Songs as Hopeful Defiance

I commend to you this Huffington Post blogpost from Jonathan Foreman (Switchfoot) about the power of words.

Here are some highlights:

"To create is to cosign the Maker's checks. ... The artist is a bridge between despair and hope. The artist, more than anyone else is responsible for the re-creation, re-definition and re-thinking the world around us. Every poem, every song, every painting has tremendous possibility. Each of these creations could be a letter of resignation to The World That Is or a window into The World That Is Not. Each poem/painting/song could be a vehicle to a new reality, one in which the artist plays a part no matter how small. The artist paints a world into existence. The canvas, the paint, the brush--these known quantities of existence and reality are tools for stepping into the unknown. The notes of the song are a bridge from what is to what is not yet"

The whole thing is worth a read -- take it in and write it out!

With hope,
Carolyn

Procrastination - The Songwriter's Nemesis

I loved this from P.J. O'Rourke; I think it applies rather well to most songwriters I know (present company most definitely included.)

Usually, writers will do anything to avoid writing. For instance, the previous sentence was written at one o’clock this afternoon. It is now a quarter to four. I have spent the past two hours and forty-five minutes sorting my neckties by width, looking up the word “paisly” in three dictionaries, attempting to find the town of that name on The New York Times Atlas of the World map of Scotland, sorting my reference books by width, trying to get the bookcase to stop wobbling by stuffing a matchbook cover under its corner, dialing the telephone number on the matchbook cover to see if I should take computer courses at night, looking at the computer ads in the newspaper and deciding to buy a computer because writing seems to be so difficult on my old Remington, reading an interesting article on sorghum farming in Uruguay that was in the newspaper next to the computer ads, cutting that and other interesting articles out of the newspaper, sorting—by width—all the interesting articles I’ve cut out of newspapers recently, fastening them neatly together with paper clips and making a very attractive paper clip necklace and bracelet set, which I will present to my girlfriend as soon as she comes home from the three-hour low-impact aerobic workout that I made her go to so I could have some time alone to write.”

P.J. O'Rourke
The Wit and Wisdom of P. J. O’Rourke

Does this ring a bell for anyone else or is it just me?

SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #22 - Steve Bell)

"Songs remain a mystery and a miracle for me.  Vocationally, I can’t think of a single thing I’d rather contribute to the world.  Songs often know things the writer doesn’t even know. They accomplish things that mere mortals are unable to accomplish. They delight, remember, provoke,  entertain, gladden, sadden, enflame, enrage, soothe, heal…   The best songs outlive their authors and have an independent existence and purpose.  These are the ones every song writer hopes to write."
- Steve Bell
(taken from Steve's Great "Happy New Year" blog post)

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Daily Routines

Check out this great site for the daily routines of famous creative types:

http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/

It's intriguing to note how many prolific writers have religiously observed rituals. Got any?

SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #21 - Robert Schumann)

"To compose music, all you have to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of."
- Robert Schumann
(thanks to Glenn Teal)

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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #17 - Colin Linden)

"Most times you don't write the song, the song writes you."
- Colin Linden
(quoted in Songwriters Magazine)


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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #16 - Nick Lowe)

"… I hadn’t been writing songs very long and, like everybody else who starts out doing anything creative, you start off plundering your heroes’ style and catalogue. When you’ve exhausted that, you move on to somebody else and do the same thing with them, and the day comes when you’re rewriting your latest hero’s works, and you put in a little bit of the first guy’s thing that you ripped off, a middle eight, or a bridge, and as it goes on you include more and more of these bits and pieces that you’ve ripped off, until, suddenly, you haven’t ripped them off at all. They’ve actually become your style. And then all you need is a good idea. And then you really are in business. I remember having this idea—“What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding”—and almost falling over in astonishment that I hadn’t heard this before, that it really was an original notion."
- Nick Lowe
(Thanks to Mike Turitzen's excellent The Songwriting Process Site for discovering this quote in Vanity Fair)



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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #15) - Bono

"You can have 1000 ideas, but unless you capture an emotion, it's an essay."
- Bono
(Thanks to Greg Norlin for the quote!)


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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #13) - Muggeridge

“In the same sort of way, listening to great music, or reading great
literature, or standing before great buildings, an inner rhythm is detected, and the heart rejoices, and a light breaks, which is none other than the love of God shining through all His creation.”
– Malcolm Muggeridge (quote courtesy of Roy Salmond, purveyor of bon mots)

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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #12) - Vonnegut

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (this quote courtesy of our well-read friend, Ken Wilson. Thanks, Ken!)

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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #11) - Hafiz

"Many say that life entered the human body by the help of music but the truth is that life itself is music." - Hafiz, Fourteenth Century Persian Poet (submitted by Mark D, 'cause Songville had no good 14th C Persian Poet Quotes - Thanks Mark D!)

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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #10) - Babe

"But Farmer Hoggett knew that little ideas that tickled and nagged and refused to go away should never be ignored ... for in them lie the seeds of destiny."
- Narrator in Babe(yes, the movie about a pig), giving some very good songwriting advice, if you ask me.

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SONGVILLE SAYS (Great Quote #9) - Bell

"Songwriters write in isolation because they can't afford therapy. But the experience of writing the song is not complete until an audience has received it. An exchange must take place." - Steve Bell, in mighty fine concert in Surrey last night (October 17, 2008).

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