few and far between
April 22nd, 2005
cata-wha?
I couldn’t sleep the other night.
I have been spending more time trying to make music with various samplers and sequencers and combining them with live guitar. and, after a not too late creativity session, i COULD NOT fall asleep.
I feel the gears of creativity grinding back into motion. It’s not going to be pretty - and i am sure there will be untold amounts of crap songs before anything good comes out. But I need to do it.
It is difficult to articulate why it is important. I suppose it is unnecessary, too. I do feel the need to have focus, and not waste opportunities to be creative that seem few and far between.
So, it was interesting to sit down during lunch with two magazines I got in the mail, verbicide (containing Interviews with Ian MacKaye, and Tim Kerr) and Magnet (containing interviews with Michael Gira and Sleater Kinney, as well as tons of up-and-coming-and-soon-to-be-forgotten, hopeful indie stars and starlets).
Both zines pointed out things which I aspire to, and things which I either care less for, or truly loathe.
The verbicide interviews with MacKaye and Kerr were good. These guys have been at it for a long time, and don’t plan on quitting music or bailing their punk ethos anytime soon. That is where I want to be. Not in terms of status, but as a lifestyle. For a long time, I think it was, but I dropped the ball somewhere. And where I would have devoured this zine 10 years ago front-to-back - ads, reviews and all, the rest didn’t speak to me. Which is ok.
Magnet was pretty hard to take seriously. Now, I know I do not want to have a color promo shot of me standing in the woods looking contemplative and wearing a thrift store short sleeve acrylic sweater one-size too small, and if I ever get around to naming a band, I really hope I can come up with something better than “Joy Zipper”. The Sleater Kinney photos were painful to see - an awkwardly posed fashion-shoot. Ugh.
Good article on Michael Gira, though. Like MacKaye and Kerr, that guy is staying true to his vision.
So, I took some extra time over lunch and got a new set of strings, and I am set on getting the gears oiled up and spinning. There is sure to be lots of grinding along the way.
