Speaking in Lyrics
Greetings from Central Park. I got my second dose, counted down 2 weeks (til I was as protected as I’m gonna be) and booked a flight from LAX. I needed to hug my kid.
A change of scenery always stimulates a writer’s mind. And New York City (from where I came) is a mistress from whom I never fully recovered after I left. Luckily she still embraces me with open arms. I don’t care that people say “she’s changed.” She’s still the same to me. And I enjoy revisiting the girl in me who looks out from behind east coast eyes.
Anyway...I’m staying with a friend who I met in my very first songwriting workshop in umm…the 1980s. 😳That’s right, millennials! Try to imagine still cavorting with your first co-writer 30 years after you finish your first song.
We’ve been re-connecting by drinking coffee every morning at a table by the window looking out over 3rd Avenue watching people and cars. When you’re looking at things in motion (like people and cars) your mind moves too. Swimmers. Waves. Planes. Trains. Automobiles. Hair being blown dry.
This morning I noticed that every other thought that came from my girlfriend’s lips sounded like a piece of a song.
“I’m tired of trying to fix the broken ones.” 😳
“He gets me but he doesn’t get the one thing I want to give.” 😳😳😳
“Too much to hold” — which referred to a possible financial acquisition but could totally work in a more personal context.
I kept telling her to write that sh*t down. It’s the stuff that emerges from every-day conversation that doesn’t always come as naturally when formally summoned.
Some of my favorite songs like Demi Lovato’s “Mistake,” were written with Leah Haywood and Dan James (of Dreamlab) - a hubby/wife team who had no idea that what they randomly spewed (and man, could they spew) was gold. They did all the work. I simply directed their traffic. “Dan…What did you just say, Leah…what was that? Wait. Check it out. Try those 2 thoughts back to back.” I rearranged their furniture. They didn’t even know they were sitting on it.
We songwriters speak in tongues. And our partners need to be ready. Not that my girlfriend and I were trying to write, it’s just that my antennae have learned to pick up (or overhear) anything that’s lyric worthy. On supermarket lines, newscasts, snippets of gossip from teenagers walking by me on the street.
Being a productive co-writer means being spontaneous not just bringing cleverly crafted fresh rhyme to the party (although I adore cleverly crafted fresh rhyme), or a pre-existing idea... (although yeah! we should bring those too. Whatever tastiness you got there in that journal, in your notes App, your texts to yourself, or the ideas in your head you swear you won’t forget. (Congrats, btw, if you don’t…forget that is.) Recognizing material when you hear it is money.
Which speaks to the value of a slow-cooked song (rather than a demo that’s written, produced, sung and mixed in 4 hours) in that it leaves time for this foreplay. When we drink coffee by windows we’re not so focused. Peripheral space is fertile ground for song starts, the best bits, a lift off.
Which brings me to why getting back into the actual non-virtual room is something I can’t wait to do. There’s energy there. There’s touch. There’s hugging and jumping up and down when that title falls from the sky. There’s coffee breaks by windows!!!! And…as my long-time go-to collaborator Gregg Sutton aptly put it recently, there’s “telepathy” between 2 writers that you just can’t squeeze from a screen. Touché, Gregg.
I’m excited about 2 more weeks in my favorite city, watching the street buzz slowly return, taking off this f*cking mask, getting back in the room where it actually happens, keeping my ears open … and my antennae polished.
My first songwriting partner and my daughter shooting the breeze on 79th Street.
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