Paul Cantor

How to Write (Part 1)

Sometimes— and only very rarely, because I notice nobody really cares about writers (or maybe they just don’t care about me)— people ask what my process is for writing something.

I generally have a few ways of working and am not married to one particular method over another. Whatever happens to be working on that day, I go along with.

Most of the writing I’ve done on the web has been penned in a stream of consciousness. I literally just open a google doc and pretend I’m writing an email to someone. Sometimes I even write it in gmail in an email that is addressed to myself. It’s not very thought-out or even well-researched, for that matter. I find that when I pretend I have an audience of one person, my writing voice is much more honest and true to the way I speak. I happen to like the way I speak, so I often want to capture that vibe.

When I was in college I took a class called “Writing for Media,” which basically dealt with writing TV scripts and things of that nature. An exercise we did in that class focused on writing every thought that came in our heads, sans punctuation, for something like 30 minutes straight. The idea there was that the punctuation is needed only to make better sense of the words. The ideas, however, are what really matter.

So you just get the words out however you can, then go back and fix them up. If you have enough time, maybe you go in there and try to get real ‘wordy.’ I’m not a particularly big fan of super wordy writing— it always comes off like a writer trying to impress their writer pals— but ultimately I just try to make sure the sentences have a certain rhythm. I’m big on rhythm. I try to think of writing like music. You never want to be the drummer who can’t keep his/her time on stage. Not cool.

While the stream of consciousness method has its perks, there are downsides to it as well. Sometimes you’ll be sitting there for an hour just pouring out every nonsense idea you have, come back and look at it after grabbing a cup of tea and realize you still haven’t gotten out what it is you think you have to say. This is probably a step below writer’s block.

That’s when you have to zoom out of the picture and literally just go for a walk or something. Sit on a bench. Ride the train. Treat yourself to dinner. Whatever it is you need to do to be alone with your thoughts, do that. But make sure you’re away from the computer or whatever it is you write on.

I think one of the reasons why people find it so difficult to write is because they have difficulty thinking. They’re sitting down hoping to dream up the words as they go along, laboriously typing sentence after sentence, sometimes starting over and over and over again. It’s an endless cycle that will just leave you frustrated. Instead, try to sit there and synthesize your thoughts without writing them. This is VERY hard to do in this day and age, with so many distractions vying for our attention. But if you take an hour away from the computer and just try to think about what it is you want to say— work out all the kinks in your head beforehand— I guarantee you that you’ll find your words hitting the page that much easier.

Like I said, this is difficult. So you may want to take out your phone, open up the voice recorder on it, then just talk out loud about how you feel about whatever it is you want to write. I’m not sure why more people don’t use voice memos for writing, but I find them to be a handy tool. Sometimes it’s easier to say what you’re thinking than write it. So just say it, then go back and use what you said to flesh out what you want to say in written form. Heck, you may even find that you just want to transcribe what you said. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Cracks in the Sidewalk

Memories are such a complex thing. Sometimes a thought comes back to me at an odd moment and I think, gee, why is that I remember something like that? Often they’re minor things, like the way the ball dropped through the net when I made a jumpshot during a high school basketball game or what music I was playing in my bedroom right before I went out with my first real girlfriend for the first time (that was June of ‘96 and it was Heltah Skeltah’s Nocturnal, for posterity’s sake). But then I can’t remember even the simplest things nowadays. Like people’s birthdays. Maybe that’s because there’s a difference between remembering something and something being memorable.

Today I went home to see my dad for Father’s Day. Some members of my step-family were present and he was busy entertaining them, so I took the opportunity to walk around my old neighborhood. Ordinarily this sort of activity wouldn’t really engender much introspection from me, but for some reason today my eyes fixated on the concrete as it passed below my feet. As I looked down at it, as well as the driveways that pepper the little faux suburban condo community, every little crack of the pavement came back to me so well. I realized that I’d studied every nook and cranny to the point where I knew exactly what certain parts of the ground looked like. It hadn’t changed.

I thought to myself, why is that I remember such an inconsequential thing? Why would I know that on that particular driveway, there’s a crack of concrete missing on the left side? Probably because I spent so many years as a kid walking in and out of those driveways, knocking on doors to see if my friends could come out and… I dunno… play. Or whatever it is we did. If it wasn’t that, it was riding my bike over the speedbumps, or riding into someone’s driveway and then riding back out and jumping off the curb. Day after day, year after year, you become acquainted with these inanimate things. They sort of have a life of their own to you.

I kept walking around the block and house after house, I just kept being reminded of some experience I’d had there.

“Running out of that yard while playing manhunt.”

“Playing in that small walled off den for the garbage cans that fall afternoon after I’d come home from school.”

“This was where I kissed so and so.”

“Remember Eddie, who used to live there?”

I don’t think those thoughts are all that uncommon when you’re back where you grew up. But knowing the fire hydrant leans to the left, or that the mailbox has a dirt spot on it on its right side (that still hasn’t been cleaned, wtf?), these are things that I didn’t anticipate remembering so well. It was surprising to say the least.

“Still doing the music thing?”

“Still doing the music thing?” is a question I get asked a lot by people who I don’t see that often. Usually it’s folks I know from high school or any time of my life before age 22. I guess that’s the age people figure you ‘grow up’ or something. Whatever that means.

I find this question terribly difficult to answer. Why wouldn’t I still be doing the “music thing?” As if that’s some sort of passion you turn on and off like a car engine. I get it, though. So many people lose their grip on their hopes and dreams— music, obviously being one of those— that to see someone in their adult life actually continuing on with them, it can be, well… weird.

