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Transcendence Diaries

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online musings and journals of singer/songwriter recording artist author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly posting online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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Transcendence Diaries

Tag: writing songs

Songwriting in Your Sleep

2
April 27, 2015

A funny thing has been transpiring lately. Something completely unexpected and almost supernatural in a way. If there is any “one thing” that I do well, out of the thousands and thousands of things we do or learn to do or are forced to do while we’re journeying here in the earthly realm — for surely every person possesses such a trait — for me personally, if there is one thing that I do better than every and anything else it is having a natural proclivity to prolifically writing songs and music composition. This is no secret, I know. It is common knowledge. So much so that I don’t even believe the main point of this entry should be to even remotely explore this strange character trait or why it comes so easy to me compared to so many other things. I am sure we have discussed it before here in these pages over the years.

Instead I simply wish to make note of this rather incredible new event that has begun transpiring lately on a near nightly basis. A little backstory…. We just finished recording and finishing over 45 new songs for the “new album”, which we now know will turn into three new albums that will be released over the course of this year. Choosing the songs is always one of the most challenging aspects of entering the recording studio with the guys. For I come in with alphabetized binders filled with thousands upon thousands of songs. Each in my humble estimation as good and worthy as the next to be included on our latest new album. So begins the process of me sitting there singing and playing the guys and the producers and engineers the songs that I have tabbed for whatever new album we happen to be working on and together as a group we semi-democratically choose which songs are yeses, which songs are maybes and which ones are flat-out nos.

Sometimes the decisions make sense to me — often times we go in with a set idea of concept in mind and thus only certain kinds of songs would be appropriate. While other times the group’s decisions about which songs are definite nos disturbs and confuses me. Everyone hears music differently. It is so subjective that it is impossible for one person to even be able to comprehend how another person hears a song let alone why they may or may not like it. And I must admit that at times I even find myself getting hurt a little at how quick they are to dismiss a song that I absolutely believe is “an incredible song!!!” But that feeling is usually fleeting for as soon as the discussion ends I start up another and the process begins all over again — every song carries with it such a special collection of feelings and memories and emotions that it is easy to get carried up and away with it as it was with the last. We will easily listen to a hundred or so songs before we eventually narrow it down to fifty or so. And from there we are all keenly aware that the hard part is yet to come as we have to keep narrowing it down to the ten or so that will eventually be known to be on that new album historically.

With this latest project — lord knows we were very aware that time was of the essence and that we needed to record and release the follow-up to Ballad On Third Avenue as quickly as possible. Ed Hale the artist had never garnered such overt commercial success before and never at such a level as what we were experiencing in that moment. But instead of being disciplined and finishing quickly the project soon turned into yet another large epic battle to not only record a mammoth batch of 45 new songs, but also to create three completely new and totally different sounding albums, AND to incorporate several new innovative techniques into the recording process — using musicians from all over the world to record their parts virtually at their own studios and send them in to our engineers to import the songs into our system — a process that would at the very least create an extremely confusing and disharmonious sound but at best could just possibly create something completely fresh and unique sounding. (Since I am writing THIS post-recording now and we are in the mixing stage, I can relay that it did indeed create an incredibly massive oftentimes muddied even noisy fusion of sound and cacophony at times, this is true…but some of the songs are sounding fantastically unique and innovative in their “sound”, a sound no one has ever heard us create before with more instruments and a wider variety of instruments and sounds than we’ve ever incorporated into our music. Not that it doesn’t still sound like “us”. It does. It has the Transcendence sound all over it… Still basically Brit Pop with a classic rock bent… But the new technique we attempted worked. It is very exciting to listen to. Goosebumps inducing at times even. The mad experiment worked. It’s just taking longer to mix and finish. But the wait will be worth it I believe. )

Needless to say that since all of our attention and focus at the moment and for the next few months if not the entire year will be dedicated to finishing these new albums and then to marketing and touring , the last thing in the world I want to spend any time doing is writing new songs. But what to do when you are able to write new songs as easy as breathing, when it comes that easy to you? You see a guitar, pick it up and bam out comes a song. You sit down at a piano and within minutes I am deeply inside of the inexpressible comfort and pleasure of “new song composition”, completely adrift in it and oblivious to everything else going on around me. Not the most productive way to be when your attention needs to be on marketing and mixing and planning and implementing a new album release.

