I Wanna See Everything

Over the past 6 months a habit that I've picked up is carrying a small notebook around with me most times I leave the house. I use it as a diary mostly, but also jot down song ideas and occasionally dabble in short fiction writing. That kind of makes it sound pretentious and that the writing therein is serious in any way, which it really isn't. But sometimes I write a little story and I feel the need to say that here, I guess? Anyways, having that notebook has affected the output of this blog, for better or for worse. Ideas that used to be turned into posts now stay in the notebook. I sometimes think that some things I put into the notebook could be a primer for a longer blog post, but that has not happened once yet, so there goes that. Maybe that's a sign that they aren't good enough ideas. Maybe I'm just really lazy. Only God knows.

So there are some things and some ideas that are exclusive to the notebook. In general, these are more private and confessional things, which made me think "Why are those exclusive to the notebook?" I guess an easy answer would be that I am too scared to put my innermost thoughts on this blog. I mean, everybody has somethings that they keep to themselves, right? But I also thought, don't most people's innermost and private and weirdest thoughts make up their best ideas? Isn't that why Tropic of Cancer and On the Road are good? Would the quality of my writing be vastly improved by complete transparency in my thoughts and saying everything I think? Would anyone even care? The only two readers I know for sure I have on this blog are my girlfriend and my tru homie and IMU supporter since day 1 Matt. I don't think I'm in any danger of alienating them with anything I say.

I've gotten pretty into the band Self Defense Family lately. They have a tumblr on which the band, but especially the singer, answer questions almost constantly and the replies they give are always 100% completely honest. They give their real opinion, not caring about the public opinion about this band or that author or this social practice or that common belief or this attitude. As a result, me, as well as many other people, are very drawn to them and the ethos of their music. Their complete honesty and truthfulness makes them extremely interesting and I'm starting to think that if everybody acted that way and never lied about things to soften blows or avoided an issue to not hurt feelings, that everyone would be a lot more interesting. If everyone didn't have varying levels shame about the things they like and think, than everyone would be more interesting.

Obviously, that is much easier said than done.

It's like that episode of Community where Britta's boyfriend is a carny with irreparable brain damage that erases him being able to feel shame. Okay Abed, in order to fully embrace the metaness, make an IMU joke next season. Maybe that will make me start to watch again.

While listening to Self Defense Family today, I thought to myself "I really enjoy the lyrical and ideological themes of this band? Why have I never been able to write songs like this?" The obvious answer is that I am lazy person and that I haven't written a song in a long time. It's something that you need to constantly be doing in order to get better at. Once you stop, you start to deteriorate skill-wise.

A metaphor for song writing (in German!):



But even when I was writing songs all the time, the themes never really got beyond "I love you/I used to love you/We're not in love anymore/I hate you". There was one song written from the point of view of my skateboard, but that was really just a rip-off of "Plea From a Cat Named Virtute" and was sonically almost identical to "Civil Twilight". Why did I write songs like that? Was I that narrow in my interests and thoughts?

Here's my most honest stab at it: I was terrified of being single and had a hard time dealing with it. I was not very good at dealing with the ways that all of my university relationships ended, so I tried to express that by writing bad lyrics. I also was heavily listening to mostly pop-punk bands that all had mainly heartbreak-focused songs, so listening to that music clearly had an influence on what I created.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy a good jammer about being in or out love. I sure as hell still do. You know what? I probably still enjoy them more than non-love or anti-love songs. But there's more to me than that. A lot more.

After thinking about what I wrote songs about the things that I wrote them about, I came to the conclusion that most of my "serious" ideas went into this blog as opposed to the dumb pop-punk songs I used to write. But are the things I write about on here even that serious? At times I might touch on some real, at least to me, shit, but in general I don't even think I do that. There are things I never write about. For example, sex. Sex is like a top 5 most popular thing in life, yet I have never written about it here. Why? I have sex. Everyone I know has sex. Everyone has sex. The logical answer would be that I am scared to write about it. Should I be? Fuck no.

(Don't worry, imusicalgenius.blogspot.com, the website you are currently frequenting, is not going to turn into a raunchy sex blog. That just ain't us.)

All this did, more or less, was make me reconsider what I write about, whether it be here, at school, in my notebook or in my song notebook, and if that matters at all. And that's good! Self-criticality is very important. But just because what I write about (Danny Valencia) isn't the most important, that doesn't mean it isn't important. It still is. There are varying degrees of importance.

Plus, this is my blog, so I'm the fuckin; boss here. What I say goes and that's the way it will always be. Unless imusicalgenius.blogspot.com somehow becomes a huge money-making entity and I eventually decide to take a deal from a corporation and they take over the writing of the blog. Because let's be honest, that is extremely likely.

Anyways, here's something for you Timmy:

"Write what you want to and what you feel you should. Don't be scared of what the hang-ups are surrounding that. Stick to your guns."

Cool.