Some call it Maize

I call it corn.  By that I mean what I write and record is what others call music, but I call it doing the best I can with what I've got.  I don't claim to be good, nor do I claim to want to be any better than I'm going to be.  I get a kick out of being the best I can, knowing full well that what I do is make up songs, most of which are not that great, and I'm comfortable with that.  I think what I write are songs, and what I record is music, and it may or may not be called something else by someone else.

In my last post I wrote about what it means to call yourself a songwriter, and I want to make it clear I don't take it so seriously that I pretend I'm something I'm not.  It's just a word, and whether I ever sell a song or become rich and famous from it, I can feel good calling myself a songwriter.  Even if I never play my music in front of people.  Actually, when in a group setting where people I gave my CDs to decide to play them in my presence, I cringe.  Not sure why.  I like making the recordings, but a part of me doesn't want to hear them played back with others around.

It's okay to suck and be happy sucking at something.  Others may not like it, and I completely understand that.  They might say I produced something good, or something bad, but it's still sounding close to resembling music.  I know my limitations, I know what doesn't sound right and what can be improved in my recordings, even after I've done the best I could.  It's hard to make people understand that.  Sometimes you lose some magic spirit when you keep doing something over and over again until you get it perfect.  It's better to go with the flow, re-do a few things here and there, get it close to what you envisioned, and call it good.

Be Happy Being Bad

I say go ahead and be terrible, know it, own it, and do it anyway because it pleases you.  It's probably rare to be bad at something, yet have a passion for it anyway.  I say there's nothing wrong with that at all.  What you have that more gifted people might not have as much of is that very passion.  Take whatever level of skill you do have and work with it.  It's what makes you unique.  Whether it's your creativity for lyrics or melodies, technical instrument playing, perfect pitch, etc., its not the level you're at, but rather, it's what you decide to do with it. 

It is entirely possible for you as an intelligent human being to be an appreciator and connoisseur of music - to know what's commonly considered good and popular and what's not.  It's also possible for you to choose to look on the bright side of your own levels as compared with the ideals you understand.  So that when you realize you're quite far apart from that high-set bar as a discerning listener, you do not view it as so much of a negative that you give up trying.  Try hard, and perhaps fail miserably, and recognize it, then rethink how you think about the failure to the point that you only see the good, and the potential for more.

No Need To Rush Into It

Everyone has to start somewhere, and not everyone progresses at the same pace.  Take it slow, take it easy, let it come to you, let it flow out of you.  Keep it natural, don't force it.  If you're not feeling it, move on to something else.  Wait until the mood strikes you, and then harness the power of the moment as best you can.  Making something out of nothing ... a song from a blank piece of paper and quietness.  You have certain gifts, certain abilities, certain talents.  You can never be great at everything.  If you're like me, your singing voice is politely called "interesting" by others who've heard it.  Hey, that's something, at least.  Stay positive, and be thankful for what you do have.

Why Not Continue When You Can Amaze Yourself

Making music is fun for me.  Why would I stop?  No reason.  If you are able and feel the urge, do what you can, when you can.  Find time, make time, do it, make it happen.  It is magic, this thing we call music.  I am amazed by it.  What others would call noise that I make, I call it magic.  It's astounding to me sometimes to come up with what I do.  It's beyond physical.  It's spiritual for me, and it's gathering up invisible forces that exist in the world and working with them to your advantage.  Taking particles and rearranging them with unexplainable power...that's what music making is to me.

Amazing Others May Never Happen

If you're like me, a few people close to you in your life who know you well have given you positive feedback about your music, and you actually trust them.  If they liked something you did too about your music, isn't that a huge momentum-building bonus?  It must be.  It might be jokingly what you refer to as not being so great, but it is also you admitting to shortcomings and imperfections, but liking the overall result - the collective good parts that make the thing you created pleasant to hear.  Even when they didn't interpret it as you did, if others liked the parts or aspects that you yourself also liked, then you've got something important.  You've made something someone else enjoyed.  You've made their lives better because of it, however small a contribution.

