228. The Good Death (Draft – missing chorus)

DAY TWO-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT

No. You aren’t dreaming. And neither am I. It’s true: this is a post after nearly a year. I’m going to finish the 365.

Part of the incentive behind finishing is that I’ve had so many people come up to me and ask if I’m going to finish that I can’t ignore it any more. It’s a painful thing, in a way, to know you have a creature of your own floating out there in the vastness of internet space that’s incomplete. And I’ve had enough insomnia recently that I can’t put it off any more. Plus, I want to finish it. I miss the exercise of it, and I have felt its loss because I haven’t created anything in a long, long time. I just needed some… time, I guess. Some really wonderful things have happened in the almost year and half since my last song post. Some sad and bad things, too, but even those things can be considered a welcome creative push (in retrospect most of the time).

Let us begin:

Yeah. It kinda feels like that.

The Good Death. This song was initiated by a Pearl and the Beard writing session. I brought to Jeremy and Jocelyn sections of a uke part I had come up with a few weeks earlier on my own. We put things together and configured exact chords, verse melody, a chorus, a bridge, but didn’t have lyrics or exact form of the song at all. We took the bare bones sketch home with us after our session, and it sat. Months and months later, we put it back on the table, and Jocelyn worked out some really beautiful lyrics with the original melody we had designed. In a rehearsal last week, as much as I loved her awesome lyrics, I wasn’t convinced it was in the sweet spot. It just wasn’t there for me. So, I took it home myself as an exercise, throwing out the melody for the verses and the bridge while keeping the chorus melody we had liked. I redesigned the job of the original uke riff, making it more of an intro or ornament rather than it being the verse itself and wrote a new verse section with a brand new melody. The bridge was a different story. Jeremy and Jocelyn and I came up with this t00-hard-for-me-to-play-on-the-uke bridge but didn’t really know how it was going to function in reality. But we liked it so we left it. In this re-imagining exercise, I almost threw it out. I’m still undecided about its effectiveness, but I like elements of it, so it stayed.

I am posting this as an exercise. I wanted to show the development of a song and how deep it actually can go. The original, original version of this is actually a completely different song. We may go back to it, we may take this, we may throw out all versions all together. One can never predict what will stick and what won’t.

I had 4 focuses for this song:

1. Find cathartic, sincere lyrics. Mean what I’m saying while trying to avoid cliché but make it relatable. Maybe use ideas I’ve discussed recently.

Discussing “The Good Death” – From the internets: “There is no single definition of what constitutes a good death. The definition of a good death will vary for each patient. In 1997 The Institute of Medicine defined a good death as: ‘A decent or good death is one that is: free from avoidable distress and suffering for patients.’”

Also, yes. There is a reference to The Neverending Story.

*Personal note begin*

Have depression? Tension? Anxiety? This might be cliché in and of itself, but it totally works: Find an art or a creative outlet you think you might enjoy (baking [and then have a huge party and let your friends who love you enjoy the fruits of your anxiety], rock painting, cat photography, kazoo playing, etc.). It really doesn’t matter if you’re “good” at it. Create something. Anything. Look at it or sing it. Again and again. Or don’t. Burn it or throw it away. Running. Running also works.

*Personal note end*

2. What do you want to hear? Re-imagine the song keeping as many original elements as possible, but you don’t have to keep what you don’t want to keep.

3. Expect nothing. Possibility of disappointment is high when you’re putting yourself out there, especially if you’re writing in a team situation like Pearl and the Beard. This is a [personally cathartic] songwriting exercise using elements of a previously group-developed skeletal song. That’s all. If it makes it in, it makes it in. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Like Tom Hanks says, “It’s not personal. It’s business.”

4. And as always: No Pre-Judgements. None. Hell, let’s just say No Judgements. Ever.

365 Project alumni know that even if this ends up being used in any way by either me or the band, it will be totally different as a finished product. I mean, I went running the other day and already came up with a totally new verse, new tempo, etc. But displaying it in such infancy is why the 365 was developed. And like we say in sessions, “There’s no judgement in brainstorming.”

Oh. And there is no chorus yet. I have no idea what to put there that doesn’t sound like I’m 5. (Not that being 5 isn’t way bitchin’, cause it totally is.)

RECORDING: As I mentioned above, I have total insomnia, so it is now 4: 43 am. I recorded it at my kitchen table three times at about 2 am, just taking the last one because I think my neighbors could only stand it that many times so early in the morning.

