To summarize my last post, I destroyed “Clap For Youself” in the car on the way to work. Bye-bye. On the way home, I “saw” it, all mixed up, non linear, paired with an intense intuition in my gut that felt, “don’t give up”. And that’s where I left off.
To follow up, I since sat in the living room with my acoustic in a narrow sliver of time I had one evening that week. The completely new chorus came to me within maybe 2 minutes. This after slaving for months with the other version. Also, the next morning, again in a sliver of time while I got ready for work, the words in the old last version slid into place. The new melody forced it to rewrite itself. It became concise, subtle, and pinpointed what I was trying to say all along but couldn’t. At it’s heart, it’s a song about loneliness and trying to overcome it.
You still can hear
People cheer
If you listen through time
Like the faintest of chimes
On a whisper's wind
This is quite a rough version, nowhere near what it will be if it ever gets “released”. We are used to “finished products” in music, so I hope you’ll bear with me through these early stages. After all, I know hip hop artists who wait years for their producers to “drop” their single, because it’s not polished enough. This is a blog about a creative process, not a bid for a Grammy.
Me & my dad at my cousin’s wedding circa 2004. He was one of my biggest fans in everything I did.
Serena Williams lost the Australian Open in only the quarter finals. My hero looked tired, flat footed, slow and …gasp…still bloated with baby weight. I myself am no skinny mini, so I say without judgement, I just…wanted my hero back. And I wanted to cry. “This could be it”, I thought, which I’m sure was the sentiment of so many others. But in the interview after the match, she said with 100% confidence that she WILL win again, it’s only a matter of time, implying that Margaret Court record is hers for the taking, just not quite yet. And I thought, who am I to disbelieve her? She may be sluggish and awkward but if Serena Williams says she is going to come back, then Serena Williams is going to come back. And I will make dance music like I hear on Sirus XM’s BPM station. It takes a lot of patience building loops, and envisioning songs when you’re used to writing on an acoustic guitar. But it is only a matter of time.
s/n: There is a copyright on the earlier version, but it’s so easy to “publish” these days, which is of equal importance to registering in D.C. and indeed is a copyright, albeit unregistered. Besides…who reading my blog is going to steal anything?? It will have a registered copyright soon enough.