Emotion

Threads

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

A song critique I worked on recently reminded me of an approach I take with my own songwriting…tying a song lyric together using what I call “threads”. If you’ll forgive ANOTHER metaphor, a song is really like a weaving in that all of the threads rely on each other and wind around each other to give an overall effect. A song lyric with these common threads has a greater impact on a listener because they give a context and complete a story, even if there is no “story” in the song!

This ties into the effective use of metaphors in a song…when you mix up your metaphors too much, you give too many pictures for a listener to hang onto. But if you make your song relate back to the same idea over and over, you enforce the theme and create a powerful effect.

Let me preface this by explaining….I’m using my own lyric, explaining how I thought to tie everything together…this does not mean I think I’m the greatest lyricist! What I’m attempting to do is bring you through the thought processes I had, as I remember them. Let’s take a look at the lyric:

CHANGE OF SEASON
c1997 I.Woloshen

I’m here again
Down by the rivers’ icey waters
And I hold my breath
Simply remembering this place
Those bare-boned trees
Revealing rows of empty bird nests
And that cold, hard rain
Trying to wash them all away

CHORUS:
I’m down by edge of the riverbank
And I’m waiting, waiting
For a promise we made and a smile again
I am waiting, for a change of season

Well I see my name
Where you wrote it on the old post
And I hear your voice
Somewhere inside this bitter wind
And though I’ve kept to myself
Let winter come in stone grey silence
This chill will pass
Just as the world itself must spin (CHORUS)

Have I come this far
Only to find our cause abandoned
Just like those nests
Watching the rain erase my name
Or will you rise to a brand new beginning
And let winter go
Giving a chance to life again (CHORUS)

This is what I would consider a very typical theme. The idea of seasons relating to the ups and downs of relationships is a common one…nothing new there. So what was I thinking of when I wrote this? This comes from a real life experience, a real relationship and a real place. I remembered the images that came to me when I was at this river once in the winter. I live on the west coast (or “wetcoast”, as we like to refer to it!) in what used to be a rain forest. In the winter, rather than it being cold, dry and white, we are cool, wet and grey! The images are of loneliness (bare-boned trees, empty bird nests), and the relationship having chilled (that cold, hard rain trying to wash them all [the nests] away) just as the singer is feeling abandoned by the other person. The chorus, again, reinforces the past experience at the river, and the suspended state of the relationship (waiting for a change of season).

The second verse introduces the “you”…the other person. I could have done this in the first verse, but instead chose to have that be about the memory. In the second verse, the memory is reinforced with the line “I see my name where you wrote it on the old post”…implying something having happened there, and “I hear your voice somewhere inside this bitter wind”…again some kind of presence of a past relationship in this place. The lines “Though I’ve kept to myself, let winter come in stone grey silence” reflects the singer accepting the dark season of the relationship, allowing it to happen, maybe knowing it was inevitable. But the next two lines imply hope…”this chill will pass, just as the world itself must spin”…where the singer equates the certainty of the earth’s turn with the certainty of the relationship reviving.

In the third and final verse, the singer is more or less leaving it up to the other person. “Have I come this far only to find our cause abandoned, just like those nests, watching the rain erase my name?” Is it going to stay this way, is the singer going to “disappear” from the other person’s life? “Or will you rise to a brand new beginning, and let winter go, giving a chance to life again?” Spring!! New life…a fresh start.

Each of the verses is meant to tie into the theme of the winter of a relationship, its past, and what’s going to happen next. What I try to be careful not to do is repeat my ideas too much…this is not as easy to do with a song that is not really a “story”, but just a description of a state of being or an emotion. In a story, you have a beginning, middle and end. I made the coming back to the river the “beginning”, the discovery of the written name and the sound of a past voice the “middle”, and the hope for the future, or spring, the “end”. The “threads” are all to do with nature and the nature of a relationship.

Believe it or not, I was tweaking this song as I was writing this article! Hey thanks! You helped me make my song better 🙂

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Go With The Flow

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

You’d think that, being a songwriter, my interest in literature would venture more to the fiction arena. But ever since I discovered non-fiction (working in a public library for eight years helped), I’ve been hooked. I’ll read anything from spiritual to the so-called self-help books, with the aim of developing a greater understanding of myself and the world around me. I find great inspiration in many of the books I’m reading…lots of song ideas!

I’ve been reading a book lately called “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman. I highly recommend it as a source of understanding your own emotional brain, how it works, and how you can work with it. One of the more fascinating sections deals with the creative mind and learning…the chapter is entitled “The Master Aptitude”. It begins by discussing how paralyzing worry, anxiety and fear can be…how it affects our learning and sabotages our ability to function. Eventually, the author moves on to a discussion of “flow”.

This immediately piqued my curiosity…flow is described as that state which “represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performance and learning.” Athletes call it the “zone”, but it can be found in almost any type of situation, whether it’s a doctor performing surgery or a composer creating a piece of music. The traits of “flow” are intense concentration, where pretty much everything else around you is shut out of your consciousness, a feeling of bliss and a loss of the sense of “self”. This is how I often feel when I’m writing! It can last a few minutes or hours…depending on the task at hand. It’s a kind of “in between” state, whereby if there wasn’t enough stimulation you’d grow bored and if there was too much you would lose control…a very thin line. The feelings associated with it become the motivation…in other words, you work at getting a flow because of how it makes you feel .

That’s a perfect set up for this next question: Do you write because you like the flow, or do you write because you want to get rich and famous? The fact is, that in studies done around this phenomenon, those who are more likely to succeed are the ones who do it for the feeling it gives them! The ones who are motivated by outside success will give up sooner, or have a lower success rate.

We will find flow more easily in the things we feel we are “good at”. For you beginning songwriters out there who don’t feel you’re good at it yet…think about why you do it. I find that from all of the songwriters I have met so far, the ones who began writing as a source of self-fulfillment are more likely to stick to it. Inevitably, the writers who have been writing for a good length of time began from that frame of mind. On the whole, do you find joy in writing? If you do, you’re more likely to succeed! Simple as that.

Oh, yes…and how do you get into the flow? There are as many answers to that as there are those who experience it. The more you write, the more you will find your own way to it. Some find the flow only when they are inspired. Some are disciplined enough to write everyday…they likely will get into the flow more often. The only answer is to DO. Go for it!

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