My own version of posting lyrics in my LJ
May. 31st, 2008 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adiva_calandiaOof. Ever have one of those days where you feel like you spent the whole day with your foot in your mouth? Yeah. I think I have sock caught in my teeth.
Some nice driving today, though. The long straight stretches of the Sterling Highway on the Kenai Peninsula, especially headed northeast into the mountains, when the road dwindles to a vanishing point ahead and young birch trees and spruce, not so tall that they block the sky, creep up to the edge of the road, and ahead of you are mountains . . . it makes it hard to imagine living anywhere else. God, I love my state.
I spent some time while I was driving today actually listening to the lyrics, because I haven't written poetry in a long while and I'm never really been able to write songs, as much as I would like to. I was thinking about how Vienna Teng writes songs, and listened to things like "Narcolepsy" and "All Will Be Well" and "Such Great Heights" that way, as reactions to real life events and feelings -- and then on came "Icarus' Sister" and "Is The Spirit Here" and I reminded myself that sometimes it's storytelling. Either way, it seems to me sort of like drabble writing. You have a prompt, a person or concept or image you want to explore, and somehow you get a song out of it (of course, they you have, say, Heavy Trash, who are in it for the sound, not the lyrics. Different kettle of fish).
I started thinking of people I would like to write songs about, but didn't get very far in what sort of music they would be. I know a couple people who would have to be slow, smooth lounge singer jazz songs, lots of double bass and saxophone; some people who would be strummed guitar, bar chords, quick and upbeat with simple chord progressions, like early Beatles or Bob Dylan, probably with lyrics that sounded equally quick and upbeat but were dripping with irony.
I would be a piano piece, I know that. I would like to be a Regina Spektor song, but I think it's more likely I'm only a Regina Spektor song in sound, and more a Tori Amos or Vienna Teng or Paul Simon in lyrics. Or is that giving myself too much credit for complexity? No, I think I could be a Paul Simon song.
Some nice driving today, though. The long straight stretches of the Sterling Highway on the Kenai Peninsula, especially headed northeast into the mountains, when the road dwindles to a vanishing point ahead and young birch trees and spruce, not so tall that they block the sky, creep up to the edge of the road, and ahead of you are mountains . . . it makes it hard to imagine living anywhere else. God, I love my state.
I spent some time while I was driving today actually listening to the lyrics, because I haven't written poetry in a long while and I'm never really been able to write songs, as much as I would like to. I was thinking about how Vienna Teng writes songs, and listened to things like "Narcolepsy" and "All Will Be Well" and "Such Great Heights" that way, as reactions to real life events and feelings -- and then on came "Icarus' Sister" and "Is The Spirit Here" and I reminded myself that sometimes it's storytelling. Either way, it seems to me sort of like drabble writing. You have a prompt, a person or concept or image you want to explore, and somehow you get a song out of it (of course, they you have, say, Heavy Trash, who are in it for the sound, not the lyrics. Different kettle of fish).
I started thinking of people I would like to write songs about, but didn't get very far in what sort of music they would be. I know a couple people who would have to be slow, smooth lounge singer jazz songs, lots of double bass and saxophone; some people who would be strummed guitar, bar chords, quick and upbeat with simple chord progressions, like early Beatles or Bob Dylan, probably with lyrics that sounded equally quick and upbeat but were dripping with irony.
I would be a piano piece, I know that. I would like to be a Regina Spektor song, but I think it's more likely I'm only a Regina Spektor song in sound, and more a Tori Amos or Vienna Teng or Paul Simon in lyrics. Or is that giving myself too much credit for complexity? No, I think I could be a Paul Simon song.
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Date: 2008-06-01 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:07 pm (UTC)