Thumbing the Muse

Time, man.

It's a killer.

In a different era, when I was a much different man, I was fond of telling the people around me who complained about not having enough time is this:

"Time is not something that's given. Time is something you make."

And I was right.

Still am to some degree.

But what I didn't conceive then, was what happens to you when you've spent your life making time and then you've reached the plateau. I've mastered bending time to fit my needs. Pushing out fluff and minutiae. Forcing the people who needed me to find another hero. I come first. Me me me. Write what you want on a post-it and I'll get to it when I get to it.

Then I became a dad. And time wasn't about me me me. Time suddenly became far more zen-like. Time became about the now.

Art, any art, is an open ended commitment. Sure there are some far more disciplined writers in this discipline of writing who can schedule a forty five minute writing session and then move on to the next priority, but their work is the result of craft preceding the muse, and always ends up feeling like a lesson in song-craft more than a moment of clarity.

No offense Mr. Hammerstein, I'm sure you meant well.

Moments of clarity hit with no warning. They strike with impunity and disregard of situation. The further the writer distances himself from the world around him, the more clear the signal, the more apt the writer is to capture lightening in a bottle.

The rub, of course, is that the muse exists in the world around us. Not in a tiny, one windowed studio, but in a bus and on a train, with a goat and in the rain. We exist, we observe, the moment of clarity drops like a piano on our tiny cartoon selves.

Boing!

But what immediately becomes apparent when one becomes a parent is that when lightening blasts its way out of the universe and falls into the level just above your sub-conscience

calvin

See! Right in the middle of a sentence, my son walks into the room and wants to type his name.

But what I was trying to say was that when the muse strikes, there are diapers to change. There are an infinite amount of Connect Four games to play. There are hot wheels to push around, legos to construct and let's go fly a kite.

But I embrace this. I feed off this.

"Castle Park" isn't about my experience, it's about my son's. I masterminded a way to incorporate the open ended commitment of both artistry and fatherhood in a way that allows me to be both a good father and a good songwriter.

dad mom taylor

Sorry. He wanted to type "dad" then "mom" then "taylor"

Taylor is his sixteen year old brother, which if you've been following along is the person I normally refer to as "the sixteen year-old" (Don't think I didn't miss the fact that he wanted to write "dad " first. The dripping sound is that of my heart melting)

But that's just the thing. I thought I had it made. I thought that I could have my cake, eat it, roll around in the vanilla frosting, and thumb my nose at the impossibility of writing a great album, be an awesome dad, the perfect husband, a fun blogger, great at my day job, six feet tall and a full head of hair.

I write this because of december 23rd.

It's 11:15pm.

I'm sick with the kind of cold that can only be caught from snotty little preschool noses. Calvin has a double ear infection and has been restless, but cuddly in a way that only a sick child can be. He's finally asleep and laying in his bed, breathing the soft sugary breath of christmas dreams. I look about the house and decide there's nothing I need to clean, nothing that needs picking up, nothing that can't wait till tomorrow. I tiptoe to the bathroom to strip the coffee stained clothes off my body. To brush my teeth. To blow my nose. The nightlight in the hall gives me just enough illumination to see my ghostly reflection in the bathroom mirror.

She falls.

There in my head, welling up from my sub-conscience, is the first verse.

The first verse to the song I've been laboring over for the last two months.

She's so perfect. The lyric, the melody, they both flow seamlessly into the chorus I've already imagined.

It might have taken two minutes, two hours, I don't know.

It was an unending commitment to capture her.

But I was exhausted. Baby finally to bed. Work in the morning. Restless wife warming up the covers.

I moved instinctively to my guitar, but the mirror caught my eye.

How did I get this old? How can I look so wasted? I must have lost weight, because the image was more skeleton than man. My strong body looked frail, and my normally shiny, ready for anything eyes told me the truth.

Not tonight, man.

Your life needs you tomorrow. and the next day, and the next.

Let her go.

She'll be back.

She'll come to you again.

She always does.

Get some sleep.

Inboxes

I missed a deadline.

