Memories From A Show... The Self Known

"Don't you have anything for us?"

Sitting around Dante's living room, lit by the glow of the t.v. on mute, while Abe paced back and forth on a call with a local promoter, we waited for an answer. I was nervous, watching the ceiling fan circle, wanting good news.

"Ok," he said.

Another pause.

"Ok..."

Shows were tough for us from the start. We were too soft for most of the metal and punk clubs, too young and clean looking, too nice for modern rock. 'But what do you do other than be yourself?'

"No, we don't scream..." Abe sounded a little defeated. This wasn't the first time we had to describe our sound by all the things we weren't, "well, we move around, but... no, not thrashing..." it didn't sound like it was going well.

Then another, "Ok," and I had to get out of the room.
  
Kitchen, drink, pace the floor, check the fridge again, nothing, pace... Finally I decided to wait at the table. Dante always kept this place so darkly lit, it was hard not to be a little restless, 'This was probably going to end with us playing in front of a row of Mohawks and leather jackets, giving disappointing looks as we tried to harmonize on a cover of a Beach Boy tune out of a busted speaker.'

I wasn't expecting for us to find a spot easily, but I was hoping there was a someplace in town for us. '

How did other bands do it? Where do you go? It can't all be built on people you know? Asking them to our shows one at a time?'

We had heard good things about Austin, but it would still be a few years before we would get there. We weren't even that serious about playing, just wanted to have a night with people like us.

'They had to be out there, San Antonio was a big city.'
  
"Get back in here," Jaime called from the living room.

I walked back as Abe was furiously writing on a notepad. "We got it, I think it might be a good one this time."  

...

They looked like dad's more than musicians. Mid-thirties, clothes understated, hair and beards disheveled, they mostly kept to themselves, even on-stage, either because they were weary from the 15+ hours of flights or just by nature.

They weren't the cliché, sex-chasing, ego-blimp style people that usually fill out portrayals of rock acts, They were the blood and flesh style of real working musicians. Not the old guys around town who've been playing the same five clubs for years. Not teenagers who borrowed a family van to sell their burned demos to neighboring cities. These were real world traveling artists... everything I wanted our band to be, and at the time, they were the closest I had ever been to it.

Collectively known as Augie March, named after the acclaimed novel by Saul Bellow, they mix melodic and lyrical inventiveness with cross-genre fundamentals that would be comparable to Radiohead if you replace the heavy electronics with a roots music fetish. They recently released a new album Havens Dumb that I can't wait to check out. Hope you keep an open ear for it too.

We were poorly rehearsed and loud, something we picked up trying not to get killed by other punk and metal bands we had to play with, but filled with the blind determination of a young band. We didn't know how bad we were at the time, we we're just happy to be on the show, playing with like minded people.

We loaded our gear off the stage, down into the back alley behind the tour buses, and back into our cars, trying our best to stay out of the way of the professionals as they loaded their gear on to the stage.

Plugging in guitars, turning on amps, they gave us a quick thumbs up and great job, all the pleasantries. Then in a moment of great honesty, their keyboardist pulled me aside with some advice. 

Though at the time I didn't fully understand how good. I was sweating, out of breath, trying to hear through a ringing in my ears. So I'll tell you now what he told me:

"Lock yourselves in the studio, and write, write, write...
find your voice. It takes time but you got to do it."

He'd left me stunned, nothing to say but a quick "Thanks," as they cleared out of the room. I grabbed a beer out of a backstage ice chest and found a dark corner on the staircase where I could hide my under-agedness and watch the show.

The audience was mostly just arriving, having missed our set, they were drifting around the room, some getting drinks, some talking, a few were looking at the stage. The house lights faded away, and the drummer smiled and turned to his band. 

With a deep breath Augie March seemed to turn off the world. The club, the audience, all the shit life gives you before you get on stage, it all vanished. Even when they had trouble with the vocals not being heard, even though the audience tilted between interested, confused, amazed, and bewildered, the music came through.

I was moved.

A wonderful understated performance. None of the musicians tried to steal the show. They put the songs first. The music first. The message. They weren't performing, they were translating. Some musicians are entertainers, actors, or fashion guides, but these guys were interpreters. And I felt it. The show was about giving something, not expressible by words alone.