So when we moved back to New York full-time late last year I decided to store ALL of my musical equipment including all guitars and keyboards in our storage warehouse with our other house items so that way I wouldn’t and couldn’t even be tempted to pick up an instrument and write any songs. For we already have far too many to believe we will ever really be able to get them all recorded. That’s just the hard painful truth of the matter. One that is still hard for me to bare the thought of. Thousands of songs literally equates to hundreds of albums at an average rate of ten songs per album. We’ve done the math. It’s a no-brainer. We will never even come close to recording all the songs that I’ve already written… let alone all the ones that I am destined to still write. In a word, it sucks.

And in that, this strange character trait, this gift as some call it, is (and has always been) both a blessing and a curse. For with each new song that I have composed for years going back and from this day forward I am immediately made aware that one of two not-preferable things will happen: either I am pouring my heart and soul into bringing this song down from the ethers into the earthly realm only for it to sit on paper forever never to be recorded, OR for it to be recorded which instantly mandates that another ten that came before it will suffer the same fate. It is very much like being forced to choose which of your children gets to eat and live a long and prosperous life and which you must starve, knowing that they will surely die never to live a full life or be known by anyone but yourself and never to be known by history.

I’ve played this game with the Divine Force many times before. Refusing to accept the gift and refusing to write any new songs for a while, despite the fact that it is my very nature to do just that more and better than anything else that I do in this life. Sometimes I fear that He/She/It will punish me for my impudence and take away the ease at which I can write a song. But that hasn’t happened yet. Truly I don’t believe that it ever will. For I believe that God knows and understands that I know and understand that my ability to pull these songs out of thin air and bring them to life is as pure an expression of Him/Her/It and their glory more than anything else that I can possibly do or say in this life. They serve through their very existence and how they are brought to being in this world as a glorious reminder of the mystical magical supernatural nature of the Divine Force Itself. My guess is that God gifts every person on earth a special and unique ability such as this as a means to express His/Her/It’s Divinity on earth. Our task is to find what that special gift is and become great at it and share it with the world as a reminder of this powerful connection we share with this mysterious Divine Force that comprises and creates and flows through everything in the known and unknown universe.

But I cannot help but feel impulsively rebellious at times. It is a large task. A time-suck like no other. If I did nothing but sat in a room for 24 hours with a guitar and a piano I would easily be tasked with what I guess would be at least writing fifteen to twenty-five songs in those 24 hours. That’s the easy part…the writing of them… The subtle nature of hearing them come to life in your ears, in your mind’s eye… They already exist… Somewhere else, in some other dimension, and all I am doing is hearing them as they already exist and bringing them down to this earthly dimension so others can hear them. BUT from there there IS still work to do. Flushing out the lyrics. Discovering what THEY wish to be… For they too already exist. Arranging and producing the sound of it. So it is a time consuming burden as much as it is a gift or blessing. But I believe God knows this and accepts that at times I may feel prone to rebel from the obligation.

And such was the case this year as I decided to not bring any instruments with me. And here I have lived now for more than four months without having access to any guitars laying around the house.

But something changed. A few months ago I started having dreams where I would hear these incredible songs — usually it was some random character in my dream performing the song on stage or just sitting there in a room with me and couple of friends or I even hear them on the radio or playing in the air…and then this voice in my head says “Ed you are dreaming. It is you who is writing this song. Wake up and record it NOW. Do not let this song go. Do it now.” So I do just that.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. And many other songwriters tell stories of having similar experiences. So I have became accustomed to keeping some type of recorder on my nightstand for just such these occasions. Now I can just use the voice recorder on my iPhone to do this. And so I do. What strikes me most though about this most recent string of new songs is the sheer quantity at which they are coming. Near nightly now. As if God had a leg up on me the whole time and decided “okay then son, if you refuse to pick up an instrument to pick out the songs from the ethers then I will just deliver them to you fully formed in the dreams of your sleep. For that is what is happening now. I hear them fully formed in my head while I am sleeping and I just wake up enough to turn the recorder on and sing them into it. I always listen back to them the next day to see if they are total shite and I was just kidding myself as we are prone to do in our sleep and yet they never are. They are always totally original and beautiful glorious new songs. And yet I have to do absolutely nothing to make them this way. I certainly am not “writing them” or creating them myself. I am simply singing into the voice recorder exactly as I hear it in my dream. It is very close to being almost supernatural. Like channeling. And it leaves me impressed with God’s persistence and ingenuity. And of course with his generosity. I thought I was in control and perhaps had one up on Him, but it turns out that the joke was on me. Truth be told, I am more than fine with this.

