In September of 2007, spurred in part by the suicide of a friend, I started writing poetry again. For four months, I wrote almost every day, producing a half-dozen poems every week. At the end of January, 2008, I stopped as mysteriously as I had started. So here's a handful of them, starting with the first in the series and ending, appropriately, with the last, with a few stops along the way that I think are particular standouts.
Moment (9.26.07)
i imagine the moment when everything breaks:
lightbulbs burst
fill the air with loose filament,
raining frosted glass,
wattage lost to a blinking sun.
and bricks crumble, our house,
a sandcastle to a thoughtless
restless tide, distracted
and consuming
everything we built
everything we thought
and we thought
we knew what safety was, how it felt,
wrapped around us like a cord,
that first cord,
wrapped around our throats,
and
i imagine that moment, light forced
into hiding, heavy, sleeping
against fluttering lids
against everything we made
and everything is pale,
finally still,
but you,
you are fluorescent
and iridescent
and you will not break
and you will not leave
you will not leave me in this place,
i imagine.
--
OCD (9.26.07)
made your bed now you ought to
made your bed now you have to
but i don't get it, i say i
don't see why and don't want to
ripple into this ordered thing my
bed made neat
i should take my dreams elsewhere, where
i will watch them rip
into the skin of the unripe
fruit of this unfinished
world, and
lie in it
sleep in it
--
Offering (10.15.07)
and when the light breaks
you bend
to gather the fragments
open your hands to the harsh edges
cutting the heel of your palm
shards of hope and broken light
assembled before me
the imperfect polished
to a perfect sheen
blinding the heel of my eye
your offering, a favor
I did not ask
I could not have known
--
9:12 (10.29.07)
the clock reads nine twelve
in the photo I keep staring at
of you against my yellow
walls, of you wishing
I would put the camera down,
of you smiling for me
in my bedroom at nine
twelve in the morning, and
I keep staring at this photo
remembering your body the
night before, just a few
nights ago, your body pressed
so close to mine that we
must have seemed as one,
and I was dreaming that
you'd never have to leave but
you're somewhere else now,
some different color, somewhere
as I sit with yellow walls
and memorize the details
of photos of you smiling,
of a clock that never changes,
and dream that this time,
maybe, time will stop for me.
--
5 and 2 (11.01.07)
1. our anniversary comes and will
go without event, without
recognition, just your name
which I do not speak aloud,
just your name burned forever,
branded into me
2. in those last days, I could
not have guessed that I would
ever lose you, or
3. how quickly, with a pop and
a siren, so much commotion
and noise, and noise, the
furious hand of our petulant god
rewriting my story with the
dash and a slash of his
unforgiving pen, crumpling pages
and re-imagining the scenery
4. his evidence previously unseen
but then at the end I
felt his hand
and saw it
and felt his hand
one fist to pummel me
into surrender while
one hand grabbed my neck
and I did not cry for
that was not his plan not even
part of it as I stood
powerless as a muted beast uncaged
afraid to dash for freedom
5. as I stood so powerless
across our tree-lined street as
sweet gums turned fiery red
and yellow and defied me with
misplaced beauty watching
like me across the street
where I stood
and watched you burn
6. there is no mythic bird,
or myth to our story, only
this: the turning leaves
still turn, and the wind
will rise and rise and
will carry them off
to burn and drift and
rest, to wherever it is
that you went that day
7. and i think of you, feel so
close to you, once again,
whenever i watch them
shove that ladder into
perfect sky
--
If Light (01.07.08)
if light
what then would
this world, I wonder
if light knew question
if light
could doubt its power
to illuminate, what
then would this world
I wonder what
or how it might look
lousy with pale shadow
if light
needed comfort or assurance
of purpose, if light, yes,
if light
--
Born Again (01.30.08)
in fragments sun
sliced and surprised
across my room across
your body without flaw
this gift your body
of earth this gift
born again as yellows
and blue eyes piercing
pain will not abate broken
fragments of angels
you flutter about me
and fall
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
My Music Career, R.I.P.
On my first visit to San Francisco, in September of 2002, as I was deciding that I would never leave, Barton showed me the music studio he had set up in his garage. I expressed that I'd always wanted to make music and he invited me to sit with him while he worked on a new song. I was thrilled and intimidated. We worked together a few times during that initial trip, and he wrote a pretty song that we, for some reason, titled Don't Stop. A few weeks later, on my second visit, I wrote a poem that would become the basis for the lyrics, although the lyrics in the initial version of the song were mostly provided by Barton. In the beginning, I was mostly ornamental. Barton wrote the music, Barton wrote the lyrics, Barton did the production, and I sat, and I watched. I continued to join him in the studio and observe, and for the moment, it was all I wanted, to just observe.
