The Three Most Important Tips for Writing Your Poetry Book

repost from my website:

I’ve had my book out for a little while now and I feel like this is the first month I’ve been able to breath. I mean really take a breath and enjoy myself. Writing a book of poetry was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I couldn’t be more proud of the way it all came out.

Anyone that has ever written a book deserves a big congratulations. You are amazing. We are amazing. Anyone just starting the journey, I think it is one of the most rewarding and harrowing experiences, so good luck.

A book is a big process. We think of it as one product, but it is the culmination of several art forms. The design/layout of the book was in itself a massive undertaking, not to mention the writing, rewriting and endless editing. After the book is created you have distribution and marketing. When my book was released, I did two reading events (one in San Antonio and one in Houston), an interview with Nuestra Palabra (Which I am so grateful for Tony Diaz and the staff for having me), an online store I maintain and in-store distribution, and that is just the beginning of the release journey.

There are some things I really excel at in this process, some I am new at and still have a lot of room to improve on, but now I have travelled from coming up with the idea, to getting it out into the world. There isn’t a single point of the book making process that I didn’t get my hands in. (I have levels more appreciation for the written word and all the wonderful books on my shelf). And I want to share some of the things I’ve learned with you.

A quick note: “When Love Ends, Be The Water,” itself came out beautifully. Featuring gorgeous illustrations by Rikkianne Van Kirk. (I’m so touched by the delicacy of her work. I think I’ll write a separate post about that. You can click on the link and check out her amazing work). I will always be my own harshest critic, but all that self-loathing and anger paid off: I MADE A BOOK! And a good one too, if I may. I am offering a few pieces of advice for anyone thinking of writing an independent book (this wont apply if you sign a deal with a company cause they will do things their own way and that’s cool). So for those of you crazy enough to try this, here are a couple of tips:

1. Good isn’t good enough: Everything matters. Just like in a poem. Every word. Every space. Every detail counts. The same goes for the book. Every font. Every layout choice. Every decision you make is an opportunity to deepen your connection with the audience. Make sure that all of those details are saying what you want it to say. Not everyone will agree with every decision you make and that is ok. But if you have solid, thoughtful reasons for making those choices, then it simply a matter of taste and not error. You never want error to be the dividing force between you and your audience.
2. Learn what you can, get help for the rest: If you don’t know how to edit, layout, illustrate, distribute, promote, or whatever. You have 2 choices. Spend time learning the craft (all of these are dedicated careers you can spend lifetimes learning btw) or you can hire it out. Neglecting a necessary item, isn’t helpful and doing it poorly… well, see tip #1. There are lots of helpful resources for finding the right people, and lots of helpful places where you can learn what you need. I went to my library and did a whole lot of research on fonts, design, and layout to get the book where I wanted it to be. I have no idea how to illustrate, and I am terrible with drawing but I had the help of a wonderful artist and she took my book to a whole new level.
3. A book is a marathon, not a sprint: This ties in with the first two tips, because you there will be so many times when you are fed up. When you think: Do I really need to do another edit? Another design? It’s probably good enough! But you have to push those things aside and try to look at your book with at least the attempt of objectivity. You have to ask: Is this the best I can do or am I just exhausted? Timelines will fall apart. Deadlines will get pushed back. Draft numbers will pile up. If you feel like you need help, see tip 2! If you want to just rush it out, see tip 1!

You can read a whole bunch of tips for writing a book, but no one will know who to write your book better than you. I think if you keep these 3 tips in mind, every other tip is just falls in line. Like, don’t have typos corresponds to tip 1. Same with knowing your audience, stay on topic, start with a bang, or whatever standard hints people like to pitch.

I believe this experience should be available to all writers. It is 2019. The gatekeepers have fallen. Writing is democratized. Publishing is easier and cheaper than ever. The internet/libraries are a wealth of unlimited knowledge. You can do it! No one can tell you no.

So one final bonus tip: Don’t let anyone (including yourself) stop you. I guess this goes back to Tip #3, but there are always going to be low moments. People who don’t get you or what you are trying to do. Moments where you will question your sanity. That is normal. Criticism is great for building your ideas. The thing to remember is, you are writing YOUR book. Especially for poetry, it should be for you and reflect who you are. I write because I love writing. I am not going to turn the one thing I love doing into some nightmare for me just to please somebody else. I wrote the book I wanted to write. I made it the absolute best I could. If I needed help, I researched, and if I still couldn’t, I asked for help. And finally I went slow. It took me a long time to get here (2 years) and now it is nothing but a celebration.

till next time

-rene

…

PS: Originally I wanted to blog the process of writing my book (which I still might do), and then I had wanted to start doing reviews of other poetry books that I read (which I also might do. Maybe you can help me decide?) but things got so crazy just trying to make it through this thing alive that all those ideas had to be stored away.