Studio Dreams

The method of delivering songs to people for me is making recordings and letting people choose to discover and listen to them.  All of my songs can be streamed free, and if you want to purchase them, you can.  This seems to be the modern model.  Everyone and their brother has a home computer-based recording studio nowadays, and I am proud to say I was among the first wave of people to do such a thing.  It's where I can be alone and make things up.  It's also where I can take the time to get it right - that is, to get it sounding slightly better than how it would sound if I played it for you live and in person.  A big factor with this is I'm able to record multiple tracks with multiple vocals and instruments (all my own), and blend them to my liking.  This I couldn't do as a solo performer or even with a band, it wouldn't necessarily come out sounding how I envisioned it.  Would the recordings be any better if I practiced them live and solo in front of people a hundred times first?  Due to unlimited "takes" available in multitrack digital recording studios, I agrue no.

To Perform Or Not To Perform

Seasoned performers advocate performing to songwriters who are not.  By that I mean that in my life I've run across many different circles of songwriters most of whom cut their teeth and paid their dues playing covers in live settings for many years prior to writing their own songs.  They think their path was one all songwriters should take.  Although I was at one time in my life a live cover song performer on and off for a few short years, I gave it up a long time ago, and other songwriters don't understand why, and when I remind them I'm a terrible singer, they say I shouldn't care and should get back out there anyway, due to the value of audience feedback.  I would argue that many of the best and most beloved Beatles songs came after they decided to stop playing live and focus on songwriting.  Like anything, I advocate for doing it to be better, as in "do songwriting to get better at songwriting."  I'm more like the late career Beatles in that way...I decided long ago to hunker down in my home studio and write and record songs.

No Yearning To Be Heard, Just A Slight Hope

Having people appreciate your music is a great thing when you're a songwriter, but it doesn't need to come from being a live performer.  There's no need for people to take it so seriously that they believe you can't call yourself a songwriter unless you become well known, or have popularity in one way or another.  It's a craft, and a hobby, and it's fun.  To me, I have fun with it, and I call it what I call it - writing and recording songs.  That's what I do.  If regular performers want to call what I do something different than that, I don't have a problem with it.  I call it what I want.  I do only what I want.  It's a creative outlet and I like the parts of it I like.  It's my free time.  I don't feel this burning desire to get polite applause and kind compliments from playing my songs in a bar or coffee place in front of people.  Wanting it bad is something that comes from within.  I don't need people to hear my music badly enough to make time for getting gigs or showing up to open mic nights anymore.  I'm happy enough writing and recording songs the best I can and putting them out there and hoping they'll be discovered and liked, while realistically knowing not much of that will happen.  I'm cool with that.

Could The End Be Near? Decade Milestones A Telltale Sign? History Says No.

Here it is 2015 and I just realized I started this blog a decade ago.  Happy New Year, by the way, whoever you are (voices in my head?).  Haven't posted much, but have ramped it up in recent years a bit.  Still have no idea if anyone is reading it, but don't care, since it feels good to write about my hobby here at blog.scottcooley.com.

A couple years after I started this blog, I started my website.  Neither was hard to figure out.  I have intentionally not taken it too seriously, choosing only to post content to either when I felt like it.  Slowly but surely I've steadily made improvements and upgrades over the years.  Just like my songwriting hobby, I've eased into the blogging and web site stuff slowly.

Last year marked a decade of releasing an album every other year, and in four more years it will be a decade of selling my music officially in online music stores.  Slow and steady improvement in all of this stuff, in my own opinion anyway.  Maybe 10 years is a nice number for a life chapter, although to be honest, I started this whole hobby in 1989, so it's going on a quarter of a century strong so far, and despite a few droughts of a few months here and there, has shown no signs of letting up.

