The Beginning

I want to give you some idea of how The Flood started. Before I had two fine young gentlemen to help me kick the project into the desired gear, it was just me. Living in a railroad apartment in Brooklyn. Waiting on fussy millionaires and egg white obsessed NYU students. Drinking. Essentially, wasting my time. I had spent a whole year wasting my time. Instead of writing, which I had all but given up on as a viable career choice, I was watching Law and Order: SVU with my girlfriend and working myself into a fine powder. I could very well have kept my dusty guitar in my closet, kept my pen in my desk and kept my thoughts to myself. If I had been a more attentive boyfriend. But, thankfully, I found myself girlfriendless after a year of domestic torpor. And now that there was a female-sized hole in my daily routine, I began to look around for something to fill it. Alcohol wasn't quite what I was looking for. Too typical of a post-girlfriend crutch. Social life? I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And didn't have a rat-tail or a mustache. And didn't listen to dissonant electro/dance/pop. And enjoyed reading thinkers other than Derrida. There goes that option. So, I started to write again. It began to flow much easier than I thought. While I certainly wasn't composing Abbey Road, I was amazed at the sense of validation that these songs gave me. I spent about 3 to 4 months writing the 12 songs that would become "Lilac", the first album to be released under the moniker of The Flood. This process turned me from a cog in the giant, nerve-wracking, soul-sapping machine that is the New York City service industry into... well, still that, but one with plans to disengage myself from the whole sordid affair. Thank the Lord that you weren't one of the customers that experienced my rapidly declining attention to proper service and restaurant decorum. As I would scrawl lyrics on breakfast tickets or sing gibberish melodies into my phone's voice notes in the bathroom, dozens of hungry New Yorkers would wait for their orders to be taken. And wait. And wait. I had never been so fully immersed in my private consciousness, never so unaware that there was a world of unhappy, disgruntled people swarming around me as I set down my bathroom compositions. This is the true beginning of The Flood: me, ostrich-like, hiding my head from chaos.
I could look at this turning point in one of two ways. It could have been an absolute blessing that I ended up truly addicted to this near catatonic creative state, narcotized by the supreme bliss involved in creating something symmetrical and meaningful. This is only if The Flood takes off and provides me with anything more than a hobby. If the world doesn't perk up it's ears after a while, then it will turn this blessing into a full-scale tragedy. Because I have fully given myself over to the demon, at this point. I can't imagine songwriting as anything other than the axis around which my life will rotate. What's more, even if I do imagine a different lifestyle and attempt to engage with it, I will end up just as I did in my restaurant days. I can see myself in an office bathroom, bags under my eyes, singing more gibberish melodies into my phone and writing verses on Post-It notes.
So, my final point. Do you want to turn me into a corporate automaton? Do you want to be involved in crushing my dreams to smithereens? Do you want popular music to be devoid of copious Shakespeare, Socrates, and Petrarch references? If the answer is no, then go here: www.cdbaby.com/cd/Flood3
This blog, ladies and gentlemen, has constituted the unveiling of my new invention. I call it guilt-trip marketing. Buy!



Patrick Brownson