Worked on a commercial demo, added banjo and piano effects, synth bass and a drum loop. Still seems commercial to me but it wouldn’t be the first time I spent hours on an arrangement I might later throw away. It’s a tricky position to be attached to your perspective and then see new value in dropping it. At a dinner party last week, two women raised different views about Kobe Bryant’s death. One said he isn’t being remembered in the way he should be: for being convicted of rape. The other said he showed remorse and you have to allow for people to change, because he said he had. Christie Blatchford died. All the papers wrote teary obits about how great she was, seemed to me her “greatness” was defending cops and smearing anyone not right wing enough for her compass. I wrote a song about Jian Ghomeshi, five years ago, in one verse I referenced her and the pride with which she wrote that he got off. I liked the idea that one day she might hear it, and then I could return the favour of what it was like to read her. Now it feels like another arrangement to reconsider. Most of the current commercial things I hear adhere to musical ideas, that are dull to me. Sometimes, I try to practice it, letting the dull thing live. That bass sound is too dumb, ok let’s do it. That snare is too artificial, ok let’s do it.