I knew we wouldn’t have much time in the afternoon to dedicate ourselves to an extended studio session, as there was a surprise Super Bowl party organized for Jeff’s birthday. My mother was coming with her partner and every detail was organized to start upon the game’s kickoff, so it was the perfect setup to invite the rest of the band to add their colors to the “Burning the Bridges” palette. We started with Jeff, to whom I explained I was foreseeing a more dreamy type of bass loop and swells to fade the whole band back into the second section of the song. He had the key the song was in, and the tempo I wanted to merge the second section into, and the intro of that second section… that was all. “Think Fluxus movement, Jeff.” This is an artistic approach that became a movement at some point in the ‘60s, a philosophical movement about which I offered him several books around a year ago, so he knew what I meant. Soon after Jeff finished expressing himself, Miss Isabel came in for the wind instrumentation. She didn’t have a clue either and “Fluxus” sounded like a Roman general or Greek god when Jeff mentioned the direction. “WHAT!?!, WHO?!?” We all laughed and added “deconstruction”. That seemed to trigger the whole spectrum of possibilities she could explore in a quick flash. An hour later, the song existed in its fabulous Frankenstein form: process over product. It’s not because it’s a sketch that it can’t breathe and develop itself into its own entity. The moment I told Ben to press play on that unmixed, sub-formed, and incomplete creation, a true satisfaction arose within us all. The collage of raw feelings and assemblage of unconstrained parts came alive, as imperfectly monumental as a piece of ourselves being reborn, entirely on its terms and free from the world. “It’s amazing!” Moose screamed after we heard the song at full volume. I turned to him and said: “It doesn’t matter if it is or not, it’s alive, and that’s what it’s all about.” Yes, I have a slight sense of drama once in a while, but it was nonetheless the truth 😉 TOUCH DOWN!!!