Lack of motivation can be a great impetus to get reinvigorated. You reach a certain point on the same cycle, over and over and over and no longer care. That's how I've been feeling lately. Of course, because I've been so blase about the daily routines, somehow, a song came out of me this past Saturday, complete. It took
maybe 15 minutes to write the words and the chords were already there and waiting for me to notate before I picked up the guitar. I cannot tell you the last time that happened. Well over a decade ago, I'm sure. This Saturday is the target to actually record this and see if I can complete it in one day (just like past triumphs). The subject matter of the song is a former lover, who quite frankly, I hadn't thought about it in a while. Yet, the minute this memory was triggered, out popped a modern masterpiece.
That leads me to what I felt like writing about--in order to whet my own appetite for my book. Yes, yes, I know. But literally everyone has been cajoling me to just start writing it, by virtue of either some of my memories, experiences or stories that, as unbelievable as some of them seem, are true. And since the First Muse is coming to New York in July, that's as good of a jumping off point to begin--the adolescent, high-school kid. It's not as though the story starts there; it's the period of my life I've been trying to re-piece together as time (and I'm sure the ingestion of chemicals over the decades) has eroded a lot to the clarity of memory. ..
I know I was a chubby kid; smart but blindly angry at everyone and everything. I hated being in a prep school--and wasn't exactly liked by anyone, save for one or two people. One of those two people, I loved completely. She was the first and most importantly, she was my raison d'etre. Once I realized I was in love with her, my identity became clear--I was a songwriter. That sustained me, along with my religious fervor for punk and new wave. Seeing bands, buying records and knowing about it was the opening of the door from the suffocation of my Staten Island upbringing to the sinister-yet-seductive life in the city--especially in Soho and in the Village. I can see some of it as clearly as I had then, but I can't help but feel almost nostalgically sad that all of it is just a memory--forgotten by most. Having not seen First Muse since Sept. '91 (a less-than-five-minute chance encounter in a Staten Island breakfast eatery, while I was with my then-fiancee), I have to admit, I'm looking forward to seeing her and speaking to her face to face--it may help get even more of the facts in line as I try to take these random fits and starts of memory and lace it together as a linear thought for the damn book!