I think I’m ready for a fresh idea. I’m just going to put this out there with a big, Thank You to you all and the Universe. Let me know what you would like me to do and of course, if you haven’t read it yet, my book is available on my website and on Amazon.

Learning To Read Pt 6 (Metaphor and The Descent into Sub-Text)

A poem is not always what it seems. There is the apparent story - the text. And the thing we are not talking about when we talk about the story - sub-text.

In this way our conversation between reader and writer can get dangerous. 

and the way to bridge that gap is - metaphor

...

this is a series about understanding and improving our ability to write through my experience of becoming a reader. check out parts 1-5 on this page

...

When I was young-er and a not so avid reader in middle school we read a poem about blueberries - I've tried to find it but haven't - and I remember it was about blueberries cause I got into an argument with my teacher that went something like this:

teacher - what do you think the poem was about?

me - blueberries

teacher - but what else was it about? maybe the blueberries were a way to talk about something else...

me - why can't a poem just be about blueberries?

teacher - *sigh

Now, I'm sure the poem was about more than blueberries and I'm also sure if I was older than 10 I might have been able to think more critically about blueberries. 

The truth is trying to define sub-text is tricky even now. There is not one answer that works for every reader or writer. Every one can and will read into a poem differently but that's not a problem younger me failed to grasp:

What my younger self failed to understand was the metaphor of the blueberries, or if I remember correctly, picking blueberries. That is, the act of picking blueberries was the subject of the text, and the rail into which I could have begun to descend into the author's sub-text. 

The poet chose blueberries out of all the fruits or vegetables that they could talk about and why can give us a clue about the poem is really about when we talk about blueberries. Maybe they picked blueberries because it was a real life experience, so blueberries was a historical choice, but this would lead us to possible sub-texts like nostalgia, family, youth, nature, innocence, etc. Or maybe blueberry picking is regional and the sub-text can wonder into class, race, gender, history, occupational, etc. Or maybe the blueberry is representative of something bigger like a person, or relationship, or a nation, or a people. 

teacher - so what is the poem about?

This would all be easier if I remembered the rest of the poem, but like I said the metaphor is just the handrail for the descent into the sub-text, not the sub-text itself. So any poem can be read in these different ways and they are not more or less valid just more thoughtful.

younger me - blueberries

me - all I remember are the blueberries

teacher - *sigh

-rene

Learning to Read Pt 5 (Line Breaks)

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This series looks from a readers point of view about how to become a better writer. How I learned to read poetry taught me a lot about how I want to write. Check out parts 1-3.

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Line Breaks might be the most misunderstood concepts in amateur poetry. Many beginner readers/writers, my past self included, think of breaks as serving a singular function. 

Either one of the look of poetry, as in short words in a line looks like poetry:

a poem 

looks 

lik'a poem 

when 

its shape 

looks

like this

or one of idea breaks, as in breaking each line when a thought is complete:

a poem

looks lik'a poem

when its shape

looks like this

Both look like poems because we know they are not written in long format like this sentence. But the truth is that trying to pin down and understand why or how to break lines is less a science or a rule, but an artistic touch. Poems can be full paragraphs. One to several words per line, or even parts of words. They can break at full thoughts, or in the middle of a thought. So where do you begin to understand it?

I once again take it back to reading. 

One of the biggest functions I see across all kinds of line breaks is the question of flow. Or the reason to make a break is to help guide the reader into the tempo of the piece. Is the poem supposed to be fluid and easy? Is it slow and deliberate? Is it fun and whimsical? Or a million other things that the form could be used to represent the ideas of a poem.

If the lines break and clean full thoughts the words become really easy to read. The idea flows as if it was a full prose sentence but almost easier because it is arranged into smaller thoughts. But if the lines are broken erratically, the same words can become difficult and slow.  As in:

a po

em looks 

lik'a po

em when it

s shape

looks

like this

None of these break choices are right or wrong, poetry isn't about that, but they do convey different messages with the same words. They tell a different story. They have a different "voice" (a concept I have issues with but that's for a different post). It really is a matter of flow and flow, to me, comes from concept. 

What is the poem about? 

How should it be read? 

How do I want someone else to read it?

These are all ideas that go through my head when I am writing. Because we know now that even this is a poem:

A poem looks lik'a poem when its shape looks like this.

But what would that tell the audience? Somehow the words lose a bit of meaning when they are written out in a regular prose format. Somehow the idea becomes one dimensional. The voice becomes generic. Not to say those are bad things, just different choices. And every choice in a poem is critical.

The more poems you read, the more you will see how and why other authors have chosen to make these breaks, and how it affects the way you read.

