• 3:02 AM
  then ZZ Top comes in and saves me

As is our routine, Thursday is a night to work on music and production with Kris. He came over and said he was helping Eloise and Aleksandra write new songs. Then he started showing me a new song on guitar. I started feeling jealous. "That's pretty good. You wrote that for Eloise?" "No, no. This is something I came up with right before coming over." So! We developed that idea for a while. We hit a sticking point when Kris realized that his new song had the same rhythm as another song of ours. Fortunately, we had put down a bunch of careless ideas before we managed to crush our own creativity by worrying about how creative we were being. I don't like writing songs to technique or to antithesis, but I can't say it's a bad way to work. You sure do come up with some technical or not-like-other-song sounding stuff that way. We wound up with both - a strange groove caught somewhere between 3/4 and 12/8.

It's hard to remain in the semi-floaty-headed seat-of-the-pants low-mental-focus state of mind that makes composition go fastest. Sometimes subtle background distractions help me stay in that state. I think they might occupy some of my compulsive brain parts. Those compulsive brain parts are bastards. The whole time I'm making anything, they're like a heckling audience, booing and mocking the part that's creating. Many times I will be vocalizing these jeers as I work. "Okay, I'm putting down something stupid." (coming up with a guitar part) "I could do this, but it sucks" (charting out a song transition) God forbid I try to hold an idea in my head that goes against the left brain. This can create a specific breathless state of suspended self-denial which reminds me of tinnitus - an oppressive, intractable presence. I recognize this feeling when it happens now, and remind myself that I'm clinging to an idea which may turn out to be important to me.

Oh good, the internal critic just showed up. "Look at all those words - who do you think you are, Ernest Hemingway? Are you concerned about how bad you're going to feel when you see this stuff later and recognize an idiot?" Uh, yep. Thanks internal critic. Seeya later.

I guess all that is a cloud around the topic of composition techniques. Kris has an intense dislike for writing a song which has certain elements in common with another song he's written. It doesn't bug him to write a song which sounds like something someone else has written (unless that someone is me, since we're on the same project). I tend to think the same way, unfortunately. It is impossible to compose freely unless I let myself revisit things I've already done. And if we're not putting down the ideas as they come just because we might've had a similar idea earlier, well.. there's something in there that feels like arrogance. Like every idea has to be some kind of revelation. It's not the case. Most of these ideas won't make it past these speakers in my house. The first time we come up with some particular fragment may not be the best expression of it. These are my arguments against my issues. It's tough to see Kris stuck in the same issue, cause I'm not confident enough in this stance to explain it.

Darth oversees all production activity at my house.
He holds one of Kris' repurposed banjo fingerpicks.
Don't ask me, he just likes the way they sound.