i’m really proud of how far i’ve come as a lyricist. it’s taken a lot of work. i do look back very fondly on much of my earliest work and kind of weep a little at the young guy in his mid-twenties who was like trying to force his weird splayed brain through a billboard-hit-sized hole (tiny, confining, and it turns out mostly a networking thing but whatever). it suffered quite a bit during the kindred era, save for “looks like rain” and “my brother taught me how to swim.” i was in very…serious conformism-for-ludicrous-profit company and I was so deeply unhappy namely for that reason. and also a divorce but whatever I don’t care about that.

but it’s pretty cool to suddenly find myself revising and working on lyrics in ways i never have before. i know i was highly particular particularly through Gossamer. my best lyricism was my initial offerings, and I count Manners as that—really untouched by anything.

in 2019 I reconnected with my mentor Roddy Potter (who was actually, weirdly, one of Allen Ginsberg’s last mentees…he has many-a-story). he’s dear, dear friend of mine and shaped me as a thinking person and then an artist all throughout high school after we became friends once I joined the varsity cross country team in fall of 2002 and won MVP that year. he’s the coolest and seriously really kicked my ass, always let me have it.

so when I went to him in 2019, the last song I had written basically was Remembering You which the lyrics are featured on my most recent post. he tore them to shreds (and then years later said no notes, it was a process-based thing and he knows me like the back of his hand which is wild—knows i’ll do whatever i want in the end anyway.

I said, roddy, please god, I cannot stand writing about myself. I know nothing but this cyclical void. It’s felt off for at least 8 years, maybe more. I can’t stop talking about myself. Maybe it’s the interviews, maybe it’s the whatever.

He coached me through the thinking and I’m reminded of the Auden/Griffen interview book I bought a few months into 2020, in Buffalo, living with my parents and working closely with Roddy, in which Auden refers to all artists as being narcissists (not clinical, but then again…) by definition. Monstrous, continuously brutalized if born as artists by hopefully a defining aspect of artistic living that goes against an inner grain. Sometimes it takes years to abate.

Roddy said yeah yeah yeah, can you describe a rock? Fucking describe a rock and come back to me.

Slashes through every poem.

YES. NO. STILTED. WHY. THIS IS GOOD. marked up on the pages as well, months into trying desperately to describe a rock without literally doing that homework.

I did it. I wrote You Live for This before heading up to Buffalo (which he rented a uhaul and came to nyc to help bring me back up with all my gear so we could do some sessions). I wrote the way we will win which he was completely mute about the lyrics for and instead we talked about what lyricism means to him for like twenty days. And how he perceives my work.

Then I did it— I wrote two songs, Brothers to the End and Central Park After Dark and then I told him I haven’t anything left in the form of saying “yeah yeah it’s coming”

He then proceeded to invite me to go on a hike with him. I hated it, but I love him so much that whether in the forest or in the basement of my parents house or on stage like we did so many times before, playing music—any chance to be with my guiding light like that I’d take.