chrysesofia
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3/17/2006 12:28:38 PM
i find the pressure does have to build to a certain point … it has to be big enough for me where i can’t just keep it in my head, i have to write about it … and at the point where i find myself blurting something out loud at the same time i’m typing it … that’s usually a big signal, the through-the-looking-glass moment where it becomes creative because now i have heard the words and the words have a rhythm and the rhythm suggests both, simultaneously, a word pattern that begs to be completed (like a puzzle) and a musical sound (which makes it an even bigger puzzle). but there must be emotional pressure behind it to push through that … boundary. and yeah i think there is an element of self-voyeurism in that, kind of closet drama queen.
and you’re right, the evidence of that is it’s incredibly difficult to write a “happy song,” or to build up that pressure to write a good song when you’re not … undergoing some internal … conflict. i’ve managed to trick myself into doing it as an unemotional, intellectual exercise, with surprisingly fluid and feasible results, but then i find those are the ones i tend to forget i’ve written … because they made no impression on me, or took nothing out of me. i didn’t give anything up to create them. can’t feel it … numb spot.
life seems to be more and more about, literally, what can be made of it … every experience seems to be measured in some respect by whether “i got a good song out of it.” the irony of how we chronologically develop is that when we were younger and had the time and energy to make more of what we wrote, we had no wisdom of experience to inject into the writing … and now that we do … well, as you say, if one other person gains from the hearing, experiences something, then you have done it, you transmitted it, and that is highly worthwhile. the connection, now, is more valuable than fame would have been then.
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Geetan
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3/17/2006 5:13:45 AM
Gosh...
The creative urge...
Sometimes it's blessing and sometimes it's a curse. I may be able to open this valve, as you say, but it requires the pressure to build up behind it before it can be released. With this song for example, my downfall and my undoing were all my own responsibility. Even as events unfolded, there was this thought that I would get a good song out of it. The song ' Lay Me Down' was almost a physical presence, growing from day to day, until I had to write it or crack up.
The mental body requires stimulus and so does the emotional body. I sometimes wonder is it possible that the artist in us, courts emotional disaster when things are too quite. Does the artist indulge in a certain internal voyeurism, gathering the stuff of creation merely because that's what it needs to survive.
There is a great lyric by the Prophet Bono : ) which is something like 'we all kill the inspiration, and then sing about the grief.'
I've never , to my knowledge, written anything worthwhile when I was content. Either the pressure was on financially and I had a deadline to meet, or I was emotionally in turmoil, to say the least.
I guess, you and I and all the rest who are drawn into this peculiar madness have the comfort of saying, well, at least I got to do something creative with what I went through; at least it has a meaning. A lot of people don't have this which I think makes life harder to deal with.
Interestingly, a few people of my acquaintance have cried to that particular song and gained some comfort from it, which in turn, seemed to make my own troubles during the writing of it, worth something more than a three chord trick.
Perhaps that's just how it's supposed to be.
Life is, after all, a musical creation...
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chrysesofia
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3/16/2006 8:38:34 PM
it's taken me a few days to find this.
i relate to almost everything you're saying here. including name-wise, processing everything internally, and opening the vein.
but your vein opens and raw soul spills out ... with a self-assurance that i envy.
so ... you ... have a way of getting it out. you do know how to do it. your voice carries it.
and the ability to do this is a valve ... you can let out what has to come out and withhold what you need.
so ... this is a good place to do that, because people are gonna get it. you come across.
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Geetan
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3/13/2006 9:20:14 PM
I've just uploaded the next song, called 'Lay Me Down'.
It's struck me as odd. I'm actually quite a private person, which is why I don't use my actual name. The name Geetan was given to me. It was almost a baptism, but not quite. It's more something I have to live up to, but seldom do.
The song is about an intensely painful period in my life. I talked to nobody about. Not because I couldn't, but because I chose not to. I process things myself. I conceal but do not reveal what tears me up on a personal level.
But for some reason I can open the vein and pour it into a song...
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