Joe Jackson - A Slow Song

A need for more input so that I can create more output again

Photo by Toufic Mobarak on Unsplash

After more than 75 consecutive weeks and 100 posts, I finally hit a wall.

I’m not going to call it writer’s block or burnout. I’m quite familiar with both, and this feels like something else. The ideas are still there; my drafts folder is chock full of half-written essays.

But the energy, the enthusiasm, and most importantly, focused time to finish any of them is zapped.

I can say that life has definitely gotten busier. Both physically and mentally.

I’m in the middle of trying to find a new assisted living/memory care home for my aunt in the Bay Area where I live (she currently is at a facility six hours away in Southern California). This task has been draining in ways both expected and unexpected. The expected part has been the bureaucratic mess of medical documents, scheduling tours, witnessing the depressing reality of what most memory care facilities are like, and the cost.

The unexpected part has been the explosive return of my long-time companion, constant generalized anxiety. Which, if I’m honest with myself, should have been expected.

This is a lot, but my life has been even crazier during the past 18 months — I literally lived at my aunt’s current assisted living facility for eight days last year with no wifi and was able to write two posts at the time!

I knew that keeping up with a twice-weekly Substack newsletter, especially the way I write (slowly and methodically), would not be sustainable. I’d more or less adjusted it to a second post every other week, and that felt doable for a while. Mixing my longer essays with the shorter TWEET posts was working for me, and more importantly, for many of you (based on feedback I’d received).

But that is no longer the case (for me, not you).

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I stopped using social media two years ago. (I still have Facebook and Twitter accounts, but check them at most, monthly). I knew I was susceptible not just to their addictive qualities but also to the way I relied on them for self-approval. Also, the constant political and mean-spirited posts were making me more anxious. So I cut them out.

I’d kept a Wordpress blog where I wrote music-related essays (early earworm babies), but I could never build any sense of community and often felt like I was posting into the great internet void. Then I discovered Substack, and, within a few months, Earworms and Song Loops had attracted new, active readers. And, to my happy surprise, the platform was providing that communal, supportive vibe I’d been seeking. I’d subscribed to several other excellent newsletters, left feedback in the comments and began collaborating with other writers.

Then Substack began offering Notes — a Twitter-like digital space within Substack where ‘Stackers could post messages, comment on any topic they wanted, and promote their own and their friends’ newsletters. It seemed like an ideal way to build a subscriber base and discover new writers.

I started to post on Notes regularly, and soon my subscriber numbers jumped 100-fold in about three months.

But it didn’t take long before I began to feel that familiar twinge of social media addiction, of comparing mind taking a bullhorn and bellowing constant invectives. I found myself opening the app during every break I had during the day. I began to feel that I had to. That if I didn’t, I’d start to fall by the wayside.

I was already feeling anxious and guilty for not keeping up with reading the regular posts of the more than 50 newsletters I subscribed to. Notes turbo-charged those stressors.

Writing once or twice a week for Earworms and Song Loops was challenging enough. Now I had to find time to read several dozen newsletters on top of that? Also, I had dozens of new subscribers, most of whom also had their own excellent Substacks which I wanted to, but didn’t have time to read. The sense of overwhelm began to spiral.

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

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These are all excuses, though.

Or, if not excuses, they’re all distractions from the simple fact that what I need to do is slow down. Give myself a break.

I haven’t been able to read a book in months. I used to read novels, music biographies and other non-fiction books one after the other. Often several at a time. I’d spend a lazy Sunday reclined on an Adirondack chair in my backyard, and get lost in someone else’s imagined or lived story. The 500 items on my to-do list would rarely impinge on this time of creative input.

But since starting this Substack, whenever I’d pull out one of a hundred books I’ve been intending to read — before I’d get even ten pages in, my brain would drift off, planning out my next essay. Or I’d check the Substack app to see if any of the writers I follow had something new for me to read. And there was always something new to read. This would always be accompanied by that familiar tug to leave a comment, to do my part to foster community.

It’s even affected how I listen to music. I’m unable to play an album and simply listen to it. I have to be doing something else simultaneously. And if I do happen to give a song or two some semblance of attention, it’s invariably interrupted with a thought of how I might rate the song in relation to the other songs. Is it better than the last one? Worse? Is the lack of an immediate catchy hook a sign of lazy songwriting? Or am I being close-minded? Should I be taking notes for a future post?

Music and books (and TV and movies, to a lesser degree), have always been a source of refuge. A place to escape the burdens of life and my overactive mind. It’s bumming me out that these once-reliable resources are now exacerbating my OCD tendencies.

