Thoughts from April 17 and 25, 2001

April 17, 2001

This is my thought for the day (and I have more where that came from). I just need to get it out because they’re hurting my brain. I’m waiting for time to pass. Don’t get me wrong, I love sitting around waiting for the day to pass. It fills up a day with … nothing. How exciting! When this day is over, I’m going to be exhausted with all the nothing. Nothing is all I need. Nothing is all I want. Give me more nothing and I could make a nothing sandwich. I will use my breathing as the lettuce and air as the pickles. You have got to eat, and I have got to do nothing. Nothing for president! What? We’re out of something? Well, I’ll take nothing. It’s twice as good. (Sorry, let me try that again.) It’s twice as good! Crunch this, Something, I’m having Nothing for breakfast.

I don’t know, but I think I made my point.

April 25, 2001

What do you get when you cross a goat with a lizard? One of the scariest nightmares I’ve ever had. I had a dream the other day about work. I actually had full intentions upon writing about the dream, but I can’t even remember the gist of the dream. It had to do with work and … I just can’t remember it. I usually write about my dreams right away, but I didn’t this time. I’m a creative machine, but a memory note pad. If I write things down, I can usually remember where I wrote the information down so I can access it, but if I don’t write it down, it will be gone forever. Of course, if I remember one part of the dream, I can remember most of the whole dream. My memory is fickle. It works when it wants to. My mind has a mind of its own, which I’m sure my mind would say has a mind of its own. Life, once again, is a repeated pattern, which itself is a repetition of another pattern. I hope I’m not repeating myself.

Regardless of what the dream was, the general idea of the dream was a fear of doing something wrong. I was at work (Where have I heard this before?) and someone told me to do something. I did that something, but I realized the way I was doing it was wrong. I was embarrassed about doing something wrong and was fearing the “Oh no, what did you do?” tone I knew I would get from my supervisor. I don’t take criticism or disapproval well. I know that about myself and I’m working on it. I always encourage criticism and try to ask questions when I don’t fully understand something. I’m helpful to myself in that way. Some people are not so helpful back.

One criticism about my singing I’ve heard is you can’t understand what I’m saying. There are several components or issues on this matter. The first is I usually have questionable lyrics that I’m still working on, so I don’t commit to them fully (I mumble). I also don’t really and fully appreciate my voice, so I put it slightly down in the audio mix to cover-up the flaws I always hear. The main thing about my unintelligible words is I just don’t put as much emphasis into lyrics as other people do. I can listen to a song for years and not know or care what it’s about. Some songs I know the meaning behind the song. I will admit it makes the song more distinctive when I know what it’s about. I just don’t have the desire to know what every song is about. I have a hard enough time remembering my dreams without having to remember every song I’ve ever heard.

I’m working on a song right now about not believing in evil even though the song sounds “evil.” Irony is a word in the dictionary. Some lyrics are so full of effects that you can’t really understand them unless you know exactly what I’m saying. That’s okay by me. I will try to always include lyric sheets with my songs so people who care can get a big thrill out of my words in the song.

Most of my songs have a meaning that can be encompassed in one subject or word. The word sums up the emotion of the song. Some titles are: Unbroken (about not staying in an abusive relationship), Happy (about what happiness means to different people), Fear (which is a song I made up because, after all that talk about most of my songs having one name titles, I can’t think of another song with a one name title). Even if they’re not one name titles, they express one feeling.

Speaking of one word, I have just one more word to say before I go – feather.

(I know this paragraph breaks the “just one more word” promise, but I just had to explain my “feather” last word. As I see life, you can look at it as a giant weight pulling you down or a light feather lifting you up. While I didn’t have that explanation in my mind at the beginning of this paragraph, I am going to stick with it because I think it’s an okay explanation. Thank you – I will now end this whole thing right … now.)