That’s me in the garage.

That’s me in the garage.

Improvising music on an old cast-off electronic keyboard we no longer have room for in the house. It’s cold and I’m surrounded by boxes marked ‘Storage’, as well as a random assortment of bags of clothes we plan to give to Goodwill. 

The music, such as it is, is a collection of scribbled notes on paper that I and I alone can read. It’s messy, but purposefully so. No polish, no finished product; this is me in my element in the rawest form, pushing around ideas and seeing what sticks.

It’s my sonic playground where nothing is set in stone and everything, and I mean everything, is up for revision if not flat-out deletion.

In this state I usually have difficulty keeping track of where I am - I’ll glance up at the page only to see violently crossed out material with a large arrow pointing me in an entirely different place on the score. Or maybe something circled with a note to myself floating above. Pencils fall off the keys, page turns become a nightmare; I try my best to keep the music going and match or guess the best intentions.

And yet, this process is indispensable.

This kind of repeated shaping of the material in real-time is how things get developed, how things get done. It’s private and except for this recording, never sees the light of day.

It’s a process repeated over and over and over again: trying to get things just right, trying to understand just what it is I’m trying to express.

It’s something I’m now used to, having long since given up on ideas of ‘perfection’, whatever that means.

The good stuff comes from the messy stuff; I know that now.

Here it is.

#SeventeenMinutesandTwentyTwoSeconds