Starmaster's Window (UPDATED!)

Song writing was, at first, an aspiration in Only Anything and not really a reality. Our first few public performances consisted of us playing covers of our favorite songs with no original material whatsoever.

When we decided collectively to begin writing, it seemed that we were all on similar creative levels and would produce songs--some of which never really became songs that we performed or recorded--with relative frequency. Most of these songs were kind of silly, though: "Life is a Circle," & "Cornflakes" are the two that come to mind here (I'll work on getting the original lyric sheet for "Life is a Circle" up here too-- I just found it. Update: Either John H. or I should do "Life is a Circle" the honor of its own post.)

By the time we got more serious about the business of writing the songs that we would record on our first album (Pleasantly Surprised), it was clear that Jon Thwaits was the standout creative force in the band. Not only were his melodies complex (and would grow increasingly more complex over the years), his lyrics had a narrative completeness to them that brought polish to our otherwise (at first) sketchy playing.

Jon's creative success affected me in conflicting ways. On one hand, the Thwaits tunes are the bedrock of the band and they gave us something real to play. And I loved playing them--we all did--because they are great songs. And Jon inspired me to take my own writing more seriously. But, and this is the other side, I wasn't nearly as successful as a songwriter, and I felt a bit defeated because of my struggle. I tried really hard to develop this talent, though, the results of which are pages and pages of lyrics/poems. Pieces of these poems, as I read back through them, could have turned out to be decent song lyrics, but much of them, as you will see, kind of capture my frustration at the time as a teenager trying, quite inadequately, to express himself.

Later, in the year before I went to San Francisco in '97, the process finally began to gel when I wrote Starmaster and Knight (which I feel were my most successful compositions in OA). These songs, as I now think of them, were written as appropriations of Jon's narrative stylings. In effect, Jon taught me how to write a song.

I have begun to collect these old, failed lyrics/now-poetry in a web space that can be viewed here.

I am only a tenth of the way through my stack, and will continue to update it as time allows. They are interesting to me not only as OA artifacts, but as windows into my mind as a 15 to 18-year-old. They, in many ways, represent my attempts to process the experience of adolescence and present them, in the bite-size package of a song, to the world. (And some of them are pretty hilarious.)

Update: I have completed the transcription of all (or most) of the old poetry that I have dating between 1993-1997.

There's more though. I have several poems that I wrote while in San Francisco, and more still that I wrote in the few years after my return. I will continue to add to the compilation and will give a head's up when they are up. I have also added a direct link to the "window" in the sidebar.