I'd challenge you to take the line "a poem looks" and make you own variations. I'd love to see what you come up with.

much love

-rene

ps. as always like, share, subscribe and if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, youtube, facebook and twitter. Also my new website ReneTheWriter.

pps. Let me know if you liked this and I can do more.

Learning To Read Pt 3 (Improving Your Writing or The Devil of Detail)

How often do we think we know someone from their work? 

Have you ever read something and felt like the author just got you? That they had some intuitive look into your psyche? If your like me, it happens too many times to count. 

But the more I write the more I come to believe that the opposite is true. Maybe it's not the author that gives words magic, but the reader?

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This series looks from a readers point of view about how to become a better writer. How I learned to read poetry taught me a lot about how I want to write. Check out Part 1, and Part 2.

...

One of the first things I did after I decided that poetry reading was something I wanted to do, was read aloud to myself. At my home, pacing back and forth, in my underwear as I read my favorite poems to the furniture.

Trying things out in different inflections. Different voices. It went from uncomfortable, to absurd, to terrible, to ok, to horrible, to ok, and the more I tried to read like somebody else the less sense it all made.

So then I tried not trying. 

And the more I let go of what I thought the reading should sound like, the more I could relax, slow things down, and read clearly. Suddenly my readings became better.

The less character I put into it, the more my voice emerged into the piece. And when I could hear my voice in the words, the poems became more meaningful.

That struck me. And it's a simple idea.

What I got out of it, was not the words as written, but the meaning I put in as a reader. Without a reader. All writing is dead. Without a reader, the writer is sending thoughts to a great abyss of meaninglessness. A writer is only half an equation - if even that. 

It is Readers who birth these still thoughts to life. 

Sometimes even incomplete thoughts become lush and full. 

I thought, out of all my favorite books how many details were missing that I filled in as a reader. How much of the scenery, costumes, emotion did I put in. I mean there are some writers who are heavily detailed, but even they can't put in every color, every sound, every smell, every taste, every thought and breath. And why would they want to?

This isn't an excuse to be lazy as a writer. It's a fundamental understanding that everything written, every word, is in service to this great mysterious reader and their benevolent imagination.

Writing then becomes about the quality of the details and skill. Not just the abundance of technique. Any written world will always be incomplete, but the right details in the right place will feed the imagination of the reader. 

Give just enough to orientate a reader into your world, but not too much where the piece becomes a dictation of a photograph.

Read a piece, see what details stick out and why that works? Imagine what details you would give instead. Or best, try to write a poem with as few details as possible and see what emerges.

every one

in every room tonight

over books and screens over

thin scraps of paper waiting lonely

for release dying to see a person

in the piece but they ain't

in the thing

collecting fragments

we're only buying dreams of dreams

whose words dried-dead

they

belong

to you now

say it now. say

and I'll echo you

but I ain't in

the thing

every one 

in it together

in every room tonight

looking lonely for answers

in cracked-mirrors

but it ain't in 

                           the thing 

much love

-rene

ps. as always like, share, subscribe and if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, youtube, facebook and twitter. Also my new website ReneTheWriter.

pps. Let me know if you liked this and I can do more.

Learning To Read pt 2 - Improving Your Writing

Poetry, like all writing, is the message. Every poem has one. From the author to the reader. From reader to listener. And often that message is simple, though sometimes it is obscured in difficult layers of representation. *(from part 1)

Part 2

The Message is Lost

I'm not one to tell people what is or isn't poetry. I think that is a pointless conversation. I'm also hesitant to say things are right or wrong, or good or bad. I tend to think of poems as being in-progress or finished.

It's also worth a note that Whitman's Leaves of Grass was in-progress from 1855-1892 as a published work. So it's OK to improve and change. Things don't have to be so final. 

Another note: my observations aren't meant as a law, but more of a guide for something that I see all the time with poetry, 
especially on Instagram.

I read a lot of poems on my feed. Some really move me, some make me laugh. A lot fall into this beautifully-confusing category. So many poems have great stories and ideas, but collapse in on themselves. 

They start about subject A then move to B then so on and so on until we are at F and  never have come back to any of the earlier points. Then its over.

It becomes hard to keep them all straight, but the lines feel good and there is something of a story there. Something the author wanted to say. I can read the author's excitement. Their passion. They're right on the cusp of having a polished idea in their poem, but somewhere between the feeling and the page, the message was lost. 

The poem doesn't hold the burn. 

And when I'm done reading the piece, I don't feel like I understood anything clearly. Maybe I could chalk it up to poetry being abstract or vague... poetry can be. But there is a big difference between an abstract concept, and the complete lack of one. 

This is something we develop as readers.

