In case you haven’t noticed, i’ve been pretty musical this past week. In fact, with the exception of the 36hours i spent out of the house i’ve recorded something every day since the debut of “Tangled,” and i don’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.

When it come right down to it, I still don’t really understand myself when it comes to songwriting. I don’t know why i do it; i do it now because i’m used to doing it — it’s something i do. I suppose i only ever started doing it because Gina took one of my few poems and set it to music, and i thought “hmmm… there’s an idea.” Even the idea to buy a guitar was something that sortof materialized, and i’m frankly still quite shocked that my mom even acknowledged it. The first songs i wrote were rudimentary — scavenged from the handful of chords i knew from songs i had been learning; i rarely ever play them now as a nod to both their immaturity in lyricism and composure. The first song i wrote where i knew what i wanted it to sound like was “Afterglow,” and in the months between that and my at-the-time masterpiece “World In My Hand” i had created that rock-arena in my head where i was on stage and people were watching… people who had favorite songs, who got my silly comments about tuning, and who would want an encore. In the back of my first poetry notebook i have a few pages devoted to these imaginary set-lists that i would devise every few days … now an interesting way to track what songs i played the most and how much i liked them.

What’s so different about Trio, really? I know for sure that i listen to Trio more than anyone else does, mostly because for me it’s a practice take that i can actually learn and grow from. But, why do i do it, and do it so regularly and fanatically? Why do i post my portfolio-mp3s to the page and leave a mostly-empty comment box up for them? Why do i bother to extensively provide an online discography in the song archive? Why do i talk about it all over and over again as if i have some large and attentive audience who follows all of my comments about the evolution of songs and how Weezer’s artistic development makes me cry?

I suppose for the same reason i keep on writing this : obsessively back-linking and spell-correcting posts from three weeks ago and worrying about what i’m going to write about and what will be in the next Trio. Despite obsessive stat- and bandwidth- tracking i still couldn’t really tell you how many people read me every day, or if more than three or four people listen to Trio or download mp3s that i post. I suppose i do them both for the illusion … the the illusion that my voice has escaped the vacuum that is the brick and plaster of my room … that maybe somewhere there is someone i don’t know at all listening with a half grin, humming along.