If you ask me about that night, I don't remember any wild antics, or people in the audience. I don't remember clothes or haircuts, or what I ate... But I remember the songs. I remember the way I felt, straining to hear lyrics. I remember watching the fluidity of the drummers snare work. I remember the fullness of the bass as it resonated through the room. I remember the organ swirl. I remember the depth.

Over the next few weeks, I thought about that show a lot. During rehearsals. During long, quiet drives out to my job as a writing instructor. During classes. It hung in my head. I listened to the album repeatedly. I talked about it with the band, what it meant to see that. The mood infected me. It became a part of the way I listened to music, the way I played, the way I wanted to be as a musician.

My brothers and I are on the first steps of a new phase of our career. And my mind went back to that moment this week. That seventeen-year-old me, who had his life unexpectedly changed by a band. The seeds were planted, and there was no looking back... This week we are rehearsing a new set, and I'm thinking about what I want to share. To that kid, side-stage. Listening for the first time.




-rené



 

On thousand tongue branches

a great expression of the self known saying, 

"be more concerned with the strength of your roots

then the style of your leaves."

img source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif2BnujMAEqxD4guuiSuZrit2dN1nX4i_q9LjUjFIa_WXx7vSpXgxRsgo1vZswesc_oiQsqbKJ6pcRhsz95-b5AUZtZ5vU-hVw4jQVv5rkujVtOKTFZpcx5REBx9u2rXPWuOYWcHnUqKA/s1600/Augie-March-General-PR-EH.png

The Ocean and Then This

I didn't want to move. I definitely didn't want to go back to the party. I was alone on the beach, and I mean surrounded by the splendid multitude of nature, only absent of humans. 

I'd walked far enough from the neighborhood where I could see the lit up windows, and all the talking, smoking, lies and music were overtaken by the heavy breaths of ocean. So loud and powerful, the wind and wave, yet not near as exhausting as talking to the party crowd. 

Example:

Apparently there was an underground band in the 90's and nobody went to their shows. Yet everyone had a story about seeing this band play to literally an empty room. Also, it was repeated to me many times that I had to hear them, but I probably couldn't because the band only made one rare cassette that's nearly impossible to find... but if I could it would be amazing... L.A. voice, "I mean it was like me and my boyfriend and the bartender... that's it... gawd can you believe it? They're just so good...so good. And then we broke up and the ba***** took all my tapes."

I'll admit if I'd passed by the window, having never been inside, I'd probably be envious... I'd probably want to be mingling and drinking and making up stories, but not now. Not once I've sat on the floor breathing in smoke from vanilla cigarettes, waited for an hour to use the bathroom while people took care of their noses, or drank any that awful metallic punch.

So I left. 

Oh beautiful ocean. I love the things you say. The stories you tell. Now the party is only filled by distant shadows and I'm safe to take off my shoes and socks. To sink in. It felt so good my shirt came off too.

"You are what I came for anyway," I said to the beautiful mouth of the Pacific. It's not hard to understand how it got it's name.

Travel mile after mile of field, desert, mountain. The pain. It must've taken a lot of pain to be the first settlers to get here.
 

Then this...

The moon watching from above like a loving mother. The soft sand pulling in at my feet as if it wants me closer, and the ocean. The great mystery. That perfect embracing vastness. I felt the wind. Pushing hard against my bare chest. And the motion. My world was stillness and motion. The blackness, the space, and me. Listening to the freezing waves come from the dark-beyond, rolling across the sand, over my feet.

I fell on my back, spread myself out across the sand, and closed my eyes.

Open. The water's up to my shins, soaking through my jeans. The night was colder and darker than before. The lights from the party were gone.

"Had they all left?" I picked myself up, dusted off a layer of muddy sand. It wouldn't be the first time the band went back to the hotel without me, but getting lost in Spain is another story. There was laughter in the wind, but from whom, I couldn't say. Maybe people further down the beach. It was too dark. 

I reached for my clothes along the sand brushing my fingers around me... can't find anything. My eyes slowly started adjusting to starlight. I could see the tops of waves coming in from the black waters. And the laugh again from nobody.

