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July 18, 2004
Cultivating boredom and dullness
While cleaning up the bookcase and an adjacent box of assorted junk, I realized:
- Well over half the books I own were intended as non-fiction.
- I've written only one work intended as fiction, Who Shot RR?.
- More than 12 tapes survive from the days when I used to record music with Dave, Daryll, and Brian.
I listened to one of those tapes, 8 songs Daryll and I recorded in the summer of 1993. After that, it felt like time to move away permanently, which I appear to have done since September of that year.
For one reason or another, Dave wasn't recording with us. I cannot recall why. The recording sounds like it's bubbling up through a film of old dishwater. Neither of us could mixdown like Dave.
In retrospect, all Daryll's songwriting from that summer strikes me as the sound of his marriage falling apart. My clueless guitar playing doesn't help. We should've called our recording Clowns at the Funeral. It takes all the wind from your sails and yet leaves your ears hot with embarrassment, an long, objective, critical look in the mirror. You could've said it was cute, but we were twentysomething going on early retirement. At least Daryll could sing.
Posted by Mark at July 18, 2004 02:23 PM