March 31st, 2009

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Mini-Canvases

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Yesterday, I bought thirty-six mini-canvases from the good, nice, and helpful people at Alabama Art Supply.  I even got two, free powdered doughnut holes from the ladies working at the store.  Mmm, doughnut holes.  Thanks!

Meanwhile, I have thirty-six 2.75″ x 2.75″ canvases.  Now I have to be all creative and stuff, I guess.  I think the plan is to go as quickly as I possibly can in painting them.  No thinking, all painting.  Squeeze a bunch of colors out onto a palette and just go, go, go.

The trick has to be to remember that art has to be about play.  Just do whatever comes to mind and mess around with it.  Each one of these was less than three dollars, so even if I fubar it, it’s no huge loss.  But this process also might spark genius – or whatever – in a way which something more deliberate might not.  It’s much harder to be spontaneous with a larger and more expensive canvas.  Working small ought to allow me to brush off my mistakes and just mess around.  I’ll check back in during the process and after I’m finished.

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RPM Album: Tracks 5 & 6

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Now that I’ve given away my music for the RPM Challenge to friends and many people have had time to hear it and react, I wanted a chance to explain some of the creative process that went into making each track.  This post will be the third of several which will go into some detail on my thoughts during the songwriting process.

Track Five – At Least Put a Sock On It

My first comment would have to be that I absolutely love this song, but no one else seems to and I’m not exactly sure why.  Art is a complete mystery to me.  I remember Sheryl Crow talking about songwriting on Tuesday Night Music Club and how each individual song was like birthing a baby and how you could never predict the future paths of its life.  I agree.  All of the art I’ve ever done truly has a life of its own.  The stuff I think is the best often isn’t.  And the “crap” is often better than I think.

The riff in the song is so much fun.  Right after creating it, I wrote down, “Spanish… Good Riff… Fast… 5/4 + noise… Pinched to open…”  It’s in 4/4 time for four bars and then slips into 5/4 for one bar.  When I’m composing guitar, I find myself often slipping into unusual time signatures, but I kept it to a minimum for my RPM music.  And the 5/4 part of this riff also lingers on and bounces off of couple of nameless chords.  So much fun to play.

When it came to the lyrics, I went straight to rock, probably because of the odd rhythm.  And what is rock and roll about?  It’s all about sex!  Lots of funny wordplay here, all intentionally immature in hinting about sex: “Mal-fuck-tion”, “got laid-ed”, and “blendering fashion”.  I loved writing the “taking your pants off” and “covering stains up” for rock and roll.  I can’t help but smile everytime I sing, “And your Mommy doesn’t like it” and “But you’re gonna do it anyway.”  It’s just so insouciant, it can’t help but be fun.  And I love the Pixies references.  But I don’t know what to do with it to make people like it better.

I went back and forth a lot during the writing process with the problem of how dirty to make it.  If it’s not dirty enough, it’s no fun.  If it’s too dirty, it’s gross-out rock.  It’s just dirty enough where I was worried about someone accusing me of promoting teenage sex.  Thus the title.  And the chorus.  But one girl already thought that it was all about masturbation (because “guys do it with socks“), which is more proof that once you make art, it goes kinda whereever it wants to go.

About the little funny outro, the dog was ruining my takes by licking himself and I finally got him to stop.  And then, right in the middle of recording a vocal, the neighborhood cat walked right into the middle of the room and went MIAAAAW.  So I kicked them both out.  With the microphone still on.  When I walked back to the computer, I listened back to it.  “That’s probably kinda awesome.”  And I left it in.

Track Six – No Romeo

I like the riff for this one, although I worry it’s a little repetitive.  I think it needs a lead guitar.  Or some other lead instrument to break up the rhythm.

The lyrics are inspired by a thought I’ve often had about running into an ex-girlfriend and not being able to really come up with anything to say other than “I love you.”  Because, really, nothing else I could think of would matter.  It kind of says it all, doesn’t it?  And it makes a much better connection than the “hi, how are you” bullhockey that I’d usually have to do.

But I didn’t go there, just because the riff begs for something more upbeat.  Some of the words may get a little clunky and I think this was the first time during the songwriting process that I started to dread writing more and moooore words for a particular song.  I think the little story it tells flows along pretty nicely, though.  The line “No Romeo” works, came from the blue, and I think says everything I’d need to say.  I wish I could have developed a better “twist” at the end, however, than the girl saying the same lines back to him.  Maybe under less time pressure, something better would surface.

I think the song is a touch cheesy, definitely romantic, possibly commercial, and vaguely country.  In another universe, I might imagine someone like Brad Paisley singing it.

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Review: Equus

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

I fairly recently got Equus out of the library and read it again.  I thought I especially needed to review it because it’s so high on my “Desert Island List,” but I’ve rarely talked to anyone who knows much about it.  Unless it’s a fangirl that happens to know that Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) was naked onstage in a recent version.

Equus is based on the true story of a teenage boy’s apparently senseless injury to horses.  In the play, we find out right away that, in one night, the uneducated boy, Alan, has stabbed several horses blind.  It’s such a horrible, unexpected, and abnormal act that it causes Alan’s parents to send him into counseling with Dr. Martin Dysart, played early on in the play’s running by Anthony Hopkins.

After his initial shock at the nature of the violent incident, the doctor starts peeling away at its internal, psychological causes.  He learns that religious and/or sexual feelings within Alan may have contibuted.  And we, the audience, begin to question whether Alan’s act is nearly as “abnormal” as we first thought.  Throughout his own examination of Alan, the doctor is also forced to confront his own view of what is Normal: “The normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes – all right.  It is also the dead stare in a million adults.  It both sustains and kills – like a God.  It is the Ordinary made beautiful: it is also the Average made lethal.  The Normal is the indispensible, murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest.”

The play is a tight package and touches on important themes of how people can derive their views on religion and sex.  And how the two can be related.  “Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor.  It cannot be created.”  If you get a chance to watch it, go.  It’s usually visually stunning.  And if you get a chance to read it, do.  It’s absolutely a favorite and tops out on the Hurst scale.

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