It was like a bump. I felt something buried just under my hand. The end of a rope about as thick as a quarter. Slowly I began pulling it towards me and the rope went on and on.

The water was singing. Washing out, hi-hatting in the night, keeping time with the deep bass thud of crashing wave. Striking an old song about the great loneliness in life, and separation. From shore to shore, longing. The laugh came back but this time it came accompanied by a girl.

She was dark and thin, and her hair was long constantly lifting with the wind like the way movies fake it. "What are you doing?" She asked.

I said I wasn't sure, but I had pulled so much I wanted to know what was on the other end.

She laughed. 

Further down the beach her friends were calling her back, but she bent down beside me.

"What if it's supposed to be left alone?" She asked playfully, or maybe she was serious and her sweet accent made it sound gentler, I don't know.

"I'm a little late for that," I didn't let her stop me, and kept pulling the rope out of the water, hand over hand.

"What if the other end holds something you don't want?"

I stopped pulling for a moment and the sounds of droplets falling off the rope, hitting the surface of the water caught my ear.

"Or what if the end is right behind the surface, just underneath where it is falling in now, you could get it with one more good pull."

I tightened my grip and started pulling again.  

It was not the end.

"Or then again," she said, "maybe it just goes on and on for miles covering the whole ocean floor with no end." 

"That's ridiculous," I said coldly before trying to soften up, "I mean it's a rope... it has to have an end." 

I think I offended her, cause she got up to go back to her friends. "You know," she yelled as she turned back to me, "Don't be so sure. There are lots of people pulling and pulling without ever getting anywhere."

-rene

Manifest Focus, I Dont Throw Lightning

I've spent a good amount of time (year and a half maybe?) at home songwriting/recording our next project. And if that sounds like a long time... it is... especially for us. This is actually the longest time we've had to work on writing music since we started the band. After the release of our first record, we've been running non-stop touring, writing, recording, touring, and so on. We wrote the next two albums each with about three months prep, and under one week to record everything. ONE WEEK EACH. *

Usually tracking two songs a day, for four days, and two more to do all the vocals. Usually leaving the studio straight to the stage to perform the tracks before they were even mixed. That is incredibly fast. It's 1964 fast. 

When you have a great producer and engineer, like we did, and a tight band, great things happen with a little time. Most of our songs were recorded in one, maybe two takes. A very exciting and creatively volatile atmosphere. There's a lot to be said for this sort of pressure cooker creativity: plenty of spontaneous bursts of ideas but overall it's not a lot of time to dig in and create.

While we were in the studio for a song that eventually became Don't Turn Out The Lights, our producer Dan Auerbach was unhappy with the working chorus. We played the demo. He made some notes on the groove. Did a practice run then went back to Dan to get his thoughts.


Dan leaned back in his chair, and with a sigh and a look of tiredness worn like a comfortable shirt, Dan announced he was going to take a coffee break,  'I want a great chorus by the time I get back.'  He is a man of few words, but he means every word.

Dan has always pushed our band. I don't know how he works with other artists, but for us he always asks for more than I thought we could do. Can you do it all live? With Vocals? Can you sing it better? Write it better? Play it better? And I'm grateful. His drive has taught me a lot about myself and what I'm capable of, so when he asked me to write a better chorus and walked out of the studio without a single word of direction, I knew he was testing me, and I knew I could succeed.

I sat down on the floor of the studio live room armed with an 60's flat-top Gibson and a legal pad, and started running through the song's chords. Repeating them. Listening to the notes. Playing variations on tempos and octaves, listening for a melody hidden inside. Feeling the clock and trying not to worry, I focused on the music. Strumming. The vibrations. Visualizing the notes, the waves bouncing against themselves in the air. Strumming. The subtleties, the patterns.


Then the melody came in focus like a distant image on the horizon. Closer and clearer. Walking to me. In no hurry. Just traveling at its own pace.


I leaned in closer to hear. Pressed my jaw into the shoulder of the wood and felt the chords ringing through my head. I shut my eyes. Closer the details formed. The shape, the feel, the words...

