That's what I meant to say. Me in my were.
(It's a little reference to Kevin Drew's song "You In Your Were," of Broken Social Scene fame. I really like Kevin Drew's stuff, he has a wonderful, sort of cummings-esque way of mixing around the English language.)
What I mean by "me in my were" -- I can't at all pretend to understand the song, I've only ever listened to it a handful of times -- is swimming through the many, many past mes that are going to be represented in this album. I'm almost 21 years old now and will be by the time this is finished -- that's 21 years I've spent writing this album. And it is very much a buildungsroman sort of autobiographical fiction that I'm trying to create.
In the couple of weeks before I went to college, I wrote a song called "Monday Night" (On iTunes, Bandcamp, Spotify, the usual. Check it out!) and it is filled with all the naivety and starry-eyed romanticism I was feeling at that time. I really am not entirely fond of that song anymore, not because I'm any less naive or starry-eyed (well, maybe), but because it's songwriting without depth. There was nothing artful in "Monday Night," and in a vacuum that song is as boring and shallow as anything.*
But that song can come to mean so much more in the space of an album, where its honest representation of the person I was at that particular time might be contrasted against songs I have or am writing now (and perhaps "Monday Night" might be more interesting if it were to contain some of that contrast itself). And so, despite the fact that I look back on that song now perhaps a little dissatisfied, somewhere along the way I realized it had to be the opening track of my album.
But here I am in my were. Like I mentioned in my last (first) post, I learned from Jasper that I can shape and refine my songs after they are written much more easily than trying to control them when I am writing. So I am slowly tearing my old songs apart and trying to keep their honesty when I piece them back together.
At the time that I wrote it, "Monday Night" very much represented all the hopes and dream and fears and anxieties I was experiencing, even if they were nothing novel (This is partly because it was mostly written on the spot as I improvised at a farmers market -- the first words to spring from my mouth were "Monday night can't get here soon enough.") It was something of a personal anthem; I wonder that it might become a sort of microcosm for the album.
Anyways. These are the things that I am playing with. I also have a whole host of other ideas that are slowly coming into shape. Keep an eye out for a couple small audio segments to come. Perhaps I'll really take us through my songwriting process at some point, that could be interesting. I'm very lucky in having the rare problem of having too many ideas rather than too few.
*Aside: this is something I think about a lot. Music as art versus music as entertainment, or anything as art I suppose. There's some sort of abstract soul to art that's tough to pin down, some combination of intention and honesty and mastery and thoughtfulness. Like we might call a fantastic technical drawer an artist but is the caricature your parents paid $60 for on the boardwalk when you were ten really art? What does it say?The hardest part of art is that it requires you to have something to say. This is not to say that drawing is any less for it, just that there's a difference in my mind. End Aside.
(It's a little reference to Kevin Drew's song "You In Your Were," of Broken Social Scene fame. I really like Kevin Drew's stuff, he has a wonderful, sort of cummings-esque way of mixing around the English language.)
What I mean by "me in my were" -- I can't at all pretend to understand the song, I've only ever listened to it a handful of times -- is swimming through the many, many past mes that are going to be represented in this album. I'm almost 21 years old now and will be by the time this is finished -- that's 21 years I've spent writing this album. And it is very much a buildungsroman sort of autobiographical fiction that I'm trying to create.
In the couple of weeks before I went to college, I wrote a song called "Monday Night" (On iTunes, Bandcamp, Spotify, the usual. Check it out!) and it is filled with all the naivety and starry-eyed romanticism I was feeling at that time. I really am not entirely fond of that song anymore, not because I'm any less naive or starry-eyed (well, maybe), but because it's songwriting without depth. There was nothing artful in "Monday Night," and in a vacuum that song is as boring and shallow as anything.*
But that song can come to mean so much more in the space of an album, where its honest representation of the person I was at that particular time might be contrasted against songs I have or am writing now (and perhaps "Monday Night" might be more interesting if it were to contain some of that contrast itself). And so, despite the fact that I look back on that song now perhaps a little dissatisfied, somewhere along the way I realized it had to be the opening track of my album.
But here I am in my were. Like I mentioned in my last (first) post, I learned from Jasper that I can shape and refine my songs after they are written much more easily than trying to control them when I am writing. So I am slowly tearing my old songs apart and trying to keep their honesty when I piece them back together.
At the time that I wrote it, "Monday Night" very much represented all the hopes and dream and fears and anxieties I was experiencing, even if they were nothing novel (This is partly because it was mostly written on the spot as I improvised at a farmers market -- the first words to spring from my mouth were "Monday night can't get here soon enough.") It was something of a personal anthem; I wonder that it might become a sort of microcosm for the album.
Anyways. These are the things that I am playing with. I also have a whole host of other ideas that are slowly coming into shape. Keep an eye out for a couple small audio segments to come. Perhaps I'll really take us through my songwriting process at some point, that could be interesting. I'm very lucky in having the rare problem of having too many ideas rather than too few.
*Aside: this is something I think about a lot. Music as art versus music as entertainment, or anything as art I suppose. There's some sort of abstract soul to art that's tough to pin down, some combination of intention and honesty and mastery and thoughtfulness. Like we might call a fantastic technical drawer an artist but is the caricature your parents paid $60 for on the boardwalk when you were ten really art? What does it say?The hardest part of art is that it requires you to have something to say. This is not to say that drawing is any less for it, just that there's a difference in my mind. End Aside.