sleepless in Hawaii

I've been reading Neddie by Jingo's BLOG (http://byneddiejingo.blogspot.com/) during a sleepless night, after pondering Bob Dylan's Chronicles the hour before, and this has left me with a need to blog.

Spent the weekend with a lot of daughter time and recording time on my new songs. I have gone overboard with the tempo variation feature of Logic Pro on a couple of new recordings. I had a talented friend called Dave Tam over to pay various instruments on the songs. He did some nice noodling with a wurlitzer sound on Life is in A Minor, which I easily converted to a clavichord when he had gone.

Does any of this make any sense to anyone? I doubt it. My new songs are alive, mostly only in my head. I nudge them forward with an hour of editing here, and burst of bass playing there. I shape them slowly over months, where Bob Dylan often cranked them out in an afternoon and moved on.

Maybe I'm more like Pete Townshend, endlessly molding them into something that will hopefully be worth something someday. At least I didn't waste my weekend watching football and playing video games. I got out in the surf. I took my daughter to the zoo on Saturday, and Sea Life Park on Monday, and helped serve up her birthday party in between.

But the songs are always on my mind. What little bit will help them along?

When my friends come over to play on them, it's always a great leap forward, not always in the direction I predicted. I slowly decide which surprises to embrace. Are the mandolin harmonics right for the quiet part? Is that piano part just to damn busy?

And the drums. Is it chutzpah to play them myself, when I know better drummers? Is it just too convenient having them all set up, inviting a half hour romp when the wife's away? It may be a conceit, but the drums sound fine to me. They sound like what the song wants. I'll let them stay for now.

I'm thinking of calling the album fathoms, because I like the sound. I'm one fathom tall. I can't fathom most things. And it seems to fit the theme of questioning fantasy that creeps into every song so far, like I'm trying to fathom why fantasy works for me, or to fathom the different meanings of fantasy. One person's religious unquestionable truth can seem awfully similar to another's made up fantasy.

I am old enough to doubt.

My songs are being built like house projects that sit around half done, taunting and bugging the occupants to get on with them, but get them RIGHT.