Creative Writing

I'm in a creative writing class right now.  I write poems in the class.  Here are some of mine so far.

Color #7F00FF

is violet in a mood?

violet has a way

and violet is a way

violet is away on vacation

but violet always comes home

does violet even know

that violet is only a color?

violet tries to be blue sometimes

sometimes orange, but it is fruitless for violet

fruitless for violet? no.

violet shines on masculinity

but beneath the façade, violet femmes

if they only knew what violet knows

that swampy green would envy violet

red would blush in shame at violet’s tongue

rays of yellow would try to stain violet

but violet is stubborn and hard to get out

indigo parades as violet from time to time

but only violet is what it is

and only violet knows what mood

violet is in.

violet would never presume

to step in for

black.

pity for god

No one’s from Seattle anymore

disagree with me if you will

as long as you will

look me in the eye:

look me in my crooked

leather eye.

Talk to me in person

and when you’re with me

could you just be with me

or is that a little too

difficult for you?

Are you

like a god –

incapable of changing your ways?

You sure act like it:

like you think you are.

Why try to hide it now?

Just go with it now.

We all know

where you’re from

anyway.

You’re my Seattle

and I’m not just saying

whatever anymore,

hoping I’ll get your attention

hoping you’ll want my words

like I want your stare:

like I want your crooked

iron stare.

hoping the music will move you

hoping I’m spilling out some

social imperative

hoping it’s never been spilled like

this before

hoping Apophis never causes

the oceans to spill:

hoping there is no tsunami

bigger than all my hoping:

none to wash me far

away from the sound:

of evergreen trees snapping out

the rhythm of Ray Charles…

…and yet here I am

digressing and drenched in hopes –

and hoping:

hoping this isn’t another case

of being less important

than a god that is incapable of

changing his mind.

God?  Are you incapable

of changing your mind?

God? GOD? God?

Are you?

How are you?

Home, for now

The front lawn

a graveyard

for refrigerators and

conventional ovens,

speaks to its lack

of conventional curb appeal.

The large yellow moving van

in the driveway has a smiley face

painted on its side wall that

tries to fool the passers by

into thinking that all is well

but I think they’ve got an idea.

Inside, the smell of spores

in hibernation for the winter

and an odd odor from dewy piles of

unchecked clutter accentuate

the chill that feathers your spine

while the nape of your neck realizes that

someone has died here.

The mirror on the far wall mocks us

as we trade melodic thoughts

and contemplate the small statue of Buddha

under the tilted chandelier

that has in its web  a

wayward plastic coat hanger.

The smoke of our breath commingles

with that of the fireplace,

our only source of heat and light

and the only thing that’s stirring until suddenly

some hellish spirit hurls a glass vase

against the wall mere inches from my face.

The back yard is silent but for the din of Aurora

with her pushers and walkers out In
full battle rattle making their statements

and staking their claims and vampires.

When the ground thaws out in a few months,

I’ll dig your fire pit right over there

and we’ll finally relax.

Yup.  So there that is.  I swear I'll post some music soon.  I'm working on it...

do you ever get the feeling?

do you ever get the feeling that you've accomplished nothing after a full days work? doesn't that suck.

I was just looking at the clock and it's four nineteen pm.  I woke this morning with a little bit of a we-forgot-to-turn-off-the-heater-before-bed-again hangover and the fact that we're out of coffee hasn't helped any.  at least i had one last little cure in a baggie to partake in, so the headache has mostly subsided.

What I've been up to all day since waking up is trying to recreate my scratch tracks for comfortable skin.  I decided that I would turn it into a video since I haven't posted one of these in a while, and I wanted to do something a little different than my last few posts.