Only when the urge strikes do I even attempt updating the blog, the website, writing a new song, or recording a new song.  Seems like since I didn't follow this pattern for releasing albums, opting instead to stick to a steady schedule, it would make sense if I tried to write one blog post per month.  I pulled it off last year for the first time.  Unlike my album release schedule, I didn't have a stockpile of posts first ready to record and release well into the future.

It just so happens that I'm now really almost out of songs, and am in the process of finishing recording all the songs I ever set out to record.  More formally record in multitrack digital, anyway.  The first take cassette tapes don't count, in my mind, since they were mostly practice exercises instead of actual songs.  I've gotten a little better here and there over the years, in small noticeable ways, and more than anything involved with the craft, I'm better at rewriting now. 

Re-writing and then either re-recording or recording new the songs is what I should be able to finish up by the end of this year, considering available free time.  There are about 40 or so remaining to do.  These are the bottom of the barrell songs that I've deemed just barely borderline-worthy enough to rewrite, or for good reason have procrastinated recording over the years.  Many of the re-records are ones that didn't make the cut on past albums.

So, my next release should be the best of the last batch of not very good songs, but I feel compelled to exhaust the current lyric/chord stockpile.  About another 10-15 beyond those 40 are lyric-only documents I need to write music for.  Then there are about 50 more documents of starts to songs and very incomplete lyrics I might revisit.

Of course there will be weed-outs, and not enough to result in two album's worth of material.  The drawback here is I'm possibly wasting time on songs that are not good enough to begin with, instead of writing new ones.  I can't help but finish these up though, and just maybe the next dozen you hear won't be half bad.  It could possibly be that clearing my plate of this song candidates wrap-up project will be liberating a spur on another creative period.  Time will tell.

I'm stating all this because I haven't felt like writing new songs at all lately for several months now.  Part of the reason is I want to get all these remaining unfinished songwriting/recording related tasks done first before I switch back to the create new from scratch mode.  It will truly feel fresh when that happens, because I won't have the dark cloud hanging over my head making me think I have unfinished songs I need to be working on.

It could be the hobby has run its course.  There are many famous artists I've read about who have a creative spurt - usually for about a decade - and then the desire fades and they don't write/record anymore.  Usually a lot of contributing factors and reasons for this, many unique to the individual's circumstances, but also it's the kind of thing that seems to have a tendency to slow down and conclude naturally on its own.

The 2016 album will therefore have a feel of a b-sides or rarities or previously-unreleased type of compilation, and it may well signal a final album like you might expect.  Maybe not, but I'll be fine with it either way.  Maybe I'll find a new hobby and move on to something else.  You never know, but it will be fun to have a feeling of closure on these never-quite-finished tasks on my hobby to-do list.

When you’re dead, your songs won’t matter, so why hold back?

If you’re like me – a songwriter and independent recording artist who sells a few recordings online once in a while – from time to time your thoughts inevitably turn to questioning why you bother to write songs in the first place.  This usually happens when you’re starting to write songs again for your next album release like I am now.  Thinking about writing songs makes you think about what to write about, and that can make your mind wander to the point where you wonder what the point of this craft is.

Then if you think well into the future, you realize it’s probably not in the cards for you to write a song that becomes a standard that will live on well past your death.  The more you think along those lines, it can lead you to think about why you don’t release certain songs.  Hardly anyone buys them anyway.  I have a list of my self-ranked songs, some of which I’ve recorded, and some which haven’t even made the cut to record beyond a first take at all.  On these lists, next to the song title I write the reason it didn’t make the cut of my own, strange weeding-out methods.  They’re abbreviated.

My evaluation key, which I also sometimes write next to each song, is like this:  Definite Keeper (DK), Keeper (K), Borderline Keeper (BK), Almost Borderline Keeper (ABK).  Sometimes I can’t quite decide and will even do a DK/K, or a BK/ABK for the in-betweeners, sometimes later on deciding to bump them up or down for some reason.  This is my own method I came up with which sort of evolved after a songwriting friend and I used to rate each others songs with a 1/4K, ½ K, and full K when we were both new to the hobby.  I did color coding on a batch of songs once, using white as “waiting for upgrade/downgrade decision,” and have even done a bold/italics/strikethrough method, but DK/K/BK/ABK is what I’ve settled on.

