2002-08-01 - 1:52 a.m.

Oh wait, I forgot.

I always forget.

I'm a "musician."

One of the reasons why it gets so frustrating for me, with the music and so on, is that I honestly do come up with ever so great songs, constantly, in my head.

Complex. Rich. Esoteric.

But I can't make those tentative ghosts real. It�s not that I can�t, really. I have the technology, and know how to use it. I can play the guitar and bass. I can sing. Keys and drums I can easily learn.

Just as you can never really write your dreams (and if you say you can, you�re lying), the songs I come up with can never be faithfully recorded.

That�s why I never talk about them.

So I forget them. I let them go. Which is probably how it should be.

It's probably my gift, and you know what? I shouldn't downplay it. I shouldn't expect more.

You know what? I can listen to a song for the first time, and can finish, halfway through, the rest of it in my head. And I'm almost always right. Good song or bad. I always know where it's gonna go.

When I listen to a song I've heard more than once, that I like, I'm not hearing the recorded song anymore. I automatically, without a thought, complete and correct the song by adding the phrases and harmony that should have been included.

I can slow it down or speed it up to my liking. I can change keys.

I can at any time, in any place, hear in the background a song I heard once, and five years ago, and remember it, and can usually remember where I was when I heard it the first time.

I can compare and contrast two songs from entirely different sub-sub-genres.

At the same time, I confuse memories of songs with other songs. Flaw? Nah. I�ve never met anyone who confuses completely unrelated songs because one thin thread ties them together.

I have the instinct to tap out a better rhythm on four fingers and a thumb that any drummer at a show. And I almost always know where to expect the cymbal crash, et al.

I don't know the words. I don't know the terminology. But I can feel the music, and for God's sake, not in the way that your average Phish fan would say that s/he can feel it.

I am the music. I fucking am, and not a single person in this world can take that away.

I know how to please the music. I know how to taste a song. I know.

What is this leading up to? Nothing.

Sometimes you just have to boast. Here I am boasting about something that nobody would ever think of saying out loud about me.

Just too obvious, perhaps.