As promised, i made my 7am appearance on TDavid’s radio show, complete with an entire verse of “Under My Skin” sung over the phone, and a broadcast of Lindsay and Anthony’s absolutely heartstoppingly good “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” (see below). I think TDavid’s going to keep broadcasting through the end of the ‘Thon, so pay his stream a visit.
Oh my god, David just referred to Judy Garland as “a crushing krisis,” i think i’m going to get cramps from giggling.
under my skin
Victory! Sweet, sweet, blueberry victory!
In other news: last night i played guitar for what has become a routine four hours, breaking only for the penultimate episode of Buffy and white pizza courtesy of Ross’s new credit card. This morning the skin on my fingers is rind-like and impervious to pain.
You could say that i’ve become a little obsessed with my practice regimen, ostensibly because i’m playing at a backyard festival this weekend and have vowed in public earshot to blow away all of the other performers. Really, though, it’s because i don’t know if i actually can. The recently revealed running order of the event finds me sandwiched between a duo of golden-throated music majors and a terrific a cappella group that i arrange for, with the entire day both book-ended and dotted by talented multi-instrumentalists and Philly pub performers. And in the middle is little old me.
At this late stage drilling finger exercises until i feel as though i’m going to vomit if i have to stretch my pinky to the seventh fret again probably isn’t going to do me much good, which is why i typically leave that until just before bed. The regimen begins as soon as i have stripped out of my corporate skin of shirt and tie, sometimes finding me strumming the opening chords of “Tangling” in an undershirt and low rise briefs. The run through the current iteration of my set quickly (and seemingly inevitably) descends into seething about my inability to pick complex patterns or endless fiddling with my amp tone, and rarely features more than a single complete song. Alternately, i could probably just look in a mirror and scream “you are worthless” for thirty minutes to achieve a similar effect on moral.
After this inevitably crushing warm-up routine, i turn to my Bible, The Complete Beatles Scores. What better comfort could there be to my inability to play my own misbegotten songs than to learn how to play some of the best songs ever written? Last night was a medley of Let It Be‘s A-Side, none of which i can carry all on my own. Still, the practice is useful because i am trying to match a specifically scored and recorded sound rather than some elusive cipher of a rhythm that only plays inside of my head.
After a solid run at the Beatles (always including thirty minutes on the riffing of “Dig A Pony” and at least two renditions of “Blackbird“) I am ready to perform my own set, minus the sniffling and whining. Or, rather, the sniffling and whining is restrained only to lyrical appearances. This set is typically much more affirming, though as a rule “Apart” sounds like utter shit. “Under My Skin” is placed strategically dead in the middle to remind myself that, yes, i can actually (write / play / sing) with some modicum of professionalism on a consistent basis. This is necessary, as my shot at “Seams” typically breaks down shortly after the key change.
I end with “Little Love,” because for a month i had intended to start with it and so bootstrapped it up past all of the intermediate levels of (total shit / shit / lyrical Alzheimer’s / inability to cross bridge / endless descent into ad-lib and riffing / constant Simon-Cowell-ing of vocal performance) to the point where i spent an entire hour last week walking around Center City with a guitar strapped on over my shirt and tie playing it and being asked my name and if i could be heard at any local bars or pubs. It isn’t “Under My Skin,” but it allows me to ignore (or, at least atone for) the two dozen false starts of “Apart” from earlier in the evening. It allows me to believe for a second that the forty or so friends that will be enduring me for a precious half hour on Saturday will perhaps clap out of something other than obligation.
Only after that do i brutally work my pinky fingers until my stomach knots with each effort. And then, sometimes, i go to bed.
I thought that maybe she had gotten thinner since the last time i saw her, but as i stared at her from across the room the lines on the side of her face slowly began to resolve in my vision. Clever, i suppose, even artful. Not any thinner, though. Still, i would have never thought to so carefully sketch in a smooth jawline with concealer, gracefully feline, to separate my face from my neck. Really they’re still the same, one right after another, but the girl gets points for trying.
I was made to truly shudder by someone talking about how his friends should all switch to a BA program from a BS. Sure, i’ve conducted similar conversations in my day, but his line of reasoning was so incomplete that i think he may have entirely broken his point. Still, it wasn’t my place to interrupt him so that his friends could hear what a BA of Journalism really consists of, no matter how much i might want to.