– Posted by The Ambassador using the BlogPress app on an iPhone

Art & Entertainment, Consciousness Exploration, Music, Personal Life, Religion Spirituality channeling songs from other dimensions, ed hale, god, new albums, songwriting, The Divine, writing songs

an intense day

0
October 3, 2005

An intense day, few days. Great lessons learned. Absolutely raw though. How can you describe the feeling… raw is the only word I can think of. Naked – pulsing – electric.

Take the already unfathomable events with Cleopatra over the last few months, and then the still lingering undercurrent of separation anxiety from Princess Little Tree that seems to simmer in my soul’s very bottom, at the very back of it all, in the back ground. I long for her at times and feel her longing. dance and sing and jump up and down for me my beautiful Persian Princess and ballerina. Smile for me and light up my world one more time in this lifetime before we part yet again forever. But it’s over. And that is still there whether we like it or not. Happy with our decision certainly, but still a little saddened by it. Awed by it. Appreciative and very loving and supportive of one another. I remain raw from it still, on the edge of it, but in awe of how we handled it. wizardly. But still human with human feelings.

Something else too, something totally weird.
The dove and I soared over the last few weeks. We had developed a deep, almost spiritual, nearly psychic connection to one another – though I had no idea how much so –over the last eight weeks. we had reached a peak on Saturday. We were in deep collaboration with one another on several different levels and platforms. not just regarding our non-profit work, but as friends, and as artists, and we had a very strange kind of spiritually romantic thing happening as well, as much as we both tried to pretend and convince ourselves that we didn’t. It was almost slow motion. Above time. or beyond it.

We poemed each other constantly. Artistically feeding off of one another, off of our passion and dedication to that art and to the art of living life in romance and the dream world that the artist inhabits. It was a daily event. Each of them becoming more and more intense, intimate, and personal. I counted that I had written a total of 15 songs either inspired by the connection, or from poems she had written, in less than a month, from the silly and sappy to the sublime. That was a completely unheralded experience for me. possibly the most intense creative surge I had experienced since the college days when all I did was sit around and get high and write songs and play local shows at night.

But back then I was just a kid, dabbling, learning, honing my skills; still experimenting, a lot of one-offs and throw-aways. These days when I write a song, more than most end up being recordable or releasable, ready to go right onto an album. I’ve learned to distinguish now at least for the time being between the great and the mundane dabble and never give much attention to those toss-offs. The creativity was like bam bam bam. I could pick up the guitar, take a comment she made on the phone in passing or an email or a poem and just run with it and turn it into a finished song by day’s or night’s end. it was intoxicating and I was riding high from it. as a songwriter I was amazed how on fire I was from our connection.

What’s more, she had given me a gift that I never thought even possible. Poetry. Had inspired and encouraged me to study poetry, interpret it, enjoy it, lavish in it, attempt it myself, and find my own poetic voice. Again, I found myself on fire from the experience. Climbing the ladder of learning quickly and enjoying experimenting with finding my voice.

By Saturday we peak in this strange thing that had been steadily escalating for weeks, brought on by madness, dreaminess, and the mixed messages of the oracle. We connect, bond, become one in spirit through this collaboration. We were as one mind. This was a very intellectual thing. we referred to it as a sort of a very fast paced tennis match of the wits that we played together. She would fire off a poem to me in the morning – “listen to this.” and I would shoot one back by afternoon and then she would send a reply poem that night. During this whole time I was also shooting out songs about various aspects of our connection like a factory worker with a gun to his head. Pumping them out as quickly as I had time to. sometimes one per day. every day. Great fucking magnificent songs. Awesome. For me there is no priority more important nor intoxicating than birthing new songs into the world. And this experience was inspiring me to do so more than any other in recent memory.

