I have an overwhelming urge to go buy a jigsaw puzzle.
It’s something about those perfect little fits, and how one piece that looks as though – yes – it will be exactly the piece you need winds up having nothing to do with the space you have to fill while the correct one has been resting exactly three and one quarter inches from your right foot the entire time because you dropped it when you first opened the box.
Something about that. Something about how i keep looking for the pieces that fit into parts of my life, but some of the holes seem to be getting plugged up almost by mistake.
It would be nice if the puzzle was pretty, too.
I haven’t got the slightest idea of what’s happened anywhere on Earth, the internet, or otherwise within the last 24 hours as i’ve spent the entire time alternately sleeping, reading my big three internet comics (Goats – Bobbins – Penny Arcade), and playing Grand Theft Auto 3.
And here you thought i wasted enough time just by blogging.
For those of you without plans tonight, my favorite guitar player (and one of my favorite songwriters) Peter Mulvey is playing At The Point @ 8pm for $12; the R3 Rail Line will get you within two blocks of The Point. Aside from seeing an excellent live performance, you would get to see me, my mom, Elise, and maybe (if we’re lucky) Rabi.
Come on, you know you want to.
I’m starting to feel sorry for the records. Not all of them, but boxes upon boxes.
Even though my taste in music runs pretty slim these days, i’m not ignorant; i know my Evelyn Champagne King, my DJ Shadow, my No Limits crew, and my Jets singles with blue rainbowed MCA labels on them. Still, i find myself going through boxes of LPs and singles, primarily Hip Hop, and not recognizing a single name. At first i was prone to write this off to ignorance, but after a week i’m sure that isn’t the case. The records i’m pawing through aren’t all big name acts … instead, they are debut singles, self-owned labels, and one hit wonders looking for a rebound. I don’t know them because they aren’t known.
The thing that gets me about these records, though, is the effort they took. It takes a couple of hours for me to get ready for a Trio, not counting the time i spent writing, arranging, and practicing. It took me an on&off month in the studio to record my demo cd, which is nearly all solo. How long do you think it takes to record a solid hip hop track? Brainstorming and refining the rhymes, finding a hook or a sample to build on, getting into the studio to lay it down, adding other instruments, remixing and editing …it’s a long labor. And, a labor of love. Singer-songwriter snob that i am, i tend to marginalize a lot of urban artists because they don’t write their own music and play their own instruments. But, they’re not Celine Dion, that’s for sure. They own the words, they built the beat, and they might have produced on it as well. Forgetting for a moment about their ridik-u-lezlee mizspellled namz and overblown posturing, they took the time to create something, and they were hoping to get noticed because of it
And they’re in my $6 bargain bin.