on (and the fact that I'm jonesing hard for a pipe to bake my wake) this particular tune seems rather appropriate.



Also, is it just me or does Adele kind of sound like her?

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i am the universe