I just finished watching the documentary on Metallica, Some Kind of Monster. I'm not a huge Metallica fan -- I've liked some of their songs, I had a copy of The Black Album on cassette way back (I wouldn't mind owning it again). I've liked St. Anger for its brutal ferouciousness, but haven't bought it because 74 minutes of it would be too much for me.

Anyway, I really appreciated watching it, b/c all the psychological stuff that went on within the band, particularly with Hetfield and Ulrich, was so vivid and real, and really hits me right in the place where I'm most interested in. Healing people's inner demons with music.

I think rock music is ugly and angry. I don't mind rock music that is happy and uplifting -- I listen to that and write that myself. But the reason I need rock music -- the reason I need to MAKE it -- is because it's an outlet of the poison I have stored up inside. Apparently there is a lot of it, too. We Japanese have the culture of not wearing our hearts on our sleeves -- we just sorta play nice. So there's a lot that get bottled up inside. Really twisted, ugly stuff. There are few crimes in Japan but the stuff that happens tend to contain more of a mind-twister than simple bar brawl that ended up in gun shot or something. I'm not saying one's better than other but the stuff that happens in Japan, when it does happen, is sick and twisted. And I am a part of it, a product of it, 21 years after I left the country.

So the ideal world, in my mind, is a world without rock music. When I think of an old, mature person, I picture a person without a need for rock 'n' roll. I myself envision that -- some day I won't need to rock. Yet I'm getting older, nearing that stage at least on paper, but still not even getting started with what I need to spit out. This album is the beginning. It is the opening of a dam, and I'm hoping to let there be a big flood.

Ever since my active part in making it has ended, I've been uninterested in most everything. Everything except my family. But the few impulses I've felt inside, have always been about the remaining songs. The ones that didn't make it on this record, the rest of the story. I just finished making one, a difficult birth at that, and now I'm thinking of making another one. It's not that I want to, but nothing else seems engaging to me. You see what I mean when I say I do it because I have to?

I got the new masters back from my mastering engineer, Ty. He graciously tweaked them for me, and after two listens I think I'm going to go with these. To be honest, working with this one person other than myself has been scary. I have such a fear of letting other people into my creative process. After trying it for so many years, with what seem like so many people, most, if not all of them not the right people, I had to hide away my own material for the fear of forcing myself to share it and then getting hurt because their contributions contradict my vision, and I don't trust their voices. Of course they contradict mine, they are not me and they can't read my mind. They do what they think is the best, for whatever reasons. But I get so attached to my ideas, and because I was never able to build sufficient trust in others' capacity to be smart and capable in their own ways, I interpret their contributions as a threat to my vision.

So when I listen to these masters, I'm looking for errors. Errors, at least in my eyes. Some proof that I was right, I shouldn't have trusted this person to do this job. And you know, when you look for something like that, of course you find them. You see them all over the place, even in places where they are really not there. They look like errors when you have those tinted glasses on.

Plus, ever since I launched my marketing efforts a couple of days ago, I've been pretty overwhelmed with the enormity of that activity. There are million bands out there, all trying this and that trick to get you to pay attention. How am I going to stand out? How am I going to attract the masses? Don't I want to be famous? Big? Huge? Exception to the norm? Are my songs good enough to cut it, to be an exception?

You get the drift. I am SO glad I wasn't doing this promotion thing while I was making the record. The little kid is screaming inside me, no it's not good enough, I can hear mistakes and errors all over, these songs aren't exactly what I envisioned them to be, I'm doomed to failure. Well, you know what, kid? It's time to be forgiven. You are so little and abandoned, and your fear drives you...but you have tears in your eyes and you can't see well. Sure, you can find all the places where things are imperfect, if you LOOK FOR them. But when you take in the big picture for what it is? This is good enough to let go. The little things that can be fixed, well, they aren't worth the effort it takes to fix them. You can trust the whole.

And about promotions. I hear this trick and that trick works, I hear so and so really hit it huge with that path -- but it's really not about tricks and manipulations. I can't take a short cut and I can't make anyone like me or my music. I need to find the right balance for me, so it's not about this or that image or this or that line of writing. I have to be honest and comfortable with who I am, and I just present that, to the world. My music and myself are seprate entitities, but they are also intertwined and connected. The songs will promote themselves, but I have to get involved in it, too. And while I'm doing it, I simply have to make sure I'm not doing something that's not me -- even if it seems like the right trick to pull, the fast way to get there, I shouldn't strain or stretch myself in doing so. Just be who I am, and let the world see me so.

So I'm not going to be making all the right marketing moves. I'll be a half-ass marketer for myself. I wasn't half-ass with the making of the music, so that's OK. How I promote is very important, but once again, I have more of a problem of trying too hard than not working hard enough.

Oh, and the other thing I liked about the Metallica movie -- watching Hetfield in his daughter's ballet class. Watching him with his very normal-looking (and pretty, in a pleasant and real way) wife. He and I have this huge thing in common, being a dad. Walking the tough line between family and this thing that we have to do. I'm sure if I meet him, we can share silly stories about what our kids do. So we are the daddies that go out and spew out our blood into the air, and help other people do the same, too. It's OK for a daddy to do it. I'm glad.

So there it is, capturing this moment.