Been in a really good mood lately! Things are going well. As of this writing I am checks notes 25.98223 years old, so my birthday's coming up soon. My gf just had her birthday, so we are combining ours into one family gathering this weekend, the first time we have everyone together. I've been tinkering with Reaper and making electronic music lately. Part of my foray into music making is the private lesson I have every other week. This week was the third time and instead of spending the lesson fixing everything that's bad about my fragment of a song like last time, he went "that's not bad. i have some questions for ya" which is about as much of a compliment he can give. My process feels very slow, as I need to carefully listen and do a lot of experiments to get the sound that I have somewhere in my head. Or to even find a sound - I have a good beat setup, but now I need to have something to lead. I think my next step is to add a guitar layer on top but I haven't found a satisfying riff or sound yet. Work is going great. For the first time in months I have a bunch of breathing space again and I really notice the effect of that on my energy and happiness. Because I've had such a busy year, I hardly took any time off so I will start 2020 with 51 paid days off. I'm thinking of working fewer days for a month or two in addition to a bunch of free time / side projects / trips. We'll see how it goes - the biggest determining factor will probably be what kinda job my girlfriend is going to find once she graduates early next year. She got a promising lead this week so I'm crossing my fingers that she'll strike gold on the first hit.
I've been writing music for over a decade, and I can tell you that this never stops being the case. To quote Leonard Cohen: To find a song that I can sing, to engage my interest, to penetrate my boredom with myself and my disinterest in my own opinions, to penetrate those barriers, the song has to speak to me with a certain urgency... To be able to find that song that I can be interested in takes many versions and it takes a lot of uncovering. But why shouldn’t my work be hard? Almost everybody’s work is hard. One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I’m not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff, to come up with my payload. Ultimately, it is this process that makes creating art so rewarding.My process feels very slow, as I need to carefully listen and do a lot of experiments to get the sound that I have somewhere in my head.
Before I can discard the verse, I have to write it… I can’t discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines