On laziness and creativity

Yummy, porch sitting whilst a thunderstorm carouses. Here is why I wanted this laptop, so I could hang out on the porch in the all too brief summer of Michigan and play.
One of my most favoured and all too decadent activities is to lay on the couch out here, play solitaire or psuedo-intellectual blog lurker, and just lean over to flip the burgers.

So, I was reading someone's latest entry and they were questioning the ”how to” of song writing.
I thought that rather than respond in their comments thus taking up a ton of their personal space and time, that I would discourse here, as it was something I would’ve addressed eventually anyway.

It’s been really exciting to have found someone that I can write well with. It took a long time as I never thought to define what I was actually seeking when I first started out. I was then mostly, just viewing myself as a singer. I didn't actually believe I could be a "real" songwriter. It turns out that that was stupid, because I’m not that great of a singer, and have really only vastly improved over the last 5-6 years. In spite of having been born with a decent voice, singing, for me, has become a means to an end. The end being able to put my writing to music. Which, it seems, is one of the only ways to get heard if you are not fond of, or suited to, the new word salad, poetry slam type of performance art. I am vastly unsuited to that, by writing style, temperament and probably, sadly, age.

When I first started writing with “real musicians” I was overawed and naive about what a singer/lyricist means. I thus believed what people thrust upon me, that as the two former, in addition to being a female, I was on the bottom on the pyramid. The mere canary. Throw fat girl into that mix, and I emerged with a fairly serious inferiority complex. I think this is potentially why I sometimes preen just a tiny bit too much when I’m cranking out some decent stuff.

During my years with Skinflower I put out a few good songs, I did a lot of vocal arrangement. I wrote a few songs with a few other folks, writing to their music. Sometimes sizing something I had already written to fit. It seemed OK but it really wasn’t.
I realized later that I was constantly having to try to fit preconceptions of what was cool. And not surprisingly I couldn't seem to get the juices flowing at any constant rate for any length of time. I feel I was viewed in a patronizing, owner/ master fashion and was severely critiqued constantly.

I started writing with Oliver, everything was different. He handed me about 200 hundred songs and lyric ideas, then left it primarily up to me. So over the years I’ve been able to just listen to a bunch of different music he’s written and work on whichever tune grabs me at that very moment. Sometimes he’s been taken aback at my completely changing the idea and meaning of something. Sometimes we’ve had to argue for several days about whether he’s going to write me a hook or not. We’ve had creative differences, absolutely. The real difference though, has been that if there is an issue, it’s actually about what’s best for the song itself. Not whether the words are creepy and/or sarcastic enough for the misanthropic guitar player. Or whether the wannabe hipster gets it or not.

I also feel that maturity has really redefined what I think is important enough to write about. Not that we don’t write some goofy stuff. I’d just like to think that the humour is broader and more subtle. Now, since I've had the opportunity to find my very own voice, I can write fairly easily to other peoples music as well. I had also recently worked with another composer and we had written some positively stunning pieces. Unfortunately Junk reared its ugly head and he’s no longer in my life. Very sad, I hate that shit with a passion.

Which brings us to another facet of the creative process that I’ve been debating with some of my much younger musician friends recently. Drugs and creativity. My stance is that the whole “it’s a really necessary part”, is pure bunk, hogwash and myth. Probably perpetuated by Junkies and drunks who seem to love nothing more than taking people down with them.
My view is that time spent pursuing drugs is time lost to creativity, time spent attempting to reach “just the right buzz” is time that could be spent practicing scales while you wait for the muse to show up. I feel that the Kurt Cobains, Billie Holidays and such would have been able to bless our existence at least equally and probably far better without. I don’t believe drugs illuminated them, other than for an evanescent moment or two. And those few moments are swallowed whole by the years of misery.
And I say this from the perspective of someone who is pretty sure they know of what they speak.

Wow, sure like the feel of my favourite soapboxes, I might get mighty comfortable up there, I could probably just go right ahead and take a nap.