The Light of Day

vox take 1 | vox take 2 | vox take 3 | vox take 4 | acou guit

I’m currently making observations about the strange relationship between muse, inspiration, physical and mental energy, sleep, and Being Fucking Exhausted^TM. I’ve been Fucking Exhausted^TM (and emotionally raw) at work because in the evenings I’ve been actually getting down to business and burning the not-quite-midnight oil on vocal and guitar tracks — more on those in a bit — instead of vegging like most 9-to-5′ers.

Today at work I felt like I was at the end of my rope, running on fumes, whatever phrase you want to use. The natural conclusion would be that I would get home and pass out. But I’m choosing to keep the creative momentum going, so tonight for the third night in a row I perform with a level of intensity comparable to stage performance. And here it is, close to midnight, and I actually feel less tired. I don’t even feel “insane” or disoriented like I would if this were a typical second wind. Maybe there is a lesson in all this. Maybe I should pay closer attention to what it is in life that depletes me, and what it is that energizes me. Maybe those aren’t just words.

So for the rundown:

Wednesday night, I come home feeling not too happy, and it’s absolutely time to do something cathartic. Having just sorted through a lot of old papers in my drawers, I’d recently found the lyrics to Tea-Time Pow-Wow, which has also gone by Mystery Guest as a working title. I’d kind of forgotten it. It’s on the louder, rockier end. The music is way old, being a reject from an early draft of TFBD. The lyrics were hard to come up with, and never really complete or final, so at some point in the last few years I forced something out and then used Hal Whippy to come up with some abstract-ish word substitutions here and there. It’s kind of my inner demon singing to me (”I’m the voice inside your head/That won’t shut up until you’re dead/Or substantially misled”).

George’s band down the hall was practicing, and being that they’re several rooms down, if I close my window and my door they’re relatively quiet and I can easily drown them out. A common dynamic microphone doesn’t seem to pick them up at all. So I ran through six takes, and I’ll be picking out bits from each of them. The silver lining to George’s (awful) band is that I was able to start singing in my room without feeling conspicuous.

Thursday, it’s another “bad day”, and again I need to cathart. This time I pull up Wheel (working title, will probably be Broken Wheel because that’s what it’s about, even if Christy says that sounds country). I immediately realize it needs acoustic guitar, and do two quick takes of that all the way through before doing five vocal takes. Same deal otherwise.

Tonight, I did Curtis’ Classic Collection of Comforts. I’ve made several attempts to start work on this song, but I never quite know the right tempo. So I just did it “live” as guitar and voice, with two mics. Third take is best overall, but I may drop in bits from the others.

It’s possible that I’m on a roll because I need the emotional outlet. None of what I’m recording is out of a feeling of obligation to finish stuff, but out of a genuine need to go to “that place”. I imagine certain people seeing this otherwise unknown aspect of me, and how they would react to it … seeing me in a sparsely lit room with headphones and a makeshift windscreen, just singing this stuff and really being “there”.

In other words, it’s just like the old days.