I’ve never released an ABK, but through rewriting, I have actually boosted a few ABKs to BKs, but it’s rare.  Also rare are DKs, and I can honestly say I’ve only had a handful of those in twenty-plus years of writing songs.  Don’t get me wrong, you probably haven’t heard of any, but if you’re one of my few true fans who’ve bought every album, you might be able to pick some out we’d both agree were DKs.  I would hope this would be the case anyway, but one never quite knows for sure which ones others will consider your best.

There are many I don’t even bother typing in the list – the definite non-keepers.  Some of the borderliners end up getting released, some never do, some get moved on to the next album candidate list with specific notes about what to improve when worthy of revisiting for a potential re-write/re-record.  There’s always a reason for these designations, and I usually put them in parentheses after the song title, typically only for those that didn’t make it through the final weed-out process.  It’s the reasons though that I have to look back on and wonder what state of mind I was in when I wrote them.  Some of the reasons might even be funny to some of you out there.

Here are a few of those parenthetical “reasons to not release or record” from my notes:
• music too simple
• wife didn’t like it
• potential stereotyping interpretation
• too personal
• music a possible rip-off
• unconventional
• monotonous
• forced rhymes
• whimsical
• potential inferred drug reference
• lyrics too hokey
• too much of a chick song
• too much like some other song I wrote
• too long
• too slow
• too conceited
• controversial subject matter
• lyrics too simple
• lyrics great, music terrible
• music doesn’t fit lyrics
• too negative
• too sappy
• unclear meaning
• sexual connotations
• contains swear word

I’ve got many, many more reasons I’ve weeded out the hundreds of songs I’ve written you’ve never heard. One of the things you do when you’re all out of new songs to record and having writer’s block is you re-read some of these lists and notes.  You start thinking you might’ve had some that were borderline that you could tweak here and there to launch them to keeper status.  This rarely works, as I pretty much subscribe to the garbage in/garbage out principle, but it is possible.  Sometimes you can have great lyrics that just didn’t work at all with the music, and after a long period of forgetting about the song, you can fit them to a totally different chord progression and melody (assuming you forgot the original melody).  Other times you can revist a song title note that says great tune, terrible lyrics, and write brand new lyrics and make it work. You don’t want to waste great musical or lyrical ideas, and you never know when you might have something new that will fit.

As I’m in the midst of such a scenario here lately, thinking those “what is the point of all this” thoughts, I’ve come to a new realization:  Why not release some of those, since hardly anyone will buy them, and since it’s not going to matter after I’m dead and gone from this world anyway?  Some might turn out to be other people’s favorites.  Maybe the more controversial, more edgy, more personal, etc., songs would actually be better and more well-received than the universally-appealing, safe stuff I’ve been putting out!  Since I have no reputation to begin with, there’s absolutely no danger of it becoming worse.  The few true fans out there might be pleasantly surprised.  I’ve somewhat already proven to myself that it can work well.

Some that I agonized over, yet released anyway:

I need to do more of this.  I’ve received favorable feedback on all of the above.  I debated about releasing a song with a swear word in it for an embarrassingly long time, eventually decided to go for it, and lo and behold, it became a fan favorite (Mackinac Island).  After that I thought what many an artist has, which is that I didn’t want to give people more of the same so as not to repeat myself and not bore them or bore myself or become known as the artist who writes a particular type of song.  Now I’m leaning toward trying hard to not worry so much about what people think and just release away, self-weeding methods be damned.  Throw caution to the wind, since in the grand scheme, it will be a drop in the ocean.  Maybe this new approach I’m forming will be closer to what true art should be about in the first place.  Stay tuned for my 2016 release, as it just may surprise you.

