A Cocktail Napkin Epitaph

For no particular reason, I found myself wondering:  If meeting Carl Solomon in an insane asylum at least partially inspired Allen Ginsberg to write "Howl," what would Ginsberg’s reaction to meeting Elliott Smith (who was never institutionalized but had some personal qualities similar to Solomon) have been?  The result of my mind wondering resulted in a poem that was a fun exercise in form and voice, which also a total Ginsberg rip off.  I call it a rip off because while it has personal and obscure references to Ginsberg's friends (in this case imaginary friend, Elliott Smith) like "Howl" and other poems, it is obviously modeled after Supermarket in California.  But it sure was fun to write.

Allen Ginsberg’s Post-It (to Elliott Smith)

What thoughts I have of you this enchanted tonight, Elliott, as I wonder next to basements on hills, damaged bad at best, and looking at your full moon. In my hungry fatigue, shopping for sound, I went into an ice cream parlor record store, imagining your borrowed guitar and borrowed 4-track. St. Ides aisles full of Charlies, Bunnys, Stevens, and Pauls shopping for escapism while small drum sets - played with faint brushes - whisper percussions. Legal theory next to Flaming Lips! Clemintine with Paul Simon! -- and you, Soren Kierkegaard, what were you doing with Nirvana?

I saw you, Elliott - gaunt faced, California frown, chasing infinity and jumping off cliffs - among the flavors you refuse to taste, eyeing the white van of paranoia. I heard you asking questions: Are you my Angeles? Won’t you be an outlaw for my love? What is the biggest lie? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of fragrant vinyl, following you. What should we call you tonight, Johnny Panic?  We stroll through tight spaces in our solitary fancy, possessing every frozen amphetamine and tasting clonazepam – dying men in living rooms.

Where are we going, Elliott?  What will the next hourglass hold?  Slow-motion angels in snow?  How do the next lines in your head read? I can’t say the words I am suppose to say and mean it. Yes, I jumped, but let’s talk about something else.

(I touch your sleeve, dream of our odyssey of flat and sharp notes, and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all of this enchanted night?  Trees break falls but they also impale. Will we both be lonely by 5 am, hand cradling hand, rehearsing our line (It will be okay)? Will we meander, dreaming of lost childhoods and of love at 13 - past red and blue swirling walls yet to be covered with graffiti - home to our Disney cottages? 

Ah, dear friend, Stillwater-Rotter! Lonely whispering confessor! I know of your time of dancing queens and Merle Haggards - Duncanville tattooing your future - a juxtaposition to Ferdinand sitting quietly in his field, smelling flowers - a yellow Post-It of apologies with no hesitation wounds begging for your arbiter’s forgiveness. These shouts leave your peer’s echoing: This loss isn’t good enough for sorrow or inspiration. It’s such a loss for the good guys… A grown man dying of fright… I was even having a good day when I found out we lost you… He wasn’t our son….

I do know this, Elliott: these tiny televised vessels (carefully aware of the brilliant stacks of sound) will tell us when someone reinvents the wheel while I stand, solitary, surviving a million conversations about shit that is not real. Breathing in meaning, digging deep through gasps of anxious air – much like you did until you couldn’t any longer. I hope to see you again - another evening of music, moons, fevers, and fond farewells! It is alright.  Some enchanted night, I will be with you.

Moby: Fish Out of Water?

On NPR's series Project Song: From All Songs Considered, Moby works in a foreign context in a manner most writers wish they could write even in their happiest place.  Maybe this elegance comes from his (unconfirmed) literary lineage as Herman Melville's great, great, great nephew - hence the nickname he has had since he was a baby.  Maybe he is certain he knows when to embrace uncertainty and when he should put his foot down.  Or maybe he is just able to keep in mind his defined purpose:  the goal of creativity is beauty.


Project Song offers the opportunity to not only observe the external process of song creation, but it often provides insight into what artists where thinking or feeling while they where in the middle of their process.  Project Song's premise starts simple: artists have 48 hours to write a song.  But things get a little bit more complicated as participants, who may or may not be working alone in the studio NPR provides, choose five photos, mostly surrealist photography that are reminiscent of a still-shot from a David Lynch film,  and five words or phrases.  The artists pick  one photo and one word or phrase.  The photo is meant to inspire the subject of the song and the word/phrase the style.