It was about ten minutes when Dan came back with a half emptied mug and sat back in his chair. He was perked up. Everything was done. I gave him the legal pad to read along as I sat on the couch playing the newly written idea to everyone.


Halfway through my performance, Dan put done his mug, whispered to the engineer and when I was done, he clapped loudly and we were ready to get back to work, "Yeah Son, that's right!"


That chorus was born out of a time crunch. I needed a chorus at that moment. And with focus, it manifested, it came to me. So I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining when I talk about now and the amount of time we are taking. I want to try working a record with a different feel and pace. I wanted to know what we could do with a little more. 

A little more time to write. More time to practice. More time to do takes, and mix, and sing. And it all adds up to a lot more time in the long run but that was the plan.

We could've easily retread the same musical territory we've run before. Could've put out another album like Shakedown, our last, but that's not what we're about. Since then I've learned a lot about writing and playing where I feel we can improve technically, but I've also changed emotionally. But most importantly I want to be a man in the present, not history.


This has been a crazy year for me and the band. Our family has grown and shrank. On the industry side, we've had so many highs and lows, from the top of the world to the lowest slugged out tracks of the gutter, that it makes my head spin just thinking about it.


All of that gets filtered into newer and newer songs. It was almost too much to keep up with, leaving me with used notebooks, forgotten computer files and recordings, filled with songs, ideas, and fragments at every level of completion.

Those albums are past. Artifacts. Preserved moments of time. A memory, and I'm not yet at a place to be nostalgic for our own work. I like to build off of the past, not recreate it.

Anyways I've been enjoying my own bed. My own city. My own life. And on my own time. These precious things pass by quickly, but they are the riches of life. So I have no guilt about seizing the chance to wake up to the sounds of my neighbors riding their lawnmowers, my son babbling, or my wife heading to work; not highway truck stop engine revving, hotel cleaners, lobby check-out calls, or a tour manager nervous about the next gig.


I love walking Boerne streets, looking at the changes in my city. Business come and go while I'm gone. I recently came back to find one of my favorite restaurants gone forever... oh well. I love being home for the longer days of summer staying up watching movies, reading books, and playing a violin concert in the afternoon to myself. I like becoming a better person and musician, not just a more popular band. I love writing and writing and throwing it all away and starting again. I love working a song and trying it with just a shade of difference. And those things can't be done while touring.

So day after day I drive a short road between my house and our studio, lock up with my brothers, and think of words/melodies, approach/delivery, style/substance, all in an attempt to move our band forward.


As I'm writing this to you, I'm a few feet from our speakers, listening to songs come together in the final stages (We've been mixing all day which means generally balancing the track. This is close to composition/color/balance in photography) and I've got this feeling... somewhere between anticipation, nerves and ecstatic craziness.

Anticipation because I've been bouncing these ideas in my head for a so long and this'll be the first time I get to hear a result in full. The culmination of hard work. A birth. Finding out if the songs were as good as they were conceived to be. That brings me to Nervousness: working so long on an idea puts the creator so close to it, they are never able to see the faults. But creation isn't easy. It comes with a lot of hurt. I'm not too worried though, I've got much more of the Ecstatic Craziness burning in me and I'm really digging what I hear: the best test for a song. This last feeling comes directly from my state of trying to do something I haven't done before. Challenging myself to go further, the way Dan always has; Challenging myself to dig deeper into myself, be more vulnerable than I've ever let myself; but mostly because I feel like we are pulling it off.


These songs will be of home. Of love. Of this moment. Of loss and change and growth. My reality. The life that grows outside my window. I'm happy to be out of the past, and more than willing to take as much time as I need to get there.

I don't throw lighting

I make no thunder

no way to transcend bone

No ambitious dagger

poison truth, no
shimmering hell for home

Devils play for bigger
game, starry seas

tomorrow and her works

Leaving me stolen strings
breath of body and
all good places of earth

-rené





*photo source: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nB0-1IjSlxY/maxresdefault.jpg 

Warped Wax, Where Did It Go

My love of listening, my growing appreciation of sound composition, started in San Antonio but flourished in Boerne. For that I am grateful to this city, my home. This story is the beginning of finding my home.

