Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The most fundamental, most compelling, most important right is the right of those who are innocent to enjoy a free life. There is nothing this right does not trump, and any system in which this is not true is a system of tyranny." -- holzman 2003-09-01 I'm pretty sure others have said the same thing, but that's his phrasing.

Okay, I'm home from the recording session and have made a couple of phone calls, checked my email, and teased the cat with a laser pointer. I'm tired. Yeah, this is another of those "so much I have to do, but my body is done for the day" evenings. My mother called to say that the painters will be showing up a 09:00 tomorrow morning to do the floors upstairs ... which is on the one hand a positive thing because I'd been told they couldn't be here tomorrow two weeks ago and suddenly we can get stuff done now after all; and on the other hand an annoying thing because I thought I had another week to sort out getting help moving enough stuff around in some other room to be able to put the dresser from upstairs somewhere on the second floor, and more importantly, help moving the dresser itself. Moving it to the center of a room and throwing a dropcloth over it while they worked on the ceilings and walls was okay, but I don't think I have the apropriate technology for doing the equivalent while they work on the floors. Whoops. Well, too tired to try to figure it out tonight. This has been a long and tiring day. I'm exhausted and my arms hurt. And I think something is shouting my name from inside my refrigerator ... I can't tell from here whether it's stout, porter, or a Scotch ale, so I'll have to open the fridge and find out which one is calling me. It sounds like it might be the Skull Splitter (Scotch ale). I may or may not stay awake long enough to get caught up on LiveJournal tonight.

Recording is tiring in that way where you don't realize how tiring it is until you stop and suddenly discover you're exhausted. Like skiing. Well I did get a clue when I noticed what kinds of mistakes I was starting to make. Then again, I didn't realize how hard I was working on a single take of a single track until I noticed how hard I was breathing at the end of it. So I guess it's not just the jumping around on stage that makes me so tired when we perform. Scottish rhythm guitar is an athletic endeavor, especially on the reels. Irish too, for that matter (especially on the jigs). But the exhaustion of a long recording session is more than that of course, 'cause the mental aspects can get rather intense. Focusing on getting the timing exactly right to match what's playing in the headphones, sweating each tiny mistake, having to be so much more precise technique-wise ... (On stage: "Okay, that Bm chord was a little weak because my left hand was tired, but it only lasted a quarter of a second and didn't wreck the performance. On the whole, that set rocked." Recording: "That Bm was a little weak, and I'm going to hear it over and over and over again for the rest of my life, and any fan who buys the CD will eventually notice it too, if they play it enough times. Gotta do this again, and pay careful attention to my left hand this time, while hoping I don't screw something else up because I'm preoccupied with getting the Bm right.") Maintaining that focus is tiring in and of itself.

But the other problem I'm having is, as noted in the very short entry I mailed from my phone, the difference between "perfectionism" and "attention to detail". This has to be good. It's going to be good. And for it to be good, we have to care about the mistakes, we have to have the patience to keep trying until we play it right and get a good track. But there's a line in there somewhere, and on the far side of that line are the thing that never gets finished because the artist can't leave it alone, and the thing that goes way over budget from trying to eke out that magical take that's a hair's-breadth better than the one four hundred and thirty eight takes ago. I've got no idea how easy or hard this is for my bandmates, but I know I'm hearing the siren song of the "just a little bit better" take that I know I could eventually play given enough chances. And that I have to figure out where the balance is; when to ask for one more because I can do it better, and when to say, "That was not only mistake-free, it was good, and it was good enough, so let it stand." Because, dammit, I want my parts to sound on the recording the way they do in my head; I want to sound like twice the guitarist I am, and make people gasp at the beauty of my tone and subtle nuances of my phrasing; but this is not a huge-budget project, and studio time is not unlimited.

Perhaps it will help to remind myself that this band is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not sure any of us is as good as the band is. My parts don't have to encompass all of the magic of the band in a single instrument.

But a shorter answer might be, "Glenn, you've overthinking this."