Mike Errico Studio Log. 08.25.10
Starting is easy. Finishing is hard.
It's been pouring rain here for days. I keep getting caught in it, like it's aiming.
I stepped out of the studio and it began again while a gust of wind ripped my umbrella inside out. I was still deep in my head, listening to mixes, hoping that a snare drum will sit well and still have the crack I need. Is the kick drum substantial enough? Am I getting the lyric without overselling -- Have I learned anything yet?
The G train, a bizarre green line that winds around the outskirts of Manhattan, has become my commute between the Williamsburg studio and home. It's unreliable, shady and at any provocation, simply stops running, offering a garbled lie on the overhead about "track construction." I descended the subway stairs and heard the message.
Instead of standing in the rain to wait for the even-less-reliable shuttle bus, I decided to take the L to 14th, and switch to the F. I'd get home eventually. I lumbered to the L train. The LED sign over the platform read
F NEXT TRAIN ARRIVING 26 MIN
My wet jeans cooled and clung to me. Commuters filled the bench and sat hunched over their cell phones. Time slowed, and I plunged into a familiar pit of critics that swarm in my head. I sighed, and listened to them pick my record apart.
How are the new songs? Do they suck? Or are they good but badly done? Will I let people down? Will I realize that this entire record is a failed experiment after it's too late? Who'll tell me?
Is music so hard because it's trying to tell me that it doesn't want me? Is it like a bad girlfriend who keeps trying to get me to break up with it? Does this ever get, if not "easy," then just a little easier? I know that there are moments on this record that break my heart with how beautiful they are. And it's not even done yet. But do I have the strength to finish it?
In the beginning, everything is possible. Completion is the art of ending that. Choosing one sound is also the act of un-choosing every other sound. Each nearly-completed song is still engaged in a conversation about its possibilities, and the excitement of a compelling point of view is always balanced by the rejection of other curious and rich points of view. When I listen to the new life in the mixes of this record, I can also hear all of its unlived lives. I've made thousands of choices to get this far. But are they the right ones?
With eight minutes left on the LED sign, the L train pulled up. Rain had defeated hairstyles and laundry and people moved like a defeated army. I packed in close and stared into space.
"Excuse me, brother." A short, thin black man with a badly varnished 12-string guitar nudged his way in. After surveying the car, he turned to me and stood, maybe eight inches from me.
"My man. You get three choices. You like the Beatles, right? Three choices: 'Love Me Do,' 'Norwegian Wood' or 'Michelle.'"
"What?"
"Three choices."
Shaken out of my thoughts, I considered them. He waited, smiling with widely-spaced teeth.
"'Norwegian Wood,'" I decided.
"Your wish is my command."
He began the opening riff, and I smiled at its simple genius. And what an awesome story. What the hell is going on in that song? The woman sounds so beautiful, so in control of her rudderless life. Money is a figment ("She told me she works in the morning and started to laugh"), words are figments ("She told me to sit anywhere/I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair"), the "known" world is laden with preconceptions, and this gorgeous woman is a conduit to a new understanding of it. I realized I've always had a crush on her.
As he hit the middle sections, I instinctively joined in, singing the high harmony line. He smiled, approving. The bedraggled commuters looked up, smiling as well.
"Yes. You get the high harmonies. Nice."
People started laughing and spreading the word that a spontaneous singalong had broken out. A small moment of light peeked in on a downtrodden day.
...I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath...
He came to the end of the song and nodded at me.
"It don't matter," he said, "black or white, Jew or gentile -- everybody loves a good song."
"It's really true," I said, reaching into my pockets for some money.
"Cash and good vibes," he said. "That's all I get from people, all day long."
I handed him some money, and he placed his hand on my shoulder. "Thank you. Seriously. That was fun." I put my hand on his and said, "Hey, thank you."
Almost an hour later, I finally stepped out of the F train. The rain had stopped, and the evening air was cool and moist. I walked by Frank's deli and glanced down at the newspapers laid out along the sidewalk next to the fruit. The splashy headline of the New York Post caught my eye, then knocked me back.
Silver Lining.
Record title?
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