I think after I post this I am going to go and get some coffee and check out the georgetown music store again.  that place is becoming a home a away from home lately.




when i was seventeen i could already tell
leaving town was heavan and sticking around was hell
i had to wear my camoflauge but i
never liked it when they called me sergeant

cause that ain't the kind of skin that i'm comfortable in
this is my skin to get comfortable in

oh, then i got fired from an office job
cause i wasn't gonna slob on nobody's knob
i wouldn't wear their oily ties
cause that ain't the way i like getting by

this is my skin to get comfortable in
so find your own skin to get comfortable in

next thing you know i'm living in a van
and a tramp making music is all that i am
and i think to myself hey man this is more like it
i'm getting closer to getting in

to the kind of skin that i'm comfortable in
only got one skin to get comfortable in

through all the highs and all the lows
there's been so many times i
couldn't change my clothes
but i wouldn't have it any other way
this is the life i chose

well i guess that brings us about to the stage where
i'm really starting to feel my age, and
i've had my share scrapes and such
yeah i've played my share of double dutch
to get

in to the skin that i'm comfortable in
this is my skin to get comfortable in only
got one skin to get comfortable in

through all the highs
and all the lows
i've played my share of dives and i've
taken my share of blows
but i know i got to get on
cause ain't no use keeping dead crops up in rows
life is sometimes just the way life goes

mmm---
m-m-m---
mmm---
(humming and stuff)

this is my skin to get comfortable in
got one skin to get comfortable in

Double Dribble

Hey all,

I just want to let everybody know that even though class is over, I am going to continue on with this.  And by everybody I mean you.  Thanks for sticking around, eh?  I mean, really, with all of the different information and entertainment you could be consuming right now I'm pretty stoked that you made it to this, the day of my daughter's...wait I'm thinking of something else.  You're the best.

Since you're here, you might as well share in my misery.  I was working on recording some tracks for Comfortable Skin on Tuesday afternoon and I was almost done with my "test run," which I made with the intent of posting, and audacity crashed when I had only one track left to put down on it.  The worst part?  Though I thought I had saved my changes as I went, I had apparently done nothing of the sort.  What a doosh, right?

You think after having had that happen to me so many times I would have learned by now.  One of the biggest problems with Audacity is it's inability to auto-save, and another is its tendency to crash when you have made too many changes without saving.  Sometimes trying to apply a certain effect such as fade in/fade out to an area that has already been altered in some other way.  I'm very happy with its ability to give you real-time playback so that you can record accurately because of that way that it is designed to be very lightweight on the memory drain for running it...it's a very compact engine.  If Audacity were a car, it would be a Geo Metro.  I should know, I drive one.

So I guess the lesson of the day is to know your enemy.  In my case the enemy is the fact that I can't just make the music come out of my mind the way it happens in there without me going through the motions of creating it with my imperfect limbs on instruments and electronic devices that are imperfect by design.  Wouldn't it be great if there were a device that you could hook up to the head of a musician that would make the sounds inside of the folds of their mind erupt?

ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRR!!!!

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who came down to TRx on Sunday afternoon to support Something Lovelies and our surprise guests Sonic Mustard and double thanks to all of those who through some money down to support Childhood Cancer Sucks, an organization that has been founded to fund research that is focused on finding a cure for Childhood Cancer.  I know when I looked down I saw multiple tens and twenties in there, so that was great!  F U Cancer, Thank you Nich, for having us down to your awesome shop in DTR because it was a great time.

The morning before the show I didn't feel nervous at all, which was kind of weird for me.  But then half way through the day I started to feel like everything was going to go wrong and like everything was going wrong already.  For example, running through my head was the thought that maybe I wasn't good enough at guitar to pull off some of the simple songs we were going to play;  Why did I have to get this cold and why wasn't it gone yet;  I don't even think anybody's going to be in to it while we're playing...on and on and on.   Thank god for Zach who gave me some sound advice, namely to can the frustration and throw it out the window.  It worked.  Even though I didn't pull off some of the guitar, even though my voice was a little bit off from the cold, and even though we had only played these songs together a handful of times, we had fun.  And so did everyone else.  Fun.  Isn't that what it is all about.

I leave you with the sound advice of a six year old girl on how to become a great musician.  "All you have to do is have fun, and it will sound better."  Rock on Millie.

