you are dismissed.

i never thought i would be one of those four AM writers. the kinds that wake up in a start with a revelation that, when daylight breaks, is more like common sense that everyone in the world has thought up in normal waking hours before your mind thought it up at four AM.

but this morning, from four to six, i was released from a bad idea. three years later. but i had to hear it on the sears intercom to know it. and even when i knew it standing in the glorious wash of florescent lights and craftman tools, it didn't really occur to me until a woke up last night and put it all together. common sense is hard for some people.

three years ago in my final semester of college-- post semester of my studies in an artist colony on martha's vineyard-- i was struggling to recreate some essence of songwriting and came up with, what we now call, the Bad Idea. The melody was salvageable, but... but a song is a song and i reworked it as much as i could with my limited skills in my tiny dormroom.

i carried the Bad Idea with me to asheville, north carolina as i entered into a music collective-- the next phase of better songwriting. i wanted to use the melody, but the words were entirely inextractable. i had a dozen people to bounce Bad Idea off of, but instead, i kept it. no recycling, no trashing, no sharing. just storing it in my mental shelving and letting it steal space from More Suitable Ideas or even Good Ideas. i let Bad Idea re-emerge when we were alone and had no Good Ideas to visit.

when moving to nashville a couple months back, i completely forgot about Bad Idea. thankfully. the worst part about bad idea is it didn't mean a damn thing. there was no story, no emotional ties or deeper meaning. it was really just a series of words strung together in such a way as to create a rhyming pattern and a song structure. a really bad rhyming pattern and a mediocre song structure. and. i. couldn't. let. it. die.

but i'm standing in sears picking up a spade and a sewing machine (i wanted to slip that in there so you see how self sufficient and industrious i am), and over the warbled radio comes this, in the same rhythm-- though altered melody-- i had been batting around for years:

"..."

i can't even show it to you here.

it doesn't matter what the lyrics are or exactly how it went. it was enough-- it was the hook. and i immediately noticed that i was turning a craftsman color red and my fellow shopper was about to comment on the horredousness of the song when i had to confess. and he laughed. rightfully so. i wasn't claiming that i had the song stolen or that i had stolen the song. i was claiming that i had a very Bad Idea that, when played out, fell flat and shameful just as i predicted it would. that was last week.


it was this morning that i realized i was allowed to let it go. someone out there had already played that one out for me, and i somehow dodged that bullet. or rather, sulkily mosied my way to the other side of the room before someone had fired the gun.

and it feels good. i have been officially released from a bad idea. next time, i'll drop it sooner. or push harder against my conscience and hope for my big break over a sears intercom.　

he called today.

it's not as though we even speak anymore.

that's always how i have to start justifying writing about him.  it was my first attempt this week to put into a song the profound amount of hostility and neglect that entirely defines our relationship... or lack thereof.

it's awkward to write about invisible friends when you know you can't avoid them in the future.  but i put it into my head that we don't speak, that it's not as though he would even know about that song... it's not as though we catch up or that he reads my blog or that he even asks about me through mutual friends.  i know that to be true.  and for that i am thankful. 

except that he called today.  for the first time in a year.  and it just so happens he called for the first time in a year after the week that i have finished finally writing the song that i've been trying to form about him and us and the world we lived... he called for the first time after i finally figured it all out and formed the final word. 

it's awkward to write about you.  any of you.  because i don't know when you'll be back.  i don't know when you'll find out that those vague words and funny phrases are really pointing back at you. 

it's a heavy task to write about you.  it's heavy because the things i say don't have to be truthful.  but it's scarier when they are.  it's heavy because it means that i have to dance around accuracy for the sake of privacy.  or i have to dance around accuracy for the sake of hiding what it would mean to tell him to his face.  and that's awkward.

so, here we are, with one hope:

he's never going to see this.

he's never going to see this.

he's never going to see this.

he wouldn't know if it was about him anyway.