Something Out Of Everything

I was speaking to someone recently about music. This person isn't a musician and they couldn't get their head around how a song takes shape. To them, writing a song was building something out of nothing. I tried to explain to them that it wasn't building something out of nothing. First of all, the something that inspires music is all around us, from our day to day experiences to the hundred million songs we've already heard in our lifetime. All of these things are the sparks that ignite the creative flame, the molecules that collide to cause the big bang of songwriting.

Second, sound is infinite. That's a theory that I heard once that I really liked. I don't know if it's true, and frankly, I don't care all that much. The theory goes that once a note is played, two divergent things happen. The sound vibration that we are hearing never disappears, much like the idea that energy is never created nor destroyed; the sound merely diminishes at an exponential rate infinitely. The other thing that happens is that a sound once made morphs into something new; the metaphysical thing that cannot be scientifically expressed. The sound becomes an idea that is reinterpreted by the ear that hears it.

Lastly, I read somewhere that the smallest known sub atomic particle looks like a sound wave, meaning that at the very core of everything is sound, or the evidence that sound was once there. I told me friend that it can be more accurately said that they couldn't understand how musicians build something out of everything. I was reminded of this conversation because last night Dan and I had a writing session at his place in Long Beach that didn't yield any specific results (i.e. no song was born). It made me smile when I thought that sometimes building something out of everything can be just as impossible as building something out of nothing.

You can catch us playing shit we've already built this Friday night at Pehrspace, 10pm. The show is All Ages and BYOB. Hope to see you all there!