Demo anyone?

This is the final mix of the demo that I'm burning off for booking and such.  Hope you like some of the finishing touches that I've put on everything, and I would love to hear your feedback on what you think it it all.

Grey Matters:



Hot Potatoe:



What Do You Know:



The Stranger:



The jacket cover:


The CD Label:

another potato for your sack

i couldn't stand it.  the vocals on all my mixes have been bad.  the tone of the instruments has been clashing like a titan and an iceberg.  i used a not so subtle tonal shift with the wah effect so that it would soften everything.  While much clarity has been lost, i think it's easier on the ears this way.

For better or for worse (or, let's play a little game)

I've got an idea. I'm going to post a new mix of hot potatoe and you comment me with a simple "better" or "worse" and a short explanation.

not that I'm trying to tell you what to do here, people, I just...ugh.

:)




the heat will get to you
but don't let it fall
when she waits at home for you
and she is hot for you to call

the least you could do is call

she goes out of her way
to make you happy,  yet
you find it inside of yourself to complain
and the one sure thing is that

you're gonna do your thing
so are you happy yet?

the heat just got to you
and you let her down
then you had to yell at her
cause she turned your excuse around

and you just let her walk right out the door
so what the hell are you standing
around here for?

when all others have long since signed off

in the next room there lies a woman of unprecedented charms and here i am letting my blessed dexterity waste away the new fashioned way at this plastic tray that is only warm from my touch and not from it's own heart and hearth within the way that she is.  and as i puff and puff with no one to pass to i feel content and yet somehow aversely inflamed with the thought that i could ever be comfortable with who i am now when i know inside that there is so much work left to do before the Sistine chapel of my corpus humanus is completed.

And that's what's been on my mind lately.

it's not that i assume you were wondering but that i might as well just say it because who cares if i do any more than if i don't is a valid question.  i've been sitting on ideas my whole life and i just want to see if they're worth anything to anyone cause most of them don't fit me anymore.  it's like giving away old clothes to goodwill so that someone else can find a use for them. or maybe it's more like putting up the stepping stones that i've used to get to where i am now on craigslist in the free section so that i don't have to carry them with me anymore.

And that's pretty much the reason i write.

m and i drove down to PDx today, her in her black geo metro and me in the white ford econoline 19' bus trailing behind.  for the first fifty miles i was feeling a little tense about the way he (and by he I mean the good ship USS Sir Moby Broke-Dick) steers, but once i got used to it (and may i mention that the drivers in tacoma and lakewood didn't help me out one bit) i relaxed some and enjoyed the smoothness of the road as it pulled the fish-eyed earth away only to reveal more earth, which i might add doesn't in fact come to an end but instead eerily continues to be in front of us come hell or high water as stories from the past have revealed.

And that is a digression from my day.  It was a good day.  I got a t shirt and she got some books.   Unfortunately we weren't around long enough to see some family that I am long overdue in seeing.

I hope this finds you well,

M. Chase

news flash

recording music is a science.  as long as you are willing to learn, you can figure it out.  at least i hope that is true or i'm totally screwed in the end.  but for now, i'd like to re-present to you, my second mix of "hot potatoe" as it stands today, and most likely this will be the mix i use for the "all get out (demo version)" cd that I am just one song from finishing.  In the end, I'm going to have six songs on it.  they will be (not necessarily in this order though) 1) grey matters 2) the stranger 3) comfortable skin 4) hot potatoe 5) what do you know 6) hey, man.

i've always really liked the way that hey, man turned out so mad props to kristie fike the baddest assed lady engineer i know.

anywho, here's the song.  i've got to get started on the aforementioned comfortable skin.  is it taboo to use the syllable "fore" so close to "skin?"  Or am I still thinking about that lady killer Jonah Falcon?

Damn you John Stewart!

the heat will get to you
but don't let it fall
when she waits at home for you
and she is hot for you to call

the least you could do is call

she goes out of her way
to make you happy,  yet
you find it inside of yourself to complain
and the one sure thing is that

you're gonna do your thing
so are you happy yet?

the heat just got to you
and you let her down
then you had to yell at her
cause she turned your excuse around

and you just let her walk right out the door
so what the hell are you standing
around here for?

