Tuesday, November 12, 2013

One of the things I love most about various art is how a smaller piece of the work can jump out of its context and perfectly encapsulate a moment or emotion or thought from your own life. An accidental, hidden shard of mirror waiting for you to see yourself. And when you see it, it's like you get to see a part of yourself from the outside. Or be reminded of something you had forgotten but was always there lingering behind the fog. 
And these things give everything a million different meanings that the artist never consciously put there. It's accidental adaptability. A surprise couture experience that can't be created on purpose. 

I've been reading This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, and the following lines jumped out at me in just that way. 

"You are on your way to another life. You won't have time to miss me."
"This is what I know: people's hopes go on forever."
"We didn't know it was the last days but we should have."

I sometimes wonder if other people have this kind of experience with my music. I imagine it must happen every now and then. I wonder what lines jump out at them, and why. What moments from their own life they conjure. What it makes them think the song means. And if it's completely different from what I thought I was actually writing about. I suppose that's why I prefer to not explain songs. What I mean when I write them is secondary compared to what it means to an individual while they listen. I'd rather leave it open to mean whatever they want it to. 

That way I wrote one hundred different songs. Without even trying. 

Monday, November 11, 2013

a (very) short story

i wish foolish things
didn't make me anxious,
he said. 
it shouldn't make me
vibrate so. 

she said nothing. 
she wasn't in the room
city
conversation. 

in certain spaces
echoes can vibrate forever.