I’ve taken to starting the day with a brief lyric from our storied past. (Mostly a two-storied past. We haven’t lived in a lot of high-rises in our time.) For some reason, this morning a particular song of Matt’s popped up, and I found myself humming along to this stanza from Natural Laws:
What’s that they’ve written all
up and down the wall?
Something about suction and my face.
I don’t know what they mean
or why it’s illustrated in green; is it
some tasteless reference to my
love for you?
Some people recite Shakespeare; others read Supreme Court decisions to their children. Me? My tiny mind focuses on the familiar, and there are few things more familiar to me than the boatload of crazy-ass songs I’ve been living with for the past three decades. Lots of material there – probably a couple hundred songs, poorly recorded on cassette 4-track decks or something meaner, all demos. The copyright folks down at the Library of Congress must think we’re a couple of crazy motherfucking crackers, though I’m sure most of the cassette collections we’ve sent to them as deposit copies have long since turned to dust. (They do digital file uploads now, of course.)
Matt’s always been a very prolific crackpot. Myself? Less so, though my cumulative output over the years is less well-documented. Matt recorded practically from the very beginning of his songwriting days, whereas many of my songs floated around in my head and never got much farther (nor, frankly, deserved to). To this day, Matt writes about six or seven songs to my one. Not sure how he does it with that day job of his – tramping around the wilderness, feeding beavers, chasing falcons, snapping photos of butterflies, etc. My songwriting habits are pretty bad. Sometimes on a weekend I’ll pick up a guitar and play the same chords I always play, except in a different order. (One of these days I’m going to run out of orders.)
Of course, there’s always the piano. But most of my composing happens in the old brain case. If I don’t get a song in my head first, it doesn’t usually go anywhere. Sometimes I fram on the keys, record a snippet on my phone, and build it out from there, but usually not. Hey … whatever works, right? So long as you and the brick walls listen, we’ll keep tossing it out there. That’s how we roll.
