I’m not sure how I feel about songwriting at this moment.
If I’m honest, a lot of my songs annoy the hell out of me. They nearly all are in the second person - whining to a friend, begging God to make me beautiful, condescending to an ex, etc… It’s sickening, petty stuff, really.
The truly bizarre thing is that I don’t see myself as insecure when I am writing the song. I am huge in my song. The narrator of my songs knows exactly why people think what they think and he knows exactly why they are just…not…getting it. But when you consider how the narrator is essentially, constructing the reality that the song takes place in, it get’s pretty bleak.
The narrator (let’s not forget that’s me) is inclined to make himself appear to the listener as the justifiably aggrieved party in nearly every scenario and you have to wonder if the actual events that inspired the songs really took place the way he’s suggesting they did. (I started psychoanalysis yesterday, btw)
I would love for me to come across as big as I feel in the moment when I am writing: self-possessed, agentic, droll. Ideally, my precocious lyrics would wash over you in an enigmatic and inscrutable fashion. Who is this young man? How did he get be so wise?And in his few years?
When I was nine, I transferred elementary schools and immediately became the de facto object of affection for half the girls on the playground (nothing like this happened since). The next school year, they completely forgot about me, and I was truly puzzled. I asked my friend Jacob what happened and I distinctly recall him reminding me that I had been significantly more bashful and quiet the previous year.
“Wait, you’re telling me girls don’t like me anymore cause I actually talk now” I asked.
”Yeah, pretty much. I think they just like shy guys” he said. “They like the mystery.”
I just can’t do it.
This song, though! It’s time I just get my insecurities out in the fresh air. Earnestness is sexy! or whatever they say on Tumblr.
I wrote this “Slouching” several years ago and kind of just forgot about it until my friend, Jesse Bielenberg suggested we work on something together. Getting to know him better at his genial, Sunset Park studio, I felt the tenderness of this song calling. Something about Jesse gave me confidence that, in his hands, we could free my self-consciousness and record it in all its tenuousness.