When you go to work, once you’re there do you ever think back on your commute and realize you can barely remember anything about it? Yes? No?
I do that a lot…Â a dangerous amount of a lot, and refer to it as “cottonhead” because my head spends so much time up in the clouds that even though I’m paying attention to what’s going on in real time, I retain very little of it. Technically I should call it “cloudhead”, but I like the sound and visual that “cottonhead” drums up. This started right around my first full time job in the fall of 1991. I had a 20 mile drive to work from Cottage Grove to University and 280 in St. Paul and by the time I got there, punched in, and started working, I would challenge myself to recall anything about the drive in and usually came up with nothing. This is usually followed with my other favorite game, “Which shirt did I put on this morning?” where I look straight ahead and try to remember what shirt I put on. I usually get that one right but there have been a few mornings where I’ve had no clue. I guess at least I’m coherent enough to put a shirt on.. clean ones from my dresser drawer no less!
I started walking to work in January 2015. My job was about 7 miles away and it took about 1.5 hours from door to door. It was so early in the morning that I had the city to myself, it was awesome. 1.5 hours of meditative cottonhead time and exercise – what a way to start the day! The first month or two I was taking in the scenery, but after that I would pretty much just go on autopilot as I have every other commute in my life, usually conjuring up song and drawing ideas as well as pondering what the heck I’m doing with my life.
I made “Cottonhead” a little over a year ago as an experiment to put that state of mind to music… I wanted it to be super Revenge of the Nerds-y at the beginning so started from there and built on it. I didn’t like the arrangement and got sick of hearing it at the time so scrapped it and forgot about it. A week or so ago I was asked for some soundtrack music for a fundraising video and the minute I saw some of the raw footage a blippy Rubik’s Cube synth line from the orphaned “Cottonhead” immediately came to mind. I shuffled some of the bits and pieces around and stuck a fork in it, because it was done.