I’m not really sure why I decided to sit down and start singing. Like any other day, I was at my computer but I had been thinking about the promise I made to myself as a boy to not share the best of myself (or what I consider to be the best of myself: my music and visual art) with the world, and figured that 30 years had passed since I made that promise and honestly I felt that was sufficient time to say I had kept my promise. I mean, that’s 30 years of music I’ve never made and skills I’ve never developed and I’m really quite satisfied with my commitment to that.
All the music that might have been, and the success I might have enjoyed with it, and all the lives who might have been changed by that music.
Nada.
🙂
Again, happy with that.
So I gained lots of experience with Adobe’s sound editor software when I was working at English First for the 2008 Beijing summer games, the 2014 Brazil World Cup, and the other intensely intense online English language training I was writing, recording, and editing. So with that software experience, I sat down and started to write a song and then record it on the Adobe Audition software (named Soundbooth when I was working on the English projects).
I’m glad I called this first song “love by me” because it’s a good way to begin–by talking about love and love from me, or by me. I’ve changed the artwork but originally it was me but sort-of 1970’s era Cat Stevens-like because I loved his work when I was a boy, and I find that pouring layered opaque colours into a photograph is an option that can provide a good deal of artistic variety.
I remember listening to my first voice recordings and thinking, “god, I can’t sing.” LOL. Really, even though my voice has never been horrible, I was comparing myself to the pop stars I grew up with on the radio and thinking about how little I sounded like them. Obviously, that did not build confidence in myself nor did it help develop any kind of style that makes a song as unique as someone’s signature. So, I did what seemed obvious to me and processed the hell out of my voice, layering it and combining it and harmonizing and changing the speed and tone as I felt was necessary to feel comfortable with listening to myself. Actually, I was just trying to make myself sound a lot more like someone else.
It took a few days to lay down the entire track structure and lyrics, but I would tweak this damn thing for months. I literally worked hundreds of hours on this. I re-recorded, added, removed, or edited, and each change often took great effort. Hell, the voices at the song’s fade out was an overlapped mix of like 27 separate recordings of me speaking or carefully timing the vocals perfectly. That final minute of the song alone probably took me a couple of weeks of all-day efforts. Even if I recycled sounds, which I learned how to do, each and every note and vocal and supporting instrument sound had to be recorded and combined and edited until it became what it is now. If I had any free time in my work schedule, I would spend the entire day working on this, until late at night or sometimes all night. I recall several days where I went to work having had no sleep the night before. I assure you that this particular song-making process really sounds much easier than it was.
But this was and is a labor of love. No doubt. And I feel I new sense of purpose and reason with this medium where I have absolute creative control of everything I want to communicate. For me, this is a fantastically intimate approach to communication. Music is so much more colourful or dimensional than writing, and so much more deliberate or precise than visual art.
I started this song in May, stopped for a couple of weeks when I returned home to the USA, and then continued when I returned to China in July. I would tweak for several more months, and I wouldn’t share this publicly until March of 2015. I learned a lot on this song, and all of it the long, painfully slow way. I would continue learning and go back and make subtle changes as it helped improve the song, but mostly everything that I could have done wrong I probably experienced with this song and had to just find some tedious, manual method of correction to get the sound I wanted. My ignorance made it a lot harder for me to make what I made. LOL
I really thought the sound of my recorded musical voice was strange, and it was to me, but not just in the lyrical sense. This voice was new to me as I was expressing it, and it was me finally realizing something that I had shut away in a psychological basement somewhere for 30 years. Equally, I liked realizing what I could do with my talent in rhythm and editing, and that really fueled my interest to explore and experiment.
In the past, my lyrics were an interpretation of the work of others. I wanted to sound like the pop stars i grew up with, but my attempts never felt right because I knew it wasn’t really me who was speaking. That’s not the case anymore. I like the lyrics on this song because I’ve found my voice. Probably inspired by dad’s passing and my planned return to a more responsible life in the USA, I just felt and feel like I’ve grown up and into my own unique voice, and that has been a very cool experience for me still (as I write this), in ways that I’ll spare you because it’s cliched psycho-bunk that makes a bad, tired story.
But all of the psycho-bunk is true and it’s wonderful because it’s happening to me now, not to the pop stars I grew up with on the radio. Good for me.
This song’s lyrics talk about love and how I love (and fail to love) others. Of course I had a few people in mind when I wrote them. I always do, and not just lovers but friends or family or someone I saw on the street or colleagues or icons of some kind. What I enjoyed most was being brutally honest with myself and not giving myself light I don’t deserve to stand in. That’s something I’ve learned with age, thank Golly Doodle, as I really have had lots of opportunity over the long years to be brutally honest with myself. But that’s part of my own voice I think. I like the way I can show my internal struggle(s) in an honest way because even though that might make the listener feel really uncomfortable, I am at a place and point in my life where I really don’t give a flippy-flop about that so much; I don’t have to and/or I don’t want to and/or it’s best not to and/or I’ve learned not to and I am desperately trying to be more human–more like the listener I am repelling.
