Today is an Elliot Smith Day.
Some days are.
Perfect music to work with… I can tune in and out of it.
Some of it washes gently over me, barely making a ripple on my consciousness, my brain carries on working and thinking. Here, it masks the noise of people passing by in Birdcage Walk below.
But then I find myself tuning back in again for occasional lines
“The moon is a sickle cell, it’ll kill you in time…” (Coming up Roses)
“The enemy is within, don’t confuse me with him…” (Stupidity Tries)
“It’s all about taking the easy way out for you I suppose…” (Easy Way Out)
And I wonder what effect if any these lines have on my work, or whether the rhythm of the zoning in and out is like a sort of brain-breathing thing? Sometimes, I sit back, sing a whole song, then go back under again.
I always seem to come up for Waltz #2…
Then back to work…
“in the place where I make no mistakes, in the place where I have what it takes…”
Then occasionally I come out somewhere unexpected, disorientated, wondering who it is that’s singing, convinced I’ve never heard this track before.
I don’t always work with music. Sometimes only silence will do, or the outside noises that today I’m trying to drown out. It’s just a mood thing.
But the first thing I installed in this new space was the capacity to play music. Everything else followed that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBxYfLqKyew
Things are going well in the making. I still layer these scraps up, plugging gaps while trying to leave areas exposed. It is instinctive, the size and shape and positioning of each little bit. It might look disorganised, random, but I have a strict set of mental rules about what is right and works and what is totally wrong.
I have a few things in mind that have to be made, to satisfy this urge of work, these protective items I feel compelled to make. But in the distance, I see a rising dust cloud of something different approaching. I don’t know how long it’ll take to get here. But it will. I think it might be something big… what I’m making now are tests and trials, and experiments in preparation for something yet unidentified….