I can’t really speak for anyone else, but for me personally, I still get a lot of joy out of what might be considered childish in the grand scheme of things. Making records, being involved with the creative process and what goes into that brings me a certain level of satisfaction that I’m not sure exists elsewhere. I mean, maybe it does. I just don’t know. I’ve worked in a handful of different roles in music, media and the like and can say that as far as accomplishing things goes, being involved on the creative side of music is still tops. Nothing quite matches the feel you get from doing some cool shit in that arena.

So why stop? If you can do it, there’s no reason not to. I’ll probably still be doing the ‘music thing’ until the day I’m gone. It’s a natural inclination. Not something one does because it’s trendy.

Project E.A.R. “Revolution” LP and songs I produced on it

I’m pleased to share that Project E.A.R.’s new album “Revolution” is finally available for sale.

I’m really proud of the records I produced and co-wrote on the album— “I Don’t Care,” “Chasing Rainbows” and “Can’t Get Enough,” respectively— and I wish the band nothing but success with this album.

For me, personally, I’m excited that people will get to hear something that I (and everyone else involved) worked on really hard to get right. These songs really took shape over a year ago. Let me explain.

Back in the middle of January 2012, I was on BBM with my friend Yaniz in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Yaniz manages a handful of artists and DJs there and is essentially just one of those people who makes shit happen in Southeast Asia. She tells me that the band she manages, Project E.A.R.— a super group of sorts, made up of members of a handful of band members from different countries in Southeast Asia— is getting ready to work on their album and is looking for beats for it.

Beats? Well, I always have those. So I sent a few over, and literally within hours I’d heard back from her saying that they wanted to purchase two of the tracks I sent. I love selling beats soooo, yeah, exciting !

The story would have typically ended there, as I’ve sold beats to international artists before. And while we might have connected eventually as I traveled through their respective countries, and vice versa— as I’ve done with artist artists I’ve worked with in that capacity— we’d probably never actually work on the songs together in the same room. And I kind of hate that.

In the midst of BBM convo, Yaniz told me that the band members would be flying in from their individual countries and convening in Bali, Indonesia, to record the project. They were renting a surf villa in Oluwatu for a week, and would be building a studio inside, where they would make the record.

To be honest, Bali was not somewhere I was planning to go. I know Bali has this allure to it, especially since “Eat Pray Love” was shot there and all that, but to me it just wasn’t on my radar like that.

“You should go!” Yaniz said to me in a BBM message. “It’s Bali!”

I mulled it over for a few minutes, thought about working more hands-on with the band and how that might lend itself to making better music— especially considering that these beats I’d sent were largely just skeletons— then looked at my schedule, decided that some of the stuff could stand to get canceled and made a rather impulsive decision. Fuck it, I’m going to Bali. Two weeks later I was on a 24-hour flight to the other side of the world by myself, having never met the people I was going to work with and the lofty goals of making some great records.

Upon meeting the band members— Moots (Malaysia), Dandee (Thailand), J.D. (Malaysia), A.J. (Malaysia) and Jamir (Philippines)— I could tell right away that we would make some good tunes. There’s just a vibe you get from certain people, where they’re very genuine and sincere. The fact that I’d traveled so far, it wasn’t lost on them. That type of energy goes a long way when you’re being creative. On occasion I’ve worked with people who aren’t so open and down to just try things out, and I’ve found that it’s often lead to poor results. I don’t know how anyone can work in a creative field these days and not be down to just do whatever. We have all these tools to produce amazing things, have unlimited computer power and space. It’s the perfect canvas to just throw things at the wall, see what sticks. What do you have to lose?

But I digress. The Project E.A.R. guys were not like that at all. If I had a suggestion, they’d at least give it a shot, see how it sounded. If collectively the consensus was that it was wack, we’d delete it. They let me produce their vocals, help them with lyrics and adjust their flows to sound more palatable for an American audience. It was a collaborative effort.

So anyway, over the course of a week we worked on the three songs I produced, and they also cut a few other songs from the album as well. I wasn’t as intimately involved in those tracks, if for no other reason than because I was so jetlagged. I would literally wake up in the morning there and we’d have a communal breakfast type thing— the people at the villa cook for you— and then we’d just jump right into working.

There really wasn’t much down time. By the early evening, following dinner, I’d be so tired. I would just retire to my room in the villa and pass out. Because of that I’d usually wake up early, too. And then I’d just lay on the couch with the door open, listening to wind blow and the waves crash outside. It was among the more peaceful experiences I’ve had in my life.

One day I walked down from the villa and went for a swim in the Indian Ocean. The water was warm and the corral was rough. I was by myself and surrounded by Australian surfers who were just there to catch a wave. I waded in the water and looked at the sky. I thought to myself that it was altogether incredible that some musical ideas that I thought up one cold and lonely night in my Staten Island apartment brought me all the way to where I was. That’s pretty cool.

“I Don’t Care” features Dave Kennedy of Angels and Airwaves, and is an ode to arena rock, complete with a scream and shout-style chorus that I think you will hopefully have stuck in your head after you hear it.

“Can’t Get Enough” is a keyboard-driven pop rock song, a love letter to that one thing each respective member can’t live without. My favorite part of the song is probably the Nile Rodgers-style disco guitar on the song’s chorus. That, I can’t get enough of.

And there’s another song, “Chasing Rainbows,” which isn’t available yet on Soundcloud. When they make it available I’ll be sure to post it.

But anyway hit me up, let me know what you think.