sucktober

today is one of those days where the temperature is mostly dangling just above freezing, the wind is blowing, but not too hard, and bruise-colored clouds are sliding across the sky above skeletal tree branches. it feels like the beginning of fall.

but it's FUCKING APRIL 15th.

by the way, mother nature stepped up to the plate and ensured that, by dropping a trace amount of snow from the sky earlier this afternoon, winter has officially lasted six months. october 15th to april 15th. sigh.

and because of the 30 to 70 to 30 shift we've undergone in the last five days, my sinuses fucking feel like they have miniature freight trains covered in sandpaper running through them.

poor RA's over on his blog talking about NYMag and their bizarro ryan-adams-romance gossiping again. i can't freaking imagine how much that must suck. i know how annoyed i get when even people i know and love assume they know what's going on in a relationship with a girl i might or might not even be having. i can't imagine what it's like to have people you don't know at all not only make huge suppositions about your personal life, but also publish and broadcast those suppositions to tons of other people with an implied agenda that it's intended as evidence for personal judgment. the celebrity media is bullshit. get your own life. maybe if you did, you'd be a little fucking happier and you wouldn't make everyone around you smaller and more miserable either. grow up. fuck.

i've decided that i can't write music right now for some reason. i'll keep trying, but after writing most of the Ricochet album, all of the Blues EP (which i haven't started recording yet) and half of the two-side third LP (which doesn't have a name yet), i've run into a songwriting wall. i think it comes with the territory of only mostly having yourself to reflect off of for awhile. everything i write lately feels like i've already written it before. i might try writing some instrumental mash-up type things. to take my focus off of lyrics for awhile, to give me some rudimentary practice at samples, some more practice at recording in different environments, and more practice at piano (if i did an instrumental session, it would be piano-centric). but what i AM going to do is force myself to write. i always envision things in terms of the big picture, like i have to write an album, or even a whole song, or i have to write a book, or an article, or a short story. and so i freeze up. it's the same feeling you get when you sit down to write a term paper and have to stare at the empty computer screen for hours before you can start. just imagine that pressure but applied to a work of musical art that is pretty much going to represent the entire extent of your ability at the one thing in life that really means a lot to you. yeah. too much pressure. bailing time.

so i'm just going to write for awhile, and post, and see what happens. i might not be able to rip through an album's worth of writing every three months like i was doing back in the day, but that doesn't mean i can't work through enough things that i can at least put down a turn of phrase or something that matters a little every day, instead of doing nothing every day because i'm afraid to deal with the enormity of the task i've set before myself.

life's hard enough as it is. i'm just gonna go with it. i have to relearn the ability to listen and not drown everything out by just talking to myself all the time. so here goes.