The conclusion is don’t think twice.  Rate your own songs once, then trust your first gut feeling about whether to release them or not.  Don’t waste too much time on lists and notes and rating systems.  Go ahead and put the music out there.  Don’t let good songs go unheard because you’re too worried about what people will think of you.  People understand the art isn’t necessarily representative of the artist’s personal views and they know you write from other character’s perspectives.  When you’re not around anymore, it’s not going to matter to anyone, so as a t-shirt I saw once read “don’t die with the music in you.”

Why The Pope Shits In The Woods

To answer this question, and relate it to my free-time hobby of writing songs and recording them, I have to express my thoughts about wanting people to have access to my music while not wanting to spend money on promoting it or playing live shows.  I need to reach deep into my psyche and try to examine why just writing songs and recording them for myself is not enough.  Wax warning:  This post might be construed as all three, but do you ever notice anyone waxing anything but philosophic, poetic or nostalgic?  Maybe some novelists with PhDs and knowledge of literary criticism do to impress each other, but we aren’t them, are we?  Songwriters write songs to try to impress each other I suppose, but what does that say about us?  The pseudo-intellectuals of the world and those who self-identify with being some variation of geek/nerd/dweeb, etc., and who also happen to write songs, may very well get into using big words and trying to out-do each other that way.  Some with songwriting expertise advise the twist on a tired cliche thing as an ingredient for a good song, so if you follow that, maybe you are going to wax something else in your song, or maybe waxing bikini, as in to assume the identity of a hot babe’s bikini.  I’m getting away from the point of this post already - which is to answer the question in the title as it relates to the craft.  

I know, it’s a wacky proposition, but I’ll get there, and if you read along, you’ll get the point, which is that if art is only appreciated by its creator, it doesn’t really exist.  Another way to put this idea is that you must make people aware of your music, like it or not, to truly get the most out of the craft of writing songs.  My wife cured me of being a swearer long ago, but I thought using the only swear word I’ve ever used in one of my songs was necessary for this topic, just as it was absolutely necessary in my most popular song, Mackinac Island (HS&F).  In the continuing saga of the non-performing songwriter/home recording hobbyist and hermit who knows deep down in a bygone music era not too long ago he’d have no business in the music business, but now finds himself able to just barely get a virtual foot in the door, I’m going to attempt to answer one of life’s funniest questions and relate it to my sad struggle to be discovered, heard, and appreciated.

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”  I’m pretty sure this was a line from one of my all-time favorite movies, The Big Lebowski, delivered hilariously by the main character the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges.  It’s a funny twist on “Is The Pope Catholic?,”  which is what you say in place of “of course” in reply to a yes/no question.  

There are a lot of variations of this we’ve heard throughout our lives, which all sort of combine elements of philosophy, science, and comedy:

• If a bear shits in the woods, and there is no one around to smell it, does it still stink?
• If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
• If a man speaks in the forest, and there’s no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?

The answer isn’t always so obvious though, in my way of thinking.  People tend to immediately accept an intended meaning when hearing these, and after laughing, rarely discuss alternate meaning interpretations.  Without delving deeply into metaphysics, and hopefully not getting myself into deep shit for using a swear word and speaking my mind and offending people, I’m going to describe how the classic tree version applies to songwriting.  If you write songs and never play them in the presence of other people, or never record them and make those recordings available for other people to listen to, then they are the trees.  