 

I don't think it would come as a surprise for me to say, Boerne is not in a cutting-edge city like New York, Chicago, L.A., London, The list goes on... I'm not taking about the people in the city but the lifestyle of the city itself. Boerne's pride is history, tradition, and nostalgia. A time machine, rose-glassed look at the best parts of our past.

You might think it is not the place for someone who wants to be forward-thinking artist. Who wants to be a rejectionist. Who wants to jump off cliffs of creativity without a care to where to land. And while I was younger, in high school, eager to begin my life, I thought like that. But like a lot of my adolescent beliefs I was wrong.

It was on one of these adolescent days, with nothing to do but walk and dream of far distant Americas and the adventures I was sure to have, that I entered into an antique store.

 

I'd been coming to main street for years with my parents, both avid antique lovers, probably one reason why we moved here, but I never paid attention to what was inside.


Usually I waited, moaned, rolled eyes and was difficult. That day I was on my own, shopping for me, and uniquely interested in finding something. Music. But not the music available at Best Buy or Target. Also it's worth a note to say, I was too young to shop online, no credit card, and too young to drive to Austin or any trendier record shops. I was looking for music I hadn't heard before. Tired of the radio, feeling rebellious, I was lured by the charm of rock'n'roll and finding it the cheapest way I could.

To my great teenage delight I found a crate of vinyl hidden under a table, containing a strange array of music I'd never heard or seen before.

These were not perfect by any means, nor collector pieces. They were dirty: covers torn, stained, and ripped, records scratched and dusty. Some in the completely wrong sleeves. Lots of oddballs, Ping-Pong percussion* anyone?

"What do you want for these?" I asked not trying to sound too interested.

The old man at the counter scrunched his nose so much it lifted the glasses an inch as he examined the crate I was pointing at with my sneaker.

 

"What do you want them for?" He laughed to himself, a joke I still hear shopping today: "Do you even know what those are?"

He went on to explain how they were his son's records: mostly from the early seventies, he'd left them at home when he went to college, never picked them up, and they'd sat under this very table for a year or two. He took $10, all I had in my wallet - goodbye lunch tomorrow, for the whole crate.

It took me a while to figure out how to put my father's system together. We had used it when I was younger, but since we moved a few years earlier, the turntable, stereo, and speakers were boxed and stored in different places. Cables and plugs had to be hunted.

Next came a thorough cleaning of every disk, as well as a total examination of every record cover and sleeve.  I was most attracted to The Who and The Beach Boys, a few country records, and a best of Dion and the Belmont's which proved to be phenomenal.

 

I'd like to pause from this story to mention:


This boy and his new found treasure trove worked very hard to get his vinyl sounding great. I'm not one to romanticize the pops and cracks, lack of high and low end, or the eerie warble of warped wax. Those artifacts which some find charming actually bug me because although a part of the experience they are not part of the music. I also do not enjoy people who talk during movies at the theater. But there's an atmosphere and quality in vinyl that's only now being matched. A liveliness, a magic, bred into the medium, which is why it is my favorite format for listening.

  
Early downloads, napster, mp3, CD's, tape cassettes, even the first iPods paled in comparison. And once I heard the difference, it was undeniably better. I couldn't go back. There was a universe of warm, inviting comfort in vinyl. I also didn't care much for the artwork, not that the artwork wasn't beautiful, I was just interested more in the songs within, and soon found out that a quality record inside a torn or distressed sleeve would go for considerably cheaper than any new music.

 

Back to my story.

Finally I had the records cleaned and began listening one by one. Unknowingly I'd planted the seeds of my future, and the toe path of that journey came was in this sleepy city.

 

Boerne, gave me the music education I couldn't get in bigger cities. It was affordable though the selection was erratic, sometimes strange, but always unique. So much great music waiting to be found, and it was all hidden away down the street in dusty bins and slopped shelves, piled on floors and underneath porcelain figurines.

 

Now that I've traveled, now that I've seen shopping center after shopping center with the same stores and restaurants offering the same experiences without any regional individuality, I can appreciate my home so much more.

