I am afraid of music

📸: Joe Major.

There is a song open on my DAW right now that doesn't want to reveal itself.

I listen to what I have, and feel in love with lush, ever-gazing wash of the verses. And the drop that comes after.

The whatever-you-want-to-call-the-part-with-no-vocals-where-the-music-freaks-out-on-its-own-a-bit.

A beefy robotic jam like a night at a replicant discotheque. Rain and lights, the steamy smell of udon from under soaking tarps.

But I think I've become afraid of it.

It's already two months past when I hoped I'd be finished and the song has become a Jenga game, balancing on one block and one sudden move will bring the whole thing down.

Some songs tease. This one mocks.

I hear my voice in the scratch vocal takes - not framing out a loose set of ideas to bolster later, but to laugh and leer. To remind me that I was never a natural singer and that my notes go straight through the nose. That I chew off the diphthongs at the end.

Guys with buns, blank patchouli stares and a proclivity for soft cooing would do this far better.

Is this it? Do I need to sell the studio and buy a camping trailer with the proceeds in which to live out my final days on the farmers market circuit? Or in my shouting shack?

The song, like all songs, is a child. And this, the age-old parental concern.

Do I meddle, or do I leave alone? Helicopter, or let them go?

I will mess them up one way or another.

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• Don't forget to see Brazil at Post Fest and pick up a limited press bootleg CD.

  
  

• Also, get your copy of ALL OF THIS WILL BE FORGOTTEN (Selected essays from 2024) at the DL;BR store.

  
  

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