Of songs

Those who know me in the real world are aware that I am a lazy songwriter.

Its not like I have no motivation to write a song per se. I get ideas every day, whether its for lyrics, a bridge, what effect would sound good, and so on. When it comes time to put pen to paper though, I get hopelessly lost, stuck, confused. I think my main problem is with lyrics. What sounds too hokey? Does this really convey what I want to say? Am I being cryptic just for the sake of it?

What amuses me is when I'm browsing in a book store and occasionally in their music section, I'll see books on "how to write songs durr". Like, stuff like this - songwriting, painting, sculpting - you can probably teach the basics of quite quickly:

- There are words in songs
- Sometimes these words have a double meaning
- They are typically about a woman. Even if you're a gay man, or are talking about a highway that never ends, or a sailing voyage, or your grandfather's hernia, you're still going to be talking about women in one way or another.
- Use metaphors. Chicks dig metaphors.
- Say what you mean, mean what you say. The latter doesn't always apply. Hell, just say something. Chances are someone's said it before you anyway.

And so on. But how do you objectively go about teaching someone how to express themselves? Its like telling someone when they can laugh at something, or when something should be sad. If I'm a clean slate with no prior experience with this, how am I supposed to form a frame of reference? The best these books probably can do to at least get close to a notion of maybe how to write songs is to have famous artists share their methods, anecdotes, successes and failures with songwriting. But that only serves to show the reader how much they struggled penniless and feckless for years, lived in cars, ate garbage, traveled this great land, to finally achieve the personal growth necessary to become a balladeer. If someone's reading this compendium of woe/success in a Barnes & Noble while slurping a mocha, chances are they've failed anyway. Besides, all these artists are rich and famous by now (unless your local Rolling Stones tribute band rates a mention somehow), so a)they made it, so by now it doesn't matter what they write; Tom Petty could fart into a microphone, have Eddie Murphy dub in a tambourine, and communicate with whales using ethnic humor, and it would probably sell. b)All they're selling is their experience. Yours may differ. Hell, yours will probably differ a lot, since most songwriters lead interesting, dangerous, one of a kind lives. You and I don't.

Which is not to say that I subscribe to the whole "suffering artist" model of songwriting, far from it. The old maxim is that you "write what you know". If you don't have simple, earthy wisdom to write about, and really just want to discuss wizard kings and their girlfriends with rocking tits, all while following a carefully planned out story arc you've been hatching since you first tried weed in seventh grade, more power to you. I envy anyone who can pull a song subject matter out of their ass, and not just subscribe to the "wine, women and woe" trifecta, because thats harder to accomplish. Well, there's drugs involved, so a lot of it is just being lucky enough to be next to a recording device at the time you're tripping major balls.

I have songs on the backburner for years, and only recently have I started to write riffs, words, bridges and so on again. Who knows, I may stop for good, or have an even longer wait until I get things rolling again. I'm 25, and in grad school, and having a miserable time at it; isn't this the time I'm supposed to be gathering experiences for my songs? Instead of running pissant regressions on pissant data at 8:30 in the pissant morning? I don't even want to dig through my horrible relationships with women or my nights out drinkin' for song fodder. Any abstract concept will do. At this rate though, I'm wondering if just buying that fucking book from Barnes & Noble and taking up residence in some shitty coffee shop should be all I should ever hope for.

On a positive note, this thing right here.