SongDriven

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Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:52:30 GMT

I write a lot of songs. And ostensibly, I write them alone, all by myself, a solo singer songwriter, not needing anyone else. Except, it isn’t true. Not even vaguely.
When I look back over the last ten years (which covers pretty much all the songs I’ve written) there’s almost never been a time when I’ve not had someone escorting me on my way and helping me focus to get my work done. Here’s a timeline:

*2000: I write my first song and maybe three others four songs over the course of nine months before my friend John contacted me and asked how the writing group I had wanted to start was going.

*2001: We start the group with just the two of us gaining members slowly and surely, and I start writing a song every week for nearly two years.

*2003: The group stops meeting weekly and I stop writing weekly as well. (I’ll finish about seven songs between now and 2007)

*Spring 2007: I sign up for a songwriting class to kickstart my writing habit again.

*Summer 2007: I do my first “Fearless Songwriting” week—writing seven songs in seven days—enlisting as many songwriters as would agree to do it to help keep me writing during the week. I write my seven songs. So did most of my friends.

*2009 I wrote 28 songs in February using the community at FAWM.org for support.

*2010 I write 28 songs in February again leaning on FAWM.org again and enilsiting 28 friends to pace me through the month by each writing one song themselves.

What it boils down to is this: anytime I look outside myself for support not only am I infinitely more likely to actually complete the work, the work itself is much better too. There’s never been a time when I’ve worked on my own.

Travel like a Trekkie

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:07:14 GMT

Lots of writers dawdle around when then write. Imagining what the next line might be or worse, what their Aunt Gerdie might say if she were ever to read that next line. This is the equivalent of trying to get from New York City to the crab nebula by car then stopping just across the Jersey line at the Vince Lambardi Service Area. You’ll never get there. The proper way to do things is put all the critical voices in your head in cryogenic stasis for the next ten minutes or so, and set your hand warp speed writing whatever comes out of you hand until you finish filling both sides of the page. Once you’ve arrived at the end of the journey without quite realizing it is a great time to look back at the ‘exhaust fumes,’ your words, and see what you’ve got that might be worth revisiting. That’s where the good stuff is.

3 Uses of the Knife

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:00:00 GMT

Often in our writing we strive for perfection, for completion, and yet perfection is boring. It is the oddities and imperfections that we remember in the end. Stanislavsky says as much in this quote I found in David Mamet's "3 Uses of the Knife." "There are plays that you leave, and you say to yourself, “By God, I just, I never, gosh, I want to, now I understand! What a masterpiece! Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” and by the time you get home, you can’t remember what the play was about. " "And there are plays—and books and songs and poems and dances—that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life.

Lists of Song Ideas

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:05:26 GMT

Lists of Song Ideas:

1. I used to keep lists
2. with all the things
3. I thought would be
4. great to write about.
5. Then one day
6. I’d get out the list
7. and look at all the great ideas
8. I at one point
9. wanted to write into life
10. Then, often
11. a half hour later
12. I was still flitting about
13. and indecisive about what to write
14. so I decided it must not
15. be a good day to write.
16. I don’t keep lists anymore.
17. Everything I could write about
18. is right in front of me
19. or in my memories and associations
20. I just need to choose and dive in
21. I could start with bike
22. or grass
23. or toddler
24. and just let my mind move my hand
25 until the page is full

Meep! Meep!

Fri, 28 May 2010 20:05:19 GMT

Perfection is a bit like the Road Runner in Warner Bros. Cartoons and we're often like the Wile E. Coyote trying to catch it. We contruct eloborate plans and devices only to have perfection stick its tongue out at us and get away again. Like Wile E Coyote your energy would be better spent if you stopped chasing after perfection and started using your creativity to work towards building something solid and real. You’ll stop falling off so many cliffs that way.

"Oh I just don't know where to begin..."

Wed, 26 May 2010 16:58:22 GMT

You say you don’t know what you what you want to write about or don’t have anything to say? Put that down on the page and just start writing about it. What does it feel like? How long has it been going on? Does it make you frustrated, sad, angry? Does it remind you of anything? Does it make you think you’ll end up a loser like that guy from your college poetry class? You know the one I mean. It’s important to just start writing. To get into the habit of writing whether we think we have anything to say or not. I love catching writers in the act of working through their blocks. There are two songs on Armed Forces by Elvis Costello that I’m guessing he started without much idea where he was going: “Oliver’s Army” starts with the line “Don’t start me talking/ I could talk all night…” that sounds a lot to me like something I’d say when I didn’t know what else to say. But the real winner is the first line of ‘Accidents Will Happen,’ “Oh, I just don’t know where to begin…”

