2003-10-11 - 2:03 a.m.

I wrote a song.

It's been awhile since I've actually written an entire song. (That's the trick, just like doing any other project, at least for me--gotta finish it now or you're never gonna finish it.)

Now the quote unquote master craftsman feels entitled to dissert on craftsmanship and crap like that--but there's this thing. Nobody's heard it yet.

(Is dissert as in dissertation a word? It should be.)

That's the worst part. I'm not used to playing it, I don't have a ton of faith in it, and, as always, it's not hey I feel so happy, you're a girl, I'm a guy, so let's dance. Noooo. I gotta write about stuff that happened to me.

So we'll see. I got plenty of time 'till my next scheduled show (January, 2004), so we'll see.

Dude. Writing songs is hard.

First off--I actually like to rhyme. A good line is a strikeout pitch away from the plate--you got lucky that the listener swung for it. A good rhyme is a nasty curveball that tails in at the last minute to send the listener reeling and wanting to see the replay.

OK--listen to Aimee Mann if you want to know what I'm talking about.

But I'm not Aimee Mann. I�m not even Michael Penn. I�m not Bob Pollard, not Robyn Hitchcock, a shy loud-cause-she�s-quiet Suzanne Vega, not even a shameless Evan Dando (and thank God for that). My songwriting is an entirely different thing than my writing here is. I mean, there are zero songs of mine that I'd prefer to covers.

Now covers, that's an entirely different story.

Frat boys and wedding bands have shamed this, well, what should be art, to the nether-regions of performance.

Cover bands can laugh at Mimes, bad Clowns, and people that pretend to be gargoyles. That�s it.

But what an outlet for me. To take a song that I already have a ton of faith in, and to change it up a bit? I mean, that counts, right? I�m talking about songs that have given so much to me, and I want to give something back, or I�m talking about when I covered Debbie Gibson�s Foolish Beat--it�s the same thing--presented as new to the audience, right?

So, OK. The absolute worst thing about writing anything is knowing that someone is gonna see it somewhere. Well, maybe not for all of us, but for me.

At least what I write here, I don�t really care what anybody thinks, most importantly myself included.

But a song? There�s nothing in the world I judge with more harshness, it should be next to impossible for me to write one.

And that�s why I drink.

We�ll see how it holds out in the light of the crack of noon.