It took us a few months to complete the first version of Don't Stop. Shortly after we finished that, a friend of Barton's died unexpectedly, and he wrote Gone as a response. I helped a bit with the lyrics, and was beginning to offer suggestions about production. We finished that version of Gone in two days, which was surprising, given how long it took to finish Don't Stop. In February of 2003, we started work on a new song, originally titled Something To Call My Own but that title was later shortened. Again, my contributions were minimal, though I provided some lyrical tweaks and more suggestions about the production.
We also worked on refining a few of Barton's existing songs, Something Good and Take Me Up, but then something changed. A computer crash left us without a computer to make our music and we went a few months doing nothing. When we returned to production, with a new computer, Barton has purchased a number of additional hardware and software upgrades which meant that while he was still the veteran musician, and had a decade of experience on me with production concepts, he was no more experienced with the new equipment than I was and so we learned it together and in doing so, became a little bit closer to true partners in the musical endeavor.
It showed in our next track, Don't Let Me Go. What also showed in this song was the contrast and conflict between us that would cause our music to keep getting better and better, driven by that tension, but would ultimately cause that taut cord to snap. We both wrote separate versions of the lyrics that had completely different vibes to them, and ended up compromising, using half his bright and cheerful lyrics and half my moodier, darker ones. The song doesn't know quite what it wants to be, but the production values on it are light years ahead of anything we had accomplished previously.
We followed this up with another reworking of Take Me Up, and in the spirit of resurrecting old material, Barton played me a track he had written many years earlier but felt he had never been able to properly produce. The mixes he played me were flawed and messy but there was something in the song that I loved, something that spoke to me, so I enthusiastically suggested we give a new production a shot. That song was Tonight. We did a mix that was, again, so much better than what we'd accomplished before, that I think it surprised us both. We got caught up in the endless possibilities of the track and produced three additional remixes. The first one, the "Dimensional Mix," came easily, but we struggled a bit with the "Endless Sky" mix, repeatedly changing diretion. Later we would also produce the "Manifestation Mix" but only after some other things had happened.
Barton approached me about releasing Tonight. It was scary. I'd never given meaningful thought to the idea that we might actually put this music we were making out into the world for strangers to experience. Barton contacted a dance music promoter, Sergio, and I made some album artwork and we pressed CDs and vinyl. Scary. Once we had all the materials in hand and were ready to begin promotion, Sergio and his partner told us that they thought the "mix package" wasn't strong enough and we should hire a remixer for additional mixes. We hired Eddie X and it was also around this time that a record store owner named Victor introduced us to DJ Manny Ward, who loved our track, especially our "Endless Sky" mix. He agreed to work with us on a remix as well. With Manny's new mix, Eddie's five mixes, and our own new mix, we had enough for a second CD.
Tonight premiered at #48 on the Billboard Hot Club Dance Play chart, and ended up going as high as #38. We had charted on Billboard.
To follow that up, we decided to release Take Me Up. It was, honestly, never my favorite song, but we thought it might have some club appeal and therefore a good choice. We released two mixes of our own, plus a mix with Manny, and one from Eric Kupper. It wasn't doing as well as we'd hoped so we were forced to rush-hire Norty Cotto for an additional two mixes which we released on a second CD. Take Me Up peaked at #37 on Billboard, a tiny improvement over Tonight.
I dont recall the exact sequence of events, and would need to consult the dates on the archive tapes to be sure, but I think by this point we had written almost an entire album's worth of material, which we planned to release with the title "Visual Perception." Alongside Tonight and Take Me Up, we had Don't Let Me Go, and by this point I believe we'd already written and produced versions of Nothing Lasts Forever, Fill My Eyes, Moving In Darkness, a new production of Gone, Flying, and Honestly. I had graduated to full production partner, and had contributed lyrics to almsot all those tracks. I believe Honestly and Nothing Lasts Forever are the only exception. I wrote all the lyrics for Moving In Darkness and Fill My Eyes, though in working them into the music they were tweaked sufficiently to allow Barton a co-writing credit. I also started doing some production on my own. It was more efficient for me to lay down production groundwork and then tweak it with Barton, rather than wait for him to do it together, as he was in school for his Master's and working almost full time. In a number of these cases (Flying and Nothing Lasts Forever come to mind) I did a lot of the production work while Barton as out of town, and expected he would scrap everything I'd done, but most of it remains in the versions he will be releasing. I know I also did a lot of the production work on Moving In Darkness, and since I also wrote all the words and sing in it, I've always felt like that one, versus the others, was my song. Barton never liked when I referred to something as "mine' or "his," but my desire to take ownership of things stems from the fact that our partnership was so unequal when we began, and that the group was named after him. I always felt like it would be very easy to forget me, and in my way, struggled to make my voice heard, probably more than I needed to. And to Barton's credit, he did everything he could to assuage those feelings in me, occasionally to his detriment.
