Transition Protocol

This brings us to the end of Songs of Days volume 4, Blank Book. We we will proceed forthwith tomorrow with volume 5, which bears the title Untitled (very postmodern, I know. Or perhaps, what's the word? Pretentious). Looking back I'm sort of baffled that I didn't elect to drum up three standalone songs to fill the fourth volume before starting such a long related series as Flesh and Bones: An Homage 1-101, but there it is. I guess I have taken the attitude that the division of the books themselves is essentially arbitrary: start at the beginning, start a new one when the old one is full. In retrospect I do find (or imagine or project) a certain thematic coherence and narrative character in the volumes, but at the time of their writing the content was purely dictated by the flow of the daily writing in the context of whatever blank page happened to be next.

The only book this isn't true of is the final volume of series one, which ends in the middle and so was left half blank because I got to the last song I intended to write. Thinking of that I realize (four years too late) that it would have been more bad ass if, when I started the second series of daily songwriting, I had picked it up on the next blank page of the last book of the first series - instead of starting a new book, which is what I actually did. Though perhaps the decision to establish a concrete break between the two projects was intentional: my memories of starting the second series are surprisingly vague, considering its scope. I remember getting pretty worked up about the idea of returning to daily writing, and about making the huge, 10,000 song commitment, and that I started out with a bunch of complicated extraneous codes and markers that indicated stuff like what time of day the song was written, which were soon abandoned. These days, though, the specific inspiration and trains of thought that led up to these decisions are lost to me. The lesson of this may be no more than that the momentary whims of decision are not as important as we often think: only persistence carries through in the long run.

You can read an explanation of the origin of these lyrics here