I Can Dance!
By: Jeff Glovsky
Tags: Music, Jeff Glovsky, SoundCloud

I don’t make music.

I can write and take pictures (I can bitch slap shade throwers) … I can mix sounds and voices and instruments live. I find comfort and meaning and rhythm in words, and can lyricize random poetix with ease.

Oh, I can compose things …

And musically speaking, I can even plink and tinkle a little.

Plink and Tinkle

I know what sounds right, I’m not tone deaf and I know what’s ‘in key’ (though I’ll never be there!). I’m not an aggregator of esoteric crap on an i-pod … There is nothing more curious, or annoying, to me, than knowing that for some reason, you’ve collected more than 5,000 songs (are there even 5,000 songs??), with a healthy dose of Inuit, bagpipe or “chakra music” in your song library.

Now I can appreciate some sexy throat singing every now and then … Get down to a little Achy Breaky Mani Padme Hum on a Friday before last call. But to walk around with that shit in my earbuds for any stretch of time is beyond my capacity … and yours too, if you’re going to be honest! You don’t need to be streaming it — and I certainly don’t need you showing me that you’re hip enough to ‘get’ or “like” it.

Anyway … I’m not a musician.

I’m musical, and music has informed my life … but a creator of music (or a designer of sound), is something I’m not. I also can’t draw, but that’s a whole other post.

So whenever I find time to hang out on SoundCloud, I’m generally wondering why I’m there. Why would I, not being a musician or creator of “sounds”, sign up there?

Why would most people? then, becomes the question.

Whenever I bang around on SoundCloud, I’m praying it won’t algorithmically single me out … like, “Jeff Glovsky plays Barry Manilow on SoundCloud” … That would be mortifying.

Because that’s all I do there — that’s all I CAN do — is listen to (“play”) music, and then repost (“share”) it. I suppose I could put a couple playlists together … and those would be, like, my “sounds”, right? Isn’t that how it works?

Or maybe I’ll record myself reading my writing — the ultimate self-absorption … a maximum masturbation session!

“Amsterdam Avenue, holy midnight”, I’ll intone enigmatically … my deep yet keening voice, preening dramatically.

“…on my knees…like Romeo! Verona, in my pantaloons! Elizabethan trappings, Al Pacino in delivery…Like, “Attica, oh Attica! Oh, wherefore art thou…ATTICA!?

“I’m screaming. No one hears me.

“But now give it out how I’m a writer…Writing! No more shitty gigs…No odd job mental patient lot, no theater, theayter…NOT! I’m never gonna work again!”

Yeah, I could read that. My overwrought and written words pouring out inconceivably: me reading and recording them! See, reading a prose piece or poetry live, at an open mic. — or better, by invitation — is one thing. But taking the time to record and promote something … that’s not what I do.

… Yet. Like working up the nerve to dance … ‘cause that’s also something I don’t really do. I might bop to the beat like a tactile transducer, or stamp my foot up and down like a farmer … or maybe even twerk a little.

But I don’t dance, and I don’t write or play music.

I can only share my own sounds.