49) Directionless Motion

Songs & Writing, Places are Portals

Loads of new subscribers, thank you for joining me here. Very grateful for your time, attention, support, interest. If you like my Substack, please share, re-stack on Notes, whatevs. If you’re just “following” —something I just realized that is a thing here on Substack, please consider doing this instead of following…it really really helps:

Since being in the UK, music has been more of a mainstay than writing…the book I came here to write. I’m practicing songs I’ve written over the years, re-learning and re-commiting to memory. I started a new song about this dating app biz, called “Out There” —as in putting yourself out there. As you might recall, I got here, and on a lark joined one for the first time ever, met one person I was interested in and promptly left the app. Got a refund too, not sure how I managed that one.

It’s been a fairly unpleasant experience, the dating app thing. Unless you like the idea of being a grown-ass woman with tons of confidence and mojo who is suddenly transported back to being an insecure mess worrying about being attractive/sexy/desirable enough, I do NOT recommend this approach to meeting people.

On the one hand, I still like the guy and have a new person in my life that I really enjoy being with. On the other hand, I’ve been friend-zoned by him which blows but is also an exercise in fully trusting that all is as it should be and the correct outcome is going to land. In the meantime, I vent my frustration with my go-to default, which is writing a song that probably no one will ever hear. Maybe, we’ll see.

Regardless, it’s effective. Songwriting has helped me process heartbreak, betrayal, divorce, being kicked out of the Go-Go’s—all the bad shit makes for great songs. Generally, they are so raw and real that it’s hard for me to release them, although I did put “In My Closet” on Bandcamp—it has an optimistic punchline and touch of campiness that offsets the abject misery of the subject matter.

In the early days of this Substack endeavor, I was sharing the process of writing a song—”Hurry”—from working out the chords and lyrics, to making a home studio demo, coming up with bass parts, guitar parts etc. Hopefully all the way to a finished product. A lot of readers enjoyed getting a peek into the entire process. I got as far as adding live drums to the home recorded stuff, then other life things started happening; musically and workwise. Starting with meeting Zach Person and writing a song for a non-profit fundraiser, which ended up being “We Don’t Play.”

When I went back to finish “Hurry” I decided I didn’t like the vocal track I’d done, then as I was re-recording the vocals, I started nitpicking the lyrics and melody. In short, it’s never been finished because A) I wasn’t happy with it, and B) more life stuff hit; the big Head Over Heels musical director job, then moving to England. “Hurry” is a really good song and I still want to do it justice and bring it into the world.

If you weren’t here, you can still check out the making of “Hurry”— what I called “seeing how the song sausage is made” in Dispatches 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, (paid 12) 13, 14, and 15. I’m really looking forward to getting some stuff to set up a little home studio here. I miss losing myself in that process. I need to lose myself in some recording and creativity.

I have two timeworn strategies for making shit happen: one is utilizing incremental progress. It’s effective with the creative projects: writing, songs, stories, essays. With this method I just make sure to do the tiniest bit—the bit that’s just on the other side of doing nothing at all. A word, a chord, a sentence. Doesn’t even have to be bite-sized, it can be a crumb. It just has to be done every single day. On a good day, maybe even a couple of tiny bits can happen.

It’s good because if fear of failure, procrastination, or the dreaded paralysis has set in, those tiny bits can be applied to the work, and they will add up. When they add up, they can make a crack and eventually a flow or inspiration or the Muse herself will slip through that crack, and then anything can happen: Pages! Paragraphs! Verses! Finishing!

The other strategy I employ for making big shit happen is the old “throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks” methodology. This means suggesting unlikely and outrageous things to people who have no inclination about same. I’ve done this several times since arriving here in my new life. It’s a bold and fearless move, it’s Kandinsky and Rothko and Pollack territory, if trying to create a life was like painting a canvas. And I have to semi-believe I can actually follow up in the event that any given person actually considers whatever wild idea I’ve lobbed their way.

