This is a speech I gave for the EMERGING WRITERS FEST last year.
It was lovely to be asked along to The Tote in Melbourne to speak and listen. The theme was music, or song, or something along those lines..
Anyway, I thought I'd put it up in installments as it's pretty long. I sure can waffle about the things that I love. Enjoy! (I'm keeping in the smiley faces and winky faces, that is where I'm using a 'joking tone'. Happy to say, there was lots of laughter and a warm reception, the aural equivalent of smiley, winky faces...)
* “I’ve been
wondering all about me, ever since I seen you there, on the cliffs of your wild
cat charms I’m riding, I know I’m ‘round you but I don’t know where. You have
slayed me, you have made me, I gotta laugh half-ways off my heels, I’ve got to
know babe, will you surround me, so I can tell if I am really real?”
These words, from
probably my favorite song, from probably my favorite writer of songs, Mr. Bob
Dylan, could easily be applied to just that, song itself.
Bob might not have
been intending it so, but I hope he wouldn’t mind the analogy.
The language of
song, it’s ability to make us investigate our selves, know if we are really
real, be utterly wild cat charmed, laugh half-ways off our heels and the rest
of it, has always fascinated me.
As a muse, the
language of song itself, and other people’s mastery of it, for me, has almost
no equal.
Well.. Except
maybe heart break… ;)
Mercurial and
molten, so expressive yet so refined, so different a delivery from singer to
singer, so different a message from writer to writer, sometimes laden with
stories of the greatest import and
crucial lessons for unfolding generations, sometimes a purely physical kick, a
bawdy lustful concoction to get limbs flailing rather than heads scratching.
But whether it’s a
heart string that is being pulled, a brain that is being stimulated, a memory that is
being conjured, an ancient myth or archetype being given life for the zillionth
time
or a critical
message being relayed in the heat of the moment,
it’s the words
that get you there.
They are the wings
that rhythm sprouted, giving her the means to fly. And to embellish, explain and
transport.
The almost
unending variables in both song and songwriting make this a pretty daunting
art-form to talk about.
Hard to define,
and difficult to teach, as anyone who’s run a songwriting workshop can attest.
I personally believe in no hard and fast right and wrong with lyrics and song
writing, just - did you get us there?
Did we feel and
think and move?
Not always in that
order and maybe not all in the one song, but hopefully one of those boxes was
ticked.
And if we were
moved to do all three, well that’s one hell of a song. That’s my kind of song.
Come to think of
it, that holy trinity, the feel, think and move caused by song, is about as
close to any kind of religious leaning as I get.
Maybe it was too
much late night Leonard Cohen when I was a kid but I think if I picture my
vision of heaven, it does look something like a tower of song.
And in a way it is
my altar, my place of worship. When I’m deep, deep down in the enjoyment of a song
there’s a definite sense of the earthly melting away, I feel connected to the
correspondence that is happening, the stimulating of a shared human experience
gland. It gives me a sense of the divine and wonder in everyday life and highlights the beauty in life's everyday machinations.
It too can take me to
very solemn places and lets me feel things I have not experienced, shedding
light on dark things that a conversation or lecture alone could not illuminate.
To Be Continued.....
