Um, so, i missed the lyrics for this hour, but i’ll touch on them later. Gina is here, and we’re working on some songs for those open slots i had later this evening. More news when we’re done.
by admin
gina
“All That’s True” was a passive act of collaboration.
I have this friend Gina who i’ve been friends with ever since i finally escaped my Born Again grade school in 1994. She was the reason i started to do theatre, and the reason i started to play guitar – because she’s always made both things look so incredibly effortless. One thing i started on my own was songwriting, because Gina was never one with much of a bent towards lyrical writing. When i wrote my first song i was too awful at guitar playing to write the music so she wrote it for me and then taught it to me. The next year she wrote one of her first sets of lyrics, and they were amazing, but she never really did anything with them. So, in the summer of 1999 i was up late one night doing nothing and i had just gotten into the tuning FADGCF, which is now one of my favourites. I was playing around with the tuning, which lets you play lots of nice open C and F chords, and i happened to be trolling through my Netscape email for snippets of lyrics that had been left by the wayside, and one thing lead to another and “All That’s True” got written. Gina still doesn’t know how to play it, but if she comes over later i’ll teach her. Here are the lyrics:
If a rose bloomed in winter would it be a strange sight/ what if it had blue petals/ and only bloomed at night/ do you think it still would be called a rose/ if it didn’t smell as sweet/ I think instead, they’d just rename it/ and sell it on the street, because//
Everything’s for sale today, just like it was before/ and tomorrow there’ll be something new that’ll make it all worth more/ in the end, it’s all worth nothing/ if it means nothing to you/ but that’s okay if the money’s made/ ’cause that is all that’s true/ // /
I wonder what would happen if I went back/ to when all the cave men were here/ I wonder what would happen if I took two rocks/ and discovered fire and decided to call it air/ do you think that I’d be famous/ would they draw me on a cave wall/ do you think they’d give me their barter/ so I could profit from it all//
Everything’s for sale today, just like it was before/ and tomorrow there’ll be something new that’ll make it all worth more/ in the end, it’s all worth nothing/ if it means nothing to you/ but that’s okay if the money’s made/ ’cause that is all that’s true/ // /
If a rose bloomed in winter/ would they sell it on TV/ and for 49.95/ could i get a second one for free/ do you think by any other name/ it would smell as sweet/ or would it just be another flower/ sold off the corner of the street//
Everything’s for sale today, just like it was before/ and tomorrow there’ll be something new that’ll make it all worth more/ in the end, it’s all worth nothing/ if it means nothing to you/ but that’s okay if the money’s made/ ’cause that is all that’s true/ // / Everything’s for sale today, just like it was before/ and tomorrow there’ll be something better that will cost you so much more/ it’s all worth nothing in the end/ worth nothing to you/ but they can make their money/ if we can keep our right to choose
I rocked out with recording last night, and wound up with an hour and a half of amazing audio of songs i hardly even play in a typical month of recording. The only problem seems to be that computer users with especially generic speakers are getting all clipping at the top of the songs… i assure you that i took very special care not to clip on any of the songs for more than a note or two, and if you hear that tomorrow you need to get some JBL speakers like i have :p . Meanwhile, i did record my previous song written for Mollie, but i actually went and wrote a wholly new song that’s specifically about her. I’m not going to point either one out specifically during the blogging frenzy, but they’re the two more carefully played songs in the mix – to get two takes of each i spent almost 3hours playing them (out of a total of eight). Also, Gina came down and did some interesting new stuff with me, and she’ll be making a guest appearance during the ‘thon either so i can take a 15 minute nap or so we can do a Trio. Very exciting. Don’t be alarmed as the layout gets scary while i switch to the ‘Thon layout.
Today was the slowest and most intensly boring day of my life and i got nothing done. Nothing. Not a single iota. Blah. I’ve been sitting here for hours doing nothing and wondering about what i could be doing, but that amounted to just doing laundry, and i wasn’t too pleased about that. Of course, i won’t be too pleased if i have to go commando tomorrow for lack of clean underwear, but i’ll burn that bridge while attempting to cross it (and i’m sure that the burning process will involve an automatic hand-dryer on the 2nd floor of the main building the men’s room and a very wet pair of underwear. but, seriously, i have underwear for tomorrow, so don’t worry).
By the way, i’ve whored out all of my musical opinions to other places, but that can’t stop me from telling you that the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs: Vol. 1 is the most totally confusing, unexpected, and utterly perfect album i own. And, i don’t even really need the whole thing, just 2/3 of it. Even more frighteningly, Rabi and several other credible witnesses claim Vol. 3 is the one that will change my life, and i don’t think i’m ready for any further alterations at this point so i’m sticking with Vol. 1 with some occasional flirtations with Vol. 2 (kisses without any tongue, at the most…).
