Why do I have this page to do this?
Not sure if it is mostly a product of modernity, my old age and lack of self-discipline, or other forces at work... but I find it exceptionally hard to make myself sit and write a coherent thought in more than a single paragraph on paper. I need a place to organize my thoughts for this album in paragraph form, and so this blog will do. My little notebooks are for scribble and phrases and poetry, forms and things that do not fit well on a website format. Websites are too stiff and sterile. Pencil and paper know no bounds.
I also hope the structure of this helps motivate others to do the same and see it as a totally reasonable and achievable product. Writing, or even in this case, typing, releases pressure from the soul and the head. If video games are full of silly little objectives to make us feel like we are achieving something in fictional land, writing releases the same feelings but actually can be tied to us producing something tangible and real; human.
A cover song
I have decided I will add a cover song to this album Fossil Tails: "The Other Side of the World" by the band Swans. Prior to seeing Swans play live, it rarely crossed my mind to consider music from an endurance act as the expulsion of sweat and work. But within two years this viewpoint came into my mind strongly, and I blame two events for this: 1) Seeing Swans play. 2) Seeing Dan Deacon play a complete version of his album Spiderman of the Rings and Ultimate Reality. Witnessing the simultaneous pain and joy of playing in both cases made me discover yet another layer to creating art as an adult, and bringing new life and meaning for me to the band Cursive's literal existence. You strain to create, and in this act you force yourself to reach and reach and reach and work and out of it comes something brutal and real and very human. Any inauthenticity immediately gets in the way.
This song by Swans reminds me of their style of performance: brutal, extending, a practice in endurance as much of a practice in marrying dissonance and melody. The song also speaks of and intangible force of optimism felt by the speaker of the song. Movements of the body, sensations, reactions, able to harness mysterious things unspoken but without thinking. And each set of verses and all of this is concluded with the phrase "On the other side of the world;" a reminder to keep in mind context of current life; that elsewhere things may be different and pleasurable and extremely natural, sometimes contrary to what is being felt here at the moment.
In encouraging our protagonist to "just move," on the album I am working on, perhaps it could help to consider these things....and so I will throw it in there and see how it feels amongst the other tracks. If it fits, great. If not, I will toss it. Either way, I had a cover of it recorded from a few years back that I enjoyed playing so perhaps it will work.
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