I’ve been writing new lyrics of late. Writing new lyrics and trying to find new tunes. Of course, there aren’t really that many new tunes in the world to find, and chances are that any new tunes that I do find have already been found a zillion times before by a zillion other different people. Possibly a couple of zillion people. There are, after all, only so many notes.
Likewise, there are only so many letters and therefore only so many words that you can shape them into. So there is a limitation there too. Plus, a lot of the words that you could shape them into are not words that you would want to put into a song. There are also a great many more words that could not easily be press-ganged into service. The word ‘meretricious’ for example is a word that I would quite like to put into a song but I fear that it would be hard to do so in an uncontrived fashion – and I really hate it when things have to be contrived. Which is not to say that I am not guilty of contriving (I probably am), it’s just that I have never noticed myself really doing so.
Thus far, I don’t recall ever having made the attempt to put meretricious into a song. It’s obviously not impossible (and I may well try to include that very word in some future ditty) but it might be tricky and it’s not the normal sort of word (whatever ‘normal’ actually is) you’d generally reach for when constructing a lyric. I do recall that some years ago it was my word of the day though. I have no idea why.
Anyway, before I sidetrack myself too far, once you’ve ruled out all the words that you either can’t use, are difficult to use or you simply don’t want to use, this imposes further limitations on the variations of lyrical sentence structure at your disposal. And that limitation must, at some hugely distant point, be an ultimately finite limitation. This in turn must surely mean that anything you write or, for the purpose of this ramble, anything that I write, has probably already been written before by someone else somewhere in the cosmos. That nonsense about monkeys and Shakespeare comes to mind.
The last example is highly unlikely in the general scheme of things of course, but the likelihood of eventual duplication (for a variable value of eventual) must surely be much more likely if you write exclusively within the limited area of subject matter that I normally occupy – that is, the framework of a miserable b****** musing endlessly about “women who done brung me down and made me miserable in the first place”. This, I am sure you’ll agree, is hardly a unique subject area in the whole song-writing malarkey so it’s not too much of a leap to assume (if you can be bothered to think along these lines for this length of time and not decide to watch something on television instead) that lots of people are already doing it or, indeed, have already done it. This means that somebody else has already written almost exactly the same lyric that I have written and, up until I embarked upon this tedious thought process, lovingly thought of as being mine. Oh, those plagiarising *******!
This tedious thought process is, of course, not a new train of thought, either for me or an entire planet of songwriters past and present (and almost certainly future) who have already (or will sooner or later) mused about this concept. But it was a thought that occurred to me again this week as I sat twiddling with a Bsus4 and wondering what to do next. At the time I concluded that whatever it was I did (I forget now) was probably very much the same thing that I have done before when confronted with a Bsus4. Probably more than once.
Of course, I try to make things different but I doubt that I achieve much variation because, over the course of a lifetime, I’ve scribbled and strummed and then completely forgotten about more written wordage and
hummed/strummed tuneage than I can (fairly obviously) remember; so I feel that it’s an odds on certainty that I must be repeating myself. And, at the same
time, also unknowingly doing something someone else is doing, and quite possibly at the very same time. Ah, so actually it’s me that is the plagiarising
*******!
Ho hum… you know, it’s thinking like this which might make you occasionally think “what’s the point?” give up, sell all your guitars and take up stamp collecting.
Fortunately though, I haven’t got the slightest interest in stamp collecting and, having only comparatively recently come into possession of the bestest guitar I have ever owned and which is a total joy to strum until the proverbial cows come home, I’m not really in the mood to trade in my instrumentation for a leather embossed stamp album, so, on the whole, I think I’ll persevere with the wordage and well-trodden chord sequences.
I suppose the one area in the whole song-writing thing that I could possibly
make significant effort to change is the subject matter – that whole melancholy
‘because of women’ deal… The trouble is, although that sounds as if it ought to
be easy enough, it is exceedingly hard to break the habits of a life time. And,
for me, writing on that subject is a habit of a lifetime. I didn’t just decide to be a miserable ******* you know, I’ve had to work at it.
I’ve recently found it necessary to tidy up the attic (that’s a real attic, as in the
attic in my house, as opposed to some deep metaphorical mental attic) whereupon I came upon my stash of old notebooks. There must be 40 or 50 of them, dating back about 30 years, packed full of the scrawl of my younger self – strange drawings, curious notes, odd phrases that must have meant something at the time, and lots and lots of lyrics. And even then, those early, quite often naïve jottings, are invariably about women-inspired heartbreak.
And I’m not entirely sure why. Why am I not sure? Well, because at the time that I wrote many of these ancient verses, the lyrical content pre-dated any major involvements that I had with women - and the heart-break nonsense that
inevitably goes along with it and which I was, for some reason, writing about.
It’s a mystery: Why the heck was I writing that sort of thing at a time in my life when I absolutely know now that I had never, ever experienced it?
It’s kind of peculiar really. The only way to rationalise it is by assuming that I must have been getting into a state of readiness for the future moment (or moments) when it did happen. A sort of pre-season training for romantic downfall. A general preparation for failure, even. Or simply honing another dimension to that will to fail that I have more than once been accused of having.
Hmm… Obviously I should have got out more when I was younger. Mind you, I still think much the same thing about the older version of me, now.
Ha ha.
Anyway, I guess that, not for the first time, the only unoriginal conclusion which I can draw to this extremely dull line of thought is this: Behind the endless repetition of words and music that blanket
the world and, nearer to home, my not quite so endless progression through life
and the constantly revolving finite amalgam of thoughts and words that I think
and assemble, nothing ever really changes.
Everything remains, as has
been observed by cleverer minds than mine, much the same.