Small towns and their oddball beauty can only be felt once in a specific time and a specific place. It's precious. I love it. I was lucky enough to be open to new surroundings, even if they were hidden in old packages.

 

 

Where did it go?

My fury of noise                    
       

pitched pain

subtle lulls
 

Tear and tempo                       
       
once so sure

in blood, an bone
 

Crying they found me             
              

when low, very low

life had pushed

I'd looked back                        

only once
but where did it go?

 -rene



*image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-dsGis1BnHkzN8SCuf-sY_0xDB5Q-WL_-hhKUHkzCk5u1rTl-mDB5tKXccFrgiClBpMBgsK1hrJ-e8tVJ5h5c0H_y0Y4s10dBo_7_Zg2gic-iK8MUi1lJDYy_nlAuoMeGttpOPMwGIB8/s1600/sagle_ping_pong.jpg

Past Life: Clinically, Scientifically Naked

See the man with the stage fright, Just standing up there to give it all his might - The Band

Past Life:

I've never been scared to be in front of an audience with the band. But that doesn't mean I've never felt the chest-thumping, quick breath fear that can overpower any performance. I've just learned to live in it.


Once I had an assignment for a high school speech class...

I hated that class, not my teacher she was great as were the other kids, but I was just out of place. Having been lifted up two years I was 14 taking a summer class with 17-year-olds giving speeches about my life, politics, and drama readings. As you can imagine it was awkward. I wasn't living their life, I didn't know their music, their movies, their parties... to all my classmates I was still a kid. It's amazing the social gap between high school-ers.

...  Anyway, every time I stood in front of the class seeing, what then looked like men and women, adult faces wearing too much make-up and the beginnings of very bad mustaches, I wanted to disappear. To run out the door. To hide underneath my hoodie and stay in the back of the class reading. But you can't do that in high school, because for some reason, the more you hide the more teachers try to get you out of your shell. So instead I had to stand at the podium with the feeling of my lunch crawling higher and higher up my throat, with my hands shaking holding my note-cards, and the words failing to come. Receiving a flood of rolled eyes, smirks, and sarcasm. But this assignment was different.

We had to record ourselves as a Radio DJ, making a commercial segment between songs. So I grabbed a portable tape recorder, sat in my favorite spot: my bedroom had a window on the opposite side of my bed, I could sit look at the sky and no one could see me from the hallway, and I drained myself out in to the microphone. Recording songs off the radio, writing my skit, complete with a commercial break for Fizz Bang Cola. 

I got wild, gave my best Wolfman Jack impression:
Heeeeellllloooooooo, San Antooonne! So happy to be in the land of a thousand dances, a thousand chances, and the thousand lovers making gooood romances... hawr hawr...

There was no one watching. No faces to look at. Just me, the recorder, and my imagination. I wasn't thinking about what everyone else would think when I had to play the tape on Monday. I wasn't thinking about the grade. I wasn't really thinking about the assignment, cause I kinda went overboard making twice as long as needed. I was only thinking about the performance. I don't know why this project, why this time I decided to really try, but it felt different. It felt real. It felt comfortable.


There is a moment when a song finishes, no matter how quick the response is, there is a moment while waiting for the audience reaction that can be nerve racking. While the note is ringing out, and the heart beat raises a little. Waiting to see if you get applause or the silent death stare - I don't think people boo anymore. It's not that the audience controls me, I've played plenty of shows when the crowd and I just don't connect, and it doesn't mean we were good or bad, we just either connect or not. Still, in a performance something is given away and it feels so good when people receive it openly. I think that's where the tension comes from. Wanting to be understood. And the moment of uncertainty, that place can be scarier than first stepping out on the stage in the first place.

I was in that moment when my tape stopped. And I, the over-achieving 14-year-old watching the faces of the apathetic summer school 17-ishes and my teacher, waited for the verdict. 

Then the teacher laughed, the students laughed, I laughed, some of the kids paying attention even applauded, of course there were others who didn't really care. I was happy with that little bit of respect. But I gained something more than just my highest grade of the class.

I'd put myself out there and earned the response I wanted. They laughed at the jokes, they heard the words, it sounded like a radio program - poorly recorded - but legitimately like a radio program. It was a creative expression fully realized... Ah what a moment... And it was armor. And it was strong.

