Restraint

The title might bring to mind a more grandiose topic, but what it alludes to is my current desire to push on past a small neurotic blog comfort zone. There has been an urge (usually acted upon) in the past where I scour over previous entries and edit, correct and cleanse. For whom and for why? It's not worth the effort. I will not go back to fix the handful of typos in my previous couple entries... I will let them stand. You know what word I meant, so it will stand. Surely I retain some of my retentive ways, but I'd like to add a few hours to my life by not trifling with such unnecessary details. Should I spend my time fixing some syntax while I could be creating something new? I think not. It's not the best use of my "talents." Create. Create. And keep on creating. Whatever it may be. This will hold true for music as well. Make something new, put it out there, good or bad, and move on to the next. How many things have I been sitting on for how many years? Rhetorical question, but there is an answer... many things for many years. I've got a wee window of opportunity and I best push out as much as I can in the time I have. That bus might take me out tomorrow (one more reason to be against mass transit) and if all my creative mojo is only in my brain rather than recorded in some form for those that would care, well, it's just lost. Bummer. Glen Tilbrook, one of the songwriters for Squeeze said in an interview If I allowed it to be some craft where I'm working for inspiration, I think I probably would have written 30 songs by now. Instead I've written a couple thousand. Not all of them are good, but I learned – again, early on – that some songs would just come to you, and that would be great. Other songs you have to work really hard at. And that can still be great. Other songs you work really hard at, and they would be rubbish. There's all sorts of in between, you know. When I wrote music for "Tempted," that took me a week. I know that Bob Dylan quote that if it's not done in a couple of hours it's not worth it - well, not in my experience. Sometimes you can labor onto something. But sometimes writing music is like creating a piece of sculpture, you're sitting there chipping away at this block of marble. And you take a step back from it and see how you can change it, and see if you make it more beautiful. But the route to getting there isn't always clear. I think that sentiment translates into other arenas as well, artistic, political, etc. For what all that's worth.

I've decided that Maggie and Mickey (black dog and brown dog, respectively) are so happy because they live in the moment. At most they know there is a tomorrow, but they don't know there's an inevitable end. We have to come to peace with the inevitable in whatever way makes us best able to live in the moment. Moe (white cat), on the other hand, he may not know of the inevitable end, but I think he hopes there is one... especially for the dogs.

Speaking of dogs and orangutans. You should watch this craziness.