I mentioned in a post last week that I’ve written about 100 songs, 80 or so which have been recorded on the seven CDs released from that time to 2021. What I didn’t say is that there are at least that many more that you, nor any other living entity on Earth, will ever hear. I tried writing lyrics over the years in the 80s and 90s — absolute garbage. I, like many others, thought I’ll never, ever be able to pen something that wasn’t clichéd, trite, just plain ol’ crap.
In 2004 I journeyed by car between Arizona and Kansas several times as it was the year my dad died. When I’m driving for eight to nine hours at a time I start to have some sort of stream of consciousness kick in around hour four. It was these drives along with the life changes that year (dad died, bought our first house, got married, turned fifty, landed my first adult job with benefits) that somehow triggered stringing words together that were less clichéd, trite, just plain ol’ crap. It was a start.
One set of lyrics did survive the great paper burning of the 90s—it was Lost In the Graveyard which I remember jotting out in the period when I lived in Barrio Viejo, just south of the Cushing Street Bar. Somehow I held onto those in some Manila file folder over the years. So it was in 2005, with a few other songs with lyrics that I felt were just past the tipping point on the worthy-meter, that I recorded my second CD titled Lost In the Graveyard. (The first CD, Step Right Up!, was all instrumental) I even made a video for that song in 2009 that I posted on youtube:
As it turns out, Graveyard is the most played of all my songs on digital platforms and such. I earn tens of dollars per year making my retirement years quite discomforting. I also penned a song for my pa on that CD titled He Was Here. I had never sung in public, and some say I still shouldn’t, but fuck it, I now have SONGS WITH LYRICS! So, when we recorded that one in 2004, Catherine Zavala, my trusted friend from the Mollys days, sang it with me…she brought along a thermos of hot tea mixed with Jameson Irish Whiskey to get through that session. After several attempts we got one that we could live with.
In the visual art world, there are only a few things from the late 80s that I thought had any thunder, hardly anything from the 90s I lay claim to (excepting, perhaps, the public art from the Miracle Mile project), and then not much that didn’t end up in the landfill until after 2011 or so. Every time I think I’m starting to see progress in my work, work that has some sort of unnamed power, I end up trashing half of the stuff, crap you’ll never see.
All this is to say if you think that there are special people called artists who, by some act of God or other unicorn-esque magical fantasy, come out of the chute with some amazing built-in powers of complete genius from day one, think again. OK, Picasso created some amazing paintings in his single digit period, but people like him are anomalies. Oh, alright, Lennon and McCartney did pretty good as teenagers…sheesh. But, for me, I’ve found that it’s simply about going to work in my studio and seeing what happens that day. I will say that having a specific space that is just for doing the work makes a difference. I built my studio in 2007 and I can leave everything as is when I’m done for the day (thank you ten years of adult day job).
And now I’m trying my hand at a bit of writing. I find if I don’t sit down to WRITE but just transcribe what’s on my mind, it’s somewhat acceptable. Also, I’m 67 years old so I don’t really care anymore what other people think of anything I do. I’m not trying to MAKE IT or be a SUCCESS (although, I wouldn’t be opposed to having some sort of gallery representation of my larger, pricier works while I’m above the dirt). That’s a pretty freeing concept. Certainly much less stress.
So with all of that out of the way, my KC friend Pat Tomek recently posted a cartoon from the Oatmeal, a quite witty conglomerate of philosophical comics about stumbling through life. Matthew Inman is the artist and he hates nautically-themed bathrooms. I recently subscribed to his blog.
Here Inman explains the process of creation, from music to visual art, story-telling to life in general. What he’s done in a few strokes of his pencil/eraser/pen sums up the earlier ramblings in this post quite well.
And now…
Great post, loved the Matthew Inman cartoon! Now I need to get to work ... thanks
I worked with Charley Barsotti (cartoonist for the New Yorker, USA Today, Playboy, many others) for nearly 20 years. Above his computer screen was a quote from Chuck Close: "Inspiration is for amateurs. Professionals show up and get to work." And work, I think, looks a lot like the Oatmeal cartoon above.