It sounded interesting enough to me, so I surrendered: "Ok.  I should be doing other things - like working - but I will waist a few minutes watching this."  I realized time wasn't going to be waisted when I saw Moby in action.  As someone who is quite obviously an introvert, Moby prefers working and recording 1.  alone and 2. in his bedroom.  Moby was a fish out of water collaborating with Kelli Scarr in NPR's studio.  But even if he wasn't in his usual physical and psycho elements, his process doesn't seem affected.  Rather, he embraces it:  "I like the idea of hurling myself into a process that I have very little control over." This seems a strong reaction to what most people may shy away from, but maybe that is an element of the secret to his success.

The image he selects: a figure in a trench coat in the woods with a head of clouded explosions.  The word: Sunday.  Moby explains his  instant connection to this combination when he shares the fact that he spent many Sundays in his youth in the woods, alone, in strange places.  He comments simply on the "desolate quality" and "disconcerting loneliness" of the picture by saying, "I like that."


As a fan and artistic companion of David Lynch, perhaps it is to be expected.  Maybe Moby finds comfort in the disconcerting and disconnected.  After all, he was born in Harlem but spent most of his formative years in one of the richest towns in the United States, surrounded by wealth but living with his mom on welfare and food stamps.  His love and appreciation of punk and post-punk music conveys the same sentiment of contrast.  As he describes it as eclectic and as the artists as just using whatever was available.  If not romanticized, it could start to remind you of Fat Albert's Junk Yard Band - hey, hey, hey. Maybe it is a common working class mentality, but I can't help but admire the approach as well.  


After the preliminary decisions are made, things move quickly in NPR's studio.  As if he were a contestant on Amazing Race, he practically runs over to a bass guitar and starts playing a riff  in the key of E that is the zygote of the song "Go to Sleep".  As he turns to a keyboard playing a soft melody of audio xanex, his eyes  remain stern but not harsh.  He turns from the melody to a notepad, scribbles down what appears to be a few notes, says, "Ok.  Song's written," and walks away with a nonchalant but purposeful gate.


There is one slightly uncomfortable but moment where Moby reminds us that he is the master of his musical domain.  "Um.  Excuse me," he waves at the control booth, "Stop.  You changed the  level of the  click track while I was recording... You can't do that... Can you start again."  The last part seems like a question, but the control Moby has in the studio makes it a statement.

When trading ideas with his collaborator, abstractions take form, the theme and purpose of the song are further clarified, and so is Moby's ownership of his process.  Compromise is certainly a word he knows and applies, but only when he feels he should.  Kelli expresses some lyrical ideas.  Moby listens.  Moby asserts his own ideas and prevails most of the time.  While working with Kelli, his tone is never harsh.  I imagine Oprah's staff meetings to be somewhat similar:  smiles with dominance behind them and slight fear in the eyes around her.  But what does Oprah know?  She is only... Oprah.  What's Moby know?  He is only... done with this song in around 8 hours.  I could spend 8 hours just on facebook.  


But the quick turnaround with enough time to make three different versions and give an impromptu Tiny Desk Concert is not the most impressive part of this edition of Project Song, even though that is impressive.  What made the greatest impressions on me were how willing Moby was to throw himself into a situation where he was obviously uncomfortably out of control and how well he can articulate his process.  Even being in a strange situation where failure is never far away, Moby excels.  More and more I find truth in the concept of embracing uncertainty.  That has been a difficult evolution since I am a planner by nature, but I have reach a point where I can say I am flexible.  I can roll with the unexpected, and like with Moby's experiences in the self-described "unexpected success" of his career and in this specific studio experience, what you do not plan or predict can be what is best.  But his process seems to be one area where he will not compromise.  While so many artists offer the product with no explanation of the process explanation or they defer to a description of subconscious, automatic writing, Moby owns his.  His introverted tendency may be his room for metacognition and deliberate reflections.  He knows what he is doing, he knows how to explain how he does it, and he seems the better for it.

Moby reminds me to take advantage of those uncomfortable situations as they often offer personal or professional growth.  As the advice he offered to young artist in one interview echoes: diversify as much as possible because the more you can do, the more likely you are to have a career. But all of this also encourages my curiosity about process even more, which reminds me of his second piece of advice:  do what you love.  Reflecting, revising, and having some results to show for it... one brick on top of the other; such is the measure of man, and Moby.

