I'm revisiting the idea of physically releasing The Compendium Of Unruly Caterwauling as a CD or a Vinyl or both.
It's a pretty huge expense, with little or no return on investment. Certainly throughout my life I've been guilty of allowing vanity to get the best of me, but I have grown up a little. Nobody buys music these days in enough numbers to sustain a small independent artist's existence. It's really difficult for me to pull the trigger on something that in the grand scheme of things means nothing.
And yet.... the idea of it still looms over me like The Sword Of Damocles. Physical existence is the last part of the journey of having the dream, and then dragging it into reality.
About a year ago, Marty Blake (The People's Republic Of Shuffling Hungaria's collaborating graphic artist and art director) and I were really in the the thick of the design process. Of the thousands of tasks that need to be executed, we were considering traditional "liner notes", which could be printed on the back of the vinyl to be read whilst listening...
Reading. Another lost art.
But I digress.
Here's an idea that has been kicking around in my head for awhile. It has manifested itself into a rough 1st draft of possible liner notes for a physical product that hovers stubbornly at the edge of the 4th dimension of reality in an alternate universe. It may never be physically published, but as a supporter and subscriber, you get to read it.
chi·me·ra
/kīˈmirə,kəˈmirə/
1. a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.
The songs in this folio are roughly a collection of some of the picaresque events in the character of Little Georgie’s life’s narrative… which of course mirrors my own, because he is I and I is him.
Many years ago, I split town to be an honorary Mardi Gras Indian and study at the feet of the master musicians of New Orleans. I returned back home after being blown back up north by hurricane Katrina.
There was no magic left in me, or impetus to make the kind of sacrifices necessary to perform musical tricks that had started to feel more like turning them.
In fact, I spent the next 15 years trying to obliterate the fever dream of my alter ego, “Little Georgie”, attempting to emerge as a single and complete entity; divorced from anything resembling what “used to be”. But no matter how hard I tried, it's always an exercise in futility to try to kill him and bury him for good. They don’t call him “The Little Zomboy” for nothing.
On rare occasions, I would get a rare itch to drag a fever dream across the fourth dimension and to see if I could still make it emerge in reality. It’s a cosmic dare and a gauntlet thrown. The stars and planets have to align just so to create enough of a gravitational pull to create the illusion of momentum to make something wild appear.
If one piece of the puzzle goes missing, or isn't present? The whole thing falls apart and disappears as quickly as it materializes.
It takes a boatload of resources and a Herculean amount of hard work to pull off the trick of “Little Georgie and The Shuffling Hungarians”... but when it happens?
I can't describe it. You just have to be part of it I guess.
Like an addict taking a swan dive off the proverbial wagon while simultaneously setting himself on fire, I will still decide to scratch that itch, even though crashing and burning is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Epic failure is my destiny and brand. Or better yet? Life: "The trick you can only do once".
If you’re reading this, you’re holding in your hand the plastic evidence of fever dreams manifested, and magically conjured momentarily into some form of reality through a weird cocktail of force of will, synchronicity, providence, and sheer dumb luck. A brief moment in the continuum where everything clicked, and the tumblers fell all at once.
But it ain’t real. It’s the family cow transformed into Jack’s Magic Beans. My Muse that alternately inspires me and yet insists on taunting me. My scratched itch. My Chimera.
A red hot plastic dream, frozen in digital amber. Proof that the Chimera will not be ignored… a mythical beast that cannot be ignored, locked away or restrained, and will not be vanquished.
And yet, it prefers to remain stubbornly illusory, always a finger tip away from a grasping reality.
Pulling the Chimera of Little Georgie and The Shuffling Hungarians into focus is like capturing a photo of a Sasquatch.
I'v done it before. Just don’t blink.