Thank you for listening, reading, sharing.

THE GOOD DEATH (draft – missing chorus)

Give me the Good Death
Because I’ve called it willingly
Just give me the Good Death
Don’t hold it against me

Conjure The Nothing
I’ll contemplate my final breath
Inside your chest The Nothing
Loss always is where you look last

CHORUS

Reach in and eat a broken heart
Starving mouths make ill returns
Quiet now this lump of heart
I can’t escape what I deserve

CHORUS

BRIDGE
Could this maybe be fiction using all your calculations
With the giants I’ll kill your lofty, genius intuition
Using arms of a dozen like it, there will be no complications
We’ll be strangers then.
Be strangers then.

Give me the Good Death
Because I’ve called it willingly
Just give me the Good Death
Don’t hold it against me

(Considering another chorus here)

157. Black Hole of Calcutta

DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SEVEN

I must give great thanks to Lady Lamb the Beekeeper and Anna Vogelzang for the lyric help today. In talking with Lady Lamb some weeks ago about writing lyrics, and she sent 5 words over text for me to put into a song. These 5 words were:

apricot

June

swoon

wheat

remember

I got a text from Anna Vogelzang today that somehow ended up in me talking about her beautiful bird tattoos (which can be found on the underside of her forearm). Long story short (and after a short discussion about fish oil and its positive properties), Anna suggested that I include the words:

bird tattoo

fish oil (I failed! I just couldn’t find place for it. FAIL!)

Writing: I LOVE YOU www.etymonline.com. You make my life so much more interesting and knowledge filled. When Lady Lamb first sent me her words some weeks ago now, I spent a while researching them on the online etymology dictionary website. I found such incredibly interesting things!

Apricot linked me to the word Aubergine – fruit of the eggplant (ironically, my friend Emilyn Brodsky is linked to the word Aubergine almost intimately… she is also included in this song in another way: Emilyn recently gave me a vintage blue hat which I love. It is the blue hat referenced in the second line.)

June sent me to The Black Hole of Calcutta. What a horribly sad and terrifying story. “Black Hole of Calcutta, incident of June 19, 1756, in which 146 British POWs taken by the Nawab of Bengal after the capture of Ft. William, Calcutta, were held overnight in punishment cell of the barracks (meant to hold 4 people) and all but 23 perished.”

Oddly, June 19th is my birthday, which had me addressing “Emmy” in the song, a name my family called me when I was very, very little. My idea for the narrating was a man struggling to survive, wanting more to give in to his circumstance whilst in The Black Hole, speaking to “Emmy” a presence who is very far from him and in a totally different world than where he finds himself.

Swoon is “in a faint, to choke, to sigh”… then wheat and remember came by themselves.

Recording: The vocals and cello were done at the same time. This is the first full take, and, in the interest of time, I didn’t do it again. I was thoughtful about the instrumental: should it be simple and only reflect the melody line? Should it be more free and improvised or feel more mapped out? I did a few improvisations trying these different ideas and ended up with this one.

It was difficult to fit all the required words in, but I did all but one. Near triumph! And thanks to Anna’s birds, I had a jumping off point. Have a wonderful, wonderful day…

Black Hole of Calcutta

Where is your bird tattoo?

Send me your blue hat

Lest I forget so well

Upon this day you died

I’m at a loss for words

Stole them right off my tongue

Now it is June, Emmy, now it is June

Stuck in the Black Hole of Calcutta

Not sure I’ll make it out

The man to the right, he swoons

It’s all that I have just to remember

The fields of a labor lost, its wheat, and your apricot dress

Oh, Emmy, I’m done

Oh, Emmy, I’m done

I’m gonna let go this silver gun, this happy, silver gun

Oh my home, oh my Aubergine,

When will we see the sun as it is

I will or I won’t, there is no bargain

Tobacco and smoke is all I know

Oh, Emmy, I’m done

Oh, Emmy, I’m done

Oh, Emmy, I’m done

I’m gonna let go this happy, silver gun

114. Pieces and Parts (The Sketch)

DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN

Well, you can’t say I haven’t learned anything.  I’ve realized something very significant from yesterday’s posting.  All long, I have felt very strongly about being honest and forthcoming in how things are going and how I feel about a particular song.  I still feel like there is validity in writing all of that stuff… however, it occurred to me that, though I might be unhappy with a certain portion of a song or feel negatively about a certain aspect of it, it doesn’t mean you have to know about it.  In fact, as someone said in a comment, it gets annoying (this secretly hurt my feelings, but I understand it).  I also realize that these statements aren’t helping you devise an opinion about the work itself without my own feelings about the work getting in the way.  Someone said to me, “You create the art and, when it’s finished, you let it go and just put it out there and let people think what they’re going to think.”

