next to the toffee tree

::disclaimer: if you don’t know that ‘julia’ is my guitar, you might get a little confused:: 

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i thought it right to finish what i started.

i began last week with an intemperate description of my intemperate mind as i struggled to complete an essay on things fall apart by chinua achebe. i believe this was the first book that i ever read twice. the book was: powerful, beautiful, purposeful and original — everything that my essay was not. thus, i had a conversation with sheryllee, my publishing partner, as i frantically searched for a muse in my life’s madness;

my pierides hiding in the lumpy pasture of my mind.

i let you, my readership, travel with me on this journey of writing an essay – four conversations, all containing a music video. hawksely workman to sufjan stevens to new buffalo and now david cairns. yet the piece of music and accompanying video might need some explanation.

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i had an epic week. on tuesday i went to see matt costa and delta spirit at the starlite room. both acts were extremely good and the show finished around midnight. since i had been writing in circles for the past few days, when i arrived at home i decided to continue my weariness. this writing came hard at first, but by five in the morning the words were pouring out of me in torrents of genius. i lie – well, just the last line. no torrents of genius ever came.

it was a gritty boxing match. sticky blood and salty sweat covering the titans, as they battle for hours, in the name of vainity.

the final essay was not overly powerful, but thick with tension. not unspeakably beautiful but attractive by adventure. not purposeful, no, not at all – but it was original. it was a battle field and after a night of toil…here comes the sun.  

the sun coming up on the end of the calamity, no remeinance of pure redemption, none. only the physical glimmer of the morning sun on the green parts of the grass that make us wonder about some moving on.

i came to this fairytaleish-civil-war-sunrise after a i had hammered out a solid draft. i then picked up my julia and decided to let her weigh in on the morning.

so there we were: me, julia, sheryllee, and God in the morning.

julia’s voice filled the basement as the essay lay on the table, and after many hours of correcting and editing i would hand it into my teacher the next day.

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also included in my epic week was me, running out of groceries and eating pierogis for three meals in a row. just pierogis. did i mention that i didn’t sleep for about 40 hours straight, due to the fact that i decided to go to school after staying up all night? but after stumbling my way from february 11th to 15th, i loaded a irresponsibly packed bag into 1993 toyota carolla and headed for the mountains, which are an essay from God (if you will accept it): powerful, beautiful, purposeful and original.

in His essay i glimpse an end to such calamity and the beggining of a pure redemption.    

::just in case your wondering about the music, its only julia, one time. she is just that beautiful, and if i could actually speak to her more properly, that symphony you hear behind her, might be a little more orderly. a little less ‘drunken men in tuxedos shammering symbols together at the wrong times and their tangy bows bearing down on mediocre chords’. but the music’s undercurrent is laced with some notes of shear brilliance, rising up on sturdy legs…finding their begining deep in julia’s sides::

this is a little project of mine. (if you are in the video, you did not inspire this dreary music, i just needed a dark room. your faces shall never make me write a sad song.)

:::if there is not music video above this line, then i’m guess your looking at my ‘facebook notes’. well, here’s a tip, always view the original source, cuz sometimes stuff doesn’t get through the import, and you could be missing out. also i only make corrections or additions to the original posts::: 

::warning: from now on, this post may in fact be very, very boring. you don’t have to read it. and this is not a trick to make you read it::  

if you kept up with my last post, that was david bazan covering leonard cohen’s infamous ‘hallelujah’. why i was so drawn to the video was because i’ve always loved the song, the poetry, and the kitchen chair, but david bazan played it more powerfully, for me, than cohen ever could have. he took the song and made it distinctively his. what we are not talking about here is ill scarlet ripping off rihanna’s ‘umbrella’. that was good project in its own right, but i think we would always be more prone to call it (as most all covers): ill scarlet covering rihanna’s ‘umbrella’, whereas we can aptly title the former cover: david bazan’s ‘hallelujah’. its about owning what you’ve stolen so perfectly and emphatically, that most believe that the original writer must have stolen it from you. and in some way you are receiving back the torch that he/she had borrowed.  so, inspired by such, i embarked a little journey of my own, one that would last me about nine minutes and forty five seconds. i have always had a certain chorus floating around in my head, so i called it a bridge and went to work on a couple of verses and chorus. in my first attempt a spewed out a full song in five minutes. very rare, because even if i sing a full song during the very first writing attempt, it’s usually thirteen or fourteen minutes of playing around before i stop and evaluate what i got. so, rather astonished by this spurt of inspiration i plug my guitar and mic in, and let er rip. what came out is what is on this video. the microphone pops, and i hit one pretty egregious note, but it is what came out. the song is very melancholy. so don’t listen to it too many times. i don’t want to deal with a bunch of angstful comments. for those of you who often admit on how my depressing blogs can scar you (fake mom, are you listening?) – my outlook is not as bleak as the tune. in fact, the truth is, that even though i can relate with the first person persona, the ‘i’ character is actually not me — the ’you’ character is — don’t that just blow yo hill-william mindwhat i find interesting about the song is how in lyrics (written and stolen), music, and tone seem to fold back on themselves into this sort of rational impossible object. the video, containing a few subtle quirks and faces, has really nothing to do with the song, and by no means needs to be paired with the song (like most music videos) to make sense. in fact my greatest fear is that the video will confuse the lyrics, hopefully not. lets title it together: – pressed and stolen: an empty seat on the lonesome piano bench.

perfect! long, ambiguous, and cryptic      

p.s. i wasn’t calling any of my readers hill-billys — its just an expression.

p.s.s. i forgot to give respect to damien rice who wrote the bridge of my song. its found in his own tune named ‘delicate’. interestingly, or perhaps even plunging you deeper into boredom, i think damien is probably one of the most similar artists stylistically to myself, just slanderously more talented. but as lesley (song 5 and 10 on my CD if your paying attention) would point out: damien’s music is like a picture of him standing in front of you, holding out his hands for you to see his raw, pulsating heart. — just like blah! right there. end quote, well maybe i paraphrased.