Periphery

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:45:00 GMT

Sometimes ideas are just waiting for us at the periphery of our minds. They are there, but they are also a little shy. You have to coax them out. Sometimes I feel like my consciousness is a bit like a light cast down on a stage. There are things that I am aware of that are fully in the light. There’s a bunch of stuff I’m not aware of in the dark. And then there’s the stuff at the edges. Maybe I can see a shadow but I’m not quite sure what it is. So I move the light a little bit and perhaps I can get a better sense of what it is. Sometimes moving the light will scare it though. Then I need to find a different way to approach it, or perhaps bring the light up more slowly. It’s frustrating to try to describe this process but it’s simply this… often times when I feel I’ve run out of stuff to say, there’s something at the edges that isn’t quite clear yet. The secret of writing for me is to start saying it. However is waddles into my consciousness to just start saying it.

Call It Done.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:47:05 GMT

So you’ve been working something to perfection and it’s driving you crazy. It’s been three weeks and you just can’t get that last detail right. What would you do if it were due for a class or to your boss in a day? At the end of today? In an hour? Last week? Creative endeavors can be hard because they are personal and often have no deadlines. We care about them deeply and want them to be ‘just so.’ But if this were a project for a class at some point--usually about five minutes before the whole thing is due or you get an F for the semester--you pack everything in, head down to your teachers office, hand it in and call it done. Is there more you wanted to do on it? Yup. Is it perfect? Nope. But it’s done and now you can work on something else. There's a grace in being finished with something, and perhaps especially when you aren't satisfied. It gives you something to work towards for your next project, perhaps something to prove as well and it let's the muse know you can be trusted with more material. Afterall you'll see it through to the end. Commit to a deadline and when it arrives, be done with your project done or do whatever you have to do to call it done.

"You Suck!"

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:11:37 GMT

The internets don't seem to love me... or at least one corner of them doesn't. When I started this month off I was posting video for all my songs to Youtube. (It got a little overwhelming workload-wise so I stopped for now) I went back to check out my views and comments a few days later and noticed my song "We will rise up" had 2 comments!! I went to see what people had to say. The page loaded and emblazened in the comment box was the message. "You Suck!" Twice. From the same person. I was a little disheartened at first. But then I remembered, part of building a fan base is making people hate you and your music. In audience of ten people at an open mike perhaps one person will like your songs. The rest will say: "YOU SUCK!" But you've done your job and created a fan. In an opening slot for another act with an audience of 100 people perhaps ten people will enjoy your songs, the rest will say: "YOU SUCK!" At a festival playing in front of a 1,000 new listeners perhaps a hundred people will love your music and 900 will say “YOU SUCK!” I saw this happen to Robbie Fulks at A Ben Folds Five concert years ago in New York City. All around me people were booing him off the stage. The crowd had turned, they were looking for torches and pitchforks. And me, I thought he was funny as hell. Maybe a little too country but the clever won me over. The job of an artist’s is to elicit an reaction from people and a visceral one at that. Getting someone to take the time to say “YOU SUCK” from their little corner of the world is in it’s own way a vindication that you’re doing your job. Sure we all want genuine praise, but sometimes a hearty “YOU SUCK,” can be validation that you’re moving in the right direction as well.

Grandma

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:20:00 GMT

Ellis and I talked a couple of days ago and she said she was writing a song for her Granny today. Did I want to write a song for her Granny too? Or perhaps for my Granny? Of course I did, though I had no idea what I would say, or how I would say it (nothing unusual for me, frankly). I was a little bit apprehensive too. I didn’t know either of my grandmothers terribly well. They both lived on the west coast and I didn’t see them often. My Dad’s mother died when I was ten. She was a sweet woman who I’d met a few times and she made me a toy clown that hung in the window of my room for a long time My Baba I knew a bit better. She came out to visit us on occasion while she was still in good health and more over, her work is everywhere in my parents house. She was painter and a poet and I think she did a column for a newspaper in Palo Alto for a bit. She wrote and illustrated a children’s book for my brother (he’s the eldest) and painted a scene from “Wind in the Willows” on his dresser as well. She wasn’t the easiest person for me to know as a child, but she loved us and I’ve always admired her creativity. So, this is the song I wrote for her.

Unmade

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:15:00 GMT

Jess shot me the mp3 file for her song “unprepared’ a couple days ago contradicting her song title but, what’s one to do? We hadn’t talked about a specific theme but I loved the subject of her song. I have lots of experience with being unprepared and more over dreams where I’m unprepared. Mostly my dreams place me in a classroom without my homework, or with some test that I haven’t studied for at all. What hadI been doing for the past few months when I should have been studying? I couldn’t tell you. Anyway, I worked with ‘unprepared’ as a start for my song. And somehow unprepared morphed into unmade. What I really wanted to do as I started to get into the song was make everyday things like making bread (o.k., like once a year things) tell the story of what was going on between the two people in the song. It’s not perfect but I like a lot of what’s there. Hemmingway says I should kill those bits, but that’s a different blog entry.

