Monday!

I honestly don't get the point of teenagers with minimal singing talent exposing themselves to the world's ears with the help of companies using synth machines. Besides money... But even from a financial perspective, wouldn't it be worth more to find someone who really has some talent in singing and songwriting? Or at least if you find a kid you like, give them some vocal lessons and some initiative for improvement. If they have a good stage personality (obviously we can't overlook the performance factor, which appears the largest) that's excellent, but you need someone who cares about the artistic and musical sense. What kind of impression do you think you're making on the younger generation?! Look at the crap they will consider to be "good music" just because it made it to MTV.

I think Pablo Cassalls is an amazing example of a prudent musician who made it to fame - because he was a good musician. He studied the Bach cello preludes for 15years before he even performed them for anyone. Our younger stars wouldn't have to go to that extreme, but really think what a difference it would make if they actually spent time gaining musicianship skills and really immersing themselves in the material. Even if it's pop - I don't care what genre it is - they need to take the time, really study it, know it backwards and forwards. Really understand it. Then I might have some respect for them. They may go through fire because they're famous, but that isn't any sort of excuse for cheap music.

Floating Papers...

Some poems I found from a while back. A few are decent. Most of them are either nonsense or plain misery. These are the better ones. I think the last one is the most poetic. The first one contains a reworded quote from Jon.

August 2009.
Don't you wish time would stop
So we could think and say
The things we really mean
Instead we live a puzzle
500 bits missing
Fill in the blanks with smiles
Tomorrow will be worse
Walking along the line
Don't look over the edge
Fate will take you all over
And bring you home in the end
Don't try to understand me
I guess you all the time
But perhaps it ain't you
Just the derangement of my mind.

September 2009.
Surrounded by these land sharks
I'm not a little surprised
How could this happen anyway
I can barely summarize
The face that I ain't in New Bedford
Nor shippin' out to sea
That I'm stayin' here in NorCal
It's sure dumbfounded me
But of course the saying's always been
"Jack Tar's a fool ashore"
And so I'll sail back out again
Where they'll be a problem no more.

October 2009.
Coffee warms my heart and soul
As I gaze through a misted windowpane
The streets are drenched in Pacific fog
Rolling from the ridge beyond.
Perhaps it's traveled from Hawai'i
Tahiti, Russia, or Japan
Now blanketing me with its presence
A thousand miles from home.
Is this the constant weather in England
I wonder as I watch
I've never been, so I wouldn't know,
Only what I've read in the books.
Then first it starts as just a dribble
That turns to a plop, then a pound
And my mind is off to Washington
As the rain keeps falling down.

March 2010.
Goodbye, the hardest word to say
Avoided until the end
Unhappy eyes that look away
Heart strings feeling a wrench.
Talk and laugh the minutes away
It's bound to come at last
Freely flowing, the unimportant
Cover the stillness in the air.
Until it's dropped quietly
Like a pin upon the tile
Could that little click mean so much?
Faces drop like birds in fall
The last syllable gone to the wind
One quick look, then gone forever
That's how our lives are spent.