As a reader it is easy to make a judgement and say I liked that, this made sense, this was weird, or good, or sexy, or terrible... but as Writers, I see that judgement disappear.

I think because it is easy to understand ourselves, and it is hard to know how others will read our words. But we need that readers mind in order to write our messages clearer.

So lets start again small.

Instead of worrying about a big idea. Start with a simple one. Some people say start with a title, but I have trouble with that honestly. I think the point is to start with a concept. Something that you can return to. Something that can ground a poem into a setting, or character, or action. This is where my Zen style thinking takes over for me. Good or bad. 

Recently I wrote a poem called Coffee. 

coffee 

the taste was bitter - she looked at me as if to say 

t'know more things are different

t'know more things have changed

t'know of the many things we lost 

like the slow drip

in the cold morning

unaccounted, unrecorded, unappreciated

unable to recall just one

the taste was bitter -

and she didn't have to say

Whether or not you think it is great, I don't care, but it demonstrates one of my favorite things about writing poetry. Evolving a simple idea into an emotion, and then into an experience. 

I wrote it with the idea of coffee in the morning. Home brewed. It was a simple setting. Once I arrived on the line, the taste was bitter. I felt I had an emotional hook. The flavor for the coffee became the symbol for the relationship between the narrator and this second person.

It was tempting for me to want to evolve that idea more. To let it run away, but I try to control myself to some degree. To talk about the relationship. Why it has become bitter. Where it started. What could happen next, but there has to be a point to what is being said, or else the message will be lost. 

This is the part I think is subjective 
and where real writing craftsmanship takes over.

To me it was enough to know that the bitterness had overwhelmed the relationship. To know that the characters were not on talking terms, notice the lack of dialogue, combined with the repeating lines - she didn't have to say. It was enough of a story to focus on the drink. The slow, drip of the machine, the cold, wordless interaction fusing with the taste of bad coffee. The story became self-contained but not dull; there was a story between the lines.

And I built that taste for enough/not enough through reading. Relating my poem to all the things I liked as a reader. That is my barometer. Not what you think. Not what magazines think. Not what teachers or lovers or friends think. But my taste from reading.

For example, I am a big fan of returning to the opening line to close off a poem. It's a simple technique, not to be over-done, but it can help close off the loop of a narrative; reinforce the main concept of the bitter taste, and the establish the importance of the relationship to the reader. That is, after all, the one thing I want a reader to take away from this piece.

If I had ended with the line, unable to recall just one, the last image of the poem would be the slow drip of the machine. Which is cool and poetic in its own way, but betrays the conceit of the poem. 

Coffee is not about the machine or even the coffee being made. It is about the people drinking it, and their inability to connect during a very communal activity.

Having a cup of coffee and talking about the day is a near Universal staple of the human experience. We could simplify it even more to say, talking over a drink be it alcohol, tea, water, soda, or coffee is so human it is easy to forget that it is a thing we choose to do in order to help us connect with each other.

The utter failure in this relationship to move in to normal conversation means they are so infused with the bitterness, that there is nothing left. Nothing to talk about. Nothing to exchange but the bitter looks. 

And they both know.

So maybe you didn't get all that from my poem the first time. Maybe you think it is not a poem, cause it doesn't rhyme or have an identifiable structure that can easily be categorized as a poem. Or maybe you think it sucks. Honestly I don't care.

The words I wrote have a deliberate message I am creating through 

Imagery
Word Choice
Structure
Repetition
Composition
Social Constructs


and even though I have used a lot of poetic tools, those individual terms would mean nothing if the poem meant nothing. 

If it didn't add up to the communication experience between writing and the reader. If it didn't have a story behind the poem.

So think about this: What do you want the reader to understand and take away from your poem? What is the essential idea? Make it small. Make it focused. And see if that makes a difference in your writing.

Third Note: This completely applies to most types of writing in general. Either Song. Novel. Essay. There should be some clear idea in any writing that needs to be said. With out that essence, why should anyone read it?

Much love

-rene

ps. as always like, share, subscribe and if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, youtube, facebook and twitter. Also my new website ReneTheWriter.

pps. Let me know if you liked this and I can do more.

Learning To Read. Pt 1

You probably know by now that I love to read poetry. It's the reason I got into writing in the first place. 


And in the short time I've been reading publicly, I've been lucky enough to find so much encouragement (btw thank you for all the kind words. they mean a lot to me). It's become such a big part of my life, that I decided to talk about how I learned to read and hopefully get more people to try.

Quiet a few years ago, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company visited my school and read On The Eve of St. Agnes.To tell you that it was an important moment for me would be an understatement. It changed how I wrote, how I read, how I understood poetry. 