***Update:::  I, Rather Quite, your diligent man-servant of the latest and greatest news about yours truly would like to announce that in a fortunate turn of events, I was done with work at 1:15pm today and then after finishing my mix of "hot potatoe" I got a call from South Seattle Community College to let me know that class had been cancelled for tonight.  So now here I am with the amazing opportunity to lay down some tracks for the final song on the demo.

now wa'im saaaynnng'!  shout out's to j-roc and the trailer park.  i wish i could watch trailer park boys seasons one and two for the first time all over again.  and if i could say anything to bubbles it would be, when i die, do you think they would let me be reincarnated as you?  i'd really like that.  

Au Gratin (or, the curse of the love song)

"the thing about love songs" says m, "is that every body thinks theirs is good because it really happened to them."  I may be slightly misquoting, but I'm pretty sure the intent of her statement is intact.  i've noticed that I think my songs sound good to me sometimes just because they're true to me so i refuse to look the gift horse that i've given myself in the mouth.  then again, that may just be the masochistic devil on my shoulder that is trying to get me depressed enough to do some serious destruction in my life for his enjoyment.  what's a devil to do, eh?

anyways, this is the last track I'm doing of this new song for at least twenty four hours.  i would like to unveil (cue "the final countdown" and watch Gob so some amazing magic for a minute...ok now back to what i was saying) my new tune

and let me also say first, it's not really a love song, but more of a story about a love.

"Hot Potatoe"



the heat will get to you
but don't let it fall
when she waits at home for you
and she is hot for you to call

the least you could do is call

she goes out of her way
to make you happy,  yet
you find it inside of yourself to complain
and the one sure thing is that

you're gonna do your thing
so are you happy yet?

the heat just got to you
and you let her down
then you had to yell at her
cause she turned your excuse around

and you just let her walk right out the door
so what the hell are you standing
around here for?

---

Ok now for my comments, and you can post yours too.

1) I was disappointed to have to use Audacity's crappy noise removal tool on the vocals because of a loud hiss that was too much in the forefront to ignore.

2) After having laid down the instrumental tracks I decided that this song is too rigid in this format, and I want it to get a little more groovy when it's played live.

3) I mad a lot of progress vocally during the many takes I did for this song, but I think I've still got a long way to go before I reach my ideal self as a singer.

4) I wish the drum machine I am using didn't sound so fake sometimes, but I'm thankful for what I do have, and can't wait until I have a silent sound booth with a full backline in it to record at my leisure.  But for now, please bear with me.  I had to start somewhere, and what better place than here?  What better time than now?

5) I think anything else that I have to say is babble.  Talk amoungst yourself.

the haps

It's been a week and a half since my last post.  I've thought of apologizing for that, but the point of that is moot.  I'm all about apologizing when I've done something wrong, but in this case I haven't blogged because I've been right.  Starting this project is exactly what I've needed to get things on the right track creatively.  Let me once again go over the progress that I've made since my first post.  So far, I've finished recording two songs, two video performances, and booked two live performances.

I could mention to you the fact that I've accomplished very little from one point of view and very much from another.  Compare the fact that I've only really finished two songs to what that actually entails.  Taking a closer look at the process reveals this to be no small feat.  I've written and arranged two separate works as a composer, then I have become both studio musician and sound engineer as I work my way through the performance and recording of the separate drum tracks, bass lines, acoustic guitar and electric guitar parts, lead and backup vocals, and then taken those performances and mixed them into cohesive representations of something that like a crazy person I have heard inside of my skull.  If I were to dive into the question of "where did all of these imaginings of songs comes from, and what does their origin imply?" we could be here all day.  Honestly though, that is just another digression.

