I Remember the Stones on the Beach

In December of 2016, I felt creatively unfulfilled after the end of Beat Noir and decided that I needed to fight that feeling by outlining some writing and music goals on the blog. By writing it down here, it would be more real and some people would know about it. Maybe that would make it more important? I referred to it as "the project" to myself that year.

Jesus Christ, IMU is so navel-gazey. I'll try to not be so nostalgic and talking about past things I've done so much in the future. This is a tendency in myself I don't like and try to work against.

Second note: Each IMU title is usually taken from a song I'm listening to while writing the post. Though I enjoy making references to other things I enjoy, it can sure make it hard to find the specific post I'm trying to reference.

It took a while, but most of those project actually got done. The baseball zine came out later that year and the short stories that I thought were actually good ended up on the wordpress.

By far, the hardest part for me was the songs. For whatever reason, finishing songs has never been in my DNA, which is probably why I functioned much better as Beat Noir's long-term hired gun on bass. I've (mostly) consistently tried to write my own songs since I've played bass and guitar, but I've never been able to get over the hump that comes after the initial burst of ideas that generates something new. Maybe it's because I've never made the jump of working on them with other people. Maybe it's because I am bad at writing songs. Maybe it's because I'm scared of finishing them.

I wanted to get five songs down with the hope of making a demo and eventually I did that. Then I realized that some of those ideas sucked and I moved onto new ones. Then I decided I didn't want to make a 5-song demo.

Ultimately, the songs were the ones that project that petered out the most. It was easy to just put the other stuff out into the internet and have them live there. The songs required a lot more effort and needed me to learn how to do new things, like recording at home, that were a lot of work. I looked into getting some equipment to do that, but then gave up. I downloaded Reaper to get started on some tracks, but then gave up.

I'm still working on them, albeit in the most minimal way possible. I even came up with a name, The Vice (a reference to Northrop Frye, not the website) and had a pretty solid vision of what it would be like that has mostly stuck (all songs in DAEAC#E, emo meets 80's power pop with Tony Molina aesthetic). Three-ish years later, I have 7 songs with lyrics (and two covers that are original enough that they get a mention here) and have moved onto the idea of only doing 2-song digital singles, should I ever do enough work to release them (I probably won't). I got into playing to drum loops for a while and feel like that will stick.

I write all of this because putting it down somewhere makes it feel more real, even if posting it on IMU is, for all intents and purposes, shouting into the void. To me, writing it out here is a way of me affirming to myself that it's real, even when I haven't been giving it much attention.

A tepid and, to be honest, pretty cowardly way of doing that, but a way nonetheless. Maybe one day The Vice will come to life in a more tangible way.