And while I am nowhere near on that level, I am better for what I learned from that experience. More about that specific reading later but here are some things that have stuck with me since then.

⸓

Part 1

Poetry People and Poetry Is The Message

Let's start with an uninspired, blanket observation: poetry isn't for everyone. And while that's true for almost anything, I have found such a hot or cold reaction to Poetry that I can't help but try and theorize why something I love so much, can be so hated as well. So I'll move to my second cliche and move to the beginning of these experiences.

Most of the time, when people find out that I love poems, I'm met on some scale between confusion, annoyance, distaste, or anger.

Rarely.

                 Vary rarely.

I meet someone who enjoys poetry too. 

It's not impossible. But I find those encounters to be outliers. And of those few encounters it's even harder to find someone who enjoys the same kind of poetry I do. Maybe this is do to my geography, or the small circles I keep, and maybe this would all be solved if I just got out more?... but this has been my experience.

So younger me, often kept poetry as a solitary subject. Something not to bring in to conversations with my friends. The times I remember best, ditching class, to have time alone in a corner of a library, or in my room, or on the university lawn, or hiding in the front seat of my car with the windows down. Quietly absorbing every line. Taking in the page as a secret passed thru history just for me. And I was fine with that. In fact it was exactly what I wanted. A way to enjoy my lonerism.

After all, poetry wasn't about making friends. 

Still isn't. 

Poetry is something I do for me. I read and write cause I want to. It's my desire that is it's own reward. There's no monetary value. No good job or high five. No reason other than a desire to read and write. I can share a moment with a writer's thoughts, see if they speak to me, if I like it or not or if I want even want that message in my life. And everything about Poetry, hinges on me. And while yes, sometimes it's another author who wrote the piece, the conversation is strictly internal. They were merely the fuel for my own imagination. I hold the conversation. I dictate how it ends. 

And I imagine this true for you, if you are a poetry person.

Maybe that's where the disconnect occurs? Maybe some people don't understand why they should put so much work or thought into a poem when it takes so much effort to understand and they receive no tangible reward. Poetry is slow. Its practice requires calming that internal itch for fast and easy and waiting for a longer, personal reward that may not reveal its purpose until years down, when a reader can recall a succinct and poignant line.

And while poetry is personal, at its origin, it's meant to be communal. Meant to be spread and shared. That was a big lesson for me to learn from the Shakespearean Actor and my wonderful Romance Professor. What's the point of writing, of publishing, if not to spread out like a virus thru time, infecting futures with the strange ramblings of your mind? 

Poetry, like all writing, is the message. Every poem has one. From the author to the reader. From reader to listener. And often that message is simple, though sometimes it is obscured in difficult layers of representation. *(More on this later)

That communication is the most important part of reading. Even if you're alone in your room, on a recording, in bed with a lover, or on a stage in front of a room full of people, or live on Instagram, the point is to uncover the message. 

Bring it out. 

Give it warmth. 

Slowly make it live. 

Only the reader can do that.

A good reading should help the message emerge. A great reading should bring the author's voice off the page and into our reality. Into the moment.

Sometimes it takes a lot of time and re-readings to ever get to a comfortable place and say - I know this poem well enough to read it.

I hear a lot of people read unconfidently. And this is probably because they aren't precisely sure what they are saying. 

So take time. 

I never read aloud the first time. And I never perform without many, many re-readings. I imagine this was equally true for the Shakespearean Actor who read at my University.

Read unfiltered, then Re-Read asking lots of questions like:

What did the author mean? What is actually being said here? What should the reader get from this? Why is the poem divided up the way it is? Are the rhymes and rhythms supposed to be emphasized or is it just a background mood? What is the tone of this poem? Etc.

There are a million questions and even more answers, but with every answer you find (different readers will and should find different answers) you should get closer to understanding your message.


 This is the work of reading. It's not easy. 

And the reward... that's even harder to define. 

Maybe here we can revisit this Love/Hate problem. 

Why work so hard for words? Why go slowly over an idea, again and again? Why obsess over someone else's thoughts? If you see no value in it, it is the equivalent of eating a chunk of rubber tire. Hard. Distasteful. Unrewarding. It's easy to understand why someone would hate the thought of it. Or think it strange that other people enjoy it.

I think that's the inherited attitude of our High School understanding of Poetry. And for that, I won't blame them.

But if like me, you are a Poetry Person, you know there are universes of ideas to escape to. Dreams to make. Experiences to feel. Each one has made my life so much deeper. Has taught me to appreciate others. To Think. To Feel. To Love. To be cautious of the words I use. To be mindful of my form. To be something more than I could be without Poetry. 

Human. 

So I challenge you to find a poem, record yourself reading it the first time, then read it over until you find some new insight into the meaning, and record it again. Hear the change that comes with understanding.

