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Don't Think Anything

Rob Roper had a proposal for me. He would send me a musical idea, I would listen to it and send him the first few words that popped into my head listen to his musical idea. And then we’d go off and write our songs. I knew it was important that I come up with some really good lyrical stuff for this song so the first thing I thought while listening to the music he sent me was “Don’t think Anything….” And thus our fate was sealed. (Very much like the Stay Puff Marshmellow man scene from GhostBusters—“What did you do, Ray!?!”)
So I mediate from time to time and used to listen to folks like Jack Kornfield and Pema Chodron even more often than I meditate. After all, thinking about meditation is a lot easier than actually doing it. So basically I decided to put a stream of consciousness song about meditation to a the chords from a murder ballad. What can I say? And if you do ever decide to meditate remember it’s not so much about getting rid of your thoughts as just watching them. Have no fear, your thoughts will always be there.

Feb 8, 2010 1 comment Share

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Tim,

Thanks for inviting me to participate. I'd been wanting to write an uptempo minor key song for a couple of years, so that's why I sent that idea to you. It forced me to finally do it.

And I've struggled writing fictional songs, songs with invented characters, ballads. I don't this one is very good but that's normal for first attempts. Still, a little breakthrough for me in my songwriting.

And your song is great, hilarious! I hope you come back to that after February and polish up the chorus. And I suggest you play it live, and each time improvise the talking part, with different random things you're thinking about during meditation-- when you're supposed to "don't think anything". Maybe you could get the audience to chant the mantra, "don't think anything" while you're mumbling random stuff.

-Rob

by Rob Roper (Feb 8, 2010)

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