Not just any deadline, a serious deadline.

The kind of deadline that caused panic in the streets and inured me with the title "Jerk-Ass of the Week"

How did I miss this deadline?

Glad you asked.

I missed this deadline because I forgot to check my personal work email inbox on a friday afternoon. And then again on Saturday morning. And then again on Saturday afternoon.

I checked my Facebook seventy-two times in the same 24 hours.

I checked my work email fourteen times.

I checked my personal email ten times.

I checked my blog at least five times looking for comments.

I checked my iTunes sales once. (The Australians are streaming!, the australians are streaming!)

I may have checked my myspace twice. I can't remember.

I don't twitter. But if I did, I would have. I did send five texts to my wife. Three of which were too dirty to share and the other two something about picking up wine and returning videos to Blockbuster.

I did not, however, check my personal work email. This is the separate email account I have at my place of business so that I can communicate sensitive material. So it is possible to be both obsessive and non-commital in the same breath.

Why did I not check this one? No idea. Just plain forgot. Well, maybe sub-consciencely I ignore it because it never has anything but spam and bad news, but that's a whole 'nuther uncomfortable conversation.

And the deadline; same dead line; every third week of the month; I have had for over two years.

So not only did I not check my email. I lost an entire week. Which is a much bigger problem than has been dreamt of in my philosophy.

Checking inboxes has an evil twin however. My boss's boss once referred to the inbox as the almighty Time Suck. Inboxes, email accounts, and social networking can very easily drain hours out of a clearly mapped out calendar. I've tried replacing my smoking habit with the inbox addiction, but alas, those monkeys play nicely together.

Although great danger and responsibility lies within the immediacy of connectivity, this revolution leads us to a new social zen.

The Life-Work-Inbox Balance.

So today, I reinvest my time.

I get in, check my mail. I go to lunch then check my mail. I map out the last 13 minutes of my day so that I can check my mail and still have at least ten minutes to deal with whatever problem may arise, or even better, tell someone that I only have nine minutes left in my day and there's no way I can run to the rescue. I get home, kiss my wife, yell at my kids, I do some light dusting to prepare for a party tonight, pour myself a half glass of zin, and sit down to check my inboxes. I will only do this while the pasta boils.

But there it was.

A message from a dear old friend.

His beautiful baby daughter was born premature and is in and out of the ICU.

And what was supposed to be a silly blog becomes something else entirely. Suddenly, a connectivity rant, a joke on the yin and yang of the computer age, escalates into a personal plea to the universe to bring a friend's life back into balance.

I once told a buddy that the real change from being a man to being a daddy is courage. You always think that you'll step in front of a bullet, you think you could run into a busy street, you're pretty sure you could kill a bad guy with your bare hands,

but when you become a dad,

you know.

So my friend doesn't need courage. He's got that.

He probably needs sleep more than a phone call, and I'm too far away to do some light pick-up around the house and cook some soup.

I don't believe in God. But I do believe in prayer.

Amen.

And thanks to a little click of the mouse, I can send all the love and good vibes that I've been saving for myself.

All the love and good vibes any man could respectably handle.

And it is his for the taking.

Whenever he gets around to checking his inbox.

An Ode to the Filler Song

Considering the holiday, with my belly stuffed with leftovers and a fridge full of stuff that will be nibbled but not fully eaten, I figured its as good a time as any to talk about the kind of songs that are tasty but have no true value.

I speak, of course, of filler.

Filler in my rough definition is the kind of song that is written to fill out the twelve song quota of the modern album.

These are the songs where we listen to the first few bars and immediately recognize that we've no intention of listening to the whole thing and inevitably hit the advance button on our ipods.

Now filler is not so much a new phenomenon as it is a fact of entertainment.

Act I: Give em a little excitement.

Act II: Give em a little plot.

Act III - Act IV: Filler

Act V: Kill someone the audience likes

Acts VI & VII: Filler

Act VIII: Happy or Sad: the play is over.

House lights to full.