Much love

-rene

ps. as always like, share, subscribe and if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, youtube, facebook and twitter. Also my new website ReneTheWriter.

pps. Let me know if you liked this and I can do more.

Savage II - Lost on the Idyll Green

What does Idyll Green mean?

It's an unusual name, but I am anything but usual. And to understand it you have to go back to just after the release of our single Savage (see previous post here).

I had been walking around New York feeling a little depressed, even though we had recently hit the highest mark of our success yet, though I should've been at my happiest.

For a moment, I got the feeling the road had disappeared from under me. 

As if I was falling. 

As if I was disappearing in the crowds. 

As if I had forgotten why I came here in the first place and New York ate away the last of me.Those thoughts for me come all the time, and it's a terrible spiral to fall into.

I came to a small square. Not much more than 10 ft by 10 ft. And a bench with a couple. Older than me but sweet. 

They sat close together. She had her arm around her girl. Coffee at their feet. Talking as the cars, and noise, swam around them. 

I walked past moaning my own thoughts in my head. Feeling the weight of my obsessiveness bury into my chest. Bad thoughts breed bad thoughts. But sometimes they give me a poem for my trouble.

I turned the corner around them. And I entered a small patch of sunlight. A brief patch of warmth that rushed across my face.

And noticed, very briefly, the soft movement of flowers. 

A bouquet. Yellow petals surrounded by lush green leaves, and something gentle mixed in their like babies-breath, though I'm not a botanist I make no promises, wrapped together in brown paper and yarn, they danced against each other in her lap.  

And from there my eyes drew up to her face. Small heart shaped. Framed by her dark black bob and bangs. I saw the smudged makeup. The tracks of tears she had been crying early. And in that moment, I heard these words.

Hope you like it.

Savage II - Lost on the Idyll Green

Never has my truth
been so hard
like then
when I saw
between the mirror and window, no difference

I went to the great city
        who hung gold-like pride down their necks
        who lashed strapped studded collars
        who pierced amber flesh with smiles
        who wore diamond eyes of ambition around heavy fingers
        who tried holding everything, and had nothing

I wanted more, over broken bus and city shouts, than the driving song of death

Never has my truth
felt so obscured
like then
when I walked it every day
drank it
ate it
and didn't know the taste

I went to a small park
        the draped vines
        the lush veil
        the soft-set bed of June
        the wide field
        the cradling valley

And heard a heavenly noise, of heavenly things

Never has my truth
been so clear
like then
when a birth right
of an open mind
planted and grew
lost on the Idyll Green

I went to her, as she welcomes everyone
       the grace in her step
       the truth in her turn
       the singing indescribable
       the numbered dew-drops
       the silver and gold like humility she wore
       and knew there was nothing more than everything about her

-rene



check out more including a free song here: youtube.com/c/idyllgreen

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My Writing Practice

"She's not... She's not the love... not the love... you'd ever leave..."

I paced the room several times last night, feeling this burning anxiety running through my body. Like I was about to jump out of my own skin. Like my mind didn't want be in here anymore. And maybe if I kept moving, I could out run it, or shake it out of my system, or something. Change. And wrapped in that feeling were the words. A story that was starting. Maybe a song? This is how it begins.

Disjointed. 

Angular. 

The sounds falling against each other and pushing away. It's like trying to find the matching pieces to a puzzle. There is something here. Something that is trying to define itself. Fragments of rhythms.

"She's not... She's not the love... not the love... you'd ever leave?"

"What?" Rachel called to me softly from the bedroom, barely making it to the living room,"Sounded like you said something."

"No," I muttered, "Just... thinking..." my voice dropping off as I kept circling a track around the sofa.

"not the love... you'd ever leave. You can't da-da-dum, good memories..."

Just ideas that aren't growing. 

What is she? What is she to herself? What does she want? 

I lay down on the couch with these elusive ideas on me. This is all nothing. A Meditation for writing. My practice. Writing is raising the dead. Putting form to ghosts and vapors of ideas. Trying to fill them with weight. Trying to fill them with life. If they can't live and fell and act, in my mind, they will never survive in the world. 

Maybe that's why sometimes it feels like magic. A series of synapses firing in unison. Ideas from disparate lobes pushing together to make something. A color and a word. A feeling and texture. A taste and a sound. And they need to make her real.

"What is she?"

"Rene?"

"Yeah?"

"It sounds like your talking?" her voice is low, 
she is half in a dream already.

I'm keeping her awake. "Sorry babe..." and I sincerely am.

