Chords and things

Just playing around with some song ideas.

Anyone want to help me finish it?

Coit Tower

Coit Tower sits right outside my window.


And at night, it's hard not to stare at it and get lost in your own thoughts. I was playing around with some words and wrote this a while back. Sean and I had some cool atmospheric instrumentals to accompany it so maybe we'll record it one of these days.

Look there, Up, Down.
Stands tall, no sound.
Guards through the night.
Telegraphing all around.

Sun disappears
Cold's gone, fall's here.
Blow horns, Coit spies:
Foggy glow, eerie night

My love, the sea.
Summer's gone with the tide
Mark Twain was true.
By the bay, I'll think of you.

This is Ad School (pt. 5)

I remember slaving away in the library of the College of Charleston.

Buried in books, pouring over chapters and chapters of "general education" knowledge that I was generally sure I would never use in the real world. Today, I woke up and met my friend Brandon, who had arrived with his team of Advertising, Motion Picture/ Television, and Acting students. I leased out my roof for today so they could shoot a spot for the Flip Mino that they're working on.

They arrived around 9am, it's currently 5pm, and they'll continue to shoot as much as they can before dark. All of this is student funded. Their Blood, Sweat, and Tears are more or less equal to Deadlines, Campaigns, Glory.

This is Ad School.

My name is what you think it is

I'm terrible with names. You too? No? Let's take another look.

I've always been thankful for my name. Switching schools in different countries as a younger kid, I'd always sit quietly at the back, waiting for them to get towards the end of the attendance sheet with climactic effect. Standing in the hallways, I'd often introduce myself to similar acclaim: "I LOVE your name" or "Gavin?! Like Gavin DeGraw??". He sings: "I don't want to be anything other than what I've been tryin' to be lately". But, how about... "I don't want to be ever compared to that winy singer-songwriter, ever againnnn". I want to start with a clean slate.

So these past few weeks, I've been thinking about names and their meaning when injected into culture. First though, I think it's important to get something strait: human language has absolutely no intrinsic worth on it's own. It can't feed you, it can't house you, it can't heal you physically. It's both A) how you use the words with other people and B) your past experiences with words that make it useful. Language can't stand on its own and requires at least two speakers to pump it up. Words are a mutual agreement that when you say something, the idea of whatever is in your head will be reconstructed in my head. The trouble is that none of us talk in the exact same currency and our exchange rates are rarely 1 to 1.

I'm so fascinated with names because they're so arbitrary yet so critical. For a string of guttural sounds from the throat, your name start building your reputation as soon as it leaves your lips. Introduce yourself and our brains use cross-referencing systems to dig through our memory. We quickly look for any information attached to the name or word (emotions, opinions, information, attitudes towards all the people with that name that you've interacted with before) and begin to determine our initial attitude. This sets a taste in your mouth before conversations even begin (though most of the time, it's minimal) and our brains reduce uncertainty through calculated predictions.

For example, imagine you meet a tall, dark haired man named Adam. Unless you've got previous history with another similar guy named Adam, the slate would remain relatively clean. But, imagine he introduces himself as something culturally loaded (in the United States) like, Muhammad or Saddam. Without even giving him a chance, is it possible that your first impression is laden with preconceived notions and stereotypes?

It makes me wonder what my name says about me, to you. I hope that the army of other Gavin's are out in the world putting their best foot forward, so that if I am to meet one of their friends in the future, they won't say, "Gavin huh? Yeah, I knew a Gavin once. He was a real jerk". A cool anthropological study would be to examine a sample size of people from a medium-sized city, all with the same name across an age spread of 5 years and look for social patterns. I wonder if any similar behaviors would emerge due to the public subtly expecting the same thing from different people of the same name. Think it's outlandish?

Think about first person you fell in love with. If someone new introduced themselves with the same name of your former flame, do you have enough mental control to keep any previous emotional memories from flooding back, (perhaps only very subtly/ passively) tainting the new friendship with ghosts from your past? We think that we're so good at perception and that we've got our Brain reigned in, but most of the time our Neurons and Axons are a jumbled mess, hanging on for the ride and trying to make sense out of things on the fly.

As a student studying Advertising and Strategic Planning, I've got to be careful about the words I choose and to take some deliberation before I write my next tagline.

How does that sound?

This is Ad School (pt. 4)

With every ad school comes internships.


And said work experiences give us real-world exposure to the inner workings of agencies, PR firms, and media magistrates. But exhaustive coverage scans or 24-hour creative concepting sessions have it's perks...

My boss explains it best.

This is Ad School (pt. 3)

Ad School isn't something for the shy or weak of heart.


And when you get up on stage to present and ground your findings, always expect questions, criticisms, and doubts. Ad School makes one polished in the art of thinking on one's feel, feigning confidence, and putting ordinary, boring life under a microscope to look for behavioral insights.

This is Ad School (pt. 2)