[NOTE: The songs are downloading a little slowly - my hosting provider might be throttling bandwidth. I cleared this with them first, so I hope this isn't a prelude to being shut down again (they accused me of "massively sharing massively massive files massively" and made it so I couldn't add any new files to Neopoleon - this time, though, I have the transcript showing that I got permission to post these things, so I've got that on my side). If this is a preemptive strike, I'll switch to a host that doesn't suck infinitely. Currently in my "grace period" to decide if I want to renew. Have just a few more days before I have to choose. We'll see how this goes...]
Unfortunately, the economic downturn hasn't affected the company I work for at all.
Nor have I contracted and then died from the Pig Fever that's supposedly going around.
Had either of these things happened, I might have sufficient free time to return to my duties here as "that one guy on the internet who wrote some stuff that one time that was kind of funny and so I bookmarked it and then told my friends about it and then was embarrassed when he didn't update for months and now I feel stupid but I still check his site to see if he's posted because, if nothing else, he's totally hot and I want him to sire my offspring."
I'm too busy for that, too, by the by. If you want offspring sired, I recommend you go to one of those special "banks" where there's a whole lot of SOMETHING going on that doesn't seem to involve money, but does have a reputation for somehow contributing to successful conceptions.
I'm glad I'm writing this and not trying to say it.
"Successful conceptions."
That doesn't roll off the tongue too easily, but I'm just now realizing it'd be a good name for one of those consulting firms that are hugely successful, but nobody knows what they do.
Maybe it has something to do with those banks [wink, wink]. Or maybe they cut out the "bank" altogether and deliver the service directly.
Now that I think of it, I've just described male prostitution.
Anyway, that's what I recommend if you're looking to get something sired. I'm much too busy, and...
How did I get on this subject?
I come back here to post my charming little oh-hello-haven't-talked-to-YOU-in-a-while message, and, by the third paragraph, I'm already well on my way to suggesting that you hire an illegal sex worker as a sperm donor to help create these children of yours that I want nothing to do with but that you CAN'T SHUT UP ABOUT.
Let's move on, eh? I get it. You want to have little Rory babies. I'm flattered. Really. But I had a reason for posting tonight, and although I've forgotten it, I'm going to keep on going because to stop would be to let YOU win.
Oh, hey - news flash, people - I just remembered. Sorta.
Music.
One of the nice things about being extremely busy at work and, at least until recently, extremely busy watching your relationship go down like the Titanic (but in a slightly different telling of the story where, after nailing the ice-berg, the Titanic gets hit by an asteroid) is that you don't have a lot of time to express yourself. All the thoughts in your head you'd usually share with someone else just get stuck there.
You ignore it and ignore it and ignore it, but it eventually forces its way out.
Handled poorly, you'll deal with your brainsplosion by chatting up the person next to you on the bus, but a little too intensely, leaving your fellow passenger gobsmacked and wondering what you meant when, in the middle of your spittle-laced blabbering rant, you said "Jesus noodles," paused, stared off into space for a moment, and then, with a nod, added "Yep... Jesus noodles... all the way..." as though the importance of your words was self-evident.
Handled gracefully, each morning for two straight weeks, songs will pop into your head almost fully formed while you shower, and you'll scramble to write everything down before it disappears.
Here and there, to preserve your sanity, you'll punch an hour-shaped-hole into your schedule for doing a super crappy Garage Band demo recording of the first minute or two of a song. Those demos are supposed to be sent to Felix so he can be ready for you when you go into the studio sometime in the next month or two, but the desire to share them is... tempting.
It's also probably a mistake, but compared to some other mistakes I've made in my life, I think I can handle it.
The reason it's probably a mistake is that these things aren't even close to being finished. These recordings are scratch takes - they're the equivalent of scribbling down your idea for the Flux-Capacitor on a sheet of toilet paper after you slip and hit your head on the sink.
They're so ghetto that, in one of them, you can actually hear my dryer in the background. I don't have anyplace quiet to record, and I only have one mic, and that one mic picks up everything.
