Talk To Me

MELBOURNE EMERGING WRITERS FEST. TALK CONT.

Now of course sometimes singers are just singers, entertainers with amazing voices, and God bless ‘em.

But I think I came up and was exposed to my heroes in a time when the artists often were the writer, sharing a personal, heartfelt, sometimes bracingly honest account of their life, their love or their pain.
The PJ Harvey’s, Liz Phair’s, Veruca’s and Billy’s and Curt’s delivered words that were honest and unique to them. And I adored them for it.

I still do.

I remember being completely besotted with PJ Harvey’s Dry, the mix of her almost violent poetry, delivered with menacing authenticity, who WAS this woman? What had she Been through?  I was transported to a dark yet beautiful place with a warrior queen who howled and moaned and used old blues language and tones so perfectly and convincingly, though she was a young white woman. She created a completely authentic world that sucked me in and under effortlessly.

Paul Kelly was another huge inspiration and influence.

I’ve been marinating in his music from a young age. And now that I’m getting older and my style has changed and matured, somewhat, I can detect his influence a little more in my songs.

His scene setting is some of very the best in my opinion, and he achieves the rare, and obviously very my taste, feat of keeping it simple and honest, while being hugely emotionally affecting.

His writing and his ability to create these amazingly intimate, authentic scenes, even from the perspective of a child, like the child in the backseat of They Thought I was Asleep, is something that moved me then and now, and showed me how deeply moving even a very accessible popular song could be.

So the PJ’s and the Pauls were up there as my idols, as well as  too many more to name. Their gift for expression and way with words and songs lit lights in my eyes and stirred the ink in my heart.

I was determined to express my self in kind, to paint My world and as best I could tell the stories of my young life, full of school politics, heart wrenching crushes, crushing defeats by wenches, popularity contests, feelings of intense isolation, idealism and over-reaction, you know, the whole teenage experience.

And it seemed to work.

I hope if nothing more that I provided back then, an honest voice from a perspective that’s sometimes over-looked. That I conveyed convincingly and passionately the beauty and of course the Angst of the fleeting world between childhood and maturity.

It’s awkwardness and intensity were pretty fertile plundering grounds back then, and songs have always come quite easily to me since.

It’s making them mean something that’s the trick.

Life translates into verse quite rapidly for me, and as I said it’s long been my desire to express myself that way. I’m driven to do it and am lucky I can devote so much time to it.

Sometimes I feel I express myself more clearly and can be more honest in my songwriting than in everyday life.

I’ve heard other writers say this too. That there’s a cheeky freedom in the form that’s quite addictive.

Another appealing element of the process is often writing a song about something helps me understand it better. I sometimes even look at a more cryptic batch of lyrics as an emotional forecast, as they often hold the key to what is going on in my sub-concious, hinting at things that I haven’t yet expressed. Or even realized.

Cheap therapy as they say!

This is also probably a bit strange for people who know and love us, as our inner lives and loves are grist for the mill, and pop music being such a public over-share of an art form, out it all comes.

I’m sure lots of writers find this, walking that sensitive line of telling other peoples stories, exposing private lives that are intermingled with your own.

Dating a writer or singer is definitely not without it’s risks!

As what better material is there than the juicy and constant rumblings of the heart. The frictions we turn into fiction.

So beware…

But surely it’s worth it, getting a song written about you must be an okay pay off, but lets just hope it’s an Angie or Wild Horses as opposed to a You’re So Vain or an Idiot Wind. Ouch..

So,

To wrap up my own ramble of the heart, I think I can distill what I love so much about and find so fascinating in songwriting.

That Music as a means of story telling, is so accessible, yet so personal. So ancient, but also relevant.. and so incredibley diverse.

 It’s an all encompassing and inclusive art, it connects us and exposes us, in the best way possible. It is ultimate communication..

All that and you can also dance to it.

Thank You. And Happy writing!

Okay, that's all she wrote (and spoke) that night. It was such a pleasure to be asked to come and share my (rather enthusiastic) feelings towards and personal history of word-love. I just found out two more of my friends have started blogs, great blogs. Will link them next post. What an interesting time where we share in this way, so widely, so freely. With the honesty, candor and good intent I see in most of these e-offerings, the newest sons  and daughters in a long family lineage of story telling techniques, I think it will bring about great things. Xx Ella