In the interest of not being entirely vague and mysterious, I’ve met new people, and in no short time, suggested partnerships, collaborations, companies, bands, apps, shows and businesses. Will any pan out? I don’t know yet. I’ve had meetings and researched and worked and pitched. This is what it feels like I have to do if I’m trying to write a whole new chapter in the story of my life.

Sometimes the direction of motion is directionless motion.

(See, all it took was nearly 50 dispatches to explain the theme of this Substack.)

There’s only a few cities where I have a substantial past; Austin, LA…and to a lesser degree, London & St Albans. I’m always surprised how “place” can be a portal to some random history. It’s easy to dismiss place as being of lesser impact than people, or events, music, or even pets—I mean to say, all those things take us back in a very visceral, graphic way. But place can do it too. I write in my book about driving to look at where I lived when my adolescent life was at it’s lowest.

These were the years I spun out in the turbulence and confusion of living with a mother who allowed anything. The duplex is still there, with its stone veneer and carport, and when I drove by decades later, in my fifties, my hands turned clammy on the steering wheel and I pulled over to cry.

Growing up, London was a place I often visited with my mom—we never lived here, so I’ve been taken by surprise on occasion when I come across a place here that wooshes me back in time. It happened the other day when Audrey and I went to Hampstead Heath, a massive park of meadows and forest, gardens and hilltops; a combo of nature and green space both cultivated and wild. When I was a child, my Aunt lived in West Hampstead so we were close to the Heath and went often. I’d forgotten about it until I was there the other day and experienced a replay of how I’d feel when I was a kid. There are so many overgrown paths, countless ones, all branching out from random clearings and this thing happens, my breath turns to wonder and every single path invites discovery and I felt just like the kid me, thrilled to explore any chosen path and curious where I’d end up.

Less wholesome, I can’t see Finchley Road station without remembering being a 15-year-old in an Indian print wraparound skirt and cowboy boots drinking in the Black Lion and picking up a man twice my age. His name was John, he was long haired, bearded and very handsome, he looked like Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson. We had an affair for the entire time I was there, always consumated in his Finchley Road squat¹ that he shared with a bunch of other people. His bed was in a closet under the staircase and I didn’t think anything at all was lacking in the entire arrangement.

It’s been unexpected, these past blasts that come out of places: Trafalgar Square, West End Lane, tube stops like Edgeware, Canons Park—they all carry stories from my life. A life that seems like another lifetime.

In a couple of days I head back to Austin for the third time in 13 weeks, it can’t be helped. There will be a Bluebonnets gig at the Continental, taxes will be paid, the storage room will be filled up more. There’s another trip back there in May, courtesy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who are bringing me back for an Austin event. This isn’t the sort of back and forth jetsetting I wanted, but it might help because when Audrey leaves London at the end of the spring semester I’m sure to be hurting. I worry about this.

I worry about everything since my last dispatch: I had to have another tooth extracted and bone graft that may or may not work. There’s still a lot of stuff to deal with in Austin. Loads. I worry about my car and my guitars. I worry about where I’ll move when this sublet is up. The Bluebonnets doing June shows in UK is a lot of work. My book proposal is rotting away in a desktop folder. My cats need a UK vet, I need a UK doctor. I worry that this particular Substack is too scattered and directionless and my new subscribers will go away. I’m not used to worrying so much and not sure why it’s happening. Please comment if you have suggestions how to make it stop.

Look for another dispatch around April 18. I appreciate so much that you read this far and Oh what the hell, here’s a little bit of “Out There,” the song I started writing about my dating app experience— if you paid subscribers want to take a listen. It will never be released, it’s just therapy.

i think and i feel crazy should stop but it’s not so easy on edge pretending not to wait for the phone to vibrate coz I’m out there put yourself out there everyone says this is what you gotta do in the modern world love will never find you this is what i’ve come to someone looking when i was never looking before opened up that door let someone in should’ve left him out there