Moving In Darkness was in the running to be our third release, but we decided on To Call My Own instead. I'm going to skip the part about our ill-fated partnership with a female vocalist that delayed this release by months. We got mixes by Alan X, Josh Harris and Alex Santer, and of course our own takes and the Manny version. We also shot our first video for this song, which I directed, filmed and edited. Almost everyone involved in the project experienced some intense personal difficulty during the process. But it made it to #15 on Billboard.
Our last release together, fittingly, was a new version of Don't Stop. We gathered some strong mixes, our own and Manny's, as well as Josh Harris and Jaimy. I made a new video with a slightly bigger budget than the first. But the song failed to chart and some long-simmering personal problems caused Barton and I to split up. We didn't speak, really, for almost a year and a half. I signed a legal document relinquishing all rights and possible royalties to everything we ever did, but encouraged him to go ahead and release whatever he saw fit.
Recently he released a new version of a song he'd written before he knew me, one I'd never worked on. I thought that was nice but I was wondering if he'd also eventually produce new material or at least let out some of our work together.
Yesterday I found out that Barton is moving away, to Berlin, and I decided I should contact him to hopefully reconnect before he leaves, but he beat me to it, inviting me over for tea last night. It was really wonderful to spend time with him again after so long. It turns out he has the next release all queued up, and I'm not going to be the one to announce what his next single will be, but it's a song that, while written before he knew me, is one that we worked together on a number of times. I realize, coincidentally, that I've failed to mention the name of that song throughout this entire post, but it's one of the first songs of his that I ever heard, the first one that I fell in love with. It was supposed to be our fifth single and we had almost completed our own mix of it when things fell apart. I heard the final version of that mix last night, and while of course I am biased, I think it's really fantastic, the best work we ever did. I'm very pleased that he's going to release it. It's a bit sad, really, that this adventure had to end but it's been better for both of us, an it's sad that it ended just as we were improving so much, but I'm also happy to know that such a good song will be my final contribution. Making music was always a dream for me, and now I've done it, but I've also learned that just because you have a dream doesn't mean that you can or should make it real. My talents lay elsewhere, and listening to our last collaboration, I remember all the exciting adventures we had, the endless frustrations, and come to peace.
BARTON on Facebook
BARTON website
It took us a few months to complete the first version of Don't Stop. Shortly after we finished that, a friend of Barton's died unexpectedly, and he wrote Gone as a response. I helped a bit with the lyrics, and was beginning to offer suggestions about production. We finished that version of Gone in two days, which was surprising, given how long it took to finish Don't Stop. In February of 2003, we started work on a new song, originally titled Something To Call My Own but that title was later shortened. Again, my contributions were minimal, though I provided some lyrical tweaks and more suggestions about the production.
We also worked on refining a few of Barton's existing songs, Something Good and Take Me Up, but then something changed. A computer crash left us without a computer to make our music and we went a few months doing nothing. When we returned to production, with a new computer, Barton has purchased a number of additional hardware and software upgrades which meant that while he was still the veteran musician, and had a decade of experience on me with production concepts, he was no more experienced with the new equipment than I was and so we learned it together and in doing so, became a little bit closer to true partners in the musical endeavor.
It showed in our next track, Don't Let Me Go. What also showed in this song was the contrast and conflict between us that would cause our music to keep getting better and better, driven by that tension, but would ultimately cause that taut cord to snap. We both wrote separate versions of the lyrics that had completely different vibes to them, and ended up compromising, using half his bright and cheerful lyrics and half my moodier, darker ones. The song doesn't know quite what it wants to be, but the production values on it are light years ahead of anything we had accomplished previously.
We followed this up with another reworking of Take Me Up, and in the spirit of resurrecting old material, Barton played me a track he had written many years earlier but felt he had never been able to properly produce. The mixes he played me were flawed and messy but there was something in the song that I loved, something that spoke to me, so I enthusiastically suggested we give a new production a shot. That song was Tonight. We did a mix that was, again, so much better than what we'd accomplished before, that I think it surprised us both. We got caught up in the endless possibilities of the track and produced three additional remixes. The first one, the "Dimensional Mix," came easily, but we struggled a bit with the "Endless Sky" mix, repeatedly changing diretion. Later we would also produce the "Manifestation Mix" but only after some other things had happened.
