Biography is corny
Resist the urge to thot in these biphobic waters.
Hello and welcome to volume 37.
Maybe they’re born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline. Or maybe it’s perimenopause and they can’t seem to sleep past 4 am…
This will be a ramble because I’m enjoying the free associations of writing to you first thing when I get up. Oz has graduated to free-sleeping in bed with me, which I swore I’d never let happen. Pets rule the roost; I’m only here to pay the utilities to keep their fancy food refrigerated. Llew hides under a pillow while I type away.
I wasn’t always a morning person. For most of my twenties, I couldn’t get up before ten. That changed during lockdown, when I stopped commuting to work. I realized that 6–9 am was my time, my quiet hours when no one expects anything from me. Most of the album was written during that window. If the weather’s good, I take my coffee outside and weed a little. If I’m feeling off, I get back in bed. But either way, I write.
Even though we finished tracking last year, I write most days, even while traveling. Sometimes it’s songs. I've gotten into a real groove of writing lyrics and melody away from the piano. Keeps the progressions from getting rote. I wonder if it’s different for guitarists. Piano is so visual. You can see the entire thing laid out before you. If I’m in A♭, I already know I’ll likely head to E♭, and so on. I love having it as a sword to pull from the stone at will, but stepping away from the instrument has helped loosen my choices and write for other instruments. Guitarists, do you ever feel locked in like this? Am I idealizing the writing process on your instrument?
But early in the morning, I haven’t had time to talk myself out of anything yet. With plenty of coffee and ‘me time’, I find it easier to access the prima materia that makes a song weirder, more flexible. Then I go about trying to find my way to the progression later, like one of those Outward Bound survivalist camps where you have only a flashlight, a lighter, and a couple of granola bars. Good luck, coyote. It's truly incredible to have done something this long and still feel like a novice. I hope I never lose that.
A practice is nice because it keeps the channels clear. A steady drip is usually preferable to a deluge for me. When that happens, while exciting, it’s destabilizing. One of the last songs on the record came to me while in the Uber to the airport for the second and final tracking session. Lyrics, melody, all of it. I spent the entire flight mumbling to myself, humming, and jotting down notes in my app. We put it on the punch list, unconvinced if it would cut. I dictated the chords to the band on a lunch break, trying to decipher what key it was in. We recorded the whole thing an hour later. I looked at Rob, our engineer, who was chuckling. ‘So that didn’t exist before yesterday?’
That’s the touching the hot stove version of songwriting. I’m not cut out to work that way regularly. I’ve been watching that Owen Wilson show ‘Stick.’ It’s fine (I love Judy Greer), but I do empathize with the talented kid, ruled by his emotions. His big feelings completely dictate his best and worst moves on the course (green? field?). When you’re younger, songs offer unlimited catharsis, flooding oxytocin to the brain. You feel bad? Don’t even worry about metabolizing it. Just write about it! It’s only with time that you learn the writing improves when you approach it like a director approaches a treatment. Wide lens, close-up, on a dolly track, etc. Varied shots give more perspective. A little distance can be good.
The records we love travel a long road to get to us, and you’d think I remember, but each album is released, and amnesia kicks in. Biography is the focus of this current phase, and I find it the hardest and ooziest. Biography so corny. Take one song. How do you distill what went into those 3 minutes? Do you talk about the micro or the macro? Or both? And, also, in the scheme of things, does any of it matter? This axiom turns over, like Apple’s rainbow spinning wheel of death. thinking…thinking…
Thinking is my achilles. I could spend years just thinking about what I need to do, what I’d like for breakfast tomorrow and every day after for the next week, what to get at the farmers market and which bag to bring. I could think my way through a whole date before ever committing to it. This is probably a neurodivergence thing. I have been working to be more TL;DR in certain areas, Just Do It! in others, but it’s like brushing Llew’s fur against the grain. Nothing could be more unnatural.
So how do I tell you what the song’s about? I think the answer is to, in the words of Dickinson, tell the truth, but tell it slant. Do not overcomplicate it. Here is a song about gay chaos, it says so in my notes app. Here is the one about almost dying on the Wild Atlantic Way, the one about how, during lockdown, it seemed like every person in the apps was GGG and ENM or poly, yet still adhering to the same old hetero marriage plot and shitty behaviors. There’s this temptation to show how far you’ve traveled and tie it up with a neat little bow, but it becomes a parade of clichés — later-in-life genderqueer. Check. Read All Fours, fully prepared to hate it, then enjoyed it (could take or leave the clean-eating food passages). Check.
