stay weird

yesterday i was discussing sound recording with a friend who’s a pro. I told her I recorded a demo album of my poems, very much a home-cooked thing : I was in a tiny Greek island, with no access to any gear, in a house of thin walls and howling wind. 

Terrible, *terrible conditions for sound recording. But it was a Christmas gift and the days were ticking. 

I balanced my phone mike on my Thermos flask and an upside-down cooking pot, and lit a fire. i recorded while sitting on the fireside carpet for a few nights. It was my best bad option. 

I edited the flames’ highs and lows into a vaguely consistent background noise and voila. Lovenotes by the hearth. The gift got sent and I had a shareable version of my stuff, for the first time ever. 

Later she said “Dude it was actually so refreshing to hear that story. I’m surrounded by all these overqualified tech geeks who are rocking it in huge productions, and sometimes all that knowledge and professionalism actually gets in the way of trying stuff out, of getting it done when it’s just not gonna be perfect.” 

I know just what she means. 

I’m quite daunted at soon singing on a stage - I’ve had no training whatsoever, and the cold has kept my throat closed all winter. 

But I keep listening to Tom Wait’s “Temptation” song… an epic, caterwauling, bone-rattling lament that makes my ears smoke every time. He’s as in tune as a disembowelled pig. 

And it’s an unbelievable track. 

So it’s become my personal anthem while I put in some hours to still of course, relax my diaphragm love up my larynx and enunciate to cut through my usual drawl. 

To me and to us : may we share freely our most experimental cuisine and piece-of-string unnamable things. We will never reach perfection - and for that I thank the gods every day. 

photo from a birthday party that was -forget everthing I just said - perfectly weird.

#firsttimes #performance #poetry #song #temptation #tomwaits #masterpiece #inspiration #learnfromthemasters #passionoverperfection #stayweird