Week 3 of the Making of Unnamed Album - November (Songs finished: 2)

It was my third trek to Richmond and, by this point, I was a local. 

I had all my favorite spots. The health food store where I got a green smoothie every morning. The restaurant, where I found myself sat at the bar catching up with a bartender, who, during my first visit, timidly mentioned his wife was pregnant, during my second visit, was a man in wait, and during my third visit, was a first-time father. The take-out places I trusted for something good and quick, like a poké bowl or a plate of decidedly interesting yet highly addictive Greek nachos. 

The only problem was, this time around, Richmond was all but folding in on itself. 

It seemed to me every road was under construction. And, certainly, the ones I planned to be on. I’d find my way across town to the studio using one back street or another, just to wake up the following morning to find the maze from the day before was wiped clean. I’d drive to a workout class in a part of town I could only describe as detached and quiet, only to discover it too was plagued by construction, barring cars from every necessary on-ramp. And, to make matters more personal, the poké place, which I relied on for a late-night meal, closed on a random Tuesday for a wedding, leaving me to sit murderously in my car staring at that handwritten sign taped to their door like it was a lecture handed down from the Goddess herself. 

It was my quickest planned jaunt in the studio so far, and perhaps that was for the best. 

I’d picked songs I thought of as accessible and uncomplicated. They were songs I’d written long, long ago, when Blue Monkey wasn’t even on the list of monikers I was considering for a potential rebrand. I remember playing demos of the songs for my partner in a parking garage across the street from Hollywood Forever. We sat side-by-side in my tiny Mini Cooper, listening, before carrying a vegan cheeseboard from Fromage into the cemetery, eating it in the dark with a narrow view of The Wizard of Oz. 

That was a perfect night in a very uncomplicated time of my life. It was that prized moment in every nubile relationship, when you’re just so infatuated, all the things you reckoned with seemed well-placed. Even if they weren’t. I think that’s why the songs met us in the studio with little fanfare. The arguments were less. The ideas were big and naïve. In one track, I endeavored to use my own breath as a texture of sorts. A parcel of tension. 

One day, Lawrence stood at the window watching construction workers put out orange cones, grumbling in his way, which is to say, sometimes he was the epitome of youth, and sometimes he was a little old gentleman in loafers, surveilling his house for ruckus. I remember thinking the construction was like a plague. It had started on my side of town, and it was slowly spreading all over the city. 

He was deeply unmoved by this encroachment, if it only served to alert him to the fact that the side of his house, which bordered the street and was technically under his jurisdiction, had accumulated more trash, which he was then custodian of. 

We watched Good Will Hunting, Bruce Almighty, and A Beautiful Mind on mute with the subtitles while we recorded vocals and built synths as though layering paint on a printing press. The movies overwhelmed with the errant responsibility to purpose, even as they grappled with themes of free will and gratitude. I think, perhaps there is no better metaphor for the urgency we all experience in our current day-to-day, preparing for Neptune to move into Aries for the first time since the Civil War started in 1861. 

Conversely, I felt a lack of urgency about the songs. I was totally uncompromised and stimulated by it. And I can only assume it’s because art serves as transportation from one time to another. The only thing I can say for myself is that when I was first falling in love, I did not demand that I do anything of consequence outside of falling in love. That was my only true labor. I carried on with my days. I made plans to see him or to see friends so I could talk about him. And how special it was to revisit these songs when I’d describe our relationship as mature, and far more abiding than the relationship was when we were preparing for a cross-country move and hadn’t really considered the permanence of it. 

In a sense, it felt like I’d written a theory back in 2021, and over the course of four years, I’d simultaneously disproved the theory and expanded upon the theory. Which, if we get right down to it, sums up this question of love quite well. After all, it is a question. More so than I would call it an answer. Should I ever lose my curiosity about it, well then, I’ll know it’s no longer love, it’s just an obligation where love once was. 

On our final day, I sat in contemplation, making poorly received suggestions to a Lawrence who was appalled at the proposal of more vocals. And then I was packing my bag. And he was powering his computer down. 

“It’s like each song is its own little world,” he said at we made leave. I thought nothing truer could be said. We had agreed that this was not an album being made for any particular reason. It was not going to satisfy the whims of the ordinary listener. There was only the responsibility to purpose to account for it being made. Everything else was just instinct. 

And so, I took many detours on my way back to my Airbnb, pleased to know that a song becomes a world when you forget about the world, and stop creating art to fit in it.