Author Archives: TK

The luxury of boredom…

I‘m not much of a theologian.

But I’m thinking boredom ticks off the Creator.

I mean…as a minor failed poet, I know a little something about putting my work out in front of folks and nothing makes you feel more empty and tired than having someone yawn at you.

What? This old world again, with its shifting sands, its deep green forests and roiling seas? How boring. I wonder if there’s anything new on YouTube?

Anyhow, boredom. I have a lot of sins but I’m happy to say that since wasting my suburban youth thinking I was bored, I’ve been trying hard to not commit that one again.

As I said before — no doubt when talking about this song (don’t make me look — my antipathy to apathy notwithstanding, I view sloth as virtue not vice)…

Only boring people get bored.

Internet Archive page for this recording

March 1, 2006 version
September 25, 2005 version

A Star is Bored

A star is bored
prowling empty hotel hallways
He’s never alone
so how come he’s always lonely

Nothing gets him down
it’s all just the same
saying “If you think you’re bored,
then you should see me!”

Down in the bar
leaning into a smokey corner
trying not to catch her eye:
“Say, cowboy, why you dressed like that?”

And it always seems to
go down about the same
It kills a couple of hours
but it don’t kill the pain

Tell him a story
make it long, make it lonely
Lots of starstruck summer nights
and the moon’s reflection on the river that runs through
everything

Nothing makes much sense
but he guesses that’s just life
Ya play a few songs
and then they turn out the lights

Yeah, nothing makes much sense
and he guesses that’s just life
You have a couple of laughs
and then you call it a night

My Second Mistake

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M y Second Mistake

This new instrumental started out a s a goof, a rig test, and evolved into a sort of homage to the old raga rock would-be psychedelic excursions of the mid 60s.

I’d heard a bit on NPR about an Indian American who’d written a book on applying sitar and Indian music techniques to guitar. He was using a fretless guitar in combination with fretted guitars.

When I’d experimented with sitar-like sounds in the past, I’d always used a slidem so I thought it might be amusing to follow this guy’s lead and try it without, tuning my guitar to open fifths.

I ran a couple minutes off onto the computer and forgot about it until later, when I had a few minutes to put a droney bass synthesizer and some fake talking drums on it… even though it was never intended to be a keeper… I almost didn’t hit the save button.

Just to add a certain, even more chaotic element to the mix, I took a section of the main guitar improv, made a copy, reversed it, and dropped the whole thing in more or less where it came from (only backwards, of course).

My Second Mistake