I have been openly writing my feelings about the way a song has been going and making my frustrations apparent for the sake of my own learning and future use.  That works privately on paper, but not in the world-wide web where everybody reads everything and remembers everything.  So, from here on out, I will tell you what you need to know about the process, not my personal experience with the insecurity of it.  In short, I am ridding myself of the need for validity.  I simply appreciate that you come and listen.  Simply posting what IS will be enough for me now.

Pieces and Parts (Uke Solo):

I thought I might give an insight into a song as it’s being worked on, not just at the end of it.  Yesterday, I went to pick up a new tenor uke string.  They didn’t have what I needed at the store, but they offered me a replacement alternative which was a .36 gauge guitar string.  It is so tight!  And I’m finding it makes an interesting sound for me to get ideas.  So, this is a rough uke part I have been toying around with.  I found several sections in this very simple tuning (E flat, A flat, E flat, A flat) that I put together.  I have yet to decide on a melody or words, however, and I’m still working out the kinks in the uke part.  Usually words and music come somewhat at the same time, but in this case, I had to teach myself the uke part as I am shifting around frets and playing thirds on two strings.

Pieces and Parts (Vocal Sketch Sample):

I’m also attaching a section of a sketch with vocals I did just as a trial to see if I could find a form.  This was recorded well before the drafted uke part below, which has more form.  If my mind is locked, I can sometimes free it with some improvisation like I did here.  This is the first of about three I did.  Any stylistic vocal choices (creative vibrato, unusual word pronunciation, etc.) usually come later unless I’m struck with something from the very beginning.

To be honest, usually, if a song doesn’t strike me with that specific “something” or its composition doesn’t come right away, I put it aside for a while until I give it away or it disappears.  I would probably would have done it to do this song, but I’m finding it good to push an initially attractive and then suddenly unappealing song to some kind of finish point: a stick-to-it-ness, so to speak.  Maybe this song has something to say, maybe it doesn’t, but trashing it too early on doesn’t help.

I may show this uke part to someone for a collaboration, actually.  It’s very helpful to get another ear.  I’m actually leaving to collaborate right now: driving to Baltimore to meet with a violinist friend named Emily Price (for real!).  Then, off to DC to play with Anna Vogelzang and start the SPRING TOUR!

Pieces and Parts (Uke Part Solo)

Pieces and Parts (Vocal Sketch Sample)

51. Mr. Mischievous (Tribute to Vic Chesnutt)

DAY FIFTY-ONE

Still in Miami with one last four-hour show still to go…

Guy Capecelatro sent me this email a few weeks ago:

So one of the projects I’m doing for the RPM is a tribute to Vic Chesnutt.  He’s been an amazing inspiration over the years.  I actually got to open up for him in town about 18 years ago and have seen him play lots.  If you didn’t know, he killed himself about 5 weeks ago.

The project is to get folks to use the words I wrote and make a song of it.  I know some of your 365 songs have been outside source material so if you have any interest in taking a whack at let me know. If you do decide to make a song out of it please do feel free to make it your own.  Have your way with changing words, adding things, taking stuff away.  There will be ten versions so anything the more of yourself you can bring to it, all the better.  I’m most curious to hear what this becomes.

Plus today I made two more songs from your loops.  I’ll send them along tomorrow.  It’s quite a bit of pressure I feel with these as they’re so beautiful on they’re own and I don’t want to disappoint you.  Nervous!

Okay ma’am,

Guy

I should tell you right now, I have never really listened to Vic Chesnutt’s music before today.  Guy mentioned something about him a few weeks ago while I was in Portsmouth and played me a few seconds of his song “Flirted With You All My Life”.  He’s really great!  (Shame on me for being so out of the loop.  Man!)

I got home tonight at about 9:30 pm and passed out on a huge black bean bag chair: awesome!  I might get me one of these.  At 1 am I woke up and decided to get to work the song.  I have been traveling all day to the south and played my uke a little in the car while my dear friends Jason and Melanie drove around southern Miami.  Technically, I just realized, when I write at 1 am it’s actually the day after, but it’s all subjective.  I’m still counting it.