It went on and on like this for weeks, months. Bam bam bam! Back and forth. We were occupying the same space in another world through this worm hole we had slipped through. But all platonic, very much unspoken, fascinating, inspiring, not physical. And then we are off for the day each going our separate ways. An incredible concert on Saturday as noted earlier. And then to bed by about 1 or 2am.

At some point early in my sleep, I am aware that I am in this uncomfortable sort of half-sleep half-awake state tossing and turning in an uncompromising agony. For four hours I tossed and turned in this agonizing emotional and mental pain unable to fall fully asleep. The feeling was excruciating. I was keenly aware of this understanding that at that moment in time the dove’s heart had left me/us and was with another. I had no idea how close I had become to the dove in spirit. It was as if I could feel her. I mean, as if I was feeling seeing hearing what she was, and I myself was having an emotional reaction to it.

For the next twelve hours I was aware of every breath, every word spoken, every kiss, hug, and touch that she was sharing with this other being that I could feel had suddenly entered our picture. I could feel her breathing for god’s sake. Incredible. There was no question of what I was feeling. I did not question it. I just knew it. and I knew that she knew that I knew it.

By 5am I decided to end the drama, give up on sleeping, and just get up and sit there and breathe and meditate on what was happening. I went into a deep meditation with my own personal God-concept and higher self about the matter. There was no bitterness. Suffering yes. But no resentment. More than anything I was curious. The dove and I had been very clear with one another that we intended to keep our relationship platonic, in the spiritual realm only. But I was not prepared for this intense feeling of dread, loss, or dispossession from her exploration with another in the physical realm. I was firmly aware that she and I both had the right to do whatever we wanted to with whomever we wanted. But it did not make the feelings any less intense or crushing. I was still dating other girls, and assumed she did the same, but the dove occupied almost all of my attention. So this experience came at me like a two by four to the back of the head.

I just sat there alone and quiet and meditated as the sun rose and darkness became light outside my window. Didn’t speak much. Just listened. The messages were profound and simple. The method was simple. I was to hear a message, repeat it aloud, and then ponder it, and if I had to, repeat it several times so I could get the learning and the action if any. I did this until about 10am. Many many messages. Mainly about building discipline and exercising my will in order to be more willful. Was it not a lack of will that got me into this strange predicament? Just letting it all go and being in the moment as always… I was instructed to take the whole thing and feel it, let it go, let it out, and label it. Learn the lessons. Not hold onto any of it. Breathe through it. And continue to listen to and then repeat aloud and then take in the lessons learned from the experience. I was amazed by the whole thing.

I then went to church and had a fantastic experience as I already wrote about, accented by this earlier experience for the last four or so hours. The dove did not contact me. I knew that if she did not contact me on Sunday that the visions of my experience were accurate. For I had turned into the first and last call of the day by that point. So I knew. And I knew that she knew that I knew. and I knew that she was concerned about it, but I didn’t want her to be. what I didn’t know was if she felt that it was o.k. It was important to me to get across to her that it was o.k. I knew that she felt me feel the whole thing, and I knew that she felt concerned about that and felt my pain from it, (just as I go in and out of feeling Princess Little Tree’s pain over my experiences with girls and she feels my pain of her past experiences with men…) but I didn’t know if the dove knew that I was feeling that it was o.k. Pain yes. But a bad thing not.

I didn’t want her to feel bad about it. our lines were drawn. They were clear. we were clear about where we were. It wasn’t like we were fooling around or anything. that’s what was so surprising about the whole thing. I’m not even into kissing girls that I date unless they are the one. And to be sure she was clear with me too. what we were experiencing with one another was something else, way out there. For me, I’ll date as much as I can because its fun. I love girls. I love beauty. but for me, now, the line is drawn there. I’ll date a girl or a series of them on and off for six months and still not even kiss them if I don’t feel like she’s the one or if I’m the one for her. too much trouble. That’s just my own personal commitment. Building honor. Keeping the future sacred. Or better put, projecting oneself into the future so it is the present, honoring that, keeping it sacred, and realizing that there are times when it is important to remember that we are now living in the past of a future-present and it is important now to keep sacred the past of that future- present just as it is to keep sacred the present moment. So we did not have attention on that aspect of relationship. But unwittingly we somehow had created this whole other thing out there in the ethers… I just had no idea how close we had become in spirit. Feeling someone fool around with someone else is a weird thing.

