Pretty Little Head (download)

So this one isn’t going to be easy.

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Some of them are.  Most of them are.  I’m talking about these blog posts.  You see, normally I can pinpoint what I was trying to get across in a particular song, what thread I was pulling at.  Sometimes, however, even being that specific is a task onto itself, and I can’t be bothered.

So, can we ditch the formalities and just speak plainly?  Good.  Here goes:

***

My name is Derek Walker.  I am loved by the people around me, but I never feel loved enough.  I’ve been told by many people that I’m talented, “gifted” even, but I could do with a few more of those compliments.  I don’t share this outward; in fact, I’ve made a really neat little game out of reacting to these affirmations with a certain brand of false modesty, and insisting that I don’t want any of the glory.

But, let me tell you this, right here, right now:  I want the glory.  All of it.  Now.

***

The only real way to communicate any idea or concept of lasting effect to me is through songs.  I hold dear the various lyricists that have imparted valuable things to me in the past:  People such as David Bazan, Bill Mallonee, Leonard Cohen, Mark Eitzel etc.  I recognized, at an early age, that I feared and respected those who could reach me with their craft, and I’ve always wanted nothing more than to be able to do the same with the words I write.

I’m at a stage in my life at the moment where I am constantly surrounded by immensely talented people, and although maturity dictates that I smile and rejoice with those who have found success in their creative pursuits, there is still a dark, dirty part of me that wants to believe that I deserve it more.  That part of me has got to die sometime.  It might as well die this year.

I started this blog so I could get my music out there.  I did not start it to obsess over my numbers, or worry about if I was hitting enough people, or spend a third of my day brainstorming ideas on how to increase web traffic.  Alas, as is to be expected, that is what has happened.

So I’m fighting it.  And my version of “fighting it” is to put my head down, and plug away, and keep posting, and know in my heart that I am blessed to be where I’m at in my life, and that my work doesn’t correspond to someone else’s work, and that my audience will grow at the rate it’s supposed to, and that I have to be OK with that.  “Worry is a waste of emotional reserve,” Ayn Rand once said, and while I’d have to agree that any one who quotes Ayn Rand is automatically pretentious (and most likely not to be trusted), I can’t help but believe that the best I can do to “fight it” is to stop worrying.

***

This song was written, and recorded, during a time where my emotional reserve was completely overwhelmed by worrying.

I spent about four years in a band called the Fair Saints.  (You have never heard of us.  It’s OK.)  I spent about three years and ten months of my tenure in that band worrying about our success, obsessing over why people weren’t coming to our shows or buying our records.

After our first record was released, and almost immediately lost to the ages, I decided to do something that some have said is the last act of desperate musicians.

I decided to write a concept record.

Regrettably, the Saints ran their course before that particular seed could find purchase.  But I still think some of those songs I wrote were worthwhile, and I’d like to share one with you.

(The concept, so to speak:  a young playwright falls in love with a beautiful starlet in New York.  Fame and the promise of fortune seduces her away to California.  He is heartbroken, and resolves to use the power of his words to draw her back to him.  The record would be presented as a series of letters from New York to California.)

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Tell me how you get so low
You’ve been reaching for two weeks or so
There’s a funny little look on your face
Asking if I know about this place

But the money won’t stop trickling in
If we take the train to east Brooklyn
So what goes on
In that pretty little head
That pretty little head of yours

Two blocks past the Palisade
Where I saw you dancing just last May
You’d be crazy just to look my way
And your mother said I’d last two days

The fog escapes from rusty vents
Like horses from the edge of the bend
So what goes on
In that pretty little head
That pretty little head of yours

My fingers start to hurt from the cold
The doorways are all painted gold
All the cabdrivers and showgirls shout
And the hired kids search for a way out

California’s not like this
California doesn’t exist
So what goes on, what goes on, what goes on
In that pretty little head
That pretty little head of yours

***

Let us live boldly, let us breathe loudly, let us move unafraid towards new things, let us cross borders we haven’t seen before, let us bring into light what we’ve kept in darkness, let us run towards each other with renewed desire for authenticity, let us not be fettered by opinion or popularity, let us not be perplexed at new ways to see the world, let us be unmoved by how people see us, let us dance in the light of who we were meant to be.