I finished a piece of filler a few weeks ago and I'm not happy about it. Oh sure, there's some craft involved, some nice pieces of lyric, a slightly formulaic chorus, basically a ditty.

I should be able to write a ditty without feeling bad about it.

But I do.

(Quick pause to play baseball out in the backyard with Calvin, more on this later)

So why do I feel bad about a little ditty?

Simple.

I have a lot of rules wrapped around the songs I write. And still even more rules for the songs I'm writing for this album:

No cliches. No bad rhymes. Hummable. At least one stylized turn of phrase. For "Castle Park" the song has to be thematically intertwined with Calvin and myself without a hint of melodrama. Tough bill.

I can break anyone of these rules as I see fit, but there is one rule that is steadfast and unbreakable.

I have to be able to play it for someone without feeling embarrassed.

And filler songs embarrass me.

And, dammit, they shouldn't.

Filler songs let us know the Little Orphan Annie is still in danger.

They're the kids picked for the team between the jocks and the uncoordinated.

They get Tony from the soda shop to Maria's balcony.

Filler songs are the great B Sides that the Baby Boomers relish with glee.

They're a breath of fresh air before John Lennon takes us into "A Day in the Life"

They add volume to substance. They're long eyelashes, platform heels, and the hint of perfume.

And at the end of months of late night dead air, when the body has been saturated with fast food and cheap wine. And the painful feelings of inadequacy walk hand in hand with the shadow of imminent failure. When sleep fails to provide solace. When everyone around you is trapped within their own desperate lives,

A filler song is fucking salvation.

Castle Park has some great songs. It has songs that are fun to play, fun to sing, nice to listen to. Some of it is silly, some of it will reach into your heart and make you ache. What it doesn't have are the songs that give the other songs depth and meaning.

Yeah, I would like to create one more piece of pure magic for this album. But until then.

Its filler time.

Someone Loves Angie

Before I dig in, please have a little faith that this is not a nostalgia piece. This isn't about boyhood lost, or the paving over of some memory.

Live in the now, Fat Kid, live in the now.

So anyway, if the beginning of this story smacks of sentimentality, bear with me.

Ready?

A building just outside of Sonoma was recently torn down.

What was the chipped facade of an old hotel is now rubble. A pile of bricks enclosed by a chain link fence.

I don't know its full history. I never touched it or went inside. The only thing I know about this once majestic heap of trash is one little fact:

Some how, somewhere, once upon a time, someone loved Angie.

I know this because written sloppily in spray paint just below the second story window was this:

"I [Picture of a heart] angie"

Who was Angie? I don't know.

Who loved Angie? Was it a drunk teenager, or a mildly retarded janitor? No idea.

Doesn't matter. But in order to make sense of this little diatribe I have to flashback a few days.

Went to see an interview with Stephen Sondheim this past weekend. And aside from the fact that I got to be in the room with one of the most staggeringly genius songwriters of the twentieth century (along with 1700 of his closest admirerers) I didn't really learn anything new.

Sure there were a few anecdotes that I had never heard before, but the real education came in the form of reaffirmation.

His process is my process. His approach is my approach. He is a songwriter. I am a songwriter. We live, we learn, we fail, we succeed.

He told the story of a married woman who was involved in a tempestuous affair, and though it broke her heart to do so, she broke it off for the sake of her marriage. Then one night the phone rang and she heard her ex-lover's voice on the other end of the line,

"not a day goes by"

Song!

Eventually, of course, he was asked where his ideas come from. But its an impossible question. No writer can tell you where they get their ideas. But everyone can tell you where they got "that" idea.

It's the waiter who asked Billy Joel if he wanted a "bottle of red, a bottle of white." Or the couple sitting next to Sting who noticed a "little black spot on the sun today" In fact, Castle Park is all about those little moments that send the creative juices a-whirling.

But to get moving forward I have to flashback about eight years.

I was at work when the phone rang. A dear friend had fallen from a ladder and broke his neck. He was laid up in a hospital bed and couldn't move.

