I just posted a new demo on my facebook page’s music player. It’s a first sketch of a song called Still Walking. Strange feelings abound. 

There’s a big part of me that thinks I’m nuts for having shared something so publicly so early on in its development. Surely you should wait, the voice says, hold off until it’s perfect, or at least more ready. 

Yeah right, whenever that is, I reply.

I’m excited about having taken this step for a number of reasons. For starters, this is the first new song in a long time to be added to the cadre of musical numbers that make up the amorphous creative project that I’ve for the past ten years been calling States of Matter.

States of Matter, for those who aren’t familiar with it, started off innocuously enough as a musical revue, the first working draft of which was produced in the spring of 2000. It has since become a ten-year study in cognitive flexibility for me, a project that can’t seem to be contained (is it a revue? a book musical? a concert piece? heck, a movie?!), yet a project whose manifestation as a finished work has remained painfully elusive, time and time again, for the better part of a decade.

So, I’m excited about this breakthrough; ten years on and finally some new blood has arrived that might shake things up and shed some light on how to raise this project to its next level.

But there is another thing that’s getting me stoked, and that’s the exploration of this new relationship with the idea of process. That doubting-Thomas in my mind, that voice telling me to hold off, to wait until things reach that impossible moment of ultimate readiness, has had me blind to the idea that when it comes to creative projects there might in fact be stages of ripeness. And at each of these stages, there are components that can be shared without dissipating the energy of the project as a whole. That’s about as much as I have for now, I’m still feeling this out. So there we have it, another grand experiment! :)

Still Walking is very much in early-draft mode, in fact I’ve already changed a lyric (as you might spot in this latest version that I’ve included)! But sharing it now feels right somehow, despite the warts, the nakedness, that an early-stage demo such as this cannot help but exhibit. I hope you enjoy it. As for States of Matter, yes, the gears are turning again, and my intention is another round of exploration, whatever the process yields. Ten years on, in honor of the work, I’m going to give it another try. This new song might only be a small step. But I’m still walking.

Travel safe, and talk soon.

-AF

Today I posted my first commercial release—a double-A-side single consisting of two original songs: Body of Water and Under Your Spell—to my online distributor hub. From here, the songs get sent to iTunes and a variety of other digital distributors, whenceforth they are considered published works. People will be able to listen to them, purchase them, and my hope is that they enjoy them. It feels like a huge step, the kind that makes you all wobbly and vulnerable inside, and wishing that you hadn’t listened to your mountaineer friends when they said that today’s would be an easy climb. 

Today is also the day I turn thirty two.

I find myself dogged with a slight feeling of having taken too long to get here. I’ve after all been writing songs for over a decade, and we began tracking sessions on this single as early as last June. Surely by today’s standards that’s unspeakably slow, on both counts. I realize too as I write this that I have no wisdom, no insight, no flash of brilliance, just some feelings. Feelings that waver between judgement that somehow this moment in time should have been reached quicker or achieved with more aplomb, and feelings of a sense of sureness in the way things unfold in a world whose calculus, in all its magnitude, I cannot hope to ever really grasp.

Then I laugh at myself and the absurdity of it all. Especially all the big words. Ivy League jerk ;)

It was an incredible ride, and it will continue to be; after today I return right back to the grind, tracking another set of rhythm-section takes while finishing up the next double-A-side. (watch this space!) For today, I am feeling moved to acknowledge the process that did happen, however slow and imperfect my wandering mind decides to label it; to thank those who poured their time, talent, and heart into helping create this moment and this music. We did it.

Thanks first to Tim, who has endless patience and mad skills; to the band, David, Lou, Mike, Matt, you are incredible musicians whose presence on this record humbles me; to Dave S., and Ian K., the real engineering superheroes; to pinch-hitters Fred and Justin; to Andy, Steve, and Elizabeth, for more things than I can reasonably list here; to Nina, for that shove I needed last March; and to anyone who ever told me to go and do it and the heck with what everyone else says. I am blessed and honored by your presence.

 Travel safe, and talk soon. 

-AF