But, still... it must be done. I have to share something. I must. I gotsta. I jest gotsta. So I'm gonna share two of the half-baked, undercooked, would-tolly-give-you-food-poisoning versions of the songs I've been working on. It was hard to pick which two sources of musical botulism to post. I decided on these because... well, just because.
The first one is called All the Time in the World - I recorded it on Thursday night (laundry night).
Basically, there's, like, this girl who left me a message on Facebook recently. She wanted to know if I remembered her. Or if I'd forgotten about her. I don't know. I forget.
But I do remember thinking about how absurd it was that one of my favorite people in the universe thought she'd been forgotten. Not absurd because of anything she did, but absurd because it's an indication of just how much I've withdrawn.
So, no. I haven't forgotten her.
The song is about two weeks. One week There and one week Here. Both times, I felt like we had "an entire week" to be with each other, do things, go places, see stuff... but it turns out that "an entire week" is a you-gotta-be-kidding-me amount of time if it's the limit of your visit with a girl like that. I was left feeling like those two weeks would have been just fine if they'd only been followed by a few thousand more just like them.
We started off lying on her deck at 3:00 AM, looking up, talking about Stuff, slowly shifting toward each other...
A week later, we ended with the sun coming up in my hotel room while I rambled off one-hundred things about her that I found exquisite.
The next time we were together was basically the same: "An entire week! Woo-hoo! A whole we-... What? It's over?"
I haven't seen her since, and I have this fear that I'll never see her again. This song, then, is about trying to capture those few thousand weeks I wanted with her in a few minutes. What I've recorded is the first half of the song (in a rough form that'll be very, very modified in the studio):
- All the Time in the World - The Rough Garbage Throwaway Demo Test Crap Version
The other song is about my French grandmother.
I miss her. A lot. Like, try to imagine "a lot" (the quantity - not an empty square of cement where you park your car), and then try to make it bigger. Make it lot's of a lot. Keep adding to it. You'll know you've finally arrived at my version of "a lot" when you can't take it anymore and your head explodes (I've had a lot of practice missing her, so I've gotten much better at doing it without my head exploding - I probably should've warned you, but, like the disclaimer says, this site's content is provided as-is, and if you explode your brain by following my directions, it's not my fault (moron)).
This song is even rougher than the last. It's also a smaller snippet - about a third of the lyrics are present, and the music is as bare-bones as it can be while still being sufficient to get the idea across:
- Lady Underground - The Rough Garbage Throwaway Demo Test Crap Version
And that's about it for tonight.
I hope you like this stuff. I'm nervous about sharing what are potential songs rather than completed songs (or started songs), but, like I done said, I wanted to, gosta'd to share some of what I've been working on.
You can leave now and go listen to the music.
If the rest of you are curious, here are the lyrics for the songs (only the lyrics from the recorded portions are given):
- All the Time in the World -
I've got
All the time in the world
Before gravity
Brings down the dirt
I don't know
Where I'll be
When they
Come to bury me
Live a life
In a moment
With her
Always close
To my
Favorite girl
All I see
Are her blue eyes
That wrinkle now
In the corners when she smiles...
...which is all the time
She's a
Band of gold
Around me
Hold me tight
Bound to her
I'm free
More beautiful
With each passing day
I don't know
Don't know what...
...to say
She's got
All the time in the world
The grain of sand
That becomes a pearl
When she throws
Her arms around her love
And cries
At the joy she's found
Well, I feel...
...well, I feel alive
We've got
All the time in the world
We've got
All the time in the world
[That's about halfway through the song and where the scratch demo garbage test version quits.]
- Lady Underground -
If she called
From the afterlife
This one I lost
Well I might see the light
But till then
For her
There'll never be
An again
Lady, lady, lady...
In the ground
I fall to my knees
Get grass stains on my jeans
As I scream
And as I pound
Lady, lady, lady...
You had no right
And I'm afraid
You really left
That August night
And we buried here
What you left behind
A body left
Without a life
Lady, lady, lady...
I just believe
In what I see
I grieve because
There's no mystery
[That's about a third of the song. The other four-fifths or twelve-eighteenths or whatever the remaining fraction is will be sung in the studio where, it is presumed, someone who actually knows how recording software works will be handling things for me so it won't sound like crap.]
Aight.
I'm going to bed.