Take Me to that Home

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:10:00 GMT

So Ethan wrote to me and said let's write a song about a place of worship. Something like "House of Stone and Light" or Tom Waits' "Come on Up to the House." I'd never thought about writing a song about a church so I figured why not?
I sat down and did my usual stuff. Drank some tea, ate a cookie. Did a quick word map where I started with the word curch in the middle. I did an object write which was fun (I remembering engaging in a fantasy about swinging from the lights of the church like tarzan a lot during mass as a kid) but it wasn't quite where I wanted to go. Then I started doodling a picture of a church. Like a lot of people I don't have all great associations with church, but I wanted to write a gospel-y song and it won't do to write gospel song that is down on churches. The doodling helped though cause I found myself drawing a guy sitting outside the church mediating and somehow that made something click for me. And thus, this song came out of it.

Last Addiction

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:10:00 GMT

First off, K.C. Clifford kicked ass on this. I'd been busy drawing cute little stick figures and editing them into my song for two hours when K.C. sent me her song. It was like hearing Zeppelin for the first time after listening to my ditty for two hours straight. Damn! (P.S. if my delivery sounds a little timid in the recording its because I was apparently being too loud for my roommate at 9:00 PM this evening when I was recording). It's been interesting writing to a title for the last four songs. It's been a long time since I've done that. Mostly for the last few years my process has been to sit down, mess around with words or the guitar for a bit, and see what all comes out of it. It's a different process to work through when you have an idea sort of mapped out before you sit down to write. I'm not sure I like it but I'm guessing I should get used to it. I have 28 more songs to go and a lot of them are gonna be 'assignments'. On the other hand, I'm excited to work through that process of writing to a specific idea a lot in the next few weeks 'cause it means I'll get better at it. A lot better I'm guessing. That sounds like a satisfying ending to me.

Stack it Up

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:05:00 GMT

Bethel suggested we write something about buildings and structure which I was instantly excited about because I hadn't written anything about either of those things before. Moreover, Chuck E. Costa has a great song called "From the Drawing Board" that uses building imagery. I figured I could do something like his song. Songs can be tricky though. They don't necessarily turn out the way you think 'em up. At least that's how it works with me. I'd make a horrible architect. Clients would wonder aloud about what I'd created for them while I insisted that when I put the chimney in the basement I was listening to "what the building wanted." Anyhow... I wrestled with the song for the better part of my day off and when I was done with it, I was feeling a lot like I'd put the chimney in the basement again and all the plumbing in the front yard. Sometimes the creative process leaves you a bit myopic. You shouldn't rush to judgment of your work after banging your head against it all afternoon on a day when you've only consumed some Ramen, a slice of bundt cake and a bit of green tea. It's not the right time. But I'm human, so I was judging and feeling pretty embarrassed by this thing I had signed up to show the world. Yeesh. So I went to the Lizard Lounge and thank goodness, for live music, beer and nachos. Not to mention friends. The combination is better than prozac--I'd suggest going heavier on the friends than the beer though. So I'm happy with the song for right now. I like the place it started. I always liked stacking blocks as a kid. And I like the idea of things falling down in context of play 'cause you can just start stacking everything up again. (Not sure I got that bit into the song). Also I opened the book "Turning the Mind into and Ally" today and tripped over this Tibetan saying "Even if you're going to die tomorrow you can still learn something new tonight." I like that. That also seems not to have quite made it into the song, but that's ok. I'll write other songs and it might make it into one of those.

Hit Songwriters

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:45:00 GMT

I’ve talked to and listened to a bunch of people who’ve had some good success in their music: Darrell Scott, Steve Seskin, Josh Ritter, Lisa Loeb. Of those folks not one said they sat down to write a “hit” song when they started writing. Steve might be the one who comes closest and he’s still just writing the songs he wants to. Darrell says he just writes what comes to him for the most part. Lisa knew Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawk when an independent movie they made happened to explode her career. When I was in her workshop she talked more about trying to write outside people's expectations than working towards pop perfection. "Stay" is maybe the least formulaic hits of the last 20 years. These people all write songs because they have something to say and because it’s fun, and because writing songs is something they love. When you’re trying to imitate successful people the best thing you can strive for is to imitate their love and their passion for what they do.