If you don’t take a risk, you can’t get the reward, but then again, if you’re not careful, you can find yourself up shit creek without a paddle.  That is, with no income to offset your albeit modest investment in making your music available, which frustrates you to the point where you become a harsh ranter, raving foul-mouthed filth to offend and thereby hypocritically use your way with words to criticize and cause harm instead of helpful laughter, you blog it out and carry on.  Some bail out and swim to shore, admitting defeat, but not me.  I’m raging on in a changing music business that allows amateur hacks like me to peddle my wares, trying to remember not to take it all too seriously, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that many who’ve come before and achieved sales, did so with wares I personally consider substandard to my own.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream

That’s a great song we all know.  If life is but a dream, then you’re not really reading this blog, and the moon in the sky at night doesn’t exist, whether people see it or not.  This concept applies to music marketing/promotion/advertising.  It used to be you could put the CD in the brick-and-mortar record store, and there was a chance a shopper would see it, be intrigued by the album title, the artist name, the cover artwork, the song titles, and/or the liner notes.  Those stores don’t exist anymore, but the same principle on the web means people have to visit the music store site, otherwise, the music doesn’t exist either.  The science behind audience definition/targeting and search optimization isn’t applicable and doesn’t matter when there’s no physical matter to apply it to.  But there’s a revelatory philosophical principle about this simple old tune that is not only a good approach to music, but also to living your life:  Don’t try too hard, and have fun.  I take it, and I advise it, for life and for songwriting.  You typically want to share the things you’ve had fun creating though, with the hope that they’ll be appreciated in a positive way.

Those seven words sum up my approach to this songwriting hobby very well, but the reason I record and distribute (the part that’s not fun) is based on a lack of certainty that this is all a dream.  The “what if?” thoughts of there being no afterlife, along with a belief that art doesn’t exist without appreciation, drives the “work” I put in to be an independent recording artist.  Fortunately, I’ve become aware of some appreciation of my art due to this work.  That appreciation is my fuel for continuing to be a songwriter.  Let the trees continue to fall.  What if the pope, while shitting in the woods, notices a bear also shitting nearby, while simultaneously hearing a tree falling nearby, and a woman is there to verify and provide feedback that it’s all sick and wrong? Songwriters need the feedback, or else their songs don’t exist, so they can either play live in a bar, or use CD Baby to get on iTunes.  It begs another question:  If you’re like me and people won’t pay to see you play live, despite trying, why shouldn’t you also give up when no one will pay .99 to download your MP3.  The answer:  a few people actually have paid that .99, which gives me hope that more of the same will occur, that I’ll get repeat customers if I repeat the process of releasing more trees into the wild, so at a nominal cost, why wouldn’t I trudge on?

We’ve all been alienators and bridge-burners at one time or another in our lives, and some find those personalities a little more interesting.  Maybe the rebels, the ne’er-do-wells, the slackers, the class clowns of the world write better songs.  If you’re going to answer a question with a question, it helps if it’s both funny and deep.  Serious questions are no fun at all.  Take the typical cop question “do you know why I pulled you over?” and think that through.  I always want to say something like “I’m flattered that from briefly glancing at me and my car, you had enough observatory power to gather information and surmise that I might have the type of extra sensory perception that has given me the ability to read your mind.”..and then follow that up with the word “Yes.”  Not a wise strategy.  The cops I’ve met don’t seem to be deep thinkers.  And one might think the smart and expected answer is simply “no.”  After the yes, the cop would then likely retort with something like, “why?,” to which I would then reply, “how would knowing the answer to that help you protect and serve any better than you already are?”  If life is but a dream, a maximum fine and jail time is a nightmare, not to mention the risk of random violence cops are prone to committing, such as being shot and killed by the cop right then and there.  

The “their word against yours power” isn’t fair, and if you’re dead, you don’t care if a passerby got it on video with their phone as evidence for justice in court when the cop lies and claims you were reaching for a weapon, especially if there’s no afterlife.  When a question isn’t funny, and it’s totally on the surface, it’s meant for places like courts of law, not private life conversations with real people.  Lawyers are skilled with asking questions they already know the answers to, and seem to in a sick way really take joy in playing dumb and acting as if they really don’t know the answer when they ask the question.  It’s too bad that their profession trains them for this, which they then inevitably use in their personal lives.  

