Raccoon Tour, pt. 1 - Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Verbose Koans

I got some feedback from the premium subscribers on what they would like me to write about. I’ll be getting to some of that soon. I’m excited to write things that people might want to read!

Raccoon Tour

In the meantime, here’s a little bit more about my song, Raccoon Tour. I’m going “into the studio” in a few weeks to re-record this song, and hopefully improve upon my home-recorded version, linked above. Later I’ll share more of my pre-production notes, reflections on the recording process, and more about the wonderful folks I’m working with. For now, here’s what I wrote about the lyrical content of the song in advance of the recording session.

The lyrics:

The world is all…that’s the case
The world is all...there is
The melody goes…
How you think it’s going to go
I’ll be right here

‘Cuz it’s a…
Long way to the top
If you wanna eek out a living
It’s a long way to the top
From here

Started in the middle
And I went nowhere
Started in the middle
And I, I stayed right there
I’m not wired for this fight
I’m not wired up at all
I’ll be right here

Off-kilter builder
I get devastated all the time
I’ll be right here

What’s this song about?

• This song, like all my songs, is a collage of lines written over some span of time that I pull together because it feels like they go together, and 95% of my explanation below of what the song is about I came to only after living with it for eight months, or whatever

• Like a lot of my songs this one has some kind-of bleak themes, but they don’t seem negative to me, and they’re offset by a fast and buoyant delivery and musical setting; this contrast feels right to me

• The first couple lines are lifted, albeit with some distortion, from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, a little book published in the 1920s in which he claims to “solve all the problems of philosophy” in fewer than 200 pages

• I’m fascinated by this book and could talk about it all day, but for the purposes of this song, I’m picking up on the “here we are” aspect of how LW opens his book: “The world is everything there is,” in the latest Searls translation (which is really good

• “The melody goes” line is a comment on how I fall into the same melodic and other ruts constantly; my self-assessment on this front is partially a function of the fact that if I think of something, then that thing seems obvious to me, and I assume, to everyone else, even if—as it often turns out—it is not obvious to anyone else

• The “stuckness” of being in a rut is also picked up in “I’ll be right here,” which is simultaneously a reassurance to the listener, but also a declaration of a dependable lack of progress/movement on my part

• Then, I’m playing off an AC/DC line, which I also do in another song, and at this point the “stuckness” is even more clearly about my musical endeavors–stuck in melodic ruts, and from where I’m stuck, it’s a long way to the top; when you get there, rock ‘n’ roll isn’t on the agenda, eeking out a living is—because while I love doing music, it’s also really hard, and it’s not conducive to economic survival

• “Started in the middle” - I start with privilege and some ability, but then “I stayed right there”—not leveraging a good starting point to get somewhere, staying right at the starting point

• “Not wired up for this fight” - I think a lot about the neural and other wiring that drives my behaviors and patterns of thought; in this case, my wiring is not conducive to the struggle of overcoming the stuckness–whatever that could even mean

• “Not wired up at all” - I’m a big They Might Be Giants fan, as I’ve written about, and Linnell often does a thing in his lyrics where he says something and then immediately cancels or reverses it; I’m doing that here, but also kind of defying the power of the wiring, even as in the next line I’m giving up that defiance and admitting again that I’m not going anywhere

• “Off-kilter builder” - is a comment on the unsteady construction of my songs and many of my endeavors, which I take joy in doing in just this off-kilter way - I have a perverse pride in the imperfection, which is akin to my embrace of lo-fi recording aesthetics: things are off-kilter, which is bad if you’re building a house, but maybe just right for a song

• “I get devastated all the time” - off-kilter construction is not durable, and I’m prone to fits depression, darkness, devastation

• Finally, still “right here” because while things are unsteady and I’m not making progress there is comfort in the constancy

Collage of the Day

Subscriber-only Collage