Slow Engines of Destruction

Out of floss. Have meant for several days to order more floss, but haven't, and now I am out. Have ordered more floss.

It's a bad few days for my mouth all around, really. I have some kind of minor cold that's left the back of my throat scratcy, and I snagged my inner lip on one of my canines, so there's a sore there, and to let the sore heal I have to not wear my mouth guard at night, but with the cold I can't breathe right, so I'm grinding my teeth.

I don't know why, but when things are irritatingly wrong in this specific way, I always think this must have happened to Stalin. Probably I read too much Solzhenitzyn at an impressionable age (which I spelled right first try, hooray). And I imagine being Stalin sitting in my office with mouth problems. I don't know whether Stalin had mouth problems; it's just a sense of being in control of the world but totally impotent against one's own, for instance, bitten tongue.

Things You Can't Teach

Since I've been going through one of my I-want-a-band cycles, I am in the mood to write some new songs, but it's been like banging my head against a wall. There is no other area of my life where I get writer's block: songwriting is it. I'm coming up with all kinds of fun chord progessions and lyrical concepts, but no melodies to join them together. It's aggravating.

"How do you write a song" is a silly question, because the answer is that you sit down and write a song. It's like "how do you write a story." I sit down with a pen or a computer. I can tell you how to write a better story, but not how to write a story in the first place. So it is with songwriting.

Despite this, I have been asking exactly that on Google, in the hopes of finding anecdotes of how specific people wrote specific songs in case I find something that pushes my brain engine back into working. And predictably, I found what one would expect: "Well, maybe I start with a lyric or a melody or some chords."

However, the number one Google hit is probably the most inane thing I've ever read. I hesitate to link to it, because I'm not really happy with how high it is in the rankings. It maintains, staunchly, that a song starts with the title. I don't know any songwriter that starts with a title. It is usually pulling teeth to get someone to settle on a title.

The article is also very chirpy. And mostly seems to suggest that you find someone else to write your song for you.

Maybe I will write a song titled "never start with a title."