The Plunge

This Blog has been difficult for me to pin down.  What do I say? What is my purpose?  I have countless notebooks full of my thoughts that I could easily share with you, but that's not why I started.  I started in an attempt to force myself to write.  I have been sadly lacking in that department.  Still, I write elsewhere, and (when the pen should tug on my fingers) I do not find myself reaching for the keyboard and blogger to satisfy my thoughts.  But there must be some purpose for this blog.  There must.

I found it.  It is perhaps selfish of me, but - as my Calculus teacher always says - my name's on the door.  Well, the bottom of the page in this case.  Speaking of, I don't know if I explained the way I sign it:  Y. M. Potter. Clearly my name is Will (which, by the way, does not in fact start with a Y).  I sign it this way because my sophomore English teacher, "Mrs." Fritz - she prefers just Fritz - told me that if I ever became a writer, my pen name should be "Young Master Potter" hence the Y. M.

Anyway, this blog is going to be about me.  Almost a biographical thing, but a little more introspective and contemplative than a mindless journal of events.  Because of certain events that happened recently in my life, momentous events, I decided that this blog can serve as an outlet for my goings on and my response to those goings on.

For starters - and why I titled this post "The Plunge - I am enrolling in Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee!!!!!!! It has been a seemingly endless period of waiting to make a final decision, but we finally did.  I truly feel God's call to music and sense His hand in my journey to college thus far.  I continue to pray that He would provide for this preparation for His will for my life.  At this point, we are waiting to hear back on my Songwriting portfolio to see if I was accepted to that program.  As an alternate choice, I would be majoring in what is called Audio Engineering.  This mixes two things that I really enjoy:  science and music.  I would be prepared to work in a recording studio as a producer or mix engineer (the people who actually run the sound booth).

Speaking of music! Our band, "The Galway Cannons" had the opportunity to play at a show in Greenville, PA this past Saturday.  There is a local coffee house there that is doing mission work in downtown Greenville.  They invited us to play through a connection with a different English teacher who plays in a band of all teachers.  It was a wonderful opportunity to share our talents with a new crowd.  Playing music for people is such a joy!  If you were unaware, we recorded a full length, original album this past summer and it is released on iTunes (you can listen to our music on our Facebook page before committing to us I believe).  I will be putting up mp3s of at least the songs that I wrote on my google site:

https://sites.google.com/site/drswillpotter/songwriting-projects

This site also has some new songs that I recorded on my own.  In addition, my Digital Studio Recording class learned how to embed audio right into the webpage, so you don't even have to download the songs!  I did a lot of renovation on the site, so check it out!!

That's about it for now.  If anything monumental happens, I'll keep you posted.

Y. M. Potter

Four Minutes

Before we begin, I added a new link.  This will take you to a "portfolio" of sorts that contains original compositions of mine.  It is split into two categories:  projects I have made using Garageband for a Digital Studio Recording Class at school (the reason I made the site in the first place) and recordings of songs that I have written and recorded with Pro Tools.  Okay, enough with the self-promotion!

What would you say if you only had four minutes left to speak?  I ask this because it's happened to me before.  Okay, maybe not literally, but still.  One of the schools that I applied to, Belmont University in Nashville, has a songwriting program for which you have to send in a CD of three songs you have written.  But here's the rub, they have to each be only 2-4 minutes long.  I understand why.  They get a lot of applicants and can't spend all their time listening to really long songs.  I suppose they also are looking for more commercially viable songs (apparently, our attention spans aren't long enough to handle lengthy songs).  Still, four minutes is too short.  How can you say all that is wrong with even a tiny part of our world in only four minutes?  How do you express your love and adoration to the Lord in only four minutes?  How do you pour out your soul to someone you love in only four minutes?  How do you mourn the loss of someone close to you in only four minutes?  And how do you make it sound pleasing to the ear in only four minutes? 

I don't know if he really said this or not, but in the movie Walk the Line about Johnny Cash, record producer Sam Phillips tells Johnny (after stopping his audition) "If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had one time to sing one song. Huh? One song that people would remember before you're dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth. One song that would sum you up. You tellin' me that's the song you'd sing? That same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day, about your peace within, and how it's real, and how you're gonna shout it? Or... would you sing somethin' different. Somethin' real. Somethin' you felt. Cause I'm telling you right now, that's the kind of song that truly saves people." Unfortunately, none of the songs that would fall under that category for me are under four minutes.  

