Still Crazy Here – Song and a Chat

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Episode #116: Still Crazy Here (Song starts at 3:43)

Hi there, For this episode, I dug up a box of old diaries and found the year/week where I wrote this song.

I read through some passages. It turns out I’d left my stage piano at the gig. So I wasn’t able to write songs… and I wrote: ‘If I’m not being creative, I feel terrible!’.

I was flat. Didn’t see the point in watching TV, I was disgruntled to to say the least.

Then something happened. I tidied up my desk, found 15 lots of lyrics, went for a run, had some vivid dreams and then….got my piano back and started getting creative.

Song # 459 from July 1999, came from cutting out pictures from magazines and sticking them into a collage – pictures of Elvis next to the dolphins and Star Wars characters.

Yes, there’s nothing like cutting out pictures and making a collage to just play, and see where it takes you.

In this case, I mention it in my lyrics and away I go.

The lyrics observe quite openly and partly tongue in cheek : ‘I’m still crazy here, still crazy now.’ It’s a description of how it feels to be a creative soul.

Cutting pictures out of magazines smacks of therapy, doesn’t it? Perhaps it was.. perhaps I was just gently getting in touch with the creative side of myself again.

Currently (back here in 2022) I’m flat out painting seascapes for an exhibition which opens in July. I’m mixing a solo album, recording these episodes, I publish a blog post each week, teach 22 students how to play the piano Monday’s and Tuesday’s.. and that’s just part of it. Yes, here in 2022, I’m flat out.

Back in 1999, I was trying to get busy, here in Melbourne, 2 years into the new adventure, having moved from New Zealand (the lyrics say I ‘jumped the river to start again’).

I’d managed to sell my first 70 piano solo CDs (Eridanus River Music (streaming now – CDs available). I was making a living from being a piano man a few times a week. I was spending my daytimes writing songs. So things were slowly starting to happen for me.

And when I was writing songs I was happy again. It’s the same for me now, after all these years. I’ve written another song this week, and started another couple. I’ll send them to my song writer buddy in New Zealand, Paul Dredge. We have a new album dropping in about 3 weeks. Very excited about this.

“Melody, melody melody, where do you come from?” I say this in this episode. It’s a mystery and I’m very content to leave it that way.

In amongst the analysing and exploring of the songwriting process, which I’m really enjoying on these episodes, so much comes to the surface to be discussed.

And then there’s a this underlying beautiful mysterious energy that underlies it all.

Dipping into this realm is such a pleasure. By the way, I think anyone can develop the knack to a degree… Keeping a diary, learning an art (like songwriting) helps. Yep, it’s the ‘doing’ that counts.

Ok, join me back in time, now. You’ll hear about how it feels to be a songwriter and you’ll hear how ‘Still Crazy Here’ came together.

And you’ll get to have a read through a couple of diary excerpts with me. It’s all good fun here, this podcast is constantly evolving.. (Still crazy here!)

This is the blog www.petepascoe.wordpress.com where you can see photos of the painting and cartoons I mention, plus the seascape I’ve just started. You can also read the lyrics to ‘Still Crazy Here’. I publish the lyrics here each week. There’s 116 blogs to look back through if you feel like it!.That’ll lead you on to 13 albums of mine in different genres (solo and with others).Enjoy!

Here we go, I hope you enjoy this episode.