“I Could Use a Little More… Me…”

11-08-09

I used to think of myself as a writer. I don’t mean songwriter or composer—those are titles I feel pretty consistent about—but writer in the literary sense. I just didn’t really have the forum to exercise my skills (and—just maybe—talents). I’m no Nick Tosches, but I feel I can turn a decent phrase. This whole blog thing has always been a little suspect to me. Seems very Baby Boomer, very, “Look, Mommy, I go poopy!” It smacks of vanity press gone Frankenstein.

I’ve given in.

Writing like this is very cathartic. I HATE journal writing—ask anyone from my master’s program. There’s just something squidgy about committing my private thoughts and feelings to paper where anyone can just go and… read them (shudder…). My friend Kate shares the same opinion. There’s a reason why all of these voices are locked inside my head; to let them out would get me locked up somewhere. This is different. I might throw the odd private thought in but this isn’t my Dear Diary.

So why did I give in? Well, I started a production blog for the as-yet-untitled EP I’m working on with David Steadman from Floodwatch. Our side project is called My Father’s Guns (ask David, not me). It’s been so much fun working with him on something that is so different for us that I thought other people should be let in on the experience. Thus, the MFG blog.

I’ve gotten some nice feedback about the blog, not just with regards to letting people hang out with MFG in the home studio by proxy, but also because some people have actually enjoyed my writing style. One person (who shall remain nameless) did, however, bust me for not writing very much about my contributions to the MFG recording process. The reason is simply that, despite all of my joking to the contrary, I’m not a fan of writing about myself.

I was a pretty bright kid. Lots of things came to me rather easily. Not money, to be sure, but academics and general artistic pursuits. That’s not always a great place to be in. People tend to resent the classmate who always seems to get the answer before most of the class. You don’t want to be getting straight A’s in algebra when everybody else is bent over backwards to get C’s. People struggling with stick figures don’t want to see your moody sketch work. I can pick up just about any instrument and get a convincingly music-like noise out of it in fairly short order; people who can barely play a radio want to punch me in the face. It’s sort of like the scene in Good Will Hunting when Ben Afleck’s character tells Matt Damon’s character he’ll kill him if he stays working in construction.

Reading back the last couple of paragraphs, even I want to punch me in the face. There are plenty of people in this world who struggle with massive adversity, and here I am bemoaning getting flack for being good at stuff. I sound like some Hollywood gob or grunge-era rock star crying about being loved by millions. All I’m trying to say is, you get a bit of a complex when you’re That Guy.

So… I am going to try to blog about my solo recording project, Eutoxita (this record is also as-yet-untitled) without sounding like I’m madly in love with myself but, rather, from the standpoint that somebody might find it interesting, amusing, or at least worthy of ridicule.