When people you love are in pain, you go through many different reactions all at once. Panic, fear, who do you call to get this gossip off your chest, will my boss think this is important enough to let me go home early, what the hell can I do, what the hell does he need, should I be the rational cool guy or just freak the fuck out.

That's the first few seconds.

But then I backed off the initial reaction. I made few phone calls, covered the next few of my shifts and the shifts of his girlfriend who worked for me, went home to pick up a few CD's and a few books, gassed up the car and got on the road.

It was a long drive. And I had a lot of time to think about my life. A lot of time to freak out. Jon had the presense of mind to know that his life was a life of the theater. I had quit the theater and was adrift in my metaphorical sea. My friend was hurt, and I was as helpless in life as he was in that gurney.

The radio became a source of irritation so I flipped it off.

Alone with my thoughts. Waiting for the light to turn green.

Then I looked up.

I looked at the cracked facade of a brick building.

It was one of those V-shaped buildings on the corner of an intersection where the two streets meet at a very non-perpendicular angle. It was obviously abandoned. A fire had scorched the inside. All the windows had been shattered by rocks and there were scattered bits of graffiti along the wall.

But when I looked up I saw another trashy bit of graffiti below the second story window.

"I [picture of a heart] angie"

Song!

All the questions were mine to answer. Or not. It could be about a moment in time that has been forgotten by everyone. The possibilities were freaking endless!

And the possibility of me being anything other than a songwriter was at an end.

Jon recovered.

I look back at theater fondly but without regret.

The building was torn down by the city and the owner is currently looking for some one to buy those old bricks.

I have never written that song and maybe never will.

but somehow

somewhere

once upon a time

Someone loved Angie.

An Ode to the Song Hole

To write or not to write. That is the question.

Whether it is nobler in the mind to pen rhymes on scattered shopping lists strewn about the house and suffer the slings and Legos of a complacent four year old in his outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of accumulated junk piled six feet high and ten feet deep.

And by opposing the pack rat tendencies of an indecisive wife, end them.

To write, to think.

To think, perchance to dream.

Aye, there's the rub.

For in that dream of life, what songs may come?

When I have shuffled off those ill fitting clothes, broken toys, and Ikea furniture and finally have time for pause.

There's the respect that makes calamity of such a messy garage.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of a sixteen year old boy who only wants to sing and dance, even if it means totally destroying my ability to compose a melody without the infectious groove of Lady Gaga sneaking her off key harmonies into my middle eight?

 Alas, the song hole is emptied of most of it's clutter. The space is open, the door is closed, there are pens with ink, and countless spiral notebooks waiting to be filled. There are musical instruments of every kind.

 And a leather chair that leans back.

 But I digress.

 Some of the best songwriting advice I've ever been given came from a book.

 That's right, a book.

 Not one of those "Learn How to Write a Top Ten Hit!" kind of books, but a large paperback written by songwriter Jimmy Webb simply called "Tunesmith"

 This book should be required reading for anyone who puts words to music.

 Yeah, its a little outdated now. And some of it is too technical for a dilitante. And my personal copy has broken bindings and dog eared pages, and more than one coffee stain, but its such a nurturing manual for the art and craft of songwriting that I'll probably make Calvin read it as soon as he graduates from Dr. Suess.

 More to the point however is that the book insists that the writer absolutely must create a safe place for themselves.

 A physical space that can't be corrupted by ringing telephones, fights over video games, and the disney channel.

 I have had such spaces in my past. In my single years, it was my room. In my college years it was the space beneath the main stage that housed the old velvet curtains. Just before my nephew was born it was a guest bedroom at my soon to be in-laws house down the street. 

 Since then, however, my song hole has existed only in the quiet of the late evening, or the peace before school lets out. My song hole was always at the mercy of a family schedule.

 My garage is the perfect space.

 But it's not a studio. Even though the door to the house is weather sealed, the outside noises are crystal clear. Any microphone would pick up cars and dogs several blocks away. The water heater and washing machine are constantly battling over "most noisy appliance. And it's simply not breathable during the summer when the styfling heat sucks the life out of me. But when the rain begins to fall and the air begins to clear, I can feel my whole universe slip back into focus. Melodies rise easily from the din of white noise, and lyrics guide themselves as I hold the pen to the paper. Even though I may never use it to record a tune, the song hole is a place for creation.

