A Thousand Typewriters

This is not a poem. This is a quick sketch of my next album. I've been promising (threatening, really) to write my third album for the last four years. This spring I intend to do it. I've got sketches and notes and scraps of paper covered in verse. But there was nothing tying it all together until tonight.

My first album is called "Painted Rocks". The title was taken from a series of yellow painted rocks that were at the end of a road I drove on. They were to warn the driver not to drive into the reservoir. I thought that was an interesting symbol, so I used it. My second album is called "After the Happy Ending". The title is a reference to a brief fling I had at the end of my senior year in college. I used most of the songs in the album to explore my feelings about what happens after an ending, happy or otherwise.

Tonight the concept for my third album has finally come into focus. When I got home from work I remembered an old saying: A thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare. The thoughts of the chaos of that fits exactly with where I am in my life right now. It also fits in with many of the lyrics I've been jotting down for the last four years.

Over the next days and weeks I'll be working on the lyrics for the songs that will make up my third album. It may start a little shaky but I have very high hopes now that I've got an over-arching concept to work with. Now to see where this leads me.


Something about harnessing the chaos
Ride the wave and hug the curl
Ride the wind and soar away


When you lose control
You gain perspective


A thousand pairs of hands
Banging away at a thousand typewriters
Will produce an awful sound


If you leave well enough alone
Alone won't be well enough.