OCTOBER: The Month of Songwriting

PREFACE

The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs has hit my life like a thunderbolt. If you know it already, shame on you for not stopping everything and making me listening to it. If you don't, brace yourself. It's a sprawling, 3-disc set of 69 love songs written by one man, conceived as a quasi-Broadway review. They span an unbelievable number of genres, tones, attitudes, and emotions. It's alternatively sweet, angry, happy, and heartbreaking, and frequently hilarious. Listening through it once, at least in part, is probably essential to being a complete human, and will prepare you well for what I'm about to propose.

CONTEXT

Fall is coming—time for whiskey, sweaters, tragic love, the death of all things in a blaze of autumnal glory, etc. It's time to dust off Kid A and Kind of Blue, Pink Moon and From the Basement on the Hill—all our favorite records that only really keep in environments cooler than 70 degrees—and smoke cigarettes and indulge our heavier natures. Dissatisfaction becomes its own aesthetic. Happiness seems garish and overt. In short, ladies and gentlemen, it's songwriting season.

THE PROPOSAL

I'm in an ambitious mood, and I'm hoping you are too. I'll get right down to it: For the month of October, write one song a day. It doesn't have to be long, or serious, or really even be any good. It can have lyrics, or not—or it can be just lyrics without music. Break up with someone? Write a song. Stub your toe? Write a song. Drink a glass of water? Write a song. Run out of ideas? Write a song about it. All I ask is that you make some kind of effort, once a day, to conceive of a lyrical/musical idea and record it in some way, whether by writing or recording. I'm thinking about this more as a sketchbook than anything.

At the end of October, I'll collect everything and compile it. For local folks, we'll do a reading/performing of the highlights. For the rest of you, I'll figure out whatever makes the most sense based on what I get and make sure to get it to you somehow. If you follow through on the project, I'll take you out to dinner at the end of the month if you're around someplace fancy. If you're not, I'll mail you something nice. But more than anything, I'm hoping to get a really awesome record (in both the history-book and 12" LP sense) of your exceptionally talented/fucked-up/downright silly minds.

I realize you all have very busy lives, and I don't expect you to indulge me. I'm going to do it, though, and it would be awesome to share the experience. Collaboration is also wholeheartedly encouraged, so if it seems like too much, teaming up could be cool too.

IN CONCLUSION

Please pass this along to anyone else you think would enjoy the project. Let me know if you're interested.

PEACE/LOVE/GEORGETOUMAYAN,

Joe