What you do for a living, unfortunately, can shape the person you are, and certain traits don’t work outside of work.  Winning friends and influencing people is not accomplished by beating people up with words and using questions as weapons.  On the other hand, the hand I’m talking about here, replying to a question that would seemingly have a simple, predictable answer with a funny, philosophical question is always pleasantly thought-provoking.  Add in an unexpected swear word, and you’ve got the makings of an almost sure-fire way to get people to crack up and like you.  When you hear such a question, there’s a brief second before you laugh where you think of the alternate implications it presents - you may not want to admit it, but you’ve experienced it.  

Those who like to self-identify with being intellectual, pseudo or not, will take this ball and run with it, making a game out of pointing out the technicalities and logic flaws involved.  They’ll have follow-up questions of their own in response to your question replies, such as the living thing argument - creatures present with the capability of hearing, the possibility of aliens in parallel dimensions travelling faster than the speed of sound past the tree when it fell, ad nauseum.  Your stereotypical comic book / science fiction fan will have a field day, and it will annoy you, because you’re not like them, and you’re sad realizing they’ll never think it’s funny like you do to hear someone say “Does the pope shit in the woods?”  You’ll glaze over as they ramble, and you’ll start thinking of great new song lyrics but have no pen and paper or recorder.  That’s a bummer, man.  Makes you want to say “fuck it, let’s go bowling.”

To truly expose the underlying, hidden truths behind a question where the answer is obviously going to be yes, you’ve got to talk about why the Pope would shit in the woods in the first place.  You figure they mostly hang out in big cities, travel in luxury popemobiles, spend a lot of time in churches with modern plumbing.  You can brainstorm this.  You can try to think pope, papal, paper, toilet paper, papal paper, no paper handy while in woods, the convenience of the robe vs. pants, you picture squatting, them being right-wing conservatives, yet probably not opposed to walking in woods.  Say you’re a pope, the urge hits, and you happen to be in some woods, it could happen, probably has happened.  I’ll go out on a limb here and say there have been a lot of popes, and I hereby submit they’ve all shat in the woods before,  because there ain’t no papal porta johns in woods, not even when in Rome.

I’m digressing, so to get back on track and do as they do, I’ll write a prayer:  Dear God, please let more people hear and appreciate my songs.  That’s another thing with the internet lately - with all the free streaming going on, you don’t know if your song was played and liked by someone or not. Yes, star trek fans out there, some such services have analytics available, but most don’t for free anyway, and because of google, who pays for analytics nowadays?  People who work in sales I guess. The sales aren’t there, but who knows, maybe lots of people listened and loved my songs, but didn’t feel like e-mailing me to let me know, or didn’t feel like posting a kind review,  or recommending it, or clicking some sort of Like or +1 button.  It’s a hassle to do all that when you’re just out to find and listen to some interesting music for free and move on.  So there’s the finding it thing, and then there’s the liking it, and then there’s me finding out about any of this actually occurring.  

Even the best, most famous songwriter/artists out there don’t get paid for their art like they used to, and even the ultra-popular make more from playing live shows than selling records now.  Despite the business changing, it’s pretty cool that the potential is there for someone to be present with hearing ability when the tree falls, and at least I’m doing what’s necessary to stink up the Amazon, Google Play and iTunes forests with my shitty music, and it’s better that someone could smell it, than to not be that bear at all.  For you fellow songwriters out there, remember:  don’t work too hard, have fun, be the bear.  Luckily, technology has made it so that there’s not much to lose.  There are a billion others like me - with a microphone, computer, and guitar who make up words, try to sing, and hold out hope for something accidental and viral to happen with little expense or effort to boost our audience.  Like the lottery, you can’t win it if you don’t have the ticket.  Well, I’ve offended the intellectual community, the legal community, and the religious right community, so I’ll conclude with a question for you left-leaning, tree-hugging hipsters in the forest out there:  If an internet music fan finds and free-cloudstreams a songwriter/recording artist’s song, and the songwriter never becomes aware that it happened, did it?