Days are very systematic, consisting of: waking up, checking rank, working, learning, and walking. There are more repetitions of each depending on the day, and the only way i’ve been able to keep track of where i am or where i’m going are the people that i encounter in between. Last night on the train two girls were talking in Creole, and one of them noticed how my eyes kept peering over my copy of Suicide whenever i could make out a few words of French. They were from Immaculata, and we spoke briefly about Classical Sociological Theory and the continuous length of Lancaster Avenue before i got off … only to find that i had de-trained a stop early. At first i was a little nervous, but i eventually found my way back to Lancaster Avenue and began my walk to the concert.
While life is slowly becoming routine again, dreams are getting more and more disparate with each passing night. At the end of last week i fell asleep with a playlist of music on, and my dream seemed to take place entirely within a single play of “Seams“, though it seemed much longer than four or five minutes. The setting was plain, just walking around in my old house talking to my mother and to Elise. However, at the onset of each chorus in the song i slowly began to unravel — literally to come apart at the seams. At first i hardly noticed, as the first chorus is quite short; the sensation was not dissimilar to stripping off wet bathing trunks. It was during the second chorus that i began to become really alarmed, as with each line some small part of me would loosen and fall to the ground. Skin came unclung from my legs, it unwound from around my midsection, it came off like fallen leaves from my chest and back. My mother and Elise did not notice, though, still blithely talking to me as we walked around inside my house. Each line now was an eternity … long enough for me to lose another part of myself to the inexorable process of coming apart at the seams, and to watch that part turn into so much dust as it hit the ground.
As the final chorus began i was so weak that i could barely support my own weight for the walk into the bathroom to check the scale, and even as i read it the pointer was get lower and lower. Suddenly i was singing too, “i wonder if anyone will notice,” and as i began to move towards the next line i found myself sprawled on out on my back, watching in horror as the last of me fell away to reveal my ribs and the beating red heart within. In just whispers now i was keeping up with the lyrics, endlessly repeating “at the seams” until i saw movement in my peripheral vision. Elise was suddenly there, crouching beside me and reaching out as if to lay a hand against my exposed ribcage.
Instead she extended a single slim finger, which slipped between two bones and allowed her to brush her fingertip gently against my heart. My insides collapsed upon themselves at her touch, unable to properly communicate the feeling i was enduring. At that moment the song resolved, and my eyes opened.
The first thing Elise asked when i told her about it was if the effects were realistic or like stop-motion animation. My eyes must have widened a little — because they were the latter, and it had been the first thing i thought when i woke up.
I do not think we will be making videos for my Songwriting class, but i can ask tomorrow afternoon. Anyhow, that concept would be entirely out of my budget… and, for that matter, so would “Under My Skin.”
Why am i awake, again?
Blogathon: 25/24 – Under My Skin
Two years.
Seven hundred and thirty one days, exactly.
Nearly right down to the minute.
It’s hard to say something important or unique about a song that comes up in nearly every conversational context possible. I’ve already described writing the lyrics, talked about the recording process, uploaded take after take of developmental recordings… and here i am two years later at a loss for what i’m supposed to be saying.
All i can say is that i’ve spent one tenth of my life living with “Under My Skin” … not only living with it as a song, but living with having written it and with why i wrote it. Living with the song is sometimes the hardest part; “Under My Skin” is easy to like, even for me, and i feel like it eclipses other songs that i’ve worked much harder on. Living with having written it isn’t so bad: at first it felt like a wall i had built to avoid having to express myself in any other way, but now it stands as an emotional landmark rather than a roadblock.
Living with the reason i wrote it is still strange. In the past I would agonize over it, asking myself “how do you kiss someone and then just let it go?” Now i know exactly how, because i’ve done it. It happens. I guess the real question i have is “After life crystallizes for one perfect moment, how do you go on living imperfectly?” I don’t really know the answer to that one, and i don’t expect to find it out any time soon. Sometimes that one moment i lived is almost like a fantasy in my head that never really happened, and sometimes it’s the only thing i can see. It is still both, and all the shades found in-between
“Under My Skin” became more than what i originally intended it to be when Laurel came into the studio to sing it with me last year. Ever since she willingly added her voice to mine i feel as though i don’t wholly own my words… they aren’t only mine anymore. Laurel’s voice singing them on Relief, and any other time i’ve caught her humming along, suddenly transforms “Under My Skin” from a song in the first person to a shared narrative — with its words and all that they are saying awkwardly shared between us both.
It doesn’t bring the moment back. Life doesn’t suddenly make sense the way television does. But, one moment that seemed so selfish and impossible when it first happened is now just a tiny seed that has sprouted into a flourishing garden of songs, friendships, and memories that will last me a lifetime.
And one very good song.