Daniel's corner of the web
Archive for October, 2007
First Birthday & Naming Ceremonies
Oct 22nd
Well I can not believe that my son is now 1 Year old. It seems like only a month ago he was born. I saw a picture that my cousin took of my son and myself on Saturday. I can look at the photos which my wife/parent etc take, but seeing a photo of my son and myself together taken by someone else apeared different… or it’s the fact that he has changed soo much in the last week.
When he was born he looked very much like my wife. I can see more of my features in him now and more every day. I’m just glad that he is healthy.
We had a naming ceremony for my son, not a baptism. My wife and I aren’t really church going people. The last time I was in church was for my wedding almost 5 years ago. Religion is something I don’t talk about often, more for the fact that I don’t really have any.
The events leading up to and part way through the ceremony/birthday party for my son were lets say testing… but we got there in the end.
Unfortunately today I’ve had a constant headache, I don’t know if it’s heat realated or if I might be getting a flu. I hope it is the earlier as I’m now going to 3 days of training for work, which should be fun.
Lack of sleep = creativity
Oct 18th
….. NOT
I seemed to think that most of my songwriting ideas came just before I was about to go to bed in the early/late hours of the morning, or after 11pm at night. I didn’t know if it was because I was physically exhausted and I was so relaxed that ideas just flew out of my head..
Well myself, in Mythbusters style decided to test the theory <spoken in Robert Lee’s American accent (yes, he’s an Aussie)>Does lack of sleep equal creativity?</Robert Lee’s voice over>.
Adam: So for this Myth we need to test if lack of sleep makes someone more creative
Jamie: Well that sounds kind of simple..
Adam: Yes and no. So what we have to do is deprive a songwriter of sleep for say a week and check out the quality and quantity of their output compared to their previous week. The only downside for this myth is that there is no baseline, but I hope the result will be quite obvious, either there will be an influx of songs or there will be next to zero.
Jamie: Sounds like a plan
So I stepped up to the plate…. for one week I slept for about 3-4 hours a night… by about the 3rd day my work and creativity were slacking. Although there is no hard evidence for this, for me it doesn’t work.. if anything it just makes me grumpy and edgy which affects everyone around me… So for me, this Myth was definately ‘busted’.
Best time to write a song for me… you guessed it, when on the throne… and after a good nights sleep. I just seems to be the location where I can think of one liners which can turn into songs… it’s not the nicest location to come up with ideas and I hope to move away from that option.. but hey.. if it works…
Thunder, Lightning & Dreaming….
Oct 15th
The other night there was an electrical storm over our house. Now I sometimes get an overactive/creative mind when I dream… especially when there is stimuli before I go to bed.
I’ve had nightmares after watching ‘armagedon type’ movies.. like Armagedon / Deep Impact (even though in both the earth survives). I will have dreams that are similar to the events int he movies and it will feel like I’m living through it.
One of the scariest things that did happen involved Jeff Waynes version of ‘The War of the Worlds’. I went through a stage where I would listen to the double CD almost continually. Now those who are familar with the story will be aware of the Fighting Machines and also aware of the Red Weed. I’ve had dreams where I’ve had fighting machines chasing me and I’ve tried to wake up from these dreams however haven’t been able to.. or if I did, I feel straight back asleep and the dream continued (eventually I worked it out to myself having too many blankets on in bed overheating me. With the Red Weed, I’ve had instances where, it’s not the Red Weed, but lava (which is red….) has engulfed where I am and I”ve had to go to the roof of the house to survive, seeing loved ones perish in the dream as well. Finally before it was my turn I woke up.. the old story they say if you ‘die’ in a dream you die in real life… how many dreams have you had where you have fallen and actually hit the ground???
Anyway, back to the thunder/lightning. Well I had a dream that the storm was much worse and there were lightning bolts hitting the next door neighbours back yard. I could see it hitting the ground and kicking up dirt. It was really savage. I also remember some metal which was sitting on our fence which was ‘attracting’ the lightning.. I don’t know how it came into it, but somehow a kangaroo made it into my dream as well.
I’ll have to find a book or something about dreams to see if there is any meanings to any of these dreams..
Ummmm… yeah…. edit…. So……
Oct 10th
To come up with the title of this post I had to think for a while, it went through many drafts.. and ironically that pretty much sums up my thoughts for this post… How you ask?
Well, I don’t know if it’s the internal editor in my head that is always thinking ahead and editing what I want to say before I type it, or if it’s myself being afraid to say something in case people react in a negative way to what I have to say. Or is it what feels like a constant lack of sleep (the joys of parenthood), I don’t know.. all I know is that when I put on my songwriters hat (and now blogging hat) this can make it hard to write.
If I’m sitting on a bus and someone sits down beside me, I can’t write anything, or if I do, I’m like a student in class making sure the person beside me can’t seen the answers I’m writing down. Which I guess from a songwriter’s point of view, it’s being protective of an un-crafted work.. you only want to show the world the final draft of your masterpiece.
But it’s even before that these days.. I come up with an idea.. it can be shot down in my head before it’s developed.
I had a thought tonight… the last 6 months I’ve been thinking about my music A LOT.. not from a lyrical side, but more of a musical style side… What sort of music do I write/want to record? I don’t know.
I grew up on commercial music ranging from the 50’s through to then the current day. I went through a stage where I was wondering if I were Buddy Holly reincarnate… crazy I know.. but that was the time leading up to the musical Buddy playing in Australia. I used to have a dream that I would be called up on stage as the understudy (and on the night we actually saw the understudy play Buddy).
These days I listen to country music a fair bit, and since I met my wife, I’ve been listening to Jazz music a fair bit. It’s amazing how much adrealin/influences affects your mind… After I got to a Swing dance nite and see a Big Band play, I want to start to write Big Band Scores. If I see a Jazz Trio, I want to write music for a Jazz Trio… or a country/singer songwriter.. I want to go home and write that sort of music.
But it’s all nice to feel that way, but where does my heart lie? I don’t really know.. Once I get back in to recording I’m going to work through some of my older ‘crappier’ songs and try and work out which direction I want to head, or more fit into.
But back to the subject at hand.. How do I start to turn off the internal editor? Well hopefully this blog will help… at least it will start me writing something… which is a start. Beyond that, I guess practice and either feeling more comfortable with what I want to say or start to care less about how others ‘might’ respond. Oh, and also not putting things off… I messed around looking at different systems to blog for over a year.. and it only took about a month to post this after installation 
Daniel