"Living Loud" has a price: I'm bloody exhausted.

On approximately Monday, I tweeted, "Oh man this week's blog-song is going to succckkkkk >_<"

The next day-ish, Jamie said to me, "So what's this I hear about this week's song sucking?"

I hemmed and hawed and grumbled something like, "I'm just really unhappy with how it's turning out."

To which Jamie replied, "Aha, you're a true musician at last!"

Touche, my love.

I also didn't have as much time to work on this song. I scribbled down the first verse or so on Thursday or Friday, and then totally neglected it until Monday when I realized, "Shoot! I have a deadline!" I finished the lyrics Monday morning, bashed out the chords Monday night, and then tweeted in despair.


I guess it's not so bad. In fact, since Monday I've worked out the wrinkles (ew that bridge really is not working, I'll just tweak it so that it's the same melody as the rest of the verses oh there that's better) and played it enough to have gotten used to how it sounds, so I don't actually really mind it anymore.

But it was a close one. There were a few moments when I thought that I might just scrap the whole thing and post a video of a song I wrote, like, a year ago. But that would have been cheating; that's not what I made this blog to do. This blog is about writing crappy songs that I'm not really satisfied with and posting them as testament to my creative output. It's fine enough to share the nice songs you write every few months; it's another thing entirely to share every song, even the less-than-good ones. By forcing myself to finish a song, even when I don't think it's very good, I am in some small way triumphing over the roadblock of Not Good Enough and hopefully gaining tools that will help me write even better songs in the future.

This song is kind of about Amanda Palmer, and how I didn't get to see her last Saturday. The first verse and first chorus are pretty much about that, attempting to capture the frenetic, excited feeling, and then the downfall as I accepted that I would not be able to go, that I had to be an adult and do Adult Things like go to work. I was going to continue in that vein and it was going to be another kind of depressing song, but then I thought, "Fuck it," and decided I shan't be growing up any time soon. So there you go.

I'm kind of exhausted because it took me nearly an hour and a half to get an acceptable video on an evening when I was already tired. It took long enough that I had to take a break and look up the food chemistry behind kombucha with Jamie. I lost track of how many attempts it took; let's just say that a little chord-and-lyric sheet (like the one I had the wherewithal to make last week) would have been immensely useful. (All of this is to explain the little cheer at the end.)

I already have an idea and even a couple verses for next week's song, so hopefully it won't feel quite so last-minute as this one did. It will NOT be about current events.

What are you, new? Go to the first post to find out what this blog is all about!