Recording/Writing: The writing of the melody of this song took place away from any instruments.  I usually find this method extremely helpful.  I wrote and recorded the cello part and the main vocal in about 30-45 minutes.  It was very fast.  I wonder if you’re asking yourself why I made this vocal style choice.  Well, I’m not sure what to tell you: as I sang the melody to find it, that’s what I started doing and kept it.  I like it.  Recording the other voices took time to record and line up and then I added a simple cello part.  I still think there are some holes in this song production-wise, but it’s so late (4:15 am!) that it’s good enough for song of the day.

For me, finding arrangements and melodies for other people’s words is usually sitting and looking at them for a minute and do it away from any instruments, like I just mentioned.  I look at the meter and play with different rhythms that the words might want to take on.  Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not (see Sam McCormally’s song he emailed me for day 22 Vorarephilia).  In this case, for example, in the chorus there is the line “Didn’t I hear you say”.  The word “Didn’t” could have been a part of one entire line, but I decided to hook it in front of the beat instead of joined to the entire line.

Anyway, enough talk.   Just listen.  I hope you’ve scored yourself a sweet ice cream sandwich today: I did!

Mr. Mischievous (lyrics: Guy Capecelatro)

Lifted on the stage

Your mischievous eyes a flitter

You roll up to the mic

That booming voice sends shivers

You have us laughing

Then the dagger hits our chest

The places and the stories

We won’t soon forget

Didn’t I hear you say

Your sorrow seemed silly

Didn’t I hear you say

You weren’t quite ready

What a roller coaster you must have been on

Learned to play guitar

From you granddaddy in Zebulon

Running through the woods

Like a skinny Genghis Khan

You captured all those worlds

With a shrewd unflinching eye

And in the way you tell it

We feel like we’re inside

Didn’t I hear you say

Your sorrow seemed silly

Didn’t I hear you say

You weren’t quite ready

What a roller coaster you must have been on

Ain’t it funny and ironic

As a self-proclaimed atheist

You decide to leave this place

On the day of Christmas

46. The RPM Challenge – With a side of Guy and Mike

DAY FORTY SIX

Please Delta Airlines: Let me on with my cello today so I can get to Florida for my shows in peace and non-anxiety. Please.

Good morning.  I understand the need for a break.  I’d like to have one right about now, but it’s not really an option.  So, here we go:

The RPM Challenge: Held every February and people from all around the world get on it.  The Challenge: “Record an album in 28 days, just because you can.  That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February.  Go ahead… put it to tape.”

I was approached by Guy Capecelatro about collaborating on an RPM project for the month of February.  The collaboration in Guy’s words:

The idea: writing 3 to 4 songs with just 2 things on it then passing it along for the next person to do 2 things and then the final person and their 2 things.  What you start with can be anything at all as long as you’re okay with free rein from myself and Mr. Mike Wolstat.

This has been an interesting endeavor, and I would suggest anyone stuck on something to give it a try.  It’s an interesting process also because as I’ve received each original version of the proposed songs, I’ve had to remember that another person has yet to add 2 more tracks to it.  It’s a good lesson in listening and planning out your attack.

The past 24 hours I have either worked on existing or written new material for 8 songs both for myself and other people.  I leave for Florida today (Feb. 18th) at noon and then run to play a show tonight at 11 pm in Miami.  Today, I would like to show you just a few incomplete songs within this RPM that will be completed by the end of the month with more tracks on them added by Mike Wolstat and Guy Capecelatro.  When the song is completed, I’ll update this with the new version so you can hear the finished product.

#1 Give Me More in Color (Original Version): WEIRD!  But I’m over myself and will show you anyway.  It’s funny.  (A little of both “funny ha ha” and “funny weird me out”).  I sat with my tenor uke and started playing with the beginning motif, pushed record and improvised the rest of the song.  This is the first and only take of the uke part.  The vocals were recorded immediately afterwords and are completely improvised.  I thought I would just use this first improvisation as a map and write the rest of the song from it, but as I went back and re-recorded it, the performance was so weird and unlike me, I decided to just use it.  So, there it is.  I have sent this song to Guy to add whatever in the world he wants.  We’ll see if he can make any sense of it… and good luck to Mike as well!

#2 There’s a Fire (with EHP only): This is a song Guy wrote and sent me that I worked on yesterday.  His original parts are the thumb piano and vocal.  I really like almost everything about this song.  I went against my instincts with the additions I did to this song.  I was actually hearing female vocal as an accompaniment to Guy’s lead vocals, but did tambourine (one of my least favorite instruments, actually) and a cello line.  Mike still gets to add 2 more tracks to this and it will be complete!  I like the cello line, but question my use of tambourine.  What is this life but to learn?

