A Letter - Jan 30th, 2009
I’ve been wrestling with the dilemma of how poorly suited my music is to live performances. I’ve also been writing a new song that is both long and indirect, and thus far is music only for an acoustic guitar. I’m of the mind that this new song may well be what I play in concert this year, in addition to my stock repertoire. I haven’t yet taken the plunge of impractical orchestration, slathering its muscly melodic core with odds and ebbs. I haven’t yet laced in a lyrical narrative, breaking me from my foci hitherto on the challenging guitarwork and chordal rending of eery atmospheres.
If I do decide to bring it alive, it’ll need a bit of shaping and a bit of effort given to voice leading I’d typically leave for another instrument. I am also very much uncertain of the ending. I’ve built into the song a gradual movement in opposite directions. Ever higher planes of heartache, a heart’s via dolorosa unto soaring reprieve, strike surging waves of invert relative minor, and discord abyss and poison dissonance. I’ve taken it as deep as hell, and now I know no way to come back. A sudden leap of contrast sounds so forced, and a slow and subtle rebuild makes the darkest passages seem.. well… circuitous. I must account for dark adaptation (as our eyes do, so do our listening minds) and create something so bright one must look at it only in the deepest night, else it blinds sun with light. A swing so high we may gently fall back down to a resolute ground, and not be left buried in the froggy mire.