Incidentally, 69 and the eclecticism therein was one of the main inspirations for 25/24… not that i’m going to be eclectic in any way shape or form, but i’d like to think i’m capable of it. And there might be a surprise or two in there somewhere. But, yes, i just realized i have a whole album of new songs and i’m making an unalbum with them. You’ve heard them all mentioned here at one time or another save for the first and last songs, “Atlas Girl” and “Necessary Evil.” The latter i wrote last week and fell instantly in adoration with, and i debuted it to my happy little mailing list to absolutely zero reaction. Yay for happy little captive mailing lists that don’t talk back unless you tell them they should probably talk back. Meanwhile. “Atlas” was a song i wrote for Gina (and i don’t know if i mean that i wrote it for her to sing or if i wrote it for her, but it’s definitely one or the other) the first week we were living at Drexel and it’s pretty and simple and i haven’t played it for well over a year and a half or even thought of it and when i saw it on Saturday i knew that it was a good thing i had saved it. Simple and pretty wouldn’t have stood up to the Crashing/UMS combo i had going a little later that year, but it fits in nicely right now.
Rambling on into the sunset we go. I wrote a song in my head while walking home today but scrapped it because it was clearly a pop song because i could hear its tinny little drum machine percolating in my head. I have written 125 songs that i am willing to count as songs, and that leaves quite a few tinny misfires. And it’s been four years? I wonder if i’ll even know the (three) chords to Under My Skin in four years? I’m sure i’ll have had a wonderful devestating crush to replace UMS by then, though.
Ha, devestating crushes. Teri off at boot camp where i can only send her flat little packages, Laurel in Belfast where she doesn’t like me any more than when she’s here in Philly, and some other people. Bleh. At least they make me write songs… as if i have these girls walking back and forth in my brain in a terrible parody of Herman’s Head and every so often they dislodge a tiny idea just like when you unwedge the water from your ears after a particularly long swim. Songs have been like that lately… falling out of my mouth as if i had just swallowed them by accident and now i’m coughing them up again. Ahh… songs as hairballs… there’s an image to stick with you.
I obviously need to go to sleep, but first i will listen to the romantic masterpieces known as “Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits” and “Fido, Your Leash is Too Long.” Love songs aren’t so horrible when they’re vaguely bestial, i suppose. And, after all, nibbling on your ears and doing what bunnies do isn’t the most unromantic suggestion in my entire music collection.
Wow, i needs me some sleepies. night.
lazy summer heat is slowly seeping into my pores because it always distributes evenly to where things are cool because that’s how science works. i am listless with heat, waking up abruptly from crucial points in my technicolor-bright dreams to glittering sun bathing my entire bed in gilded rays. last night there were three story double homes with bay windows in the third floor bedroom and i remember hugging someone very tightly to me and something strange lurking in the basement that i knew all about as a narrator but nothing about as a character. and then i was flying, weaving inbetween buildings and up and over and out into sky and that’s about as much as i recall about that.
today i really do have work to do, but the page was looking sort of lonely. read that last post, if you haven’t already. but, anyway i just realized today that i haven’t played “under my skin” since i played it for rabi or at the bar and i think i somehow got past it or something and that scares me, because that song was all about everything. have you been paying much attention to the new songs? they’re conspiring against me and my album and i think they might have kidnapped “relief” because i haven’t heard anything from it for a while. i think “splinter” is in charge of the whole conspiracy even though it doesn’t show up too much, because it’s very jealous about not getting on the album and it knows that gina really likes it and oh god now i’m talking about my songs like they’re people just like tori amos does but i always just explain that away with the fact that she did too many low-quality l.a. drugs in the 80’s but i’ve never even been to nebraska so i’m obviously just crazy to begin with.
the songs are sortof like people though. after you play something enough you begin to develop a relationship with it; some days you dress it up special and some days it barely rolls out of bed and some days it just doesn’t want to have it’s picture taken and it’s holding its hands up in front of its face and complaining. the scary thing is that the new songs are doing this now, as they’re written. that last one flaunted its independence right at me saying “you can’t end me unless i want to be ended, so keep on writing” and i did and it takes up way more pages in my little grey book than any of the other songs do but now that it made me write it all down it doesn’t really seem to want to be played, which confuses me to no end. i don’t think i really realized that all of my songs are relationship songs until gina pointed it, and now i seem to be able to write everything else but it’s like hitting a new note for the first time because i can’t tell if they’re strong or if they just seem very nice because i’ve never heard them before.
if you were wondering, this is just how my head is working lately. i wrote a 2300 word email last night without even really intending to. it’s like when i open up my head things just come pouring out until it’s empty again. but, anyway, this post is just a post for the sake of being here in this little box, so i again defer to the intelligence of the last post and wish you all have a nice day.