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ok my loves.

first

thank you for all your beautiful comments on the eclipse blog. i miss writing like that. i miss a lot of things. neil landed from the UK yesterday and ash went down to new york to be with dada so i could make a video.

the above photo was taken yesterday on route 28 in upstate new york (where i now live even though i don't understand why) in front an abandoned doll-house furniture store. i was there shooting with a small crew (ellie, on the left, and numi, on the right) & jim batt (in the hat).....

(with all of our macs)...to make a new video for my main patreon page. it's going to be awesome. 

we went some amazing places and shot some amazing things.....

i am reeling with the freedom of not having seen a baby for over 24 hours. i really don't remember what to do anymore.

so, on topic...NOW. i am going to try to do something quite new, and i need you.

a few times in the past couple of years, i've wound up with a creative gun to my songwriting head: eight in eight (in which i wrote music and lyrics REALLY fast with a bunch of friends), the bed show (in which i'd run down the hall from a group of actors and write songs inspired by their work...those demos are hopefully going to come out on patreon someday soon), the jib sessions (fueled by this patreon, during which jason webley and i wrote five songs in as many days...and i was really stunned at how great some of them were) and then there was the edward record...we basically wrote a song a day and gave ourselves really strict songwriting deadlines.

i never used to work this way. i used to just get an idea for a song and hopefully drift over to the piano if i happened to be home...ideas that came on the road would get trapped in phones or on tape recorders (i'm pretty awful at going back to old ideas, i like them fresh, like my vegetables, or my sushi).

but lately i've had way less spontaneous time. i have a kid. i have a house. i have a schedule. there has to be a delineation between Work time and Other time....my entire life used to basically be Work time, and i'd basically decided when i was allowed or not allowed to give myself a break (answer: very rarely and it usually had to involve wine. i am a serious workaholic, and i am not proud of it). 

but lately: i've had to schedule songwriting work time. the crazy thing is that it ACTUALLY WORKS, which i've always known but haven't wanted to admit, or rather, take into account. i may be a workaholic, but i hate discipline.

so anyway: i had blocked off some time in the studio this month (and next) to write new songs and keep chiseling the songs i started this past winter in australia...but i've been finding the time always manages to vanish. 

i've booked the studio i work in from 12-6pm for many days, and there's baby shit to do, and house shit to do, and email shit to do, and all of a sudden it's 4 pm and i'm like: how is it possible i am going to get to the songwriting shit? there is so much other shit.

but when i was writing with edward, or writing with jason, the things would get written because there were these other people and these defined things and these deadlines and so...songs got written.

and so i am saying fuck it: and i am using the patreon to make me write, and i hope you don't fucking mind.

to wit: I AM GOING TO WRITE A BRAND NEW SONG ON THE PIANO TOMORROW and RECORD IT THE NEXT DAY ... it's monday night, that would make tuesday writing day and wednesday finishing/tweaking recording day.

let me say that again: i am going to START AND FINISH and RECORD (however roughly) a song by the end of wednesday. i'll upload it. if it's good enough, i'll share it with the world. if it's just....i don't know....not good enough, it'll be a gift to you guys, and you can sympathize with my sad failed songwriter self.

either way; i've got a studio booked, a piano tuner booked, an engineer booked. i'm going to do it all in a tiny studio in kingston, NY. there is a good coffee shop a mile away with internet. the studio has suspect internet, but if i can get it working, i may try to stream some updates....i'll email you a heads up here if it works....but otherwise i'll just take video and send it along.

NOW.....

given this is a directly patreon-inspiered-and-funded project i don't want to just go in there and see what happens - i don't have any particular idea for a song....i don't have an even-remotely concrete idea of what i want to write.

if anything, i need to erase taylor swift's new signle out of my head, because when i write i tend to bend towards the last few songs i've heard, and oh my god, i am really not sure i want my new song to be a ricochet of a taylor swift song (if you want to know my thoughts about taylor swift, see my facebook post from earlier tonight. warning: contains goth.).

so i'd like, at least for this round, to ask YOU all to throw some starting material at me. it could be anything....

....a sentence, two words that rhyme, a story about something that's just happened to you, a personal story and a link to an article, a small story and a link to an image, it could even be a link to another song, and a story...but you get the picture about the story. i want to hear from you, personally, not just read an article about shit going on in the world. 

just some general guidelines:

-this isn't a call for you to request covers. this is an original song.

-don't make it cryptic. if you just say "reindeer" i'm not going to have much to work off. 

-don't make it typical...."write a song about heartbreak!" or "how about a song about your baby??" or "write a song bout president trump" or "write a song about something that makes you happy!" will be fired off out of a cannon hunter-s-thompson-style. you guys are too intelligent for that. give me something real.

-don't take up space on this thread by saying things like "i don't have a song idea but i just wanted to take this opportunity to tell you how much i love the song coin-operated boy because when i was 18..."....because that will waste songwriting time. i am going to read ALL of this shit. save that for another thread.

-don't think too much....just tell me something real, deep, hard, strange, insightful, odd, whatever. don't be afraid.

you are free to lurk and upvote other ideas...but don't just upvote the first thing you see because it looks good: that will have the tendency to snowball and make more people upvote the semi-ok idea out of laziness. wait until there are at least...i dunno...50 comments here before you start upvoting anything. then go ahead and upvote. but how about this...if you upvote, please add a comment under the idea. that would help.

i may wind up taking a few elements and combining them. i may wind up starting a song about something from the comments and going off on a totally different tangent. it's all fair game, it's fuckin art.

ok?

ok.

it's a deal.

this post is locked, as you can see, so you don't have to worry about anyone outside the patreon-community reading your thoughts. as my super fucking corny yoga teacher from arlington used to say, as we made ourselves into the shapes of waving palm leaves: we're all fronds here.

you will send me thoughts. i will read them. i will write.

and tomorrow night, i will make a video/post/recording and tell you how it's going. and wednesday night, i will post my song, whatever the fuck it is.

go.

love, 

slightly scared AFP

p.s. on top of everything, i am coming down with a fucking cold. if i wake up tomorrow and i'm dying, i may just cancel all of this. but i doubt it. but i had to say that, because. ok go.

---------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

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