The Shouting Shack

Photo: Szoki Adams on Flickr

My car dashboard has been endowed with a lifetime of secrets. The poor thing.

There's something freeing about being and feeling far away from the ears and influence of another human being.

I like my own space. I like my own company. Something I have always felt in my bones.

I don't know why I have this urge. Maybe it's from being misunderstood more often than not. Maybe it's from having grown up in the micro-managed moral environment of evangelical Christianity.

I have always felt more comfortable alone. And watching me sing (or emote in general) is still a lot like trying to piss in a crowded restroom.

I will hold back. 

And so, when many my age set out to build home studios with reinforced acoustic walls, filling them up with all manner of vintage instruments and Sweetwater gear, I just want a shack.

Temperature controlled, of course. Wired, of course. Remote and secret, obviously.

Enough room to sit if I need to, but just enough space to stand in front of a mic and press a record button.

The signal can travel where it needs to. Maybe back up to the house, or maybe over a longer haul, like to the cloud where I can nudge it in later when I'm in my big studio chair.

I could see a world where I drive an afternoon to this tiny Martian outpost. Maybe it's in the lost hills of Brown County. Maybe it's in the back forty of some Midwestern farm.

I'd park the car and pull a ghillie net over it. Bring my laptop and a notebook with half a dozen Number 2 pencils. A couple of microphones and a set of cans. The day's lunch.

Inside is a small space heater, a wooden chair with a table arm like we had in school. A lamp. An electric kettle with a box of Throat Coat.

Maybe the whole thing is powered by solar, soaking up the sun into batteries that keep it going until winter's darkness hits at 430pm.

A Bob Ross scene, miles away from where anyone can hear. An emotional Tardis where words become more than glyphs on napkins and the universe expands, transferring from head to waveform.

Who wants to help me build this?

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What I’m reading: The Magnificent Ambersons (Booth Tarkington)

What I'm listening to: Piano Nights (Bohren and der Club of Gore)

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