When it comes to my job, a job I won't discuss in this forum, I'm rather irritated by them. They seem to strike in the very moment when I can give them my least attention. Their very nature elicits mediocre work. I never accomplished anything good for a deadline, just half-assed. Gimme a little space and let me set my own priorities, and I could take over the world. Ask me to write a sales plan by next friday, and you're gonna get a single page report that has the word "very" scattered about 87 and 1/2 times. I can't argue the necessity, just it's disfunction.
Now when it comes to music, total 180.
And it's like that for all songwriters.
Imposed pressure seems to fire up the creative juices like no other.
Actually . . .
. . . what happens is the inner critic, sensing a songwriter's angst and vulnerability will start in on them like an alpha dog housewife.
The songwriter, dressed in a tank-top, jeans and work boots (metaphorically), appreciably backed into a corner, will stand up forcefully and say something along the lines of:
"If you don't shut the fuck up and let me watch the goddam game I'm gonna . . . "
At this point the inner critic retreats to the kitchen and proceeds to cry silently while scrubbing the same spot on the counter over and over again.
Eventually the inner critic will call her mom.
I use this disturbing display of domestic dysfunction to relate several things:
1. Although the inner critic has many useful functions, such as not allowing the songwriter to make fools of themselves, or to just keep them from stretching their sanity past the breaking point, the inner critic should be nowhere near the creative process, and should just keep quiet until the songwriter is good and ready to take out the trash (again metaphorically)
2. Songwriters are assholes. All writers are assholes.
My wife and I only fight because I'm writing or I've got a gig coming up. Of course, we don't fight about those things specifically, we fight about everything else. Why? Because when I'm engaged in either of those two things, I'm an asshole.
If you're a writer, then yes, you're an asshole too. If you're not an asshole, then you will never write anything worth paying attention to. Get a job with Human Resources, you will then learn to become an asshole, and by virtue of the transitive property, become a writer.
But back to my first point,
If you're a writer, deadlines rule.
They're like the extra line of cocaine during finals week at Trinity College.
My wife thinks it's stupid to have a self imposed deadline for this album. Better to work when you can work, and let it go when you can't.
But nature has a much better idea.
Calvin can now pee standing up.
I don't know the exact moment it happened, or really what the hurry was. I never taught him how to do it. I never employed various methods of energetic excitement, or systematic shame.
My mom bought Cheerios once in order to see if she could teach him how to do it with perfect aim, and she learned a true lesson in Calvin.
He'll get there, but on his own terms, godddammit.
So there it is. Calvin can now pee standing up.
It may not seem like a lot. What boy doesn't pee standing up?
I can in fact testify that only two thirds of the men in my household pee standing up.
However, peeing with your feet firmly planted on the ground is one of the few rites of passage left to a man in an ever progressing world.
(Side note: I don't begrudge the intermingling of gender identities, girls should play with guns and learn how to spit, I merely make the point that peeing standing up, will always and forever, be a male dominated activity)
So it is with great concern, enthusiasm, and trepidation to discover that Castle Park indeed has indeed been given a deadline.
One day, not far in the future, Calvin won't want to go to the park.
He will have physically outgrown the swings and be emotionally unmoved by wet sand.
It won't be a sad day. I'm not going to mourn. My life will be too full with report cards and emergency rooms. Piano lessons, woodworking, car repair, culinary arts, these are the things that will graciously take the place of our Monday outings to the park. And for that I can only dream.
But one day. No park.
No park, no album.
So time is my deadline.
For this project at least.
Maybe then I'll practice how to be less of an asshole.
But not likely.