Oh, deep, deep
joy.
Yes, that’s right, I always think it’s nice to end on a cheerful
note.
Changes? I think not.
:-)
Steve
B
Likewise, there are only so many letters and therefore only so many words that you can shape them into. So there is a limitation there too. Plus, a lot of the words that you could shape them into are not words that you would want to put into a song. There are also a great many more words that could not easily be press-ganged into service. The word ‘meretricious’ for example is a word that I would quite like to put into a song but I fear that it would be hard to do so in an uncontrived fashion – and I really hate it when things have to be contrived. Which is not to say that I am not guilty of contriving (I probably am), it’s just that I have never noticed myself really doing so.
Thus far, I don’t recall ever having made the attempt to put meretricious into a song. It’s obviously not impossible (and I may well try to include that very word in some future ditty) but it might be tricky and it’s not the normal sort of word (whatever ‘normal’ actually is) you’d generally reach for when constructing a lyric. I do recall that some years ago it was my word of the day though. I have no idea why.
Anyway, before I sidetrack myself too far, once you’ve ruled out all the words that you either can’t use, are difficult to use or you simply don’t want to use, this imposes further limitations on the variations of lyrical sentence structure at your disposal. And that limitation must, at some hugely distant point, be an ultimately finite limitation. This in turn must surely mean that anything you write or, for the purpose of this ramble, anything that I write, has probably already been written before by someone else somewhere in the cosmos. That nonsense about monkeys and Shakespeare comes to mind.
The last example is highly unlikely in the general scheme of things of course, but the likelihood of eventual duplication (for a variable value of eventual) must surely be much more likely if you write exclusively within the limited area of subject matter that I normally occupy – that is, the framework of a miserable b****** musing endlessly about “women who done brung me down and made me miserable in the first place”. This, I am sure you’ll agree, is hardly a unique subject area in the whole song-writing malarkey so it’s not too much of a leap to assume (if you can be bothered to think along these lines for this length of time and not decide to watch something on television instead) that lots of people are already doing it or, indeed, have already done it. This means that somebody else has already written almost exactly the same lyric that I have written and, up until I embarked upon this tedious thought process, lovingly thought of as being mine. Oh, those plagiarising *******!
This tedious thought process is, of course, not a new train of thought, either for me or an entire planet of songwriters past and present (and almost certainly future) who have already (or will sooner or later) mused about this concept. But it was a thought that occurred to me again this week as I sat twiddling with a Bsus4 and wondering what to do next. At the time I concluded that whatever it was I did (I forget now) was probably very much the same thing that I have done before when confronted with a Bsus4. Probably more than once.
Of course, I try to make things different but I doubt that I achieve much variation because, over the course of a lifetime, I’ve scribbled and strummed and then completely forgotten about more written wordage and
hummed/strummed tuneage than I can (fairly obviously) remember; so I feel that it’s an odds on certainty that I must be repeating myself. And, at the same
time, also unknowingly doing something someone else is doing, and quite possibly at the very same time. Ah, so actually it’s me that is the plagiarising
*******!
Ho hum… you know, it’s thinking like this which might make you occasionally think “what’s the point?” give up, sell all your guitars and take up stamp collecting.
Fortunately though, I haven’t got the slightest interest in stamp collecting and, having only comparatively recently come into possession of the bestest guitar I have ever owned and which is a total joy to strum until the proverbial cows come home, I’m not really in the mood to trade in my instrumentation for a leather embossed stamp album, so, on the whole, I think I’ll persevere with the wordage and well-trodden chord sequences.
I suppose the one area in the whole song-writing thing that I could possibly
make significant effort to change is the subject matter – that whole melancholy
‘because of women’ deal… The trouble is, although that sounds as if it ought to
be easy enough, it is exceedingly hard to break the habits of a life time. And,
for me, writing on that subject is a habit of a lifetime. I didn’t just decide to be a miserable ******* you know, I’ve had to work at it.
I’ve recently found it necessary to tidy up the attic (that’s a real attic, as in the
attic in my house, as opposed to some deep metaphorical mental attic) whereupon I came upon my stash of old notebooks. There must be 40 or 50 of them, dating back about 30 years, packed full of the scrawl of my younger self – strange drawings, curious notes, odd phrases that must have meant something at the time, and lots and lots of lyrics. And even then, those early, quite often naïve jottings, are invariably about women-inspired heartbreak.
And I’m not entirely sure why. Why am I not sure? Well, because at the time that I wrote many of these ancient verses, the lyrical content pre-dated any major involvements that I had with women - and the heart-break nonsense that
inevitably goes along with it and which I was, for some reason, writing about.
It’s a mystery: Why the heck was I writing that sort of thing at a time in my life when I absolutely know now that I had never, ever experienced it?
It’s kind of peculiar really. The only way to rationalise it is by assuming that I must have been getting into a state of readiness for the future moment (or moments) when it did happen. A sort of pre-season training for romantic downfall. A general preparation for failure, even. Or simply honing another dimension to that will to fail that I have more than once been accused of having.
Hmm… Obviously I should have got out more when I was younger. Mind you, I still think much the same thing about the older version of me, now.
Ha ha.
Anyway, I guess that, not for the first time, the only unoriginal conclusion which I can draw to this extremely dull line of thought is this: Behind the endless repetition of words and music that blanket
the world and, nearer to home, my not quite so endless progression through life
and the constantly revolving finite amalgam of thoughts and words that I think
and assemble, nothing ever really changes.
Everything remains, as has
been observed by cleverer minds than mine, much the same.
Oh, deep, deep
joy.
Yes, that’s right, I always think it’s nice to end on a cheerful
note.
Changes? I think not.
:-)
Steve
B