A few months back, blurry-eyed from trying to write eight (good) songs in a week, I found myself blindly searching google for, things. Ideas, images, anything to get an inspiration for a lyric or twelve. I’m a ‘reactive writer.’ For me, the hardest part of writing a song is writing the first few lines. After I have something to sing, the rest just pours out… years of practice have taught me to guide the process, but I admit there’s a whole lot of “holding on for dear life” involved.
Trying something new, I started searching google for combinations of words I was interested in writing about, trying to steal a spark. Somehow doing that, I stumbled in to Project Gutenberg, and fell upon the writings of Charles S. Brooks. I honestly could not tell you how I got there. Serendipity, I guess…
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20095/20095-h/20095-h.htm
Somewhere in the middle of this essay, I started reading. I don’t know how many people have read this since it was published in 1915. I’m sure it’s tailed off significantly over the years. It’s in the Public Domain now, which is good for a songwriter (yay theft!), and perhaps the ideal fate for something that should become immortal.
Honestly, this is genius work. And it’s forgotten, or at least mostly forgotten. As a creator of something that I think has lasting value, it’s humbling and grounding to think that there’s a very good chance that every piece of music I write will be lost to history. Or maybe someone will stumble upon my music, late at night, decades from now, and raise a toast to my cleverness?!
At this minute there is a black book that looks down upon me like a crow. It is “Crime and Punishment.” I read it once when I was ill, and I nearly died of it. I confess that after a very little acquaintance with such books I am tempted to sequester them on a top shelf somewhere, beyond reach of tiptoe, where they may brood upon their banishment and rail against the world.
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Right now, if I dared, I would climb to the roof again, and I would sit with my feet over the edge and crane forward and do crazy things just because I could. Then maybe my neighbors would mistake the point of my philosophy and lock me up; would sympathize with my fancies as did Sir Toby and Maria with Malvolio. If one is to escape bread and water in the basement, one’s opinions on such slight things as garters and roofs must be kept dark. Be a freethinker, if you will, on the devil, the deep sea, and the sunrise, but repress yourself in the trifles.
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One little thing I noticed a little while back. When studying some of my favorite records from the 60s and 70s, I’d marvel at how well they pull off hard L-C-R panning, without making my ears twitch while listening on headphones. Hard L-C-R panning, or “assignment”, was practically the only possibility on older consoles such as the REDD.47 and REDD.51 of Beatles/EMI Abbey Road fame.