Barton approached me about releasing Tonight. It was scary. I'd never given meaningful thought to the idea that we might actually put this music we were making out into the world for strangers to experience. Barton contacted a dance music promoter, Sergio, and I made some album artwork and we pressed CDs and vinyl. Scary. Once we had all the materials in hand and were ready to begin promotion, Sergio and his partner told us that they thought the "mix package" wasn't strong enough and we should hire a remixer for additional mixes. We hired Eddie X and it was also around this time that a record store owner named Victor introduced us to DJ Manny Ward, who loved our track, especially our "Endless Sky" mix. He agreed to work with us on a remix as well. With Manny's new mix, Eddie's five mixes, and our own new mix, we had enough for a second CD.
Tonight premiered at #48 on the Billboard Hot Club Dance Play chart, and ended up going as high as #38. We had charted on Billboard.
To follow that up, we decided to release Take Me Up. It was, honestly, never my favorite song, but we thought it might have some club appeal and therefore a good choice. We released two mixes of our own, plus a mix with Manny, and one from Eric Kupper. It wasn't doing as well as we'd hoped so we were forced to rush-hire Norty Cotto for an additional two mixes which we released on a second CD. Take Me Up peaked at #37 on Billboard, a tiny improvement over Tonight.
I dont recall the exact sequence of events, and would need to consult the dates on the archive tapes to be sure, but I think by this point we had written almost an entire album's worth of material, which we planned to release with the title "Visual Perception." Alongside Tonight and Take Me Up, we had Don't Let Me Go, and by this point I believe we'd already written and produced versions of Nothing Lasts Forever, Fill My Eyes, Moving In Darkness, a new production of Gone, Flying, and Honestly. I had graduated to full production partner, and had contributed lyrics to almsot all those tracks. I believe Honestly and Nothing Lasts Forever are the only exception. I wrote all the lyrics for Moving In Darkness and Fill My Eyes, though in working them into the music they were tweaked sufficiently to allow Barton a co-writing credit. I also started doing some production on my own. It was more efficient for me to lay down production groundwork and then tweak it with Barton, rather than wait for him to do it together, as he was in school for his Master's and working almost full time. In a number of these cases (Flying and Nothing Lasts Forever come to mind) I did a lot of the production work while Barton as out of town, and expected he would scrap everything I'd done, but most of it remains in the versions he will be releasing. I know I also did a lot of the production work on Moving In Darkness, and since I also wrote all the words and sing in it, I've always felt like that one, versus the others, was my song. Barton never liked when I referred to something as "mine' or "his," but my desire to take ownership of things stems from the fact that our partnership was so unequal when we began, and that the group was named after him. I always felt like it would be very easy to forget me, and in my way, struggled to make my voice heard, probably more than I needed to. And to Barton's credit, he did everything he could to assuage those feelings in me, occasionally to his detriment.
Moving In Darkness was in the running to be our third release, but we decided on To Call My Own instead. I'm going to skip the part about our ill-fated partnership with a female vocalist that delayed this release by months. We got mixes by Alan X, Josh Harris and Alex Santer, and of course our own takes and the Manny version. We also shot our first video for this song, which I directed, filmed and edited. Almost everyone involved in the project experienced some intense personal difficulty during the process. But it made it to #15 on Billboard.
Our last release together, fittingly, was a new version of Don't Stop. We gathered some strong mixes, our own and Manny's, as well as Josh Harris and Jaimy. I made a new video with a slightly bigger budget than the first. But the song failed to chart and some long-simmering personal problems caused Barton and I to split up. We didn't speak, really, for almost a year and a half. I signed a legal document relinquishing all rights and possible royalties to everything we ever did, but encouraged him to go ahead and release whatever he saw fit.
Recently he released a new version of a song he'd written before he knew me, one I'd never worked on. I thought that was nice but I was wondering if he'd also eventually produce new material or at least let out some of our work together.
Yesterday I found out that Barton is moving away, to Berlin, and I decided I should contact him to hopefully reconnect before he leaves, but he beat me to it, inviting me over for tea last night. It was really wonderful to spend time with him again after so long. It turns out he has the next release all queued up, and I'm not going to be the one to announce what his next single will be, but it's a song that, while written before he knew me, is one that we worked together on a number of times. I realize, coincidentally, that I've failed to mention the name of that song throughout this entire post, but it's one of the first songs of his that I ever heard, the first one that I fell in love with. It was supposed to be our fifth single and we had almost completed our own mix of it when things fell apart. I heard the final version of that mix last night, and while of course I am biased, I think it's really fantastic, the best work we ever did. I'm very pleased that he's going to release it. It's a bit sad, really, that this adventure had to end but it's been better for both of us, an it's sad that it ended just as we were improving so much, but I'm also happy to know that such a good song will be my final contribution. Making music was always a dream for me, and now I've done it, but I've also learned that just because you have a dream doesn't mean that you can or should make it real. My talents lay elsewhere, and listening to our last collaboration, I remember all the exciting adventures we had, the endless frustrations, and come to peace.
BARTON on Facebook
BARTON website
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