However, it fills up with clutter so fast that when I go in there to write, I can't even wheel my chair from the desk to the piano. Squeezed by so much clutter I feel claustrophobic and writing becomes a violent act of fighting compression.

 So yesterday I cleaned it out.

 An entire truck load of junk.

 And now I have my space again.  

 And today it begins to rain.

Go bird go!

Today was the first day of preschool.

Not some hippie lets roll around in the mud and talk about our feelings kind of preschool, but the kind of preschool that is in a square little room covered in boxes and flash cards and toys. The kind of preschool where the teachers have seen three generations pass, they drive American cars with fake wood paneling and probably need to sneak off for a quick smoke during free play time.

Not that I'm knocking on the modern, open minded, high energy, exploratory experience that my over anxious contemporaries swear by . . . 

. . . no wait, I'm totally gonna talk some smack.

two years ago, a customer of mine convinced me to take a tour of a world renowned local preschool that was the "cats meow" of modern childhood development.

It cost $300 a month.

For two days a week.

And parent participation once a week.

But I was (and still sorta am) a bit anxious about making sure that my demon seed had all the advantages I could possibly pave.

I showed up one day for my tour. Baby Calvin in my arms. (He is 1.5 years old at this point and not eligible for another 1.5 years)

I needed to take the tour because the waiting list for this mecca of toddler enhancement was miles long and supposedly if I didn't get my application in by the end of spring, then there would be no hope to Calvin's future success. 

The application came with a $60 fee and the promise that if I didn't sign the check I was relegating my son to a career in slaughter houses, substitute teaching, or god forbid, retail.

As I made my way across the gravel parking lot, I made eye contact with a tired looking old lady sitting on the bench outside the door.

I smiled. She glared

I said hello. She glared harder and cocked her head.

I made my way to the door and the old crone barked at me with both anger and a slight measure of panic.

"What are you here for!?" she said.

Now first of all, I may talk a tough game, but seriously, I'm 5'10". Neatly dressed. I drove into the parking lot in a powder blue Toyota echo, and I'm carrying a one year old in my arms.

The only thing that would make me less threatening would be a kitten in my other arm.

On top of that, I have never, ever, not even once, been barked at while in the company of my son. One of the reasons I take him everywhere is because people just melt at the sight of babies. Especially if they are quiet and relatively cute. And Calvin was quiet as a mouse outside the home, and he's even got a little dimple on one side of his cheek when he smiles. He ruled cute.

It took me a whole beat to catch my breath.

"Um, I'm here to see Leslie for a tour." I fumbled.

"Let me get her." she barked as she sped past me and through the front door.

A few moments later Leslie walks out. She asked me why my wife wasn't there, and I told her that my wife was working. She seemed a little put off, but began the tour in earnest.

Suffice it to say, the place was a wonderland. A summer camp for enriching the information starved minds of a little boys and girls.

I wanted to go there.

Old crone aside, I was totally ready to sign my money and my time on that dotted line.

But Leslie kept talking to me about how much my wife is gonna love this place.

How much fun my wife will have with the other mothers.

How much my wife will be able to learn about young childhood development from "Bev"

"Bev" of course being the gate keeper/attack dog I met outside.

"Bev" of course being a world renowned authority on early childhood development. 

"Bev" an obvious underachiever in basic adult communication skills.

Then it finally dawned on me. Though the application clearly said "parental participation" hidden in the unspoken water mark was this:

"Hey you, yeah you, the one with the post pubescent penis, you're totally not welcome here."

This was summer camp for soccer moms, not daddies. Cool moms who let their children play in the dirt, not men who would tell a four-year old with a skinned knee to "throw some dirt on it"

Now I have related this story to several people who are more familiar with "Bev" than I would ever care to be, and the reaction is usually shock.

They have very fond things to say.

yes, they are all girls.

