Why revisit this album now? Well, I made some music videos. You might not call these videos \u201ctechnically sound\u201d or \u201call that interesting,\u201d but you have to remember I consume a lot of THC. Wait, that\u2019s later. The buttoned-down way to talk about my process here is I take a lot of walks. Shit, before moving to West Ridge? I walked everywhere<\/em>. While I\u2019m walking, I\u2019m noticing things. Little things that I think are cool, or little experiences I want to preserve. I can\u2019t, though\u2014when I go back and watch these videos, I do not get fully transported back to the initial experience of wonder that made me reach for my camera. My first thought is, \u201cI\u2019m glad Past Me gave Present Me this little memory, that I can now experience again anew.\u201d <\/p> One motivator for this project was a Defector<\/a><\/em> article from Corey Atad, called \u201cGood, Bad, or Invisible, CGI Makes Movies Unreal.\u201d<\/a> Here\u2019s a pull quote that sums up a lot of how I felt trying to do this: <\/p> In one of cinema\u2019s earliest recordings, Auguste Lumi\u00e8re and his wife Marguerite are seen feeding their baby daughter Andr\u00e9e. The footage, shot by Louis Lumi\u00e9re, lasts only about 40 seconds or so. Presented as part of the Lumi\u00e8re Brothers\u2019 first-ever commercial public film screening in a 10-film program on Dec. 28, 1895\u2026the short made an impression that has persisted more than a century. A perfect representation of what the Lumi\u00e8res called “Actualit\u00e9s,\u201d\u2026Maxim Gorky and Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s would both later describe their experiences attending that first screening at the Salon Indien\u2026recalling the particular fascination they and the rest of the audience had in seeing leaves on trees in the background moving in the wind. There, at the birth of cinema, the medium made itself indispensable\u2014not by showing people something they\u2019d never seen before, but by capturing something of the quotidian and making it present.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote> So yeah! Think about phrases like \u201ccapturing the quotidian and making it present\u201d or \u201cin 1895 leaves on trees moving in the wind but seen on a screen<\/em> was basically a miracle.\u201d Then consume some THC, full-screen the YouTube on your computer, put on your most noise-cancelling headphones, and let\u2019s watch some music videos.<\/p> i dreamed a knife like a song you can\u2019t whistle<\/strong><\/p> The title is taken from a Frank Stanford poem. I\u2019d type up the whole poem here, but it\u2019s too ding-danged long. We got column inches to think about. Here\u2019s a Reddit thread with the poem typed out with extremely poor attention paid to line breaks (hey, even Homer got this treatment)<\/a>. Here\u2019s Frank\u2019s friend Bill Willett reading the poem<\/a>. If I were Paul Celan, I\u2019d say this poem summed up pretty much exactly how I felt in 2015, and leave it at that. <\/p> Here\u2019s a link to the Shipwrecked Sailor Bandcamp<\/a>. Here\u2019s a direct link to this album<\/a>. <\/p> When I wrote this, I wasn\u2019t so deep into burnout that I\u2019d stopped writing or reading. Wasn\u2019t in a good place, though. Five years out of undergrad, firmly a grad school dropout, working in the basement of a used bookstore. Newly married and with a full social calendar\u2014my personal life was going great, it\u2019s just that I couldn\u2019t figure out my career. Making this record was something of an act of desperation. I was desperate to do something creative, desperate to be a musician again, and desperate to prove all the education and training I\u2019d gotten in my life wasn\u2019t a waste. I had an idea of what a solo career sound might be like, and I had a vision of what this \u201cShipwrecked Sailor\u201d persona might look like. Mostly, though? I was hoping impress Brendan and Spencer.<\/p> unfamiliar beds<\/strong><\/p> Right away, you\u2019ll notice \u201cnot technically sound\u201d not only applies to my filmmaking, but to the production and mixing of this album. I made this drunk in 2015 (release date in 2016, but I spent most of 2015 on it) on a 2011 version of Garageband, and I think these are good songs. Plus, raw, half-crappy recordings are charming. Anyway, this song in particular felt like a new direction for my songwriting. Before this, I\u2019d been trying to be an acoustic singer-songwriter, from about 2005-2009. The less said about that, the better. Before that, I\u2019d been a guitarist in a four-piece punk band, from 2002-2006. Beginning this song with a bass line I wrote, some piano I played, and some Apple Loops drums? That was a new direction for me.<\/p>![\"a](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/a8b0646c-a57c-4d82-b099-adcbccd4fc3d_700x700.jpeg\")
<\/figure>