The Simplest Key

The people’s key (the key of ut majeur) refers to the simplest key in which one can play or write a song.  This key has no sharps and no flats, supposedly making music in this key simpler to analyze and perform, but there is some debates as to which key that is.

Since the rise in popularity of the guitar in mainstream music in the 1960’s, the key of G major has competed with the key of C major for the title of “The People’s Key”. However, more recently, G major is referred to as "The Camp Counselor's Key".  As one music site explains about G major, “[The term 'People’s Key'] is in part because of its relative ease of playing on both keyboard and string instruments: its scale comprises only one black note on the keyboard, all of a guitar’s six strings can be played open in G, half of the strings on the mandolin and the violin and fiddle are in the G chord when open, and the banjo is usually tuned to open G.”   

More support for G major’s title as “The People’s Key” is its rich history. Queen Elizabeth II stipulated “God Save the Queen” be in G major in Canada, and the music to the United State’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, was originally written in G major. Though it is now usually sung in A-flat or B-flat major, some groups are campaigning to return the song to its original key arguing that the song is already very difficult to sing on account of its range (one and a half octaves), and the modern standard key makes it still more difficult.

The indie rock band Bright Eyes also release their seventh studio album February 15^th 2011 (lead singer Conor Oberst’s 31^st birthday) titled The People’s Key. The title can also be seen in the track on this album titled “A Machine Spiritual (in The People’s Key)”.  The band celebrated their newest album's release, and possibly the spirit of its title, by offering fan's the opportunity to download its first single "Shell Games" for free.  When asked about which key he thinks "The People's Key"is, Oberst commented, "Well, I've always considered it the key of C, which is all the white keys on the piano. That's usually the easiest to play. But guitar players usually think of it as the key of E."  

Hello, my name is..

It is one of those things where I am occasionally awaken in the middle of the night from a sound sleep by thoughts of how the way Jay-Z described his lyric writing process in his interview with the New York Public Library can be applied to a faculty writing workshop on teaching writing as a process or of why "The Ballad of Sean Foley" is a perfect example of how to build the round, solid characters that are not easily achieved in creative writing courses.  I would not say it is a deliberate obsession, but it is an obsession.  I love writing, and working in the local university's writing program I read about, talk about, think about, and write about writing and writing pedagogy constantly.  If you were to walk into my office on any given day, there would be music playing on my Mac's speakers.  I try to make sure music surrounds me at all times - in the car I have carefully selected the CD based on my mood. I don't go to the grocery store without my ipod, and at home we take turns picking what music we play each night.


When I meet people and the topic of music comes up - likes, dislikes, recent discoveries - I visibly perk up, and they become a character based on their musical palette.  "Oh.  You just went to a Kings of Leon concert.  That must have been fun."  In my mind, this guy tries too hard in the bedroom, secretly watches Oprah for a good cry, and loves his dog more than his wife.  At a pause in our labored and only conversation, I meet his wife, a thirty something who is the essence of "Stuff White People Like".  She mentions early Beyonce, and her husband rolls his eyes when he mentions her love for singing Mary J. Blige at karaoke.  She is automatically my friend because, in my mind, she is carefree, not caring about what people expect from her or think about her.  She also tried line dancing once but only to people watch, participate in a cliched American pass time, and enjoy her incoordination.  We would do fun things together, like dancing to every song at a Vampire Weekend concert where most the audience could be calling us aunt or even mom.  One grey afternoon we drive all the way to Emerald Isle in October on a whim just to enjoy the crisp cold water and empty beaches.  I am more involved with the characters I am building in my head than the people in front of me.


I could be completely wrong about the tags ("Hello, my name is I use to really like Limp Bizkit" and "I'm with stupid") I hastily placed on them based on a few offhand remarks.  Maybe he only went to see KoL because his best friend really wanted to go.  Maybe she only sings Mary J because she thinks she has a great voice, and Mary J's music accentuates its beauty.  But music helps me build these characters, relate to people, perceive the greater world, and possibly create something.


So that is all this blog is - a place to process ideas about how music relates to writing and writing relates to music, maybe write a few short stories that musicians and their music inspire, to share and decode some of the songs  and musicians that are inspiring, and to write.

Kerri