Rules of the Game #11: Toothpaste and Coffee

[koganbot]

More Ashlee. I try to do right by the craftsmanship and the poetry. (Thanks to Nia for inspiration.) I also pose a question that I suppose is really "Why do we care about artistry?" Any thoughts?

The Rules of the Game No. 11: Toothpaste and Coffee

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm the opposite: whenever I sing along (or more commonly imagine myself in the music video) it's always 'me' singing, even if it's not always me, Lex. The identification has to be there but it's usually more subtle than just my feelings correlating with the singer's - I can identify with the emotion of a song even if I have never felt that emotion (sometimes BECAUSE I have never, and don't see myself ever, feeling it, eg Lauryn Hill's 'To Zion' which is about her kid). I guess it's about potential feeling, the way in which a feeling is articulated rather than what the feeling actually is.

Which is why 'Say It Right' is such an important song for me b/c it's all about potentially feeling something indefinable.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Why can't I write like that when I am commissioned to do so.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Just a thought, but next time you have an assignment and you're stuck, you should try starting up a convo, grammar and main point etc. be damned, with someone and literally editing the responses together, then using it as a rough draft (at least then you'll have words on a page).

That's apparently how Xhuxk stitched together a few of Metal Mike Saunders' best pieces, like his great Britney one "Dear Diary" -- about half off-the-cuff emails and half "this is my Britney piece for the Voice."

[koganbot]

I think Xhuxk even went and found some old messageboard postings (though maybe not; I think Mike tries to avoid message boards).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

If you can follow where he posts on MySpace (which is basically at random), you can find some really great stuff. But it's impossible to track.

[koganbot]

Yeah, what Dave said. Most of this Ashlee piece was cut and pasted and revised from several emails, a long one to Edd Hurt and a couple of shorter ones to my editor Scott Dickensheets. I feel the piece came out too stilted anyway, but it got some good ideas on the page and I don't know how anyone with a brain could read it and not realize that Ashlee (or Evil Corporation That Uses Ashlee As A Front) produces words that matter and poetry to fall in love with.

Still haven't found my way into a good finger-snapping, toe-tapping voice in my column, and I'm disappointed that I didn't make the best of my opportunity to produce My Great Ashlee Piece; but I think the second half of last week's column hits the home run (er, what do they do in cricket?), finds its way into the brains and guts of the music (even while not really discussing the sound). And so now in the public prints I've got a couple of pieces that deliver Ashlee to some people beyond our little group. And this makes up for the one previous piece I did about her, a review of I Am Me that's well-written and smart (and favorable) but seems beside the point now.

So, if you have a piece to write, get us arguing about the subject matter, and join in.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes this is a good idea - a lot of pieces I've actually managed to write were based on going back to things I wrote off the cuff. The danger of course is that as the conversation takes shape it will be other people's paragraphs I will want to use rather than my own.