Making something without purpose and conviction will leave you feeling naked. You are exposed to every flaw of your humanity. Clinically, scientifically naked.

I go on stage believing in every song, in every note. That gives me strength to go into uncertainty.  To stand in front of people and sing myself. To write these words and give them to you. I have faith in my creation. In my ideas. I don't get my confidence from some in-born ability -  maybe others have that but I do not. I have honesty, and hard work. I have conviction. Living in the fear, is to free yourself from it.

-rene

Mother. At Mass

All of the wraps and knots a riddle.

This is the moment. She kept her fingers twisting threads

turning gold, her silken mind. Each thought golden

and each look... as the wick burned down.

What was it to know like she knew?

What was it like to turn a key?

All the answers I could never give.

The skill to unravel.

Understanding when we unravel, we go.

The Living Text pt. 3 And What I Heard

How do you become a band?
How do you become a writer?

The tough questions I've been asked. And my answer, not just mine but many others agree, is easy: bands make music, and writers write. That simple.
* You want to be a band: grab some friends and bash away until it works. You want to write: all you need is pen and paper. So what stops us (even me sometimes)? I guess the half-asked question wasn't really honest... what we really want to know is:

How do we become a money-making band? How do we make money as a writer?

That answer is hazier. I'm still not sure, though I'm looking - Maybe I'll write the answer in a post if I ever find out, let you guys know. 

Most writers and musicians who are successful have a unique voice, perspective, to set themselves apart. Being, or doing something new can you get buzz. I think that's a great, but the flip-side is that all the buzz building won't do any good if the substance is weak. You can get everybody's attention: perfect. Now what are you going to do with it? You have to have meaning. Something to give to your audience. I find that heavy buzzed often comes with light substance. Maybe that's what some people feel is lacking from big selling music.


A prospective, a plot, an opinion, anything, but it has to be something you believe in. Conviction is real inspiration. To feel something deeply. Maybe that's what tragedy gives. It's a fire. A burning understanding. The work burns away pain. The more you give to it, the more the fire will take. Let the flame take it all away. Give to it completely, be completely transformed, and it will give back something new.

The questions of success may never be answered. There is only you and the words. The thoughts you have incubated. The life you carry waiting to be heard, to be read, to escape.

I have grieved. Am grieving. And with every song try to burn more of that away. I sing about the places I knew, and my trying to re-build. That was Shakedown. The match being lit.  That is writing. Audiences are fickle, fame and money are a delusion. Writing can be real if you let it.

It took me a long time to be comfortable with being a writer. Saying it. I always wanted to see one of my poems in print, but I've learned that being printed doesn't make writer. Being recognized doesn't either, by news or people.

The words, the work, that gives me the title. It gives me everything I need. No one else can. No record deal. No publishing company. Let everything else burn away. Sure, I take the opportunities that come, work them hard. Unafraid to chase, to game, put myself on the line, but never need it. Never depend on it. Never make it the purpose, or else substance will fail. And empty words, quick words, never last.



-rene


PS. this is a special post. the reason: 11/13/13 Ulysses R. Villanueva


For you are all-things

All around the fire light, the feel pound

giving us freak ambition, feverish pulse.

All around, in every body, hidden sounds

flash morning. Your little light. Your lighting form. 

Do you know what's waiting? 

Who made you your crucible?

Can you see the hammer dreams the anvil?

The time of fire is gone, let the bell ring all

bouncing against my own forgotten tones. 

The signal, the warning, a beautiful song.

* Image: http://houselist.bowerypresents.com/files/2010/08/hacienda-25-495x330.jpg

The Living Text pt 1.

INTERVIEWER

What would you say makes the writer different from other people?

HUXLEY

Well, one has the urge, first of all, to order the facts one observes and to give meaning to life; and along with that goes the love of words for their own sake and a desire to manipulate them. It’s not a matter of intelligence; some very intelligent and original people don’t have the love of words or the knack to use them effectively. On the verbal level they express themselves very badly.

I've always loved hand-writing. Completely beautiful. The preservation of thought. The symbol scratched into existence, an idea wholly represented to the world. I once felt the written word, carefully chosen, was our best means of communication.

