I’m thinking there might be real value in discussing the merits and flaws I see in a song diary entry. This one, for instance, doesn’t seem to me “ready” in any sense, but it was the final try after nine others—and it took the furthest curve off the trail I’d followed. In other words, I find it interesting.

I think it’s definitely too “busy” and the slide guitar is full of emotion but also excessive and unfocused. That makes sense, given that it was the first attempt at involving slide, or even another voice, in the recording.

But one thing that I especially like in this is the vocal. I appreciate its presence. I’m still well at the beginning of developing skill at evoking distances, either through playing or recording. But distance perennially becomes a focal point for me, because I get a lot of feeling from what might be called “spatial emotionality;” really, I suppose, spatial relationships—the sense of how things interact within a scene affects us/me.

I want things to pop and recede, as if they were entering my mind strongly then moving back into the background to wait. This is an element of perception that excites me. The play of foreground and background, how we can’t look at two planes at one time. I think a vocal “treatment” like this could support work with distance.

This recording lacks a body. There are a few moments that pull me, but it’s difficult to pay attention to discrete moments because of my general disorientation. A better version would give more “reason” to the body, to the structure, just a little bit more sense of footing. Of how to run one’s hand along the contours of the thing.

When every dream arises like a problem, from May 31, Song Diary