Song Club #17: Hard To Say
Truth is more important than originality, almost always
QUICK NOTE: Through May, I’m trying experiment where I share my weekly efforts to write a song a week—using these prompts. In doing this, my hope is to create a space where y’all might feel safe doing the same.
I’m looking for ways to make Song Club feel like an active and supportive community, as opposed to a broadcast. This is just one experiment in doing so. LMK how it feels?
I started writing a song in 2018 that I have yet to finish. This isn’t particularly remarkable. I have a ton of unfinished songs.
This one is really promising though: emotionally resonant, and true to my experience. I’ve avoided finishing it because I can’t quite bear the idea of the people its about ever hearing it. I’ve told the truth as I see it, and it’s vulnerable and hurtful. I know it betrays the artist in me to do so, but I keep holding back on bringing that rawness all the way home.
There really is something about simply telling the truth in songs that is so, so winning. It’s also so, so hard. When we try, we can get frozen to the spot, or push truthy words to the side as they arise.
BUT using songwriting to shine a light on the parts of our experience that feel so impossibly dark as to be inexpressible can be powerfully rewarding and healing.
So, this week in our writing, I want us explore things that are hard to say!
Keep going,
Lucy
SONG PROVOCATIONS
Write a song about an unspoken, difficult truth in your life
Start by writing it down in as blunt a fashion as you can. Once you’ve done this, read it back to yourself and free-write through whatever comes up for you. You might focus on thoughts, emotions, or sensations in your body. You might explore the imagined, disastrous consequences were this truth to be revealed. At the very least, on the page, allow yourself to really go there.
Write a song about an anger or resentment that’s too painful to surface
Allow the song to be a raw, vicious venting ground for all you’ve been unable to express. Explore the anger using object writing (writing focussed on senses and sensations), and try to make the emotion in your song as palpable as possible. Experiment with extreme directness in your lyric writing. Experiment with making the music feel angry or resentful.
Write a song about a topic you typically resist or avoid
This may not be a typically difficult topic, but rather one you personally feel some discomfort around. Reflect before diving in. Are there types of songs you don’t like to write? Why do you tend to avoid them? For instance, I avoid earnest love songs because I feel inauthentic singing them. For me this exercise might be about finding a way to write an earnest love song that does feel authentic to me. Feel your way into this one. What might you explore that you don’t usually give yourself permission to explore.
CREATIVE MISSION
‘Difficult Listen’
Listen to one of the following songs: Sharp Cutting Wings by Lucinda Williams, For Her* by Fiona Apple, or Real Love* by Big Thief. As you listen, take note of which lines hit you hardest.
If you’re more drawn to direct lines, how does adjacent poetic language offset that directness. If you’re more drawn to the poetry and allusion, what impact to more blunt lyrics have? What can you learn about writing you find moving, or powerful from this?
*CW: rape, sexual assault, domestic violence.
ARTIST REFLECTIONS
What did you learn about the sort of writing you avoid, and are drawn to?
Do you have a clearer sense of your inner compass here? How do you want to use it to steer in the future?
How did writing about difficult emotional topics affect your desire to write?
What did you notice about resistance in your mind and body as your explore saying hard things? What did you notice about what pulled you back into writing?
WRITING A SONG A WEEK:
An Accountability Experiment
Did I Do It?: Yes, barely. It’s maybe more of a ditty.
Time It Took: About two hours in a single afternoon.
What I Noticed:
Sometimes you need to let yourself sound like other artists.
As soon I started, it felt like I might be writing an Adrianne Lenker song (just not as good), but I kept going. Now I have a finished song, even if it feels like it borrows a lot.Truth is more important than originality, almost always.
I let the fact that I was inhabiting someone else’s style carry me through the musical questions the song surfaced and focused on saying true things. As a result this song has a fair amount of emotional resonance for me.Baby ideas need emotionally secure nurturing.
As it stands, I wrote a derivative folk ditty, but who knows where this piece will end up if I give it the time, attention, and space it needs, as opposed to abandoning it.
Receipts:
#1 - A memo of the song
#2 - The lyrics
Seams
I’m coming apart at the seams
I might wanna tell you, or see
if you’ve seen
Don’t need you to take it or leave
Don’t need to hold you, or have you
hold me
But hold on, love
Something was woven before it was lost
A thread is unbroken, no matter the cost
I’m drying my clothes in the sun
They’re catching the breeze, and my thoughts
as they come,
like,
”will you have a daughter or son?”
”will you have a family coming undone?”
But hold on, love
Whatever you’re weaving, whatever the cost
Some thread stays unbroken when everything’s lost
What was your week in songwriting like? Did you start work you later abandoned because it wasn’t working out? Did you finish something you love? Let’s talk about it in the comments!