Three Days - Three Songs

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
After six and a half weeks in London and New York, it was time to get out and see some country: Trees and meadows, lakes and rivers, mountain peaks and open skies – that sort of thing.

So today I boarded a Greyhound bus and came to Lake Placid in upstate New York. As the journey progressed I began to make notes of the things that caught my attention: buildings, trees, the names of the towns we passed through, that type of thing. I was doing this as an 'Aide-mémoire'*.

Between Albany (the state capital), and Lake Placid, completely unexpectedly, I began to write a song. The words just oozed out of my subconscious onto the notepad, and before I knew it, I had my first completed song on this vacation.

Looks Pretty Good To Me

© 2008. Jim Lesses. All Rights Reserved.

I left New York City far behind,

I had lakes, and woods, and peace in mind.

So Lake Placid sure sounded mighty fine,

And it looks pretty good to me.

I headed into the Adirondacks,

With its weatherboard homes and its lakeside shacks.

A ragged Old Glory waving out the back,

And it looks pretty good to me.

Chorus

And it looks like America,

As far as the eye can see.

It looks like America,

And it looks pretty good to me.

And it felt pretty good to be finally writing again, let me tell you. I’ve had lots of ideas and nibbles for other songs and snippets over the past six weeks or so, but this is the one. The first one. Strange what a little trip in the country will do to a man.

But there was more to come.

Friday, May 2, 2008
At 7.15am today, I woke up out of a dream with the melody for this song going through my head. As I lay in bed repeating the melody over and over so I wouldn’t forget it, the words began to materialize spontaneously, and I began to write them down. Within a couple of hours, the first draft was complete, and I was beginning to feel delighted with my decision to leave New York for a few days.

Filled With Peace
© 2008. Jim Lesses. All Rights Reserved.

See the sun over Mirror Lake,
All is peaceful...
Here I am, this is no mistake,
Fills me with peace...

Down the valley a snow goose calls,
All is peaceful...
Bathed in mist as the water falls,
Fills me with peace...

Chorus
Who could have told me?
Let nature enfold me;
Nurture and hold me,
And fill me with peace.

A little sentimental perhaps, but it is a song with a melody that reflects my state of mind: relaxed, happy to be here in Lake Placid, and especially happy to be alive and on vacation in America.

It’s amazing what happens when you stop racing around, and let the brain unwind and the body relax. Sometimes you have to give your body and soul the time and space to stop thinking, planning, organizing, and running – so that it is able to slow down and feedback through the unconscious, thoughts, ideas, and songs you never knew where there. But I still wasn’t done.

Saturday, May 3, 2008
I went for a walk into the centre of Lake Placid this afternoon. Down the end of the main street there is a little park with seats and benches, and lawn running down at a fairly steep angle to the edge of Mirror Lake. There is also a small sound shell where four local musicians were performing some old folk and country standards. They played and sang without amplification, and it seemed to me they were performing just because it was a lovely afternoon and they felt like doing so.

I was sitting in the park having lunch in the late afternoon sun, and watching the world go by. Little kids were running around, and I it occurred to me how easy it would be for one of them to be running down the small hill with such momentum, that they would be unable to stop themselves from falling into the lake, which was not fenced off at all.

I kept wanting to say to several of them, “Stay away from the water”. And the phrase kept returning to my head, over and over. Before too long, I had started writing this song.

Don’t Go Down To The Water
© 2008. Jim Lesses. All Rights Reserved.

Chorus
Don’t go down to the water,
Stay away from the well.
Keep your eyes off the Taylor boy,
Or we’ll all be goin’ to… Well…

Nobody listens to Papa,
They’re always chidin’ at Ma.
Sittin’ there chewin’ t’bacca,
Nursin’ that ol’ liquor jar.

So she went down to the water,
Took a drink at the well.
Makin’ eyes at the Taylor boy,
An’ the rest – I don’t have to tell.

Again, within a few hours, I had completed my first draft of the song. Since the incidents and ideas that triggered the song, were entirely different from those that triggered the first two, the mood and sentiments expressed in the song were also quite different.

Each song is distinct in its own way, but I am sure that if I had not embarked on this little side trip to Lake Placid, I would never have written any of them.

Maybe the lesson here is, that if you are stuck in a rut, or suffering writer’s block, you need to change the environment you are living in, even if only for a few days.

* 'Aide-mémoire'. The term is used to refer to notes, or memoranda, that are taken in order to jog one's memory later.

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Creativity

NOTE: This is another post dating from August 2006, which first appeared on my Singing Muses blog. My niece is hosting a group of artist friends in the back yard, as I write this. They have gathered to spend the afternoon creating artworks using mosaics.

Creativity is such a strange beast! I was driving home from work earlier tonight, and out of the blue began singing this line: Lately I've been thinking over, things I have to say to you/And whether I am drunk or sober, there are things I have to do.

Where did the lines come from, and why? I have no idea. Where did the melody come from? Again I have no idea. I got home, went straight to my computer, turned everything on and recorded (a'cappella style), the two lines and the melody that accompanied them. You can listen to the recording here...

I then spent half and hour on the Internet. When I got up from the computer to go out again, I had forgotten completely the two lines I had 'composed' and I had also completely forgotten the melody. Why? Where were they? What had the subconscious mind done with the words and melody?

Quite honestly, I don't know. Nor do I understand the workings of the subconscious mind, but both the words and music had completely slipped my mind. However, I was glad I had immediately recorded the couplet and melody when I did, or the song would now be well and truly lost.

It proves the rule that you have to 'strike while the iron is hot', and immediately write down or find a way of recording your songwriting ideas as soon as you can after they are presented to you. If you don't, you will almost certainly lose them forever.

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Songwriting 101: Challenge Yourself

NOTE: This entry first appeared on my Singing Muses blog during August 2006. I am in the process of moving some of the content from there to this one, before I eventually shut down the Singing Muses blog.

Here is an interesting exercise you can try if you feel you are in a songwriting rut. Write a song on a topic or theme you haven't previously addressed before. Why? I hear you ask. For the intellectual challenge, I reply.

I know a perfectly good songwriter who has never written a love song. For the past year or so she has been challenged by other songwriter's to compose just such a song, but she can't seem to do it. My advice to her was to write a love song to her dog! Nobody has to know that the object of her affection is a dog (unless she explicitly mentions the creature in the song), and anyway, the challenge is to write a love song in general, so writing a song about her dog is fine as long as it is a love song. Sadly, we are all still waiting for her Ode to Eros (or should that be, Ode to Canine?), and I suspect we we'll be waiting for some time yet.

This exercise is something I have used to good effect in my own songwriting life. Several years ago, I was going through a big country music phase. One of the sub-genre's in country music is the trucking song, and since I didn't have a trucking song in my repertoire of original songs, I decided I would write one. My song, I Just Can't Wait is the result of this exercise.

On another occasion, while driving home, I happened to tune into a radio program that featured as its theme, songs about prisons. I immediately decided I needed a prison song in my repertoire, and asked my Muse to start working on it. I have to say, my Muse really took his time about this one, because it was probably a year or two after tuning into that radio program that I finally got my death row prison song, Bitter Wine.

By the way, Muse, I am still waiting for that train song I requested several years ago. How is it going?

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