I have a habit of talking out loud when I write. Rachel says it's a creepy sounding voice, I don't know what it sounds like, I don't even realize that I'm doing it. I have a habit of staying up late. I have a habit of disappearing mentally from conversations. I have a habit of sleep paralysis. I have a habit of saying yes to everything. Of wanting to do too much. Of getting carried away. Of being too detached. I have a lot of bad habits. I guess I'm saying, I'm too lucky to have a wife that puts up with me.

I wanted a new song done by tonight. But that wasn't happening. And some how I got the idea that I was better off watching some Netflix than keeping this up.

And I did. Or started to.

I spent a good amount of time, feet propped up, shirtless, flipping through menu, checking my phone when I get an update from some social media thing. Not finding anything.Thinking of all the things I need to get done this week. Edit the podcast, finish a mix of a new Idyll Green song that will debut soon, start edits on a song we are recording, get back to my novel. And these are all swirling around me. 

I closed my eyes.

There, I saw the time we lay

in her room. When I learned 

she was a prism. We were tossed 

sheets and legs and the sun came in 

to catch her. She turned a vision 

on the walls. She danced 

like she was. So clear. 

So open. like everything could be 

                                               light

-rene 

Late-Night Drinking

I'm writing this a little late, and more than a little foggy in my head. This has not been a good week for sleep. Sorry to my wife for all my restlessness, but those things come in waves. Just the consequence of living for music.

The last two weeks have been non-stop, so I took yesterday evening with the guys and stayed out late-night drinking, having talks that were way to involved, books, writing, race, all those fuzzy speeches, that spill out of late-night podiums from pseudo-philosophers like myself.

It's too much I know. But I can't help it sometimes.

I can say being that guy is all terrible. A lot of good ideas come from venting. Pushing out all the weird ideas I carry and letting them go.

It was when I got home, the house completely quiet and dark except for the light over the sink, that I took a long breath. 

It was good.

I threw off my shoes. Made a snack of cheese, hummus and a slice of bread, not very creative but delicious none the less, and ate standing over the stove top, humming a song, and thinking this was a really good place to be. And I didn't just mean snack-wise.

The tracks with Larry are sounding amazing. We will be finishing the last song on Saturday, before the Mixing phase. 

Idyll Green is putting together a song to give away which will be out soon along with some really cool visual stuff. 

Tuesday night we recorded the first episode of the podcast that I think came out great, and I have a lot more to do. 

So much that it is intimidating. 

And exhausting. 

And fun. 

Through all of the work. This whole experience of collaborating, building, and creating Idyll Green has been one of the most fun projects that I have done in a long time. And that's a lot to be thankful for. 

And last night I found that, in the dark of my house. Alone. Tired. Content.



until next week



-rene



ps. as always like, share, subscribe and if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, facebook and twitter

A Long Trip Home

I'm going to tell you about a trip when our friend Jack drove the three of us through a long western night; determined to get us all home in one 35 hr go.

The first hours were the easiest.

No matter how tough or grueling a tour is, I always get a boost when we leave our final hotel. So it's no thing to pass 8 - 12 hours trading playlists on our phones and burning pavement. But at the 16th hour, just barely approaching halfway, that feeling turns into something else. Some new kind of exhaustion. Cause I know the only thing between home and me is time.

"Why don't you get some sleep? You can rotate back in the morning," Abe said jumping from the backseat up next to me on the middle bench.

He caught me in a bit of a daze, lost in the green numbers of the radio. "Did you rest?" I asked crawling to the back.

He shook his head, "enough. I'm ready to get driving though."

I fumbled over in the dark: clearing the bench, taking off my shoes. I could feel the tunnel vision hitting me. To make it worse all the caffeine had worn off and my body was coming down.

Looping around America the band had done 6 weeks of heavy touring. Up the east, then west through the north, occasionally popping up into Canada, we finished with a night in Seattle and one in Vancouver. So why we decided to do this drive straight through, I'm still not sure.

But like a good dream most of it seemed to fade with only flashes and fragments remaining. Good thoughts for another day, then all I wanted was silence.

3 to 5

My time to fell in and out of sleep as we slipped further away from the Vancouver, the last club, a really nice Holiday Inn that we didn't get to enjoy, the mountains, the tall pacific trees that are nothing like the brush of Texas, the desert, going south and south.

I closed my eyes.

The radio, the guys talking stories of future plans, the noise of the road; it all hung distantly on my consciousness pulling me awake.

I buried my face deeper into the back of the bench, feebly hiding away so I could try to sleep. I was tired. Really tired. I felt the weight of sleep taking over me. Pouring down the back of my brain, down into my chest flooding my lungs with it's gravity.

The other guys need noise to help them drive, you don't complain about things like that. It's an unspoken rule. I'd rather them blasting the speakers then have us all fall asleep while driving. We've had our close calls before, I don't care to relive that again. So I just listen to the road, slow my breathing and drift...

