Trad. in Normal entries

I am a poor wayfarin’ stranger, a travelin’ through this world of woe There ain’t no sickness, toil or danger in that proud land I’m bound to go --- Traditional (no matter what website might tell you otherwise)

It’s not really the lyrics I want I want up there, and sure I know how to link an mp3 or youtube video. If you’ve ever used your voice or a musical instrument to --- wait, no, I don’t mean it combatively. It’s the live sound, it’s the sound of the moment, it’s the chords humming in MY head right this minute, that’s what I mean.

It’s a funny kind of medium the written word; it’s the oldest way of recording events, thoughts, emotions, abstractions. Anyone reading this right now could write a thousand word essay off the top of their head about how fucked up history books are and make a compelling argument that that’s because they are written by the victors without even blinking twice at the idea that the author might have really thought he or she were being objective. Thing is life is chaos, ok, melodramatic, life is often chaotic, and the written word is a very narrow strip of order, even within a given spoken language the written word narrows down the structure even further to a pinprick.

And so how do you approach describing chaos with order? It’s not like controlling behavior with law, I mean whether it’s true or not I don’t feel inhibited by the repercussions of what I write (as in I don’t think my freedom of speech has been impinged upon, I either have a really dull imagination or there isn’t anything I want to say that I feel afraid too) it’s not that simple of a struggle (yeah, I know, you could argue that law and order isn’t that simple either. It’d be a fun argument. You’d be mistaken.). The concept of Truth is enough of a slippery slope as it is without trying to shove all it’s chaotic little bits into a zig zag and roll a straight doobie out of it.

So we take short cuts, like those lyrics up above. If I knew a way of making everyone who read them hear the chords in MY head NOW when they read those lyrics, I’d be considered the best writer living, maybe ever. It’s close enough that I get a few people who know the song to hear the tune thrum through their heads long enough to pause. It’s still a trick, a rhetorical device. This is 2013 and writers and musicians that are well known are celebrities. The ones who are considered the best use tricks well, the ones who likely are the best admit that they are tricks. A guitar, for instance (for some reason the really famous musicians of this day and age are guitarists) has an even more limited range than a typewriter. I can probably pick out that tune on ten, maybe fifteen different instruments, on maybe two of them I can come very close to the way it plays in my head, a lot closer than I can writing; I’d consider myself a major prick for taking credit for how it affected or you a minor prick for not being affected at all.

Shit. Now I know how chicks feel; I type the word prick and lose my entire train of thought. Oh. I don’t mean that in a good way.

I dunno, I see those lyrics typed out and it’s like --- huh, you ever seen a locks work? The water raise and fall? That song does that to my memories and endocrine system, I mean it does when it does, when the chords resonate right in my head. I should be able to do that with the written language, Christ knows I’ve tried a lot harder for a lot longer. You could give me a bassoon, an instrument I haven’t even seen in a couple of decades and forty minutes to wrap my head, fingers and lips around it, and I could come a lot closer to explaining how that song feels than I could in a year with a word processor. You don’t even have to like the song. It’s only the cheapest lowest art forms that pander to the audience; I wouldn’t be playing it for you, you’d be listening to me express what I wanted to express. Take the celebrity part out of it and that’s what art is. How the hell can anyone really wrap that up in something as linear and strict as a written language? Not only is life chaotic but it’s fleeting too. Johnny Cash probably does that song better on record than me on a bassoon, but it’ll always be exactly the same; the oldest recording device and the newest one is still dead, order imposed the way a taxidermist imposes order.

Shit. Yeah, should have never typed prick.

I’m spent.