Year in Review

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:05:00 GMT

The last 12 months have been really busy. Here's a quick summary of what I've been up to in scribbly drawing form. If you click the image you'll be taken to the full sized, zoomable image.

Scrambled Eggs

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:45:00 GMT

     I’m thinking about the first few times I wanted to write songs. I remember sitting in my room and playing a chord progression over and over and thinking how amazing it was. I mean, just gorgeous. What could I write to match that?
     So I didn’t’ write anything. That’s not meant to be a judgment of my younger self. It’s where I was at the time and I believed there was some secret that could let me be great without sucking for a bit first.
     These days I almost do the opposite. If I come up with a chord progression or a melody I like I try to find words for it right away, any words. If I come up with some lyrics I immediately look for chords as well. Bad beginnings often lead to great revelations and they certainly lead to more revelations than no beginning at all. I’ve found that not finding some words as soon as possible often leads to no beginning for me. It means sometimes a beautiful melody gets into a bad relationship with some awful lyrics once in a while. But I can always ditch the lyrics if they suck and most importantly, I’m giving the song a chance. Sitting a wishing for something great is no chance at all. Supposedly the original lyrics Paul McCartney wrote for ‘Yesterday’ were “Scrabbled Eggs.”

Gremlins

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:47:02 GMT

      Remember the movie “Gremlins?” A happy little Christmas story right? Well, the creative process is a lot like Christmas in that movie. It should be all happiness and presents under the tree but instead we have little monsters running around in our heads messing up everything.
     When you’re sitting in front of the TV eating Ice Cream the monsters are like Gizmo. They are happy and soft, cuddly and soothing. They love you and you love them. But start making plans to go to the gym or record an album and it’s like feeding them after midnight. They turn nasty on you. Start to argue with them or even just negotiate and you might as well be tossing them in the YMCA pool. The suckers are going to multiply fast and you are in trouble with a capital T.
     So what’s the secret? You can’t just give up on doing anything worthwhile for fear of your monsters getting nasty. The first secret is to do your best not to argue or negotiate with them. Don’t get them wet. When your little montsers start screaming how your writing will never be any good and you always give up on the gym anyway try this:

1. Thank them for their opinion.
     No drama, no screaming in your head. Just take quiet, simple action. It’s like in the movie when Billy wanders into the kitchen and catches a gremlin playing in the blender. He hits the power button and gremlin puree! Quiet, simple action has the same effect.
Also, don’t worry; the monsters in your head aren’t going away. They will have a sequel. Hopefully like “Gremlins II” the story won’t be as compelling and you won’t bother watching. That’s how it works with monsters. The less you engage them the less interesting their stories will become. Though they may come back, as say, dinosaurs in a “Jurassic Park” storyline or Jason in a “Friday the 13th” sort of thing. The monsters are like that. If you learn to ignore one story they create they will work hard to get your attention another way. But in the end, they’re all just gremlins and when you recognize them as such you can choose not to feed them and not to get them wet.

Speaking Metaphorically

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:50:00 GMT

Well, today I get to be a bit lazy and let James Geary doing the talking. Ted.com is one of my favorite sites to check in with. Here's what they have to say about this talk:

Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make, Geary says.

Here's a link to the video on ted since the player seems to be embedding oddly.
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_geary_metaphorically_speaking.html

Stravinsky Upside Down

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:43:12 GMT

      When I was in a high school art class our teacher had us draw a Picasso pen and ink drawing of a Igor Stravinsky with his hands clasped in his laps. She passed photocopy out and let us go to work for the afternoon. At the end of class she collected everything and put it away.
     The next day we came in she passed out the same picture had us flip Stravinsky on his head, and asked us to draw the picture upside down. At the end of the class she passed out our drawings from the day before, had us flip the Stravinsky we’d drawn today back on his keister, and we compared. Everyone’s drawings from the second day were more accurate, more like the original than the first. And the hands, the interlaced fingers that had so bedeviled us the day before looked so much more like fingers when we’d drawn them upside down. Interlaced fingers.
     This exercise came from “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” The point was to show us how things don’t look like we think they do. We make up stories about our world that argue with the way things really are. Sometimes the truth of an image when we put it on the page looks a little weird.
     The same thing is true when we write. Our minds basically make up clichés about things. It does it for images, and it does for words as well. Then when we try to write about something the part of or mind that made up the cliché starts arguing with the part is seeing how things really are. So when we write about things, to make them right, to make them have a resonance that connects with people, we have to write down the weird thoughts. Our mind will scream that a description is stupid and funny sounding and not right at all but if we can shake the thought onto the paper we may discover later that it’s the best thing we wrote that day… or perhaps that year. Write weird, and you’ll write true.