“And you keep my old scarf, from that very first week, ’cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me.” – TS

Oh my god(s)! I forgot! The very first sound in that song, that lo-fi, reverby baby voice saying, “Gorgeous”? It is a dead ringer for a recording I made of Pixel, probably when she was about one and a half, and used as an intro for some silly GarageBand track. “My name’s Maggie Pixel,” she says. “Maggie Pixel!”

So that new song kicks off and one little processing thread in my head zips back to 2009, sitting on the living room floor, playing with this little blob of cute crazy intention and randomness. That’s a powerful emotion. Like the sweetest punch to the stomach, followed by a winter morning jacuzzi with a smoking hot mug of coffee. Or something.

If I ever get around to hijacking this blog into a podcast — yeah, Kickstarter and Patreon may or may not be open in my browser tabs here — I’ll grab that audio and use it somewhere; maybe in the intro, or as a spacer block between chunks.

Trying not to do it with one I just wrote, but if the time and feel is right — usually later at night does the trick — I’ve been reading this aloud to myself, just to see how that feels. If my wretched voice could pull it off. Maybe only if I start smoking, then wait seven years. Or go huff some more porcelain dust. Or something.

Anyways, not sure if I’m just wildly daydreaming about being Roman Mars; or MK, with his porchside chats on the much-lamented, dearly missed S&D Podcast; or Jad and Robert on the incomparable radiolab. But — how can this be true? — they actually sound kind of good to me. I can hear the edits that need to go in; the places to pause for effect; the effects I’d add to give it atmosphere and some space to breathe; the bits I’d have to practice, like it’s the eighth grade play again, and I’m running lines on a Sunday afternoon, sprawled out on my parents’ bed — to escape the two house apes who otherwise won’t leave me alone — with The Thompson Twins on infinite loop on my Walkman; a memorization rubric. Those Can’t Take It With You lines are most certainly still in my brain here, somewhere. I’ve just lost their hyperlinked redirects somewhere along the way; too many patches and software updates and bad sectors on the ol’ spinning platters.

Anyways, speaking of forgetting…

“I can’t get rid of it, ’cause I remember it all too well… yeah.”