"Are you... Are you happy with this, the music?" Mom was reclined in her chair, a worn black leather massage station she'd bought for Dad many Christmases before. In her corner of the bedroom, two steps from her pillow. A place to watch TV, look out the window, and drift into a nap when nausea or insomnia kicked in.

"Of course," why was I remembering this moment? Lying on her bed, watching For A Few Dollars More, she had fallen asleep early on. I hadn't noticed her waking up, "it's not easy, but it's still fun," I said watching the desert and the steel eyes looking back at me.

"I used to think," she started, then stopped herself at the sounds of gunfire and cowboy groans. Her head rolled to the window. Mom never liked violence. It wasn't so much the killing, she told me, but the way he smiled afterwards that bugged her.

There was a bump in the road that jolted my body. And laughing from the front. The crackling foil of an empty gas station snack. The engine let open, pushing harder as we started rolling up hill. And I fought to keep level on the bench.

'Am I happy?'

The sound swell like the rising of sustained strings. A breath. A wave of violins. And down the road, bells breaking across the desert. The hum of her rollers gliding back and forth against her back.

The morning tinted by soft blue curtains broke around the floral scarf covering her head. Mom never changed for me. Her hair was gone. She had lost weight. Her skin had turned from olive to a pale white but it only made the green of her eyes stronger. Those were only superficial things. She was still as bright as ever.

"I used to think you get what you put in," she was looking back at me again and I lowered the TV to listen, "but things aren't balanced are they? Things aren't going to be fair for you."

I waited for her to continue as she looked me over, but she wanted me to share too.

"I don't know, the band's doing alright."

"You won't always be," she said understated like she was talking to herself, "I hear stories... You boys are talented, but that's not always enough...talent I mean... I worry."

"Every job has politics Mom... that's why you gotta enjoy what you do, right?" I smiled, turning the volume up again for the bang of timpani's, "if we weren't having fun... that'd be a different story."

"You can't feed a family with that René. You won't be ready." Such a Motherly thing to say. 

I remember the way my heart sank a little and felt it again.

The van slowly swung into a turn, as we slowed down for an exit. There was a jolt at the stop sign.

"A quick bathroom stop if anyone needs it," Jack whispered, unsure if I was sleeping, whipping the van into a spot under an orange light.

I kept still as the guys left the van running, locking me inside. And for a moment the van was quiet. I wanted to finish that dream, 'I am happy,' I wanted to tell her. 'Back to her room,' but my mind had other places to go.

The wind cut in over the water hitting my chest. I kept my jaw clenched tight, breathing between my teeth. Wishing I had brought a jacket or a least a long sleeve.

"I want to stay," Mom stood at the bank of the Guadalupe, in the smooth gravel, the ice cold water barely hitting her feet, "just a little longer. We don't have to eat here."

This. This memory. A weekend drive. We hadn't been ready for this trip. The whole family off on a whim, and the weather was cold, much colder than we planned. We had wanted to go tubing, but the water was low, and the wind was powerful.

"You might think right now that work matters, I know we've told you boys that, but it's the people. Of all the things I remember," she continued, "the things I want to remember, I never go back to my job. Sometimes I'm sorry I let it take so much of me," Mom kept her eyes on the drifting river.

"Mom," I walked up beside her, looking back, Jaime and Dad were at a fire pit working on getting a fire going.

The river was dancing with the sunlight, turning, jumping quickly on itself.

"You might think right now that work matters, I know we've told you boys that, but it's the people," Mom took a step into the cold water then another. "That's what I want you to keep. You should always do what makes you happy," She went deeper in, the water hitting at her knees, "When you're happy the others will follow."

I threw off my shoes, stepping in after her. And the river was so cold, so brilliant, instantly jumping up my body. I wanted to get out of the water. I wanted to head back, "Mom," I called but she was deep in her thought. The river felt like it was moving me away. Or pulling everything away from me. 

The song grew louder. The dancing lights flickered faster.

"Mom," I thought looking up at her in slow motion, like she was water, like she was light. She dove in the air. A slender flicker. Suspended above the river. Like all sound held on one note waiting for her to land. And the river pulling me down and down. 

"New Mexico... and coming up on sunrise," Abe said from the driver seat, "who's ready for breakfast?"

I sat up on the back bench. Feeling like the dream was still in my head, but every second disappearing. 

Jaime flipped through the GPS menu looking for a food stop, while Jack searched yelp on his phone.

The highway had tapered off into a narrow, winding two lane stretch. The sky was still dark purple, but I could feel the daylight coming. Soon the mountain sides would be splashed with the orange glow of dawn.

We were getting closer to home now. And only 14 hours to go. 

-rene