a week

 

The weeks are full. On Sundays I record the underscoring, reinterpreting a familiar melody from the album. The mics sound better. The room is somehow bigger. The old chords that have been friends for so long come back for another joyride. And then I mix. I bring in some cello, a cloud chamber bowl, a hardy gurdy, every once in a while some harmonica. 

Then I listen to this soundtrack to an unmade film, looping it for a good hour or two as the narration comes to me. I sketch it out, leave gaps to improvise, edit out the clunkers, finesse the metaphors. Everyone eventually goes to sleep. I fill a glass of water, and another with a few fingers of whiskey. The headphones slip on, and there is my voice  - as foreign and familiar as the last time. I close my eyes, holds my hands in the air like I am flying and then begin to speak. A few minutes in, I am no longer alone. Everyone is right there with me, faces glowing in the light of some imaginary campfire. 

And then I edit, I cut parts out, I move parts around. My conversations turn in circles and often make more sense if I can snap them into a straight line. This part takes days. I don't understand how anyone can do this in an hour or two. Then I mix, riding the levels of the underscoring, goosing the hushed asides, backing off the belly laughs. Then I export that final mix and listen to it on the laptop through tiny speakers and see if it holds up. I often go back and tweak a few things. And then I write a description, typically with a few typos I only find a day later. I upload it, and watch it appear on iTunes and Spotify, and all the rest. Then I see the numbers crawl up, a new listener here, another there. By now it is Saturday and I need to get ready for the next one. 

A string breaks on the guitar so I pull out a different one.