Spoken language is easy and quick, needing little effort, and often produced carelessly; however, a handwritten expression carries more thought. Artful at every level. The more meticulously attended, the greater density of information. Giving life. Words become action, sentences become experience, and pages become memories.

I love that.

The same person writing in haste, or anger, or love, can write the same line several different ways. Everything about the way we write. From the words we choose, to the medium- letter, note, pen, or ink- can give deeper information to our meaning. *2




I used to think the job of a writer was to be as clear as possible. Consciously controlling every detail.

My quest for perfect writing was a great ambition. But the hunt was all wrong. Impossible. Especially for lyrics. The mind is too tricky, even for written words. They will fail, be misunderstood. Translations muddied. Intentions subverted. And I have found more often, especially in songwriting, preciseness is less important than the feeling behind the words.

Some audiences care more for the sound of a word than its meaning. They look for NEW with a heavy thirst for style, not clarity. Especially in rock. I try to fight this... I prefer clarity. Many songs do not make any sense when read out loud, but they can still convey a semblance of meaning in the mood of the music (i.e. glam rock, grunge). 

Fads will always be coming in and out and I won't advocate trend following. But learning from the purposeful invention of these new ideas. We can learn a lot from unrelated genres- I'll get back to this later.  Directness is too boring, but know that a good story will never lose its value no matter what style it is wrapped in.

Maybe that's why I'm attracted to handwriting. The human element, the penmanship is itself a beautiful natural intensifying effect. Style, a facet of overall technique, can give an edge in the short run but the advantage fades quickly without substance to back it.

                                                   Nothing ages as well as substance.

But like I said, substance isn't the lone ingredient. Every writer has a complete love of words. Not just the ideas they give the mind but the full audio/visual spectrum of a well arranged piece. The sounds and rhythms of words entrance our spirit. As writers we need to know the impact style has on the audience's understanding and appreciation of a text. But we should apply style, without letting the technique-love get in the way of story. The effects should enhance the message, not blur it.

This is like having too many effect pedals on an instrument. Our instrument's sound should fill the melody, not replace it. If done right, our writing style will resonate with purpose of message. Everything balanced. Using and not being used. Controlling and not being controlled.

It would be no good to read an instruction manual for a blender written with the mad freedom of Burroughs, though it would be a fun read, nothing would ever get blended. Just like it would be a bore to read a novel with the straight-clear formalism of an instruction booklet. There is art in purpose. 

I love to write lyrics by hand. On the move. Whenever an idea hits me. I like to look back and see when I was writing furiously, or when I was taking my time. I like to be able to see where I paused to think of the next word, and when I was thinking so fast the words attached together in a long chain. But my handwritten notes have no purpose for anyone else. I always retype for others to read my ideas. That doesn't mean I should write on a computer to begin with, just that writing is not a one step procedure.

Writing, though it seems stationed, is a living art. Free of change. Free from the limitations of its own form. Read a passage out loud vs. quietly and see how much the same words can change. Write a line by hand, and then type it and see how the look changes the feel. There are limitless potentials to writing and its impact....

t.b.c.

-rene

On a ledge
her bronzed hand silks the banister
like her descent against the fullest night
could raise the sun right there. A push, a tilt.

        I believe I had a premonition
            and talking. decided.
            taking her by candle-lit smoke, and tea.
            My finger ripped against white stones
            rocking the gums. Then I,
            before I was through with my glass,
            spit on the table stone white words.
            Growing the timpanic change
            rolling in the yaw of my stomach
            I watched her come in.
           
Her heel clapped the tile. Poised beautifully.
Momentum arrested. I swear she was
the fiery sword itself, cutting away hands.
'Nothing is still,' she said
'but you will remember me like that.'
And never did her lips move
I swear










*1: Quote Source: Aldous Huxley, The Art of Fiction No. 24 By Raymond Fraser, George Wickes
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4698/the-art-of-fiction-no-24-aldous-Huxley

*2:  Image Source: http://collecting.wdfiles.com/local--files/image:handwritten-john-keats-poem/keats.jpg