You can see the Morrissey influence there, right? My personal influences are and will be all over my lyrics, but unique to myself is the difference of opinion and belief I have in my relation to humanity and the natural world. I was educated initially as a scientist, not a musician. I did not grow up with legions of fans or sleep in hotels in world tours that lasted months. I did not make amounts of money that separated me from the people and things I claim to be singing about and for and with and to. I did not grow up a stranger’s star. My voice and my lyrics are unique and my own in this way, and they reveal a dramatic contrast between myself and career musicians, with which I am immensely content. That’s been a surprising benefit to my waiting until now to write and record again. With “love by me,” I realized that I am not like the pop stars I grew up with on the radio, and that makes me feel tremendously cool about myself. This isn’t just anyone; it’s me, and this is love by me. Pun intended, let’s enjoy the hell out of the ride.
*******about the LYRICS (in bold)********
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I can spend some time breaking down the lyrics now and talking really slowly so you can understand. LOL. Seriously, I’m going to make some extra effort with this first song to set an example. I want to make clear that there is quite a lot of my mind in these things, and I have always liked to consider myself a more cerebral kind of person than a blunt object, and I want this music to be my communication. I want it to speak for me as only it can do:
I once was told sex with me was like going to church, so with the self-analysis and self-justification that usually goes with the highs and lows of love, love by me is “home-grown psychology” where “sex is church.” Like I will continue to do, I use my experience as a language trainer to incorporate all sorts of rules of the language or tricks of the trade, and this essay’s thesis is in those two phrases.
“(but) you can see that you and I were never meant to be” is me being non-committal, which needs no proof because I am happily single by choice
“and i concede with an ampersand” refers to dating and ending relations online, as many of our day do
“a wicked man makes another seem the better by comparison” = there are worse out there
“in hell” I won’t talk about what is so often talked about in love songs or pop music; I think it’s more relevant to express how romantic decisions are made by fear or loathing or anger or some less-noble reason; we grow and learn from adversity and big, bad, ugly things
you take my hand
and my whole life too
make a pair
of an animal who simply does not give a damn
as an English trainer, I’ve conjugated thousands of verbs thousands of times, so you’ll commonly see me do that in my lyrics. I also play on words and use phrases that are deliberately ambiguous not only because other lyricists do but because it originates from my experience in language training. I’m obviously not a big fan of my species–a theme that will repeat itself many times in the future
and i will romance goodbye
i understand
interpretation is my spiritual philanthropy
in hell
I have always been best at goodbyes. I am at my most romantic when I’m saying farewell. I use that in relationships to save face and then interpret and justify my way into thinking I made the right or best decision conclusively, but actually it’s circular reasoning at best and keeps me lost in an endless rotation of love and loss and love and loss–a personal hell.
***
waiting line
let’s get a drink
thanks i don’t smoke
these are the best days of my life
wait in line
you’ve got the time you’ve the got the place
you’ve got a life that’s yours to waste
you’ve earned the limelight that is blinding you
don’t worry
everything’s alright
***
I don’t sound convincing here because I don’t want to. Rest assured with me and love, nothing’s probably alright. LOL
and it is love by me again but am i like you
count the reasons that are cause for us to mitigate
and I am also equally so not like you, but only feign my emotions to simulate the behavior I see in other humans.
and i will romance goodbye
i understand
interpretation _protects our notoriety
Again, I can justify with the best of them and make myself feel good about anything–righteous or not–I do while romantically involved
there isn’t more for me to say when it is clear
that in matters of the heart there’s truth and consequence
some broken things don’t mend and repair
there not supposed to
better to have loved and lost than remain innocent
in hell
I draw a disgusting comparison between the loss of a woman’s virginity and my own reasoning to justify what I do; again, it’s hell, but I quite like that it’s my own personal space. Because this was my first one, this is as much a declaration of self for me as anything lyrically. I’m realizing something’s broken but, yeah, welcome to the nature of life and my new musical life.
***
waiting line
let’s get a drink
thanks i don’t smoke
these are the best days of your life
wait in line
you’ve got the time you’ve the got the place
you’ve got a life that’s yours to waste
you’ve earned the limelight that is binding you
don’t worry
everything’s alright
“you’ve got a life that’s yours to waste,” is from a longtime friend of mine, from sometime in 1988 or so.
If the limelight is not blinding you with success, then you are obligated and are still in a kind of hell.
Again, nothing is alright.
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