The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.

9.26.2005:

6:37 PM

Have you ever had that feeling when listening to an album or reading a book or viewing a painting or (insert enjoying a form of media here) where you just wish, just for a second, that you were the one who made it?

Not that you wish you could do something LIKE it - I get that feeling all the time. I constantly daydream and wish that I was much more brilliant than I am ever capable of being and could come up with some of the things that I've seen and enjoyed.

I'm actually talking about taking a work and literally going back into time and doing it yourself from square one, then releasing it. Not for the glory of it all, but just for the knowledge that you were genius enough to come up with it yourself. You could even put it out under the original artist's name and it wouldn't matter to you at all - all you want is to know you were capable of doing something that fantastic at least once in your life?

I am listening to Pink Floyd's "Animals" right now, and that's the feeling I have about this record. I know that most Pink Floyd / classic rock chronicalists will pick "Dark Side of the Moon" or "The Wall" or "Wish You Were Here" (or, if they REALLY know what they're talking about, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn") as the greatest records in Pink Floyd's catalogue, and I agree with them. It's just that "Animals" has that... thing. I can't explain it at all and would sound like a complete buffoon if I tried. All I can say is that the coheison of this record, from beginning to end, is stunning. It plays like one piece, each individual part geniously written and performed. It speaks to me on a level that the others don't.

So there you go. If I could hijack one work created in the history of the world and do it myself, "Animals" by Pink Floyd would be it. Or maybe "De-Loused in the Comatorium" by The Mars Volta. Or "Grace" by Jeff Buckley. Or maybe the movie "Fight Club" (because - and I know I'm going to piss someone off with this statement, but I don't care, it's just a fact - the book sucked). Or perhaps the painting of the dogs playing poker... I don't know.

In fact, I'd just take everything. Because that's how much of a hack I am.

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