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13 June 2003 Scratch that thought about never getting homesick. Touring continues to educate and amuse, but it's good to be back on familiar turf. Been recording demos for the second album these past few days. We have about seventeen songs to work with, to be whittled down to ten or eleven tracks. It's strange to be playing the new songs so much, after pulling out songs like Gravity and Lullabye five nights out of a given week on the road. It's strange to be unfamiliar with what I'm playing, to be unsure of the arrangement — what my left hand should be doing during the second verse, for example, or how to sing a certain word. Sometimes interviews are useful, in that they make me say things that I only understand later. To a radio show producer in Ann Arbor, when asked how I would approach recording the next album, I said (more or less): "Well, on the one hand, it's exciting to be doing this 'professionally,' in several weeks instead of piecemeal over three years. And you know, putting together elaborate arrangements, working with experienced studio musicians, I'm really looking forward to that. But there was a certain lack of self-consciousness in the making of Waking Hour; we were just doing it for fun, really, because we thought it was worth doing. There was no pressure, because we had no idea what was going to happen with it. And I hope some of that innocence stays intact this time around." Since getting home from Michigan, I've been waking up in the middle of night with my teeth clenched. I've spent a few days wandering around the house in a strange funk, convinced that I've forgotten how to write songs, that all the faith people have placed in me is misguided, that actually I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, much less how to make a good follow-up to this album that's out in the world with my name on it. In retrospect it's obvious what's going on: I've become too aware of what's at stake. I'm not an innocent songwriter anymore, writing songs at 2 a.m. in her parents' living room for no one in particular. Somewhere along the way I started thinking of it as a product, to be sold on the shelves at Virgin Megastores, critiqued and judged and held up for comparison, rather than something created simply for the joy of creating. So I'm not going to think about this too hard. We're just going to make a record, that's all. It'll be fun. - VT
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