Tag Line
Apr 19, 2009 sojourn
Pressing edges into song, what?
I edited the tag line for my blog, really just shortening it from “pressing life’s edges into song” to “pressing edges into song“. For all practical purposes this is the first time I’m peeling back the context for this theme and it’s got my mind churning faster than I can type.
When I press, and I often do, I get fragmented. Many of these fragments end up on the fringes of what’s happening, or life’s edges. Like when I try too hard to please someone, and fail another, or myself. Or my work suffers because I allow circumstances out of my control to press me, to put me in difficult positions I should avoid at all cost. Then there’s the proverbial painting myself into the writer’s block corner because I’m too scattered and frustrated and thinking everything I write sucks, and begin wondering what’s the point in writing at all?
This, of course, is all fodder, all grapes on the vine waiting to be pressed into a story, prose for a blog post, and, yeah, maybe even a song. But more often than not I let my insecurities and self-consciousness derail me. I reread an interview with Rodney Crowell last week in which Rodney is deemed as one who ascribes to the notion “… self-consciousness is the enemy of art.” Also last week, Bob Lefsetz posted a blog titled “Dylan on Buffet” that really spoke to me this week, too, in which he declares “The role of the artist is to open the door just a little, so we can experiment, so we can take the unpopular route, so we can become enlightened.”
I guess I’m still crawling out of my shell as a writer, still allowing the threat of rejection to stifle my creativity. Sure, it’s not all doom & gloom. There are many encouraging signs, too, and that’s what I need to focus on. I see and hear lots of friends and peers just tearing it up with their work, getting their songs and music played everywhere from MTV to Internet radio to churches to nursing homes, both live and recorded. That’s the goal, eh? To have our art seen and/or heard? Surely a big goal for me.
I just had a pretty positive song evaluation done where my “coach” qualified the song as being about recovery from addiction. Now, I agree with the assessment, but the more specific perspective from which I wrote the song is that we all live on the edge of addiction, the edge of love, the edge of understanding, knowing the real “you” comes out in the end. And that what really matters is having relationships with those to whom the real “you” is perfectly acceptable. Serendipitously, someone tweeted a Dr. Seuss quote this week that sums up this mind set so much better than I ever could, “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
My edges have already taken me somewhere today, for that, I’m grateful.
Weeds
Nov 25, 2008 sojourn
I haven’t had a day like today in some time. My wife had a partial knee replacement in the morning, painful, exhausting and totally uncomfortable for her… nerve-racking for me because all I could do was wait. During which time I worked (till the battery on my laptop ran out of juice — yep, I left the power supply at home), started reading “The Last Lecture”, surfed the net on my iPod Touch, and read some more.
The hospital we were at is fairly small, well run, and very accommodating. I spent time in the waiting room, lobby, cafeteria, etc., and overheard some very interesting topics of conversation, from the current mainstay theme of economy to the ongoing deer hunting season. We got to the hospital around 8:30, by about 1:30 I was done. Information overload. So I grabbed lunch in the cafeteria and pulled out the November/December issue of American Songwriter.
I skimmed several articles and ads until I got to an interview with Rodney Crowell. I need to re-read the content over coffee and digest more of the tone and mindset, but it was really cool to learn more about this veteran of Music Row and beyond. One piece of the interview that blew me away is Rodney’s account of how he wrote, tracked, and produced what was to be his most current record, then scrapped it because it wasn’t worthy of release.
He (Rodney) determined he had to let go of playing and producing in order to make his next record real to him, stating “… self consciousness is the enemy of art”. Great article, definitely worth checking out, but the point I’m getting to is that Rodney talked of his early days in Nashville, about cutting songs with live vocals to capture raw emotion, and about not settling for a lyric that’s only puddle deep.
There are so many distractions these days, it’s hard [for me] to unplug often enough to squeeze the creative fruit in my being and write meaningful songs. There’s no excuse, and this ramble is meant to be a reminder that writing for any other reason than to reveal what’s important to me is meaningful as watering a rock garden.
Newsflash — Life isn’t likely to get easier anytime soon.
My wife is tough, seeing her down today wasn’t easy, tomorrow [Lord willing] we’ll get to bring her home. In 3-4 months she has to do it all again, her other knee needs the same operation. I’ll need to keep it simple, be patient, and just be there as she gets her wheels back under her.
Tomorrow’s also another opportunity be a better writer. I can use my day job (as I’ve done in the past) as a smoke screen for not digging deep, but the truth is I need to spend more time in the weeds with my own pain and disappointments, relishing dreams fulfilled, pondering hopes that faith keep alive, and love that couldn’t be budged by a tornado… even the most simple song should take the listener somewhere, provoke, inspire.
Tags: crowell, songwriting, weeds