1183 Days

The company that hosts my first album on iTunes has informed me that it has been 1183 days since my last release. There's also a big green button on the front of my dashboard that says "Release New Album Now." I'm considering pressing that button in the hopes that it is a magical one.

That is to say, it might just be the kind of button that one would press when one is adrift in artistic purgatory. Press the button and suddenly everything I've been working on, thinking of, and dreaming about will be sucked from the shallowest level of hell and assembled to reflect exactly what I wanted it to be, rather then what it is now.

That is to say, a mess.

It's not enough that I feel the self inflicted pressure of what I'd hoped to be a magnum opus, or the nagging insinuations of friends and family who ask what I'm working on now, when I'm gonna write again, what new song is ready, but now I have an electronic website saying, "Gee dude, I thought you were serious about this whole making music thing. Are you quitting or what?"

The answer is "No, I'm not quitting."

"Taking a little hiatus there big boy?"

"Nope, in fact I think about this project almost as much as I think about food and sex."

"Writers block then?"

"No, more like writers attention deficit disorder."

You see, it goes like this. I think, I dream, I write, I edit, I post, I record, I listen, I hate, I change, I record, I hate, I change, I hate, I record anyway, I still hate . . .

. . . and just two days ago, I do something I haven't done yet.

I throw away.

Thirteen songs have been written for this "New Release" Two never made it out of the garage. They will remain scratches on note paper never to be heard. I have dreamt of digging them up for another go, but I've decided to give them up to the gods. One song made it to the couch for a performance in front of my wife. I thought it was cute, Joann smiled half heartedly, but now I know that cute is not the direction I want this to go, and though some of the lyrics are salvageable, the melody certainly is not.

One song, in fact the first song written for "Castle Park" and the only one co-written with a three year-old may be reincarnated in a different form, but will remain unrecorded until that new form has . . . well . . . form.

And the last is the heart breaker.

A song I love. I loved writing it, I loved performing it, I couldn't wait to hear it work, and it never did.

Oh, how it never worked.

It didn't work slow, it didn't work fast, it didn't working electric, it didn't work acoustic, my wife never liked it.

Or as she put it, "In the twelve years we've been together, you've only written one song that I really hated. It sucks, but you're gonna have to give it up."

Side note: The only true mistake I can make in life is not to listen to my wife.

So there it is, or more importantly, there it was.

I should wonder how many of those 1183 days I could have spent on something more productive, but I'd never really be able to codify it, and thinking like that is counter productive.

But 1183 days since my last release seems like such and excessively long time to be working on somethings that is still in its infancy period.

But lets do a little math shall we?

I began Castle Park in January of 2009. That cuts 1183 down to about 730. I worked about 5 days a week for the past two years with only about 20 days of vacations and holidays which brings the total down to about 210 days of free time. At least 95% of this free time is taken up by silly little distractions like maintaining a household, doing daddy stuff, doing husband stuff, watching episodes of Lost and reading books. That gives ma a total of 11 artistic days that I have been writing, composing, rehearsing and performing.

Sure it may seem like three years since my last release,

But its really not even a fortnight.

I am way ahead of schedule.

Screw you magic button!