Shut Up and Write Some Lyrics

Twenty years ago, I was an English literature major in college. I read lots of books, but found the academic climate stifling. Endless, soulless analysis nearly killed my love of literature, so I switched to media studies instead. Good thing, too. I would have made a lousy English teacher.

Over the years, I've tried to give the lyrics to my songs a certain fluidity and muscle that defies conventional rock song writing. Not to be a fancy pants, but because I wanted both the words and music to be equally engaging to those who cared to listen closely enough to hear them, yet remain unobtrusive enough to those who just wanted to hear the overall sound. And of course, I had a few things I wanted to say.

Many years ago, my bandmates would rib me about the complex lyrics in the songs I wrote for the songs we played. They knew I worked hard to come up with original lyrics that were consistently good and they appreciated it. But one day, they said, "Hey, Ken--did you ever think of writing normal stuff like, 'Oooh mama mama, gonna rock you all night long'?" Believe me, some days when I'm beating my head against the wall trying to put the right words to the right notes, I wish I could.

I don't make these stringent demands of the lyrical content of the music I like. I can barely be bothered with lyrics when engaged in recreational listening most of the time. I'm listening for an overall sound experience. If the lyrics are really amazing, that will leap out at me eventually. If not, I'm not too disappointed if the music and the vibe is really good. In that respect, I can utterly relate to the average listener because I'm not much different. If the lyrics of a particular piece turn out to be profound, it increases my enjoyment. But I don't come to new music expecting it. And thus, i am rarely disappointed. I like a little "oooh, mama mama" myself now an again.

The thing about writing lyrics is that you're treading a fine line between the desire to be autobiographical and the desire to relate and share common experience. In rock songs, personal obsessions become magnified to 70 millimeter Super Panavision Technicolor scale, and this increases the likelihood of appearing self involved to the point of ridiculousness. I'll be the first to admit that I sometimes cloak raw emotion in wordy cleverness, but that's only attributable to personal taste. My hope is that the gestalt of the whole thing will leave some sort of emotional impression on the listener. I don't mind heart-on-the-sleeve emotionalism when somebody else is doing it. In fact, I live vicariously through the work of performers whose ability to express themselves without restraint knows no limits. I admire and envy them.

The process of writing the lyrics for the album is underway. I've had a few ideas in my head as I wrote and recorded the music which I managed to write down. Through repeated listenings, certain vocal sounds came to mind--the babble of infants that sounds like words but are really inarticulate expressions of emotions not yet fully formed into ideas. I know at least what the words should sound like, if not what they actually say or mean. But as I sit down to write, the droll sounds typically from the mouths of babes mature into something intelligible. I try to write equally for sound and meaning.

True to my lit major roots, I often go back to the classic poets of past centuries to rekindle the feeling I get from reading something really good by someone who is unfathomably gifted at what they do. I always had somewhat catholic tastes in literature. I might even read the odd novel or two during this period to get a feel for unfolding drama.

I work in silence for hours, uninterrupted until I get what I'm looking for that day. Some days it never comes. Some days, inspiration comes in torrents. If I get stuck, I go on to another song and wrestle with that one for awhile. I used to keep dictionaries nearby--standard, thesaurus and rhyming dictionaries--but they're al online now, so that makes things a bit easier. I work exclusively at the computer. My eyes will no longer tolerate writing things by hand as they once did. I will write down the odd line if I'm away from home. Sometimes I send myself voice mails with a particularly good line. Any way that works.

I'm working on all the songs simultaneously. if an idea comes into my head for a particular song, I just open up the file for that song and start grinding away. I don't wait to finish one before I start another. I'm interested to see how this way of working will help the album become unified in theme as it is in music. Ideally, I'd love for the songs to have a running dialogue with one another, to let the themes stretch out over the eleven or twelve tracks. We'll see.

I'll let you know how things turn out...

Milestone: Getting Ready to Sing

In Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, the process of flying is described as aiming at the ground and missing. One has to transcend the improbability of defying the laws of physics and gravity. It's an attitude, a mindset that enables you to overcome self-doubt. The moment you get the idea into your head that you're actually flying is the moment you go into a tailspin and crash. Of course, he didn't come up with this idea entirely on his own. Hindu and Buddhist traditions have taught this for centuries. But a steady diet of Douglas Adams in my teens and a steady practice and study of meditation as an adult have enabled me to put this strategy to work in the making of the album.

I've never spent a year on an album in my whole life. I've been adding to the woodpile since September of last year, determined to make an album but just a little bit dubious about pulling it off. And it's funny, because that nagging feeling that you won't come up with enough good material dissipates quite suddenly when you count up what you have and realize that secretly and without fanfare, you have reached one of your goals.

I now have the basic tracks for sixteen songs. My guess is that five of them won't make the final cut, not because they're bad, but because the other eleven songs sound like they work together very well. So that's eleven songs that need vocals and a few other overdubs.

Writing the lyrics, a source of strife and torment to me over the last decade, is starting to happen naturally. As I've said earlier in this blog, writing songs to me is like learning how to speak. The music comes first, and as my capacity to express myself grows and the music takes form, I learn what I'm trying to say. The music tells me what it's trying to express. That wasn't just bullshit. That's really what it's like. And true to form, the words and ideas are starting to flow. I expect to spend the rest of the year writing lyrics and recording all the vocals. Whew!

I had to break through a long period of writer's block to make this happen. The past ten years were tricky for me, and the drama of life left little room for being consistently creative. The making of this album has been a process of healing and learning how to speak again. And what brought me to this point was aiming at the ground and missing. I concentrate on what I'm doing and not why. That's a key thing there: Non-attachment to results gives me the freedom to concentrate on craft rather than what people will think.

When I find myself in self doubt, I stop thinking that way. When I find myself enjoying the music I'm making too much, I pause and breathe. When I find myself either worrying about what people will think of the music I'm creating or believing that everyone will love it, I distract myself. When I find myself getting overwhelmed at the amount of work there is yet to be done, I concentrate on the task at hand.When trying to fly, I aim at the ground and intentionally miss, forgetting the fact that I'm flying and just doing it.

So now it's time to sing and there's still much work to be done. The album isn't nearly finished, but it's a lot closer than I could have envisioned a year ago. Just writing this blog entry gives me a good feeling, and while a certain amount of closure is pretty healthy and necessary, I have to forget even that feeling of accomplishment so I can move on.

Stay tuned. Cutting the vocals will soon be underway.