As far as the recorded material itself, you can hear it on my blog (you're on it), my Facebook Fan Page, The ROCKiT Space Website, occasionally on The Westside Will Radio Show, Myspace and Myspace.  but I think the most amazing thing is the places in this physical world that this music has already gone and the happenings that are going on around it.  At the aforementioned ROCKiT Space, I've performed a few times at the weekly open mic there.  I've also gone to Shadowland Bar and Grill open mic, and now today I played my first formally booked performance at Alleycat Acres on Beacon Hill.

Before I go any further, let me talk about that for a minute.  It all started with this communications class that led me to create a blog in which I could write about music that led me to connect with a few classmates, one of which is running an urban farm that is just a stones throw from the arts space that I volunteer and open mic at.  Friday night last week, I was reading through the replies to my posts for assignments in class and one of the replies was from Sean and in it he asked if I would play some acoustic music for their Sunday workday lunch break.  I started off the morning with some coffee, a simple breakfast, and some vocal recording.  After throwing an outfit together, I bounced off to Beacon Hill in my little blue Metro, unloaded my guitar and walked up to the sunny crest that the Alley Cats were turning from a vacant lot into a full on production-focused urban farm.  The Alley Cats is the group of volunteers that have been meeting with Sean for about a month and who are now working on orienting the farm for maximum productivity.

As I entered the space, I was greeted by said Sean who was being interviewed by a reporter from the Seattle Times about this project that he started.  After we talked for a moment, I walked through the crowd of workers that were busy relocating the large pile of composted soil in the front of the yard to the uniformly oriented rows that had been dug out perpendicular to the street stretching across the 42' of depth that the lot contained.  It wasn't until a was a few feet from the shed at the back of the lot that I could see just how far the hill dropped off behind it as its weeds and tangled trees tumbled down to Lake Washington below, surrounded by land and with the silvery towers of Bellevue looming over its banks.  After taking in the vistas, I walked back over to the table next to which I had stashed my guitar where the crowd was gathering to eat their lunches.  While tuning up, I had some good conversation with a couple of the volunteers about where the project came from and where they want to go with it.  I also was offered did happily accept a very tasty vegan brownie.  And while each of the people I talked to seemed to have their own individual reasons for being there, the unified purpose seemed to be what was in the forefront of their thinking, that being the food that they were going to get to take part in creating.

Standing next to the large compost pile in a little patch of sun, I played some new and some very old tunes of mine, along with a nice cover of a cover song.  And though the crowd was talking and not all gathering around googly-eyed worshiping me for my gift of music, I could tell that they really appreciated me being there so that they could turn off the radio and hear something organic while they fed their growling tummies and cooled their perspiring brows.  Before I left I was able to work out some ideas about getting kids from ROCKiT Space and their families involved in an agricultural class of some sort.  Of course it's all ideas right now, and I won't have much hand in that, I feel lucky to be in a position where I can connect two different organizations that are doing what they can to make positive change in the same neighborhood in their own ways.

In other news, my next booked performance will be played with another musician and old friend at Tyrannosaurus Records in DTR on Sunday March 21st at 4pm.  There is no cover charge, but there will be a tip jar and a Childhood Cancer Sucks donation jar up on the counter during the show.  That reminds me, I've got to call Nich (the proprietor of  TRx) and let him know those demos and flyers I promised are going to be a couple days late.

And just so you know, I was going to post a song on here today, but after going back and listening to it, I really want to flesh it out a little more.  After this song, I have one left to record before I make the official booking demo that I will use throughout the summer to try and gain exposure here in the northwest and beyond.  Don't get me wrong, I'm going to continue to record music and document the progress of that here, but I will also be talking about where the music takes me and what I get wrapped up in as a result of it.

I hope that you will find these ventures to be entertaining at worst and informative at best!

Cheers,

M. Chase

sometimes life is just the way life goes

I made some more edits to the song grey matters and i hope you like them.  Also, I'd like your feedback.  Do you like being able to hear the different mixes or would you prefer if I just put up the first and final mixes to that you can hear that disparity?  Get at me.



Take Care,

M. Chase