10 PM, exhausted after a day of work, I sat on a table in a park for 2 hours and wrote the lyrics to Astral Blanket. It was an excruciating process. I battled with the words as they came out.
It wasn’t an wasy subject.
It was about the feeling of finding something so beautiful and worthy of praise that it causes resentment. I was frustrated at myself for not being capable of the things I wanted to do, not able to create the things I wanted to create.
I heard of the book Kinkakuji by Yukio Mishima where a monk finds the temple so beautiful he is compelled to destroy it, feeling that nothing so beautoful belongs on this world, or something to that end.
I never actually read the book, because the idea itself made me realize I needed to release these feelings somehow, and so that became a priority.
The song came together over a few iterations, but the lyrics came out after two hours of what felt like torture.
*Body curled up under covers
Screaming out the song he wants to
Between this world and the other
crawling back inside his mother
When will this world end so he can build it up again?
This song’s so beautiful,
That if i could I’d tear it all to pieces why can’t it be me?
I know that it could be but maybe if I closed my eyes again…
I’d finally become intangible
Sometimes I dream of ways….*
That was over 10 years ago.
Since then my new songs yave all had simple lyrics, nothing so difficult to write. I keep then as simple as possible because I feel that simple can be powerful and I don’t see a point in torturing myself if I can create something powerful without torturing myself. Most of my melodies have been pretty straightforward as well.
My writing, while I certainly put a lot of thought and energy into writing and editing, is pretty much a direct channel to what is trying to be expressed. I don’t feel it takes any more than concentration, certainly no painful struggle.
The struggle comes from trying to create something that is beyond my current skill set, something that really pushes my boundaries.
That’s not to say I haven’t pushed my boundaires these 10 years, I have in plenty of ways, it just hasn’t happened during the creation process itself.
You can look at it like this. An actor could train for 10 years to have a strong body and then just brush up for his part as a superhero, or he could put on 30 pounds in 3 months just for the part. It depends on how far away he is from what he is trying to create and how soon he has to play the part. If hes skinny right now and he wants to play thst part, it’s gonna be a struggle.
As an artist, I don’t have a boss other than my inspiration and deadlines I areange for myself and so I can go at my own pace, but sometimes inspiration comes too much at once and demands a great push froward.
Today I heard a Chinese song that made me want to try and create something carefully crafted, something far beyond my current capabilities. It made me think that maybe I should write some very diffiuclt poetic lyrics again, and arrange and mix much better than I have in the past.
I am not pretending I will be able to create something quite like this, but something that could hit me like this. I am not into pop music by any means, always more curious about musoc that challenges me, and most pop music is not that. But sometimes there is an artist or a song that can evoke or unlock complex emotions. Shiina Ringo, Bjork, Moses Sumney, James Blake, and DOUDOU are my go-to’s for this.
And sometimes a singer you don’t connect with as deeply has a songle song that hits very very hard
If you follow my work at all you know I love the etherial, the dreamy otherworldly, and this is just that. It feels like its pulling on memories from before I was born. The lyrics are astondingly close to something I tried to express in Confessions of the Damaged (my short novel series), about the moon reflecting off the ocean, a distant vision of a wanderer, and the idea that emotions can overwhelm but are nothing to be afraid of, that the true self is something that transcends them, as well as time and space.
“Turns out that joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness—
So showy and strange—are all harmless in the end”
It made me think that maybe I need to challenge myself to weite lyrics that express things that despite all my best efforts,I have not succeeded in expressing through simple lyrics, these old memories from another lifetime, things I hardly understand myself.
I’ve emptied my bank account once again to buy a MIDI keyboard and a dynamic mic that I can use to record and playback samples and loops live. This will basically complete my studio and live setup so that I have all the tools to do the things I want to do.
Now it’s just a matter of doing them. I’ve set 2 afternoons a week to devote to nothing but songwriting, recording and practicing my own songs. Let’s see what comes out.
All my work
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Some of the most powerful songs are simple and heartfelt. No need to suffer for art when clarity and honesty connect just as deeply.
that’s true but it totally depends on what the artist is trying to express. Just a random example: “Francis the Mute” by Mars Volta definitely required a lot of work and I’m so happy they put the work in
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m8LOrDqvqGYSQlL3z5B-CKZNIr0r_ek7M&si=PIvEWRIFB9OiCtfH
first time I'm hearing of Francis the mute, this is nice actually
to randomly dropping music recommendations is one of my hobbies haha
That creative frustration when you know exactly what you want to express but can't quite get there is the worst. Props for pushing through it though, I feel the late night writing sessions usually produce the realest stuff
I guess I’ve really got to sit down with some audio software, recording is my least favorite part but maybe it will help me find what I am looking for
I hope you find it, I can tell you've got good talent just from your writing and your response