FAWM post #11 - I'm a winner!

On Wednesday, I wrote "Mud Season," a short instrumental I consider to be only a very rough draft of a song to come:


On Thursday, I wrote "Tyranny of Complexity (Looking for Words)" with Shane:


On Friday, I woke up... A WINNER!




However... I'm far from being done. Yes, I've reached 14 songs, and that's a big deal and I should feel... proud, I guess. And I do.

But after spending a whole month just getting into the flow of writing songs, breathing songs, thinking about writing songs most of the day... I don't wanna stop. I'm in the zone, man! There are still songs to be written!


It makes me think of climbing the island with Gina. I spent a couple months of 2008 living and working on an island near Kodiak. I gotta admit - in some ways, it still seems like this huge glorious peak in my life to which nothing else will ever compare. Of course, this is untrue, but you should really see the photos sometime.

One day, the sun came out and we actually finished working a little earlier than normal, and the boss was back on the mainland for a spell. We decided to go see the top of the island, since it was getting later in the season and we still hadn't been up.

This particular peak was about 1500 feet above sea level, which is not very high. Thing is, we started right at sea level, since camp was set up just beside the cove where we first arrived by chartered fishing boat.

We arrived at the first leveled-out patch, formerly a volcano crater, now a catchbasin for rainwater and our source of drinking water. (The water trickled down the island and we collected it near the beach at a sluice. Ferrying the water back and forth by hand in buckets gave me an intense appreciation for plumbing.) Peregrines showed off in the sky. The few stunted trees of the island grew there. It was beautiful.

Even though it was a long, tiring climb after a long, tiring day... neither of us could permit it in our souls to climb back down without climbing just... a little more.

So up we went. We found a puffin skull lying very still and solemn in a patch of moss and flowers. Ravens floated below us, keeping a watchful eye. The ground got steeper and steeper and we bent further and further forward 'till we were using our hands to go up. But still, we couldn't go back without going just... a little more.

Gina had gone on ahead. I could see her waltzing up the incline ahead of me. As she reached the top, I was breathing hard and focusing on the ground in front of me.

Suddenly, she started yelling for me and scurrying back down. This was more than a little alarming, but Gina is a wonderful person who lives nearly entirely in the moment she's in, so she usually couldn't help but react fully and intensely to everything she experienced. And what she experienced was a bald eagle. As she told me, tearfully from the sheer awe of it, the eagle was flying towards the peak at about the same time she was climbing it from the other side, so they ended up surprising one another at about 10 feet away from each other.

So beautiful up there. In the sun. Watching the clouds in a slow cascade over the opposide peak. Looking out over the ocean and seeing West Amatuli, Sugarloaf, and Ushagat. Jagged mountains softened by the distance. And just... the quiet. The quiet was immense. Intensely peaceful.



I think the restless spirit needs the peace of the summit just as much as the invigorating journey. One does not exist apart from the other. So, onward, upward, more songs, please!