“Wise Up” Demo

Consider this an epilogue to the last entry. Been listening to a lot of Aimee Mann this weekend; to me she’s always been the sound of stiffly picking yourself up after a fall.

(Photo: My new and improved jars – see yesterday’s entry to get what I’m on about. Note: I usually have a distaste for words in home decor, but the “imagine” was a gift to DP from his mom years ago and I dig it for two reasons: 1) Serif font, 2) DP and I are both frustrated desk jockeys that subsist on fantasy.)

As I was dismantling my soon-to-be-replaced old recording rig yesterday, which involved triple-checking that all my old demos were backed up, I thought of something…

In 2014, while I was going through the breakup of a long-term relationship, I re-discovered a forgotten demo of myself doing an Aimee Mann cover. I had begun practicing it several years prior to that, knowing the then-boyfriend was a fan of P.T. Anderson and the music Aimee did with Jon Brion for Magnolia; in fact, when he’d checked out my music after our first date, his first thought had been that it reminded him of something Jon Brion might produce.

Anyway, that night in 2014, in obligatory reminiscence mode, I’d left some files on autoplay and walked into the other room, and the sound of the cover had come wafting poignantly in, taking me quite aback. Though it had originally been intended as a potential token of affection, its sentiment seemed strangely prescient, as if I’d had a deep understanding of everything wrong with our whole ill-fated venture early on.

Here is that demo. As usual, I am obviously figuring out what I’m doing as I go, so it’s halting… but I hope the potential is perceptible, and I like that I can see it differently now. It’s no longer just my armchair-therapist read on him – which it still could be – but also me counseling myself. Though I am happy to say that, as of recently, it’s probably advice I don’t need any longer.