What Ho!
This blog is called the Graveyard of Lyrics. It might, however, be more appropriate to call it the Hospital of Lyrics. These lyrics aren't yet dead, merely on a life support machine.
I am a songwriter. It is important, before we proceed to make it clear that I am not
just a lyricist.I write melodies too. This is necessary to make clear, for the happy continuation of this piece:
"In olden days an inch of stocking was looked on as something shocking now heaven knows, anything goes"
...That
couldn't have been
written by a 'lyricist'; It contains too much internal trickery, too much inherent melody; if you read it through, the only way it works is in it's melodic form, it dictates itself to you. Clearly, when I say 'melodic form' here, I by no means imply the notes are bound up in the words, simply that it dictates a rhythm, thus you can
tell it is written by a musician/lyricist (Cole Porter, incidentally).
If you write lyrics
and the melody, you are blessed and cursed with extra impetus, extra responsibility, but chiefly the capacity to add an extra dimension to what you write. I can't just sit at a desk and write a page of lyrics. They come to me with their melody attached. Rather, I affect them, infect them instantaneously with rhythm and melody. Most of the time, anyway. This, as I said, gives them a life of their own; you start writing something with a lyrical impetus (ie; a subject) as well as a rythm, then it's pretty much alive and writes itself;
"I'm covered in mothdust but I'm sinking to the flowers, dog jowls and calabrese and I'm down on my knees having a tug on these laces are disgracing my boots which keep me grounded but I'm only really passing the time until this notion of this ocean of pain dissipates and makes me bouyant again"
That's an extreme example of something where the rhythm was very dictatorial.
But I digress. The reason I amble with so much
pre is that I am posting here couplets which have nowhere to go.
A song is anything that sticks. So said Bob Dylan. What he meant is that a song is anything which stays alive long enough to be completed, become inflated and then floated. Sometimes songs don't work because they're no good. That happens to everyone in all walks of life. I'm not concerned when something isn't good enough. What concerns me is when something
sticks but won't inflate fully. There's nothing as bad as a semi-inflated balloon. Or a mixed metaphor.
I have, through the years begun, and subsequently left, pale orphans of lyrics. Couplets, sometimes more, which I love but whose
impetus is minimal. Sometimes it's the thematic impetus:
"The wind is the finest of stylists of hair
on a list that consists of your brushes your combs and your fingertips"
I did write one more couplet:
To this list I insist we just add one more thing
the way sunlight comes over and swaddles you in like it knows it should
With which I was never happy from a lyrical point of view, though it does have
music. The first couplet I really love. But I had no idea where to go; Does anyone want an entire song about hair? Actually I would happily write a whole song abut hair if I happened to have enough to say about it at the time. There is, while we're here, a magnificent poem about hair called 'Woman Combing. Degas' by R.S. Thomas which I can't locate on the internet so you'll have to do your own research. Lazy.
One option, clearly, is to move on from hair as a theme, and that would have been my intention, but then it just became 'a song about a girl' with no reason for her to exist. It wasn't
about someone when I wrote it, it was, plainly, about the wind bineg a great stylist of hair, so it couldn't be about someone when I continue to write it. Of course there are NO rules, I totally acknowledge that, but there are
feelings, strange instincts which stop you from being dishonest in prose or poetry, which want to drive you in the correct direction. I could no more write about a non-existant girl without an initial impetus to do so than I could put a fried egg on top of a bowl of shreddies; it's imaginable, indeed it's phyiscally highly possible, but it simply isn't part of the cereal's narrative.