Today we spoke about it. A very open gracious dialogue. I told her point blank what I had experienced and she confirmed the accuracy of the whole thing, and neither of us could believe how accurate it was right down to the very times that everything had occurred. I didn’t even have to ask ‘were you with some other guy?’ I just said something like ‘you were with some other guy.’ and we both just nodded in silence over the phone, in the knowing. Even the times were accurate of everything. Crazy. It was some kind of psychic connection that we had opened and there was no way we were going to be comfortable as long as we kept this worm-holed door open up there/out there in our spirits’ consciousness. She didn’t want to agree because we get so much from our collaboration, but we agreed that we didn’t want either of us to be in pain. and besides, there was no way we were going to create the space, or time even, to be with other people that we really wanted to be with, to create our dream lovers, if we were carrying on in this other way. I told her we needed to close the door for now. Not only that, we then needed to weather-strip the damn door and then caulk and seal all the edges of it and forget about it. The worm-hole, the black hole, needs to close. And so it was. we closed the door. She flew down. I flew down. Back on solid ground.

Uncanny and unbelievable. That’s all I can say. To be so close to someone in spirit that you can feel them fooling around with someone else. Its as if you can feel them breathe. You can feel when they are in pain or in joy. Something I had experienced before, once before from this side and once before from the other side. But in this very mundane and materialistic world that we live in it is easy to forget that these psychic connections can develop between people. that it is indeed a very real thing. it transcends the physical entirely. it is not mental. But something akin to an emotional reaction to something you feel in the spiritual plane. Fascinating.

I feel cleaned from the whole thing. I don’t know, like some sort of cleansing or rebirthing. Learning discipline. Exercising and building the will. becoming more real. Letting the dove fly free out of this unconditional love, similar to the way that Princess Little Tree let me go because she loved me. It is all very beautiful. I am in awe of my life right now.

——————————————–

Today these pictures arrive in the mail from my first real girlfriend from freshman year of high school, The Vixen – yes that The Vixen, the one from the song – and I am overcome by this rush of intense emotion while looking at the pictures. She was the one back in high school. The first of many o.k., but she was the one who got away, literally. Moving to Ohio right when we were in the thick of it. first real making out sessions and all. I could have watched her carry her books through the hallways forever. what a sexy little kitten she was. my first real girlfriend. The Vixen is after all now older and it is a shocking experience. On the outside of the envelope she had written “take a deep breath before you open Mr. Ambassador – you are about to become XX years older.” I just had no idea that we were getting older. But seeing the pictures of her allowed me a window to my own image that I had never allowed myself when looking at myself in the mirror. Wow. heavy. Very heavy for me. fucking just totally heavy.

I’m looking at the pictures and I’m thinking, she is so beautiful still, but my God we really do get older don’t we? Because my last image of The Vixen is this little fifteen year old that I used to spend hours making out with after school. And now she’s older and it was like Bam! Right in my face. Am I older now and just don’t see it? I’m talking to polar bear at HQ for a few minutes about it. ‘we really are getting old aren’t we. This is how its going to happen. before we know it we’re thirty, then we’re forty, then we’re fifty, then sixty and before you know it we’re fucking old. My God. this is really fucking happening. we are aging and there is nothing we can do about it.

I decided to walk the city. I walk the parks. I walk and I walk and I walk. I am walking around raw, naked, burned, fazed out, numb from too much feeling from the last three days, a glaze in my eye… I feel like John Cusack in one of his weird gen-x movies from the nineties… the lone gen-x’er walking the city streets in the middle of the movie when the sad song is playing… confused raw vulnerable burning shocked amazed. Where are we? Who are we? Are we really growing older? My thoughts racing. My God. we are growing older. It is slow but it is undeniable and unmistakable and inevitable. The horror revealed right before my eyes with a picture of an old flame standing there looking so pretty but older with her husband and three children. Was she the one? did I fuck that up? Was I supposed to chase her all the way to Ohio at my tender age of fifteen and tell her I wanted to marry her? God I would have had to take a bus. I didn’t even drive yet! The audience laughs. And me still roaming around the earth like a nomad living day to day for the exotic adventure and various intoxicants of a life well lived and ravaged and fully taken advantage of. O.k. well that part has been great, lets face it, we’ve lost nothing by holding out on marriage, that’s for sure. But seeing her picture there made me think….