Be that as it may, I didn't give preschool much thought after that. But for years it has loomed.

And my parental anxiety has shifted to a much more hands off conciliatory response. Let him play with guns, I say. Except I did spend fifteen minutes waiting around the corner just in case he tried to run out and find me, and then the two and a half hours I spent biting my nails and waiting for the phone to ring with tragic news on the other end.

But it's time to push a little society on him. Send him out into the dark world with a flashlight and a juice box.

So as I went to Calvin's first day, I sat filling out paperwork. The teachers made it very clear that they don't encourage parental participation. 

"Makes the children act weird" Gwen says.

I really like Gwen.

Most of the kids were dropped off by dads. Awesome.

(Awesome except for the very real possibility that those dad's recently lost their jobs. To which there is really no good response)

I finished the paperwork and kneeled down next to my son.

"I'm gonna go. Wanna give me a hug?" I said.

"Uh huh. Vrooom." and he sped off to the play area with his blue race car.

I walked out the room hug-less.

And then a truth occurred to me.

The emotional scarring of early childhood development isn't his. It's mine.

There's really nothing "Bev's" childhood wonderland does except ease a parents pain. Makes the wound a little less deep in the beginning. Falsely sets those fears some place else for later review.

But as every man should learn from every father:

"Son . . . measure twice. 

Cut once. 

And throw some dirt on it."

Call me Dad

August and September have completely disappeared.

I, for one, blame the iPhone.

It's genius mobility and ease of use has totally decapitated my "stop and smell the flowers" time. Sitting down with my lap-top feels archaic and slow. Anywhere I go I'm connected to everything and involved in nothing. As my readers will be quick to point out, I haven't published in almost two months. I haven't written a single line of verse. Were it not for the insistence of my wife to continue performing, I might not have even plucked my guitar from the wall and strummed a few bars.

I played one show. But very few people showed. Just family, and die-hards. Thank the world for them.

And something happened in the haze that really surprised me.

Calvin started calling me "dad".

Not "Daddy"

Just "Dad"

It's small and innocuous, but it hit me in this weird way as if I had just walked out of the theatre bathroom found my seat and discovered that Mercutio was dead.

"What the hell?" I would whisper.

"Shhh" my date might say.

"But he was so full of life!" I would whisper, cupping my hand over her ear.

"That was two acts ago! Now shhh!" she would reply.

"Daddy" is cute. "Daddy" is comforting. "Daddy" is a term of endearment. Coupled with big blue Bambi eyes, "Daddy" says I love you, I need you, can I have a hot chocolate, or eat some ice cream even though I never really finished my dinner. "Daddy" is a full body hug. It's a two syllable snuggle.

 "Dad" is something you call, 

well, 

your dad. 

Its the word you use when you need a ride to the mall, or an extra twenty bucks for "whatever".

Even the vocal placement of the word dad is different. Try saying both words and you'll notice that "Daddy" lilts between your soft palate and the tip of your tongue as it clicks behind your teeth and across you lips. The long "e" 

The word "Dad" explodes off your teeth as the short "a" shoots right out your nose with all the soft subtle nuance of an air raid siren.

I don't even call my own dad "dad". I discovered in high school that I like the sound of the word "Pop" much better. Its cooler. It's retro. It's the least formal and totally male.

Thinking back, I may have started calling my father "Pop" after reading and watching "The Outsiders" It just feels like a greaser word.

It also reminds me that my life is never more than three degrees of separation from the great Patrick Swayze. God bless him.

I bet his kids called him "Pop"

But "Dad" is just too utilitarian for my taste.

God forbid, however, he ever start calling me "Father"

That'll be the day I give up on my vicarious rock star dreams and buy him a breifcase. He'll probably need glasses, and braces, and a 401k.

Anyway,

Maybe the iPhone is to blame for my having lost two whole months.

Maybe it is the heat.

Maybe I just ran out of steam.

Such is the examined life when no one is looking.

Calvin is four now.

I'm dad.

Except when Calvin really wants my attention.

Then he calls me Josh.