May. 20, 2003 - 9:22 p.m.
Dear Meghan:
Though I have titled this letter ‘Crash’, there is nothing crash-o-licious about this letter. I did it solely to rhyme with the title of your last letter, the reason for which will become apparent later.
Happy five-month anniversary. And they said it wouldn't last...
I am pleased to know the recital went off, if not without a hitch, then definitely without great injury. What other dance-o-centric plans do you have for the near future? What are you doing all summer? Will you go someplace you’ve never seen? If not, when will be the next time you go someplace you’ve never seen?
Madness lingers in the law firm gig. There seems to be an unwritten law that suggests if any task or project has less than 100 extra steps, it is not beneficial to the firm. The heavies at the firm all seem to thrive on bureaucratic gymnastics, as if they – and almost all are men – are showing off the size of their projects. “Look at my massive, manly project!” Of course, it is not the size of a project; it’s what you can do with it. Latest example: I sent, via e-mail, a document for bigwigs to fill out and return to me. All they had to do was open the document (which is an attachment to the e-mail), fill it out, and return it. Sounds easy? Just received this e-mail from a bigwig guy: “Vince – could you send me 2 hard copies of that document you sent?” Imagine that. The guy actually wants me to print the document that I sent him as an attachment in an e-mail, a document that he could print if he right-clicked on the document and hit ‘print’. I resisted the temptation to write back and suggest he join the millennium already in progress, as it would make the bigwig in question just more of a whiny, sniveling, egotistical twit than he is on good days. Instead, I just deleted the request. Life is too short, and in fact, so is he.
Madness lingers everywhere else as well. In a bit of bad timing madness, Lauren – of the Clowns, of course – wrote to say hello from New Orleans, and by the way, she broke her foot. But that’s not really anything to worry about, is it? I wrote her back, inviting her to come over a see a movie. It’s about the best I can do.
I have started working on the artwork for the CD that I will be producing shortly. Images haven’t exactly been racing into my head, so if any particular image appears when you think the words ‘Ugly Bungalow’, let me know. ‘Ugly Bungalow’ was a suggestion I heard a few months ago, and though it sounds, well, ugly, I do like it, at least for my present collection of songs.
The mixing of the songs continued last night and became a marathon session, pulling me into the early a.m. hours and totally wrecking my plans to go jogging and do a few hundred sit-ups. I had actually concluded mixing about five songs when I spied an old cassette of mine out of the corner of my eye. The stuff turned out to be demos I recorded in 1991, songs that I wrote, recorded, listened to, and then decided to not listen to again. Twelve years later, I found them pretty interesting, especially in contrast to the writing style on this side of the millennium. Nothing like an audio diary to tell you exactly who you were once upon a time.
What is especially intriguing to me, and no doubt only me, is I can tell where I was – emotionally, spiritually, etc. – by HOW I played notes, not only WHAT notes I played. There were a lot of songs written exclusively in minor and seventh chords back then. And I found one particularly harrowing lyric hidden under all the synth tracks and drum machines of the early 1990’s: “I’m sitting beneath the Christmas tree/Hoping someone nice will open me.” Not bad, I thought, though I am convinced that, when I wrote it, I was just rhyming ‘tree’ and ‘me’.
I will be mixing even more tonight, so pardon if this letter is slightly short.
Relatively close,
Vincent
what they said - what they will say