And the dove? Wow. what kind of a trip was that? What the hell was that? where did it come from? who was she? Why did it get so intense? Have we sealed the trap door? What the hell was that about?

My thoughts return to Little Tree. Dance for me sing for me smile for me one more time. I picture her in my mind dancing in a puddle of water and giggling like a little girl…. it is Easter. My heart is singing from her image….

But I come back to reality quickly. I am stinging. Stung. Undone. I am shaken. Quaked. Baked. Taken. Laid to waste. Exhausted from feeling. And what about that girl in church with that long perfect body and grace and elegance and that silky-shiny long dark brown hair who was sitting just a few feet in front of me. How do I talk to her? Is it money is it fame? Is it will? is it discipline? Is it confidence? What do I need to do to win her heart? How do you even approach a girl like that? How much richer more famous popular happier successful do you have to be? Who am I now? Will I ever get the girl? How does the movie end?

I kept reminding myself, “This is life. I am living life. This is what living life is… this is the middle of the movie. You are playing the lead role, man that’s cool. You are the character who started off on top of the world kicking his heels and dancing in the streets and singing at the top of his lungs in the opening credits, who has now in the last hour or so been delivered a series of shockers and surprises. You are now walking the city streets in the bright sunlight of a beautiful New York City day in shock, experiencing the life that we all experience here. Being human. The envy of the angels. The sad song is about to end and you will go back to your day to day. Breathe. The movie is not over yet. we still have at least another hour to go. this will be a happy ending movie. You’re a gen-x’er after all. This is a gen-x movie. This is going to be a happy ending fucking movie Fishy. You’ll see.”

 

Friends and Family, Love Sex Romance, Personal Life growing older, living life in romance, Persian Princess, poetry, psychic connection, unconditional love, writing songs

Writing songs

0
April 29, 2005

Writing a few songs now. as always. Writing songs. Not finishing any. Or finishing them and never returning to them much after that. there’s that whole, ‘o.k. fine I won’t abandon you unfinished but I’m never coming back after this you know’ kind of thing with me and songs lately…. Maria full of grace was o.k. but still just so ME. tired of the ME sound. Tired of my way doing things. today got the glimpses of a new one, maybe about San Francisco, a scene in San Francisco, like that. but again I just keep setting the guitar down tired of hearing myself go to the same things….

the sun is setting. A mild wind. We walk to the beach. I scream ‘fuck. God. fuck’ a couple of times. ‘what?’ ‘nothing. Just have to get to the next place now with the songwriting. Have to get to a new me. feels a lot like ten years ago. When I had reached the end of regular tuning songwriting on the guitar. I just sat there and played with tuning pegs until when I strummed something cool came out. what I ended up with was an Open D9 it turns out. and the first song I wrote like that was ‘Bored.’ because that’s exactly what I was feeling in that moment. from there came lots of variations of open Ds, and open G and open A, and open Em and from those spaces great songs were written. so I’m not worried too much. Just what’s the word… impatient. I know something is coming. A whole new way of doing it. I’m just tired of listening to what I’m creating now while I wait. I could always move back to piano but again the piano is still strung the same as other pianos so you’re still going to hit relatively the same notes and chords and still have that ‘western music’ sound to it. gotta be a way to go totally out.

a three doors down song comes on. I go to flip it. ‘hey I like that song. you don’t?’ its not that I don’t like it. I just hate shit when its so formulaic. I already know what’s going to come next. ‘that’s not formulaic?’ she says pointing to the new gwen stefani CD I want to put in. ‘well this may be formulaic too, but it’s just so damn creative, you never know what’s coming next. really exciting stuff here….’

I’ll tell you this Fishy. this is all going to come down to you. you’re either going to do it or you’re not.

Current spin: Gwen’s new one, or is this her first one? either way, VERY pop and formulaic, screaming ‘we want a hit, we want a hit’ from the first note… Wins the award for the most contrived musical project since Cher’s last CD ‘do you believe’ that took five years, six songwriters and five producers etc… but you know, it’s just so fucking creative and catchy…. its like a musical smorgasbord… I get and learn a lot out of projects like this. you can’t help but admire it. rock or not rock… dig it.