So what would you say with just four meager minutes more on this earth?  What would your last song be?

I Digress(ed).../A Fast Running Train Whistles Down

Last time, I started down a vein that I'm not too keen on continuing. As much as I feel the necessity of people speaking out in social commentary, I don't want this to turn into some kind of soap box or analogous medium of opinion flaunting.

 I am, however, continuing along the track of Woody Guthrie. I recently finished his autobiography "Bound for Glory" which, if I have not said already, should be on your list of things to read before you complete your brief stay here at hotel Life. In his book, there is a chapter entitled "A Fast Running Train Whistles Down" about an incident where his mother, who unfortunately suffers from mental health problems, sets fire to their home and is then sent off to a mental institution on a "fast running train whistling down". As a tribute to him, I took this idea and turned it into a villanelle.
 The villanelle is a poetic form of 19 lines that incorporates the repetition of the first and third line as the closing of each subsequent stanza with the final being four lines, the last two of which are the first and third lines of the peom. It was originally an Italian form, however, one of the most famous examples is Dylan Thomas's (from whom Robert Zimmerman took the name Bob Dylan) "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". The one that I wrote takes its name from the chapter in "Bound for Glory".

A Fast Running Train Whistles Down
 -For Woody

 A fast running train whistles down.
The sun glows out complacently.
Away somewhere we heard the howl.

The hollow shell burned to the ground,
The twisting wreck of hopeless dreams;
A fast running train whistles down.

Everywhere I can hear the sound;
The flames come creeping up on me.
From somewhere I can hear them howl:

The demons bathing underground,
Roiling blood-lust of Satan's fiends.
The train of hell is whisl'ng down.

 I hear the echo fading out;
We all forget your mockery-
So far away the fading howl

Reaches the mind's unfading scowl;
The wind destroys our constancy.
A fast running train whistles down,
Our tear-stained eyes can hear its howl.

 -Y.M. Potter

An Age Old Trade

I apologize for the extended delay.  There just wasn't much to write about.  I suppose I should give you a run down of the "new" things.  There's a link to my sister's blog, "Fighting Entropy", it's good. Really good.  I will probably reference it on occasion, so you should read it.  Also, there's a link to this blog's Facebook page, if you have one of those.  Since I do not, the page is just kind of there, nothing special happens on it.

I have nothing to say.  I really don't, I've tried again and again to craft something unique or special or even coherent and I have failed.  It's turned into some pathetic mewling about such and such a cliche topic.  Every time.  Odds are that I will erase this post before I finish and never even publish it, though I don't know why I am telling you since you wouldn't read this sentence.  You wouldn't read this one.  Or this.  Still, there must be something within me that is worth bringing to light.

I've never been one for "social protest".  I always admired those who did:  Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger or pretty much any of the old folk singers.  But it wasn't for me.  I didn't even think there were problems here in Small Town, America.  Lately, however, looking around, I've seen and heard a lot of things that are quite disturbing.  Moreover no one is saying anything about it.  All the great protest singers are either dead or have moved on to bigger and better "Tempests".  What we're left with is a bunch of performers that are feeding the problem instead of saying anything about it.  Where is the sharp wit of social satire?  Where is the nasally, twanging voice that is not afraid to illuminate the obvious problem?  And where are people that would listen?

In Woody Guthrie's autobiography, "Bound for Glory", he says that he made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in the country was thinking. And this has held me ever since." Apparently, all the country thinks about now is partying, drinking and living as irresponsibly and foolishly as humanly possible.

-Y.M. Potter

Track 1

"There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." -Ernest Hemingway

I began with the intent to "practice" if you will, to find my voice.  Where it will go from there is completely in the wind.  I never think that far ahead.

This post was really just an introduction and explanation.  The title, somewhat gruesome at first glance, should be clear by now.  For anyone who missed it:  I want to write.  Hemingway's quote encompasses the task.  But it must be done.  So, here I am.  I do hope you enjoy this journey, wherever it is we are bound to go, but we are now bound.  I am the writer and you the reader and even if this is the only piece of mine that you ever read in your entire life, or even if I never meet you in person, we are somehow entwined.  For whatever reason, you read this short post today and now your life is different - no matter if it's improved or has just been wasted.  "A man never steps in the same river twice.  For, it is not the same river and he is not the same man" and it is the little things like this that make him a different man.   It is no fault of mine if you do not like that new man.

-Y.M. Potter