Lucinda Williams--now SHE really thinks outside the bun!
2003-01-21 - 11:05 p.m.
How utterly inspiring: this “interview” with Lucinda Williams, the woman I worship. I know, I know, thou shalt not worship false gods and all that, but please, please, pretty please, can’t I just have this one little false god? If you let me have this one, I promise not to covet my neighbor’s Christmas decorations (which are still up) or lust after anyone’s wife.
But back to the inspiration thing. First of all there is Lucinda’s comment about complacency that spoke to me like a personal admonition. And then I read about how Neko Case has managed to put out three albums, play in a bunch of musical combinations like The New Pornographers and the Corn Sisters, and oh yeah, by the way, get a bachelor’s degree in the process--only a year before I got mine.
Am I comparing myself to Neko Case and Lucinda Williams, you might be asking?
Am I even a songwriter, for fuck’s sake?
I think it’s needless to say the answer is no.
But am I forever playing the oh-my-God-I’m- already-this-old-and-what-have-I-done-with-my-life- and-look-how-Zadie-Smith-is-like-my-age-and-already-a-big-time-novelist- and-I-sometimes-don’t-even-know-where-to-put-a-period-in-relation-to-parenthesis game?
You bet your ass I am.
I worry all the time about being lazy and complacent and not getting anything done, so much so that while Neko Case was out recording three albums and playing in a shitload of bands and getting her BFA.... I was sitting on the sofa and worrying about not getting anything done. Again, not that I’m a gifted songwriter or anything, but you know, this is supposed to be a meditation on how the dreams you had for yourself as a kid and the way you are turning out as an adult somehow aren’t quite matching up the way you thought they would. And about how the reason they’re not matching up is actually because you’re not trying hard enough, not branching out enough, not thinking outside the box enough.
Goddamn, I wish there wasn’t a Taco Bell commercial that says “Think outside the bun,” because now whenever someone uses that stupid phrase, “think outside the box,” like in a meeting or like I just did in my own writing, I hear that Taco Bell gong and wish it was time for lunch.
