A year ago today, I did something out of character. As someone who tends to overthink things, to overbake the proverbial cake…just suddenly starting a Substack with no plan was surprising to even me.
The more surprising thing is that I kept at it for a year.
365 days!
87 posts!
That’s a post every 4 days (on average, of course).
I worried I wouldn’t have anything to say. Or at least enough to say, that I’d run out of things to write about. That I’d start and then, a couple months later, have to wear my personal Cone of Shame when I couldn’t be consistent (see also: perfect) and gave it up. One more half-carved headstone in the Projects Paul Started But Never Finished Graveyard1.
So, I’m pausing for a rare pat of my own back. And to reflect on what I might’ve learned about myself and creativity in general.
And of course to thank you, dear readers, for sticking around.
In the footnote to all the things I’ve started and not finished, I mentioned “my song suite of songs written in direct reply to other songs.” So, for Post #87 and in the spirit of imperfection and not thinking too hard about it, here are the lyrics to not one, but TWO! of the songs (one is in song-form, the other is still finding its way, as you’ll see):
(in response to Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country” in which he asks someone to check in on said girl)
Dear Bob,
So I met that girl
She’s got a warm coat
A matching scarf and hat
When she takes her hat off
It’s like Charlie’s Angels
There’s that rolling, flowing hair you remember best
Falling down across two nearly perfect breasts.
So how are you?
Bro, the north is do-o-o-ope
Yeah, the winds “hit heavy”
Just like you used to say
You were always so much better with your words
But I was always better with the girls
And guess what?
I fell for the girl from the North Country
You broke her heart, Bob
So I’m not sure what you’re crying ‘bout
With all this Hollywood care
And poems about her hair
They're not exactly “howling winds”
More like an evening breeze
But I'm, uh, “keeping her warm”, Bob
You can leave that to me
I think we’re in love, Bob
We got matching neck tats last night
Good luck with those songs, Bob
Your old friend,
Kyle
(in response to Bon Iver’s “Re:Stacks”, getting as meta as possible by titling it RE:Re:Stack, and mostly replying to the line “There’s a black crow sitting across from me / His wiry legs are crossed.” I’m not saying it’s genius. It just…is.)
To: Justin Vernon
So the black crow with the wiry legs?
I can’t help but think of Peak Chris Robinson (Southern Harmony era)
Bell-bottomed and hippie-fringed out
Dangling your keys with a smirk and a Faces-adjacent wail.
I saw Chris once at Disneyland
In the crowd like every other parent
Trying to get his kid picked
For Jedi Training
I saw Chris a bunch of other times too
In concerts.
New York. Las Vegas. Jackson Hole.
But the best one was at the Salt Palace.
I’ve seen and heard few better by anyone.
They invented the word epic for such occasions.
The Jackson Hole one
Was the night his breakup with what’s her name went public.
After the show, some drunk prick yelled at him, while he was making his way to the band bus “HEY CHRIS WHERE’S KATE?” (Oh, yeah, that’s her name.)
Knowing full well the score.
Chris just got on the bus without a word
Which is saying something in his case
So rarely found without a fiery take to spit.
Without a quip.
Without some venom.
Maybe even dangling your keys, faking a toss.
So it’s Chris, right? Rich Robinson and Steve Gorman never had “wiry legs.”
The treehouse in Jonny Jensen’s backyard tree.
The robot I was gonna build from metal scraps in the gully on the way home from 3rd grade.
The rock opera I was trying to write in 10th grade but couldn’t even finish the titular song.
That one summer I decided I was gonna become really good at slide guitar and then gave up after, like, two tries. (It’s no walk in the park.)
Yoga.
My Artists Over Time spreadsheet, charting creative vitality over different artists’ careers.
The Behind The Music mockumentary about my high school band, The Spiders.
The actual tour video documenting a Nebraska tour I did with Sarah Sample & Ryan Tanner.
A concert promotion company that was gonna bring all the artists I love to town, but only tried one and decided that it was somebody else’s problem (which, thankfully, The State Room guys immediately took on and heroically so).
Any number of journals and/or scrapbooking.
The book-on-CD version of Crime & Punishment (the narrator was so cringey).
A book that photoshops my mom into moments throughout history (think the Moon Landing and JFK assassination and Woodstock and the fall of the Berlin Wall), but just the same picture of her, with her hand out with the remote to whatever self-timer camera she’s using to take pictures of us. My Mom: Time Traveler.
That time, during lockdown, when I swore I was gonna become really good at Hammond B3 organ and then (didn’t give up!) had the worst job I’d ever had and sunk into depression (and significant volumes of Tonight Dough) instead.
My screenplay for a movie starring Adam Sandler & Daniel Day-Lewis.
The show I had half-planned—half the singers already onboard—to celebrate 60 years of Bob Dylan’s album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan but then life happened and it (the show) just kinda didn’t.
My song suite of songs written in direct reply to other songs.