I am currently working on this:
She turned your straight line to a curve
with her dress like a map of the world
And, oh!, what rose to the top
When her techtonic plates puled apart
This may yet be completed but I include it here for the same reason; I am in awe of it. Let me make something clear here: Just because I love a lyric, it doesn't make me egotistical or pretentious or any suchlike pejorative terms. It simply means I have, accidentally, uncovered something. The cliche about the sculptor is true; Writing is mostly unconscious sculpting, plucking the wind from the void and handing it to people. So it's as surprising to me as it is to anyone when I create something, this means I have a feeling of dettachedness from my words. I am thus able to judge them, in the truest sense of the word, objectively. (I don't mean I objectively
know them to be inherently good, simply that I
enjoy them like objects seperate from me, the subject)
The
inherent truth of the above lyric, if you will indulge me (I hate explaining lyrics, but as this is an
academic piece, I feel a little unrestrained) is: Being in a relationship changes you yet you remain the same. How, in terms of
image can you describe a change yet a stasis? You could say that if you are a straight line then a background can change you. How? If you put a straight line on a globe it becomes curved. [Obviously, literally it does not. Art, however, is never literal, even when it thinks it is. The very act of description, of representations belies the object you are representing. Denies truth with it's very attempt at it.] So to make this abstract flurry a physical image, could you put a map under the line and call it a relationship? Yes. The map could be a dress worn by the girl. Then it becomes interesting because the default setting for art is pretty much sex. Thus the idea of the line being over a woman in a dress like a map of the world ignites feeling of sex, especially considering all this talk of lines and curves (
those lines and curves are not sexual, per se, though they imply sex-to-come). And we have impetus in the form of image and intent, thus we can allow a light vusual pun, can we not? "What rose to the top when her techntonic plates pulled apart?" Her plates (feet), pulling apart (her legs, running along a fault line, seperating) allowing you to enter her. I shan't patronise you further by describing
what rose to the top...
My problem then is where to go with it. I don't' want to describe sex, that is not my impetus. I have an enormous fear that whatever I shall add may ruin what has come before. I don't wish to persist with the metaphor at too laborious a length, but I don't want to let go too suddenly of the imagery, its too potent. I do have several options- continue with the use of geometry as a theme, or geography as a theme.
I was born in the middle of june
With a Gemini Sun
And a Leo moon
But I fear my virgo
Ascended too soon
No idea where to go with this baby either. Don't want to write about star signs. Or another girl song.
Then there's this:
They're coming to take me away; no joke
They're coming to tear me apart
though time turns your coal face to diamond
It turns, back to black, a dead heart
And turns your soft skin into paper
Which tears as you turn in your bed
And sleep comes a such a respite from
the fears that, by day, bow your head
Which becomes too
poetic towards the end. Even towards the beginning, aguably, it's too facetious. It teeters on the brink of cliche and angst-poetry yet retains something thanks to it's humour (loosely speaking, it is not
serious) and its use of images. But it sounds to me like it could be read by a grandiloquent Welshman. OverANNUNCIATING every OTHER syllable, then whispering, squeezing dry the flannel of sadness. And it's rhythm is persistant. It
wants to carry on, and carry on in that same trotting, horses and cart, roll, step, roll, jolt manner. And I prefer to subvert rhythm; ie: To go back to Cole Porter, same song:
"Good authors too who once new better words now only use four-letter words writting prose
Anything Goes"
This invents its
own rhythm, which, as I said, dictates a melody. The above lyric (mine) is a poetic lyric, it begs to be read or doesn't beg at all. It could be slung into any already existing melody or be used to create any number of its own. And that is not what you (I) want. When the rhythm is unique, the song will be.
Well then. Thank you for your time. Sorry if this piece is a little stringy, I've had very little sleep and just wanted to get this stuff down. Woke up after 3 hours sleep with this:
Embroiled in embraces unlovely
trying to remove her top
Wine had hastened this weary conclusion
and he wasn't the sort to say 'Stop!'
there was something about her quite tragic
there was something about her quite bland
and though him wrapped around her improved her
it turned
him to less of a man.
In rooms where there's no telelvision
and the silence in held in esteem
and there's no central heating to speak of
so you make your own sights, sounds and steam;
The images you are enacting
are dishonest and vulgar and cheap
it's not that you really don't like her
it's that you'd rather be home, and asleep
and your hand moves across her dead body
and hers ventures coldy 'cross yours
but the actions mean nothing to either
your the cheapest- the freest- of whores.
So back to the rooms that delight you
and back to the warmth of your flat
where your hands can stay under the duvet
and the pillows are friendly and fat
where the warm television will chatter
and the radio swims 'round your head
you may be alone, never matter!
your alone with your top on in bed.
Which is rather silly. So sorry for that, too. Have a nice day now.
mx
