pushin P(aper)
Oranges in the Shower
Porch, marker, blank worksheet. I'd been designing this thing for weeks and finally got a printer to bridge the digital and physical worlds.
This was meant to help me document audio projects. Field notes for a discipline that doesn't really have field notes. And after playing with a few different formats I figured I’d fill one out to test it.
I don’t know where it came from. But by the time I’d finished doodling the raindrops around the title, the page already had ingredients:
rain recording from Tettegouche
spaced-out electric ukulele
maybe something funky on the synth: pads, arp, brass + auto filter
bass guitar FUNK
This project I hadn’t made a thing for already had more of an identity than stuff that’s been on my hard drive for years.
Writing a title and fleshing out a sonic idea before touching an instrument. Something about that felt like a breakthrough.
I have spent absurd amounts of time trying to solve creative organization through software:
Naming conventions for audio files.
Folder hierarchies on hard drives.
Tagging systems.
Color-coded session templates.
Automations that would generate timestamps and project IDs and dump everything into the right place.
Each one started clean.
Each one collapsed within weeks into a graveyard of “Untitled_47” and “MIX_FINAL_v3_actually_final.”
The problem was never the software. It was that I was trying to organize work that didn't have a center yet. Software organizes what already exists. The structure I needed was the kind that exists before the work does.
Writing the title with a marker forced a center. You can’t write Oranges in the Shower on a piece of paper and then make a generic four-on-the-floor track.
The phrase is now a friendly mission.
Whatever I make has to reach for it.
Oranges in the Shower might become an album. It might become my new personal shower soundtrack that I never post on Spotify. It might become a substack post (cough cough).
The point is not whether the project evolves into a masterpiece. It’s that a unit of intention now exists in real life.
It’s attached to a moment on a specific day, in my own handwriting, on paper that won’t have an automatic update or run out of cloud storage, but could very well end up with smudges, stains, and water damage (YES!!!).
This is a core aspect to soundbending, at least as I understand it (been meaning to schedule a call with Rick Rubin, tbd)…
A willingness to commit to something specific enough to recognize and exciting enough to chase, then letting that constraint pull you toward a finished idea.
and then letting that constraint pull you towards a finished idea.
For me, every worksheet is a small, complete, repeatable piece. Each one stands alone. Each one stacks with the others.
Lego pieces. Substack posts. Archive. Portfolio.
Some will become music. Some will become writing. Some will sit unfinished forever and that’s cool too.
Here’s what oranges in the shower sounded like to me in April 2026:
Kidding! But not really…
More like: Here's what I chose to represent the idea of oranges in the shower, using a sample I have that means something to me.
I had surprise plans after the porch that day and since I wasn’t able to “record a song”, it’s been on my to-do list for weeks and today was my deadline.
Who says I need to record an original track for this?
Who says it can’t be a voicememo??
Who says it’s any less meaningful either way?
Hah!!!
Posted!!!
Premeditation, imagination, intention, identity.
Trying to develop some gravity in one spot within the attention blackhole that is modern society.