#3 Bachelorhood (with Guy only): What you’re hearing here is a tiny loop of the beginning and end of a track I received from Jeffrey McKenna of Canada.  He and his brother put this track together and sent it to me as a 365 hopeful.  It’s cool, and I’ve been working with it for a few weeks.  I used the first 2 seconds or so of the end and the beginning for this song as well as manually playing an old recording from my record player from The Best of Steve Allen’s “What is a Wife”.  I sent it to Guy and he added toy piano and nature sounds.  Mike Wolstat will add two more tracks.   We’ll see what happens!

The 365 continues…thank you for coming back again and again… see you tomorrow!

EHP

25. Caps, Sweaters and Scarves (Synapse)

DAY TWENTY-FIVE.

A STUDY ON THE WESLEY HOOK and THE INDIE POP SONG.  We’ve written you an indie pop song.  Yay!

Wes Verhoeve: Yes, his hair is actually that awesome in real life, too.

First of all: I’m feeling very overwhelmed by the generosity of the artists who have thus far participated in this project with me.  So many hours are being spent writing and recording these songs: every single musician I have worked with has been so generous, giving, and enthusiastic.  I’m so honored, and, frankly, feel very undeserving.  Very undeserving.  Thank you so much.

*This is a revised article. The original posting is still here, but, as you’ll read, I started falling asleep.  This morning at 6:30, I am making additions with a new, rested capacity for thinking in complete sentences.

Just a little bit about hooks today.  I’m not really good at them and, frankly, have avoided them because I always had it in my mind that it was a sell-out gesture (not true! Hooks can help drive a song’s direction and aid in people remembering it for all time!), but my dear friend and Pearl and the Beard manager is great at identifying a hook.  (A great example is contained in the song Lost in Singapore [accordion by Franz Nicolay!] from PatB’s album, God Bless Your Weary Soul, Amanda Richarson. The music box plays a melody that Wes’ came up with!)  So, I asked him to write a song with me.  (As a side: Nadia Ali, my ultra gorgeous, incredible singer friend, is FAMOUS for creating hooks.  We spent a good chunk of time once going through her iPod identifying hooks as a help for me.  I never realized Radiohead hooked so much in their music.  It was a weird realization for me.)

I’ve just had a really lovely evening with Wes Verhoeve of Family Records‘ fame, PatB’s friendly family record label.  Wesley V., the Dutchman, and Family Records, has taken Pearl and the Beard under their wing, fostering us and our music.  We love him.  I thought it only made sense to ask him if he would write a song with me for the 365.

Hook: A means of attracting interest or attention; an enticement.

The Construction: I met Wes at his office at Engine Room Audio down by Battery Park at about 3:30.  (Though we were in an office that had a $1,000,000 recording studio, we were across the hall using my crappy little stereo mic and garageband: it was awesome! I much prefer this to a studio at the moment.)  We worked until about 10:00 pm.  We began writing at about 4:00.  Wes had in mind a specific topic for this song, and we used a lot of images from Wes’ experiences in a relationship from a while back which were very endearing and lovely.  This song was really challenging for me lyrically.  Wes brought with him an interesting guitar riff he’d had on him for a while which we began molding into the start of our song.  Again, I was challenged by the style of speech the song was requiring, as my writing is much more cryptic usually, so this required a lot of my brain power to come up with something a little more Ben Gibbard than EHP.  So, I did my best.  A lot of inspiration actually came a Death Cab for Cutie song.  I like Death Cab for Cutie, but I’m only a casual listener, and I’m not totally familiar with the specifics of their music.  I did my best to keep up, drawing from things in my past that I thought paralleled.

Early on, we decided that we’d split things up: he would write and sing in his perspective, and I would write and sing in the girl’s perspective.  I found a good the chorus, and he shaped hooks and found initial melodies and together, we finessed it as a whole, finding our own voice within a conversation between two people who once were lovers, now meeting as friends.  (I’m really proud of those chorus lyrics, actually.  I literally asked myself, “What would Ben Gibbard say right at this moment?”  I’m not sure that’s exactly what he would say, but that’s what I would say thinking of myself as B.G.)  These kinds of songs based on someone else’s actual event can be difficult I’m finding.  In order to choose language and make smart word choices that I enjoy hearing and reading, I have to dig around in my own actual event, too, or use empathy.  I used a lot of empathy here: How would it feel if this happened to me?  If I were this woman, what would I say?  How would I think? It’s a fascinating study in the human mind and healing actually.  Also, I found my own intensely personal experiences turning up inspiration like dry wells, but the experiences I haven’t really weighted as being that significant are helping me out the most in this circumstance.  This isn’t always the case but certainly was here.

