Songwriting From Nowhere

Write what you know in order to have success with writing. The number one rule they teach you in author school. But in my experience, and many of the writers I revere, it’s simply not true, and rarely pays back. However, popular nonsense writers like Stephen King win all the time. He pretends to know house pet afterlives and possessed automobiles, and the masses really go nuts for his supernatural stories of New England. Of course King never lived his stories. His words come crazy out of a hat, and keep coming because they pay back millions. The truth is, writing what you know will not guarantee a sustainable career. In fact, authors who write like they think they know what they know can’t afford pants, let alone a trip to the Maine woods to be ravaged by an alien. Most readers prefer magic and fantasy, as they well should in a gray existence. Reality is a tough sell in any dystopia. Moreover, it takes a certain rare type to read over a cosmically moral “honey do” list of a book. Those that can get through a read like that, usually put down books for good. Some might begin their own book, or take action to make the world a tolerable place, or just a change their way of thinking. Waiting for satori comes to mind. Even in a world fraught with insanity, there must be some quiet place to go sit with your thoughts and wait for it to end.

I think this rule applies to all forms of creative expression. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theater, cinema, etc. One has to “know” the subject in order to express successfully his or her connection to it. Just don’t count on getting paid. For example, Pierre or Paulette the cave painter experienced the bison, deer, and horses at Lauscaux literally to the bone. The reward, as any painter throughout history will attest, came from fulfilling a basic clan need. Without artists of the Upper Paleoithic, life would have drabbed down to unbearable, trudging throughout those shadowy cave rooms with no hopes to dream of. Painting horses was good therapy before not bothering to paint horses made modern freaks of nature like Sigmund Freud and Talk Space®

Songwriting is an art and a craft like any other. It has its own artists, hacks, and copycats. Traditional Irish music came to Ireland with the Celts nearly 2,000 years ago. But it it was crazy Patrick O’Cleary who wrote its first song. He had to live the land for some time before others could appreciate what he expressed about it. The needs of the clan made his tunes popular. Other clans shared the experiences and took up the tunes. Gleann Cholm Cille was a cold, forbidding place, a lot like a contemporary high rise Manhattan. Partly because of art and its interplay with culture, the people of that ancient land kept the light burning so there could become an Ireland we have today. New York (and its ilk) manufactures culture to a clan that has become so big and stupid as to be satisfied with the popular even if it doesn’t speak to their needs. People live entire lives without local culture, which I believe to be a curse on modern society. Ask yourself who in town paints for you—writes, dances, sculpts for you. Who sings your songs—not the Mick Jagger or Marvin Gaye songs, but your songs?

Today, masses of people who have experienced the 10,000 things by late middle (old) age, (like an ancient Patrick O’Cleary), will hit a brick wall attempting to write their own songs of expression. Like revisiting the actual electricity of a first kiss. It was probably sloppy as well as exhilarating, but you didn’t realize that until you were much older and sufficiently practiced enough to compare (and be very embarrassed). We just don’t practice our feelings out loud. So, lacking a spouse or close friends who will sing a soulful ballad to help us cope after a very hard day, we turn to the promoted “professionals”. Of course there is no such thing as a professional feeler. Yet we suspend our disbelief to the starmakers who generate stars to provide more ennui for the disconnected. Enter Sigmund Freud and Blue Oyster Cult. Without our own art practice and performance, or that of others who are close to us, we are easy prey to the world’s champions, made unnecessarily known by the most loathesome in society who must profit first before art can release its magic to the people.

...simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.... A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an “exhibitionist.” How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, “Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!”

—Kurt Vonnegut from Bluebeard

I am a practiced local painter and a prose writer. I play the guitar at a beginner level. Years ago I was a cook by trade, but a wannabe artist of anything. I wrote comical dittys for my girlfriend and muse. On any day I would leave a note asking her to listen to the new song on the computer. I wanted to keep this girl for the long haul, and I thought the only way a hack writer and line cook could achieve this was via over-elaboration. The songs were passable. I handmade a CD and played it to close friends who wouldn’t laugh in my face for the attempt. One is still circulating in the wild. Find it. It will be worth (for) something after I’m gone. Like a coaster or a trivet for cold casseroles.

Last January during a lake effect snow storm, a couple friends stopped by our open garage for a nightcap. At some point we talked about songwriting, which gave me the inspiration to write, record, tweak poorly and publish a few songs commemorating my 54th revolution around the sun. I began writing Saturday morning and finished 13 songs by Wednesday. A task that began with so much trepidation and self doubt, was surprisingly cathartic. I enjoyed every second of this work, even while my fret hand cramped in pain. This was not at all like the non-sedated, self-administered organ donation I imagined the process would entail.

While you listen, I will figuratively roll the world’s biggest grain of salt into your living room and ask you to take it. This was a song writing exercise, not a performing one. So please be kind in your criticism. Some part of this must have value, even if anyone at all can spot its many, many defects.

What can I say? I songwrote what I know. Now you can sing along, or more likely run away.

Thank you!

Ron

Studio 54 by Amateur