Also, secret machine, nowhere again is a great song. (now to prove that I’m totally schizophrenic) you know sometimes music doesn’t have to break any molds or go off in some totally different direction. Sometimes it can just be so cool that its good just being normal. That’s the way this song is. that’s the way the strokes are. you hear them and you think you are hearing some long lost Lou reed or Iggy pop album and its great just like that.

Music bored with my songwriting, open tuning, writing songs

I am taking my time with songs

0
April 22, 2005

We are getting older. Looking at pictures of friends that they send through email. noticing that they are getting older. Wow. Getting older. This really is going to fly by in a heartbeat isn’t it. how fucking sad. Don’t think about it.

I have realized that in order to accomplish these goals, really accomplish them rather than have them drag out month after month I have had to work on these things and these things only. Have come to terms with how one accomplishes big goals, rather than the slow grind to achieving a few small goals in ones lifetime, which is the normal way for most people. but in order to really go after huge goals and lots of them on a consistent basis one must find within oneself constant dedication and direction and discipline and commitment. Has to just be a hundred and ten percent.

Current spin: Gomez, split the difference. O.k. I get it. but again its not where I’m at. has to be more than this to rock/pop. Have to set the record straight and go all the way out there. there is a lot more that can be done. A lot more to it. we are only touching the tip of the iceberg.

Dear Stallion
I’m just really taking my time with it to try to really nail down the feeling of it, our dynamic how strange it is, or better put, my strangeness in regards to us/you… but in a beautiful artistic song kind of way, rather than merely writing about it. working off of your name, Thursday and Rain, as metaphors for a girl/relationship…

I am really taking my time with songs now… instead of plowing through them… I may do many many drafts of the same song over a period of weeks or months…
Just now I wrote more for the song, I just take notes about the feelings, pages and pages, play with words, things like that… and then eventually I just keep singing till the actual lyrics flow out from the various words and sentences off the various pages … the way they are meant to. this is a new way for me to write. I may take a whole notebook to write one song. what divinity. What freedom. What creative expression this style affords. With the below I may only use a sentence or two from the whole thing in the final version of the song. that’s the beauty of this new style.

It used to rain on Thursday
Thursday came and so it rained
In a black dress
A seamless pounding rain upon me
Smoking cigarettes and making fun of me
Teasing me with tears of laughter
I laughed as well and hoped that it would never stop
Her making love to me on Thursday
And so it rained

But now I thirst for Thursday
It hasn’t rained in many years
I am dry without her
I shed no tear for Thursday
But pray for rain each day

It rained in the subway once I saw her
When Thursday came
Appeared out of nowhere
Pouring down on everyone
But no one said a word for Thursday

She teased me
and I gloried in that moment
Closed my eyes and smiled wide
Leaned my head back and laughed inside
and prayed that she would never leave

But Thursday came and went
The first and last rain of the year
I shed a tear for Thursdays rain
And hope that I will see her again

You could go on and on and really you’re just sowing seeds. Just throwing them down into the soil hoping something brilliant will one day sprout; to use as fodder for song. so you can take your attention off of it completely. Its not like the intention is to write poetry. Because that’s not the intention. I’m no poet that’s for sure. I’m too lazy and ADD to be a poet. You’re just letting it out without thought to use eventually. Almost like going shopping for clothes. You buy a bunch of clothes whenever you are in the mood that you like without attention to what will go with what. and after a few years you have this big beautiful wardrobe to choose from each day. like that. songwriting should be like that. free. Easy. expressive. Without attention. I used to be very focused and demanding of it. trying to get them done as fast as I could. at least for me now its not that way anymore. in two years I will surely be extolling the virtues of an entirely different style. And again, that’s the way it should be.

Current spin: serge gainsbourg, L’etonnant. This is an early serge album from 1961. very good. classic early sixties French fire-side pop music. more like it. had to be something to all the hype around this guy. good music.

Music, Personal Life accomplishing goals, aging, getting older, taking my time writing songs, writing songs

Private Little World

A private little world for me... a private little world for you. The online musings and journals of singer/songwriter recording artist author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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