Recording: Initially we wanted to track the song (do everything separately), so we initially recorded the guitar first, then laid down Wes’ vocals.  (I’m am learning I need to organize my time better for this project when it comes to recording.  I haven’t been very realistic.  It needs to take less time or we’re both just too tired at the end of it all.) I realized after finishing all the recording that it was 10:00 and there was no way I was going to be able to make it home, over-dub my vocals, a cello part, maybe something else, mix everything and write about the song before tomorrow.   So, solution No. 2 was to just record it live, which is what you’re hearing here.  I would have loved to have recorded cello on this or redo my vocals because they’re very quiet and hard to understand, but it will have to wait.  When I got home, I had Jon listen to the basic mix I did on the one live track.  Not getting home until 11:30, I was already discouraged and frustrated and felt I didn’t have enough time, he said, “It sounds great and lo-fi.  Ben Gibbard did the same thing in his basement on a 4 track recorder.”  Maybe it’s a good sign?

I must tell you, it is taking me quite a bit of personal persuasion to not stay up half the night rerecording this or that or trying different instrumentation.  (I, personally, am shuddering at my performance in this song.  But, whatever.)  It needs major cleaning up: I messed up on the end when we performed it live.  Wes was supposed to sing that by himself, so we overdubbed his last vocal, but as I tried to put it in, it sounded just slapped in there no matter what tricks I tried and now it sticks out like a sore thumb.  I will revisit this song, but in the meantime I did my best with what I have to give today.  Today will have to be one of those songs that needs to be an uber-demo song, so I apologize if the experience listening to this song isn’t as nice as it could be.

I don’t think I have been to bed before 3 am in the past week and a half, and my body wakes me up at 6 am.  Literally.  Even then I can’t get back to sleep, so I’ve just been staying up all day until the next night when it’s 3 am again. (I’m falling asleep at the computer!)  I need sleep or I won’t make it through tomorrow, so I’m offering this song to you as a very low-fi version of a pop song.  So I’m off to bed then:

THANK YOU WES!  I HAD SUCH A GREAT TIME WRITING THIS SONG WITH YOU!  YOU’RE THE BEST!

So, tonight I’m ending it here, with a kiss goodnight to you and see you tomorrow!

Love,

EHP

Caps, Sweaters and Scarves

Verse 1

I’ve got new caps and sweaters and a scarf you’ve never seen

We put up a fight we had to let go

I drove the last ten miles alone, alone

Saw your face in the front of my mind

Over time, over time

Verse 2

My town has flooded I can see you from my roof

The water’s making it so I have to let go

You put me up though we were strangers then

Could I be in the front of your mind now

You will find there’s a lot to learn

Chorus

Form a synapse to remind you, remind you

Place a call so you might hear me, can you hear me?

Verse 3

I put a note behind the frame that’s on your wall

When I come over I’ll show you where it is

Closet’s full, photo for every memory

To the back, I’ll climb deep inside

Over time, over time

Chorus

Form a synapse to remind you, remind you

Place a call so you might hear me, can you hear me?

Verse 4

You had to carry yourself three thousand miles from home

To find it didn’t change you at all

Your voice has changed, I can recall with ease

Moments when you first spoke my name

You will find there’s a lot to learn

Chorus

Form a synapse to remind you, remind you

Place a call so you might hear me, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

22. Vorarephilia

DAY TWENTY-TWO

Do you remember Sam McCormally of Ugly Purple Sweater?  From Song 10: A Thousand Thousands?  Since collaborating on that song on tour, Sam and I have become good faraway friends and far away music friends (yay!).  When I was in Portsmouth visiting with Guy Capecelatro, he mentioned to me several different kinds of collaborations he had done with friends.  One such collaboration incorporated the handing over of lyrics from a previously written song to someone else with which to make a new song.  One week ago, I approached Sam McCormally (the assumed formerly O’Gormally – alliteration!) and asked if he wouldn’t mind, instead of using an already written song, writing new lyrics for me, and I would put music to them.  Neither one of us had ever done anything like this before.  Why Sam?  I love his writing style (it’s a plus that it’s also different than mine: he reads books.) and intuition, and he’s as smart as they come, so I knew he would really challenge me.

