lyrics...

I struggle with lyrics. I struggle because I'm super picky about cliches, and I despise when people try to pass off other people's sentiments, or indeed, some kind of rubbish cliche sentiment, as there own idea. It's a waste of time and space, and what's the point? But no one can write 100% original ideas in words, and so sincerity takes precedence over originality. I can deal with that compromise.
I have a few different approaches to lyrics. Sometimes they com easy, and that's when I'm most satisfied. Like the perfect haiku, short and ever present perfection, sometimes they just come out like that, and you know it's a winner. Sometimes the idea just out ways the vocabulary. Sometimes someone else has already said what I want to say, and rather than regurgitate some half arsed version of it, I've found that adaption is a better way to approach the song. I first tried this with a song I called Requiem. Some friends of mine died in a car accident, and I wanted to write about it. But I just had no idea how to express what I felt. I read through a book I had call Japanese Death Poems, to kind of focus my direction, and found a couple of haiku that really summed it up perfectly. So I chose to just turn those into the lyrics, and give the credit where it's due. Easy. Not really. I've done this since with a few other pieces. Gyokuro was a harder one. I adapted a number of passages from Kakuzo Okakura's The Book Of Tea. That was a long process, but it was less about using the poetry because it made my point better than I could, and more that it inspired me so much when I read it, and became such a part of my world that I had to assimilate it into my own expression. It's not that I don't ever write my own lyrics, I do. The Sound Object piece I'm working on for class has lyrics. In this case I'm adapting Alan Moore's Watchmen into a song. Specifically the narration and dialogue from the character Dr. Manhattan. The title is A Thermodynamic Miracle - Or, A Clock Without A Craftsman. I've wanted to do this since I first read the book. Alan Moore has a few moments (Swamp Thing is another one that comes to mind) of absolute poetic brilliance in his comic books. Especially in the chapters where Dr. Manhattan is on Mars and talking about time and seeing the universe all simultaneously, they're sweetly nostalgic and melancholic.
I wanted to write a blog about this after Rohan was showing us his scores based on other peoples instructional pieces. I think it's a great way to work. When things touch you and make you envision something new from them, I think it's only normal to take it into your practice and work it into your own work. I remember something a friend said once a few year back, and I'm paraphrasing, but, "there's no new ideas, but there is always a new context for ideas". Without getting into a debate about ideas, I think if you take anything from that advice, it's not to worry about originality of ideas, but to be aware of the context you're placing them in.
I wanted to use the Watchmen lyrics in the Sound Object project for two reasons. The first was just because when I first started playing around with the sound object I made a sound happen that brought it to mind and suited the theme, bringing a science fictiony vibe with it. Secondarily, I figured that since the project is kind of about appropriating a sound object into something new and original, doing it with the lyrics seemed like a good idea. Basically the process this time was different from Requiem and Gyokuro, where in those two works I used the text consciously and with a narrative structure that I picked to serve a particular purpose. In the new piece, I started by writing down all the bubbles I wanted to use, and then cutting them up and placing things at random to see what happens, and what new narrative could come from it. The challenge now is making the lyrical passages that have come from the text work musically and work in with the form of the sound. I'm about halfway there. Needless to say, I have a big week ahead.