I feel like my attention is locked in a room with a hundred doors and someone/something is at each one, knocking, calling out, “Let me in!”

It usually sounds something like: “Don’t forget to call the manager at Emerald Valley Assisted Living!” “Better finish that story for your writing group!” “Did you reply to the text that Lynda, your dog walking client sent you?” “You never read (insert Substack writer here) latest piece. How can you expect others to read your stuff if you can’t even bother to read theirs!” And on and on.

It’s a familiar struggle, the constant push-pull of anxious, judging thoughts. I haven’t had it bad in a while, and hopefully this time will be short-lived.

I know the feeling of finding a balance between consuming and creating. Input and output. Doing and being. I’ll get there again.

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I want to be clear that I’m extremely proud and grateful for what I’ve built here on Substack with Earworms and Song Loops. The community of friends and writers has surpassed anything I’d imagined when I started this thing on a lark in May of last year.

I’m thankful to all the friends I forced to subscribe to this thing 17 months ago by adding their emails without asking them first. That you are still here to read my ramblings, is proof that you are beyond amazing.

And for everyone I’ve met via the Substack community, thanks for continuing to visit my often TMI-laden free-form adventures into my wacky, sonic worm’osphere.

My output may be sporadic for the next bit of time. If you are a paid subscriber, don’t worry — I’ve put all payments on hold until I feel ready to return to regular posting.

I recognize that prioritizing input is what I need now, and when I’ve got my fill, I’ll be back and better than ever.

Music has charms they say
But in some people's hands
It becomes a savage beast
Can't they control it
Why don't they hold it back

- first verse of “Slow Song” by Joe Jackson

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Joe Jackson is an artist who has pulled me out of countless bouts of depression, anxiety, self-doubt….For any struggle I’ve experienced, Joe has written a song to help guide me through.

I wrote about one of those times a year ago with the song “Happy Loving Couples” which you can check out below:

Joe Jackson - Happy Loving Couples

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“A Slow Song,” the final track on Joe Jackson’s brilliant 1982 album, Night and Day, is a love song.

Joe admits it himself in this live concert clip from 1983.

He says it’s about wanting to hear that perfect slow song, one that you and your special someone can dance to at the end of a romantic night on the town — cheek to cheek, hip to hip, lip to lip.

I love the simple lullaby/waltz melody that plays throughout, how it builds (slowly) to the point where Joe gets completely worked up because the DJ at the club he and his date are at won’t play a slow song.

This has been Jackson’s final song when performing live for over four decades and was his closer five out of the six times I’ve seen him live. Even when I knew it was coming, it always felt like the perfect denouement, the final tasty mignardise.

“A Slow Song” seems to be as much a love song to music as it is to a human lover. It’s about how music can and should be carefully curated so as to best suit the flow of one’s day or night (or perhaps Night and Day).

But I'm brutalized by bass
And terrorized by treble
I'm open to change my mood but
I always get caught in the middle

Maybe Joe is simply using musical vocabulary to represent the dynamics of a relationship, but as a fellow music obsessive, I’m pretty sure he’s writing about his passion, his desire for the perfect song as much as the perfect partner.

The next verse makes this overlap even more evident:

It's late, I'm winding down
Am I the only one
To want a strong and silent sound
To pick me up and undress me
Lay me down and caress me

Joe might not describe this as a love song to music, but how can it not be? There are references to a lover in other lines, but all the slithering, sexy lines are given to music. That strong and silent sound “laying me down and caressing me”? Yeah, you can’t convince me that the song isn’t the real romantic partner here.

Listening to “A Slow Song,” I can hear what I’m wanting for myself. That full and complete connection to the moment. Whether it’s with a song, a book, in a conversation with a friend or partner, or even on a tour of another memory care facility. To have that full, chatter-free presence is something I hope I can achieve.

This song makes it crystal clear that my decision to take a pause, to get out of my planning/worrying/whirring mind, and into my body is what needs to be prioritized.

Thanks Joe. As always, you have a song for everything.

• I am not sure what my “output” is going to be for the next month or two. I do feel confident that not having to keep to a schedule will allow the muse to dance to the beat of its own drum. I can promise consistent inconsistency.

• There are probably some excellent “fall” seasonal metaphors to explore here — needing to shed my leaves and send all my energy to my root, my trunk. But I’ll leave that literary woo-woo to you fancy-pants writers.

• If you are reading this on the day I post/mail it (September 25), it is my wedding anniversary! #18! I’m sending a humongous smooch 😘💋 to my beautiful bride, Karen! I have the perfect slow song all picked out….