Today, I received an email:

Here’s a song! Do whatever you want with it! Use it for a song! Laugh at it! Print it out and use it as bathroom tissue!

But more seriously–any rearranging of things, or adding to things, or repeating things is perfectly fine by me. And you can do it with zero consultation; so if you decide to double the chorus and add a verse about a pie eating contest, then God bless you.
A brief word on the meter: the verses are triambic, so the syllable pattern is unstressed-unstressed-stressed. In each pair of lines, the first is 4 feet and the second 3 feet.. The chorus (the “do you want to eat me?” part) has no particular meter.

Vorarephilia

I can tell by the look on your face that my face

has belied what I mean. Yes, it’s hard:

every twitch, every twinge, every flicker of lid

makes a tongue of its own you must learn

just as sound underwater is faster, arrives

all at once and from nowhere at all

I would speak from inside of your head, I would speak

from inside from inside of your head

(do you want to eat me?

do you want to swallow me whole?)

on the shore, sand in orifices way before

I could speak fell in love with the sea

so I swam, and she kept me afloat with her salt

and I took home a bucket of her

when I drank, stung the cuts in my mouth, made me sick

and left her alone in the sun

after weeks, the only thing that was left was her salt

just the remnants I couldn’t keep down

I would speak from inside of your head, I would speak

from inside from inside of your head

(do you want to eat me?

do you want to swallow me whole?)

I sat with them all day, reading them, singing them.  At one point, after working on several melodies moving from instrument to instrument waiting for some kind of inspiration, I wrote Sam an email saying:

The best way of describing this experience is this:

I have a huge ring of keys: skeleton keys, square-cut keys, round keys, stupid keys, red keys… they are heavy and jingling. I am standing at a door that says, “Sam’s Lyrics. Please Enter.”  There are keys that obviously don’t fit: a key to a Hummer is not fitting in this door, and I don’t have to try it to know that.  However there are some keys that are going in, but they don’t turn the lock.

This is my free-form analogy to how I feel.

That is all.

______

Cello Opening: Going to my cello, I began experimenting with tunings once again.  I ended up with three strings all on D# and let the C down to an A#.  I started playing around with motifs which ended up creating the “prelude” improvisation at the beginning.  I have played some really awesome microtonal music in grad school from the middle east: so fascinating and very difficult to play.  I tried to incorporate a tiny decoration of microtones in this opening, but they are so hard to play accurately, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in reality, they weren’t in there after all.  Afterwards, finding the melody only became easier when I called up Sam and he sung the rhythm he had been intending.  It was important for him to not give me any melodic material: I’m easily affected musical ideas.

Recording: Wanting Sam to put his incredible voice on this song was a priority for me, so I recorded my vocals and cello simultaneously, but purposely leaving vocal spaces for Sam to use at his discretion.  He added vocals to my chorus, and I love it.  Sam sent me his original version of this song, which I refused to listen to until I had sent him mine.  I was such a wuss about it, too… I was sick nervous to send him my version, wondering what he’d think.  I’m unhappy with the performance on my part, but I have to say, doing this song really had me thinking in ways I don’t normally (at one point I thought, “How would Ugly Purple Sweater handle this?”).    Given that Sam wrote very long lines lyrically, it was challenging to find something I really liked that was easy for me to sing, which this is not.  With a little practice and familiarity, I could get these vocals where I want them…and play it live.  (Sam? Trip to NYC, yo!)

The title is one Sam sent with the vocals.  Dad, just go with this definition: Vorarephilia is derived from the Latin vorare (to ‘swallow’ or ‘devour’) and Ancient Greek φιλία (philia, ‘love’).

I am posting Sam’s version and my version of this song.  (These versions are so different from one another.  The coolest thing about today was hearing two very different songs.  I loved doing it, even though I’m sitting here being gross critical of my version, but hey, EHP, let’s stop that.  Sam’s version is unbelievably wonderful…unsurprisingly.)

Vorarephilia (Sam’s Version)

Vorarephilia (Emily’s Original Version)

(P.S. The entire construction and all of Sam’s parts, was done over email this evening.  Sam, you are the best.)

January 27: Remixed version with a bit added, without intro (just in case you were fast forwarding past the intro like I was).  I like this one better, but I’ll keep up the original.  I’m sentimental.