I was thinking about this, observing the rollout of Lorde’s new album. Recreational MDMA, check. Duct tape, check. Five gum. Liquid crystal in your pocket. An iridescent water bottle. Coming off birth control. I’ve only given the album a spin once so far, and yet I know from the marketing that there is ego death, rebirth, and a mons pubis in PVC. I don’t know who decided all these things needed to go out in front, and I’m not saying any of it is bad. Chappell is your favorite artist’s favorite artist. Sabrina is manifesting while being horny on main. Billie Eilish comes out to Rolling Stone, and fans shove her back in the closet for kissing a dude. Resist the urge to thot in these biphobic waters. If it all looks and sounds a little corny, I think that’s because biography is inherently corny. Telling what was always meant to be shown. Artists, I guess, wouldn’t be artists if we weren’t all a bit obsessed with our navels, and more than a little cranky about it. This is why it’s essential to have friends to point to your belly button and say 'cut that shit out!’
A song is a Polaroid. Very rarely does a song provide answers. If anything, the opposite. It complicates the memory, fucks with the chronology, shuffling things out of sequence. Gaps in the sidewalk. If I could decode the message, would I spend seven years trying to write it? Lucky for me, I’m a baby artist so stakes are nonexistent. All I’ve learned is that my purpose is to stay a little longer with something hot, nasty, funny, or gross than what’s comfy in polite society. However, I cannot for the life of me explain why I latch onto certain memories or images.
Take, for instance, this man at a bar in Galway in 2018. Why did my brain choose to remember his face over all the others? His jack-o-lantern smile. His cheeks lobster red from singing at the top of his lungs. Why is this the image I have chosen to dip in amber and implant in your brain one day, not so long from now?
A big part of me wants to put a sticker cover that says ‘no artist became a sage in the making of this work.’
Some nice things
I don’t know if you follow Chez Chez Robert, but his videos have helped crawl out of a prolonged food rut. It’s everything I want to eat right now. I can’t get up the excitement to make anything at the end of the day. I made a take on his pesto with peas the other night, and he is right — parmesan and pecorino make it better. It may be hell’s oven outside, but I needed the reminder that boiling a pot of water for pasta doesn’t make the whole kitchen a furnace. It is a perfect weeknight dinner.
Daily dips are back. There is nothing better for turning off my brain than throwing my body into the ocean at the end of the day. I took Oz for a swim the other day as well. Much to my surprise, she likes the water. Not a big fan of the waves, however.
Espresso tonics. I’ve cut back on coffee consumption significantly to improve my sleep, but I was generously gifted an espresso machine for Christmas a year ago, and it has completely changed my world at home. I spend less money overall. Having an espresso tonic in the early afternoon is a real treat. I put a little bit of orange or lemon zest in.
Ottolenghi Raspberry Rose Jam. I brought back a few jars from my last trip to London, and sadly, I am down to my last one. Not all jam is created equally or worth £5.25, but this one is excellent. Platonic ideal is spooning it on Cafe Cecilia Guinness Bread with a thick slice of butter. I make a loaf of this bread and slice it to freeze for later.
This is a Night Rider lily. The next 3-4 weeks, there’s a lull in the garden. The big rose show is mostly over for now, and the dahlias are coming up quickly, thanks to the heat, but they still have some time to go. I am really happy with these chocolatey, wine-dark lillies. If you’re someone who likes goth flowers, I highly recommend.
I may be an early riser, but I have never been a breakfast person. I’m trying to put a stop to that once and for all by loading the fridge with food my neurospicy brain cannot resist. One of those things is coconut yogurt — it doesn’t create the film on the roof of my mouth that dairy yogurts do, which sends me down a sensory rabbit hole that’s no bueno. It’s summer, so cold food is a nice and soothing treat. Sometimes I splurge on passion fruit at the store, which is my personal favorite, or else I’ll opt for blueberries and a banana.
The only downside about coconut yogurt is that it costs an arm and a leg — not in this economy! So I’ve been using this hack to make my own. I also make labne from scratch now. I’m like a one-person fermentation lab.
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That’s all for now. If in the US, please remember the 4th is a hot dog holiday — AKA the perfect condiment vehicle — and there is no such thing as “too many hot dogs.” Do not come at me with your ketchup. It’s Gulden’s mustard or bust.
xo
CD
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Following up on #heatthewholehouse, I use the toaster oven instead of the range oven when I can. It's so small and doesn't need a half hour to preheat; also, if it's not raining, I can take it out to the patio and plug it in there.
Wow! I'm truly honored for the mention. You're totally right though, one pot on the stove doesn't heat the whole house Keep cooking your heart out!