Vorearephilia (Emily’s Remixed Version – No Intro)

4. You’ll Be Lonely

DAY FOUR

Alright.  I’m admitting it.  This is hard.  But, I’m pretty sure I’m in denial about the everyday-ness of this whole thing.  I’m thinking this might benefit me.  It’s just one, right?

I had an interesting conversation today with a friend who’s a songwriter (who will also, I hope, appear very soon in a future installment).  I was explaining my apprehensions and concerns about this project to her and her response was, “This is going to change your brain…” and “you need to start picking three chords.”  Oh, she also added, “You need to listen to some Magnetic Fields.”  (If you haven’t guessed already based on the M.F. recommendation, my friend is uke wielding Emilyn Brodsky.)

This is a great topic to address today, actually.  My friend knows I bend over backwards to insert anything but three chords.  In explanation, I’ve had people come over to my house who aren’t musicians and ask to play my cello.  They sit down with it for a few minutes having never touched the thing in their life.  And it’s those people who come up with some wicked riffs on an instrument they don’t even play.  I get stumped all the time on my own instrument with what to do or where to go.  When I get a new instrument that I don’t know how to play, I feel total abandon and write freely without hesitation.  (Which is why I hardly ever write an entire song on my cello any more.  I write it off my instrument then take it back if need be.)  I’m sure there’s a study out there about this phenomenon.  That’s how I feel about music theory.  Now that I’ve seen into the possibilities of the proverbial musical theory microscope, it’s hard for me to turn that knowledge on and off.  I have problems being okay with simplicity.  This little voice says, “A classical musician not utilizing the tools of the trade?! What’s wrong with her?!”  So, today’s song is written with these chords: C major, F major and G major.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  Writing this song was a great lesson for me.  Less can totally be more.

This brings up another thought.  I apologize if it seems disjointed later: Right now, I’m sitting at my computer with headphones on with my iTunes running on shuffle.  Right now it is playing: Phenomena by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  This is a rockin’ song.  (I saw them live, and Karen O is totally crazy.  The kind of crazy I want to buy in a bottle at my nearest Bodega and put in everything I digest from now on.)  It’s hot.  She is hot.  When I listen to iTunes on shuffle it will fall on something totally kick-ass, and I’ll think, “Man, why can’t I write like that?”  I’ve come to realize I say that about every artist I love, but if I was going to write like them, I’d be them, not me.  As a side note, maintaining individuality is really important in my work, so there’s an important duality happening there.  Being inspired and motivated by other people without sacrificing your own musical identity.  (Guarantee this topic will come up again.  I have yet to even mention Radiohead- on purpose.  But I will.  Oh.  I will.)

You’ll Be Lonely. After working on another more difficult song most of the day today, I came out with this instead.  It took probably and hour to write in it’s complete form and another hour to completely record.  (I’m working on limiting my working time.  Tour with Pearl and the Beard and Ugly Purple Sweater is starting!)  These lyrics just came out, and I’m not sure where they came from, but they were quick.  (Hear this: I’m super relieved.  It doesn’t always happen this way; I was just really lucky today.  Will address lyrics more very soon.)  Death Cab for Cutie does a freaking amazing song called I will follow you into the dark.  When I finished with the lyrics for You’ll Be Lonely, this song came to my mind for my song’s color, and I was content.  This is a love song of various meanings.  I’m not totally happy with the title, but I choose not to get hung up on it.  Recording-wise, I’ve never done multi-vocal tracks in unison before, so I thought I’d try it.  I wanted it to feel like sisters were singing it together: two people knowing each other really well, but not exactly.  I put the other voices lower in the mix, as I later felt it distracted from the lyrics.  (I also felt like the bells were too loud so I added the other voices also as support.  Bells and main vocal was a one-take, live recording.)

You’ll Be Lonely

I’ll tell you someday you’ll be lonely/But my body will die smiling/I will turn myself out and away from you

The wall could go down and crush our bones to Hell/But I know that you’re mine tonight/I’m so weakened and I’m sure our shoulders will rub raw/But keep pushing and fail not our hearts will out

And when I see you, see you in the morning/I will see you in the morning light/When poor my head has gone from my body/I will see you in the morning light

I’ll tell you someday you’ll be lonely/But my body will die smiling/I will turn myself out just to see you in the morning light

I haven’t thanked you for listening and reading in few days.  Thank you.  Really, thanks a lot.

See you soon,

EHP