Go With The Flow

 © 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!

IJ

Getting Down to Details

 © I.Woloshen

Many times when I’m writing, I’ll fill in a line with something just to put it there until I’m ready to start the crafting process. I’d like to take you through the process of taking a rather ordinary line or phrase, and souping it up. Of course, one line without the context of a song to work from limits the scope of what we might be able to do with it. When I begin the work on the lyrics, I like to have a thread that runs through the whole song lyrically and ties it together. So many decisions that I make lyrically depend on this thread that I’m trying to create. If you find that you have a line in a song that sounds pretty common and you want to make it more interesting, this might help you.

Let’s take a line like this:

“I got up off the chair and walked to the door”

There are two things we have to keep in mind when we change this, certainly if we want to say the same thing, we have to create a picture that shows us exactly this act. The other thing we have to keep in mind is the meter…that makes our choice of words and syllables limited. Let’s first look at the meter, which I will identify as this:

I got up off the chair, and walked to the door
ta da DA ta da DAAA, ta DA ta da DAAA

Looking at the first half of the line, now, I’ll try to pinpoint what makes it unemotional and uninteresting. Getting up off the chair describes an action, but does it say anything at all about me? For instance, even if I changed it to:

I jumped up off the chair

I’ve already implied something different…I could be anxious now, or excited, or frightened. The visual implies a very quick motion that could easily apply to any of these emotions. Maybe I also want to say more about the chair. Why? Pay attention to details! You’d be amazed at how much these little almost insignificant changes can affect the whole song. If you were watching a movie based on a story in the last century, it wouldn’t make much sense if one of the characters suddenly opened a bag of cheesies. That’s a detail. So let’s say more about the chair…it could be a couch. What does that matter? Well, a chair could be in any room…kitchen, livingroom, dining room, even bedroom. A couch implies a livingroom. Does that matter? Maybe not, but it gives a better picture of where I am, rather than a more vague one. So now we have:

I jumped up off the couch

Let’s take a look at the second half:

And walked to the door

Pretty uninteresting…an action but there’s nothing that really draws me into it. Let’s focus on one of the possible emotions we described above. Let’s try it from a fearful perspective…I jumped up off the couch, so how might I move towards the door? I might sneak or slip or…maybe I don’t even move at all, but I look at the door in some fearful way. But I still have to remain within the confines of the meter. Maybe I’d take a whole different approach like this:

I jumped up off the couch, eyes glued to the door

Now let’s compare it with the original:

I got up off the chair and walked to the door
I jumped up off the couch, eyes glued to the door

In the first line there is a person (me) a place (the chair/the door) and an action (walked). In the second line all of these things still exist in a similar context with one addition–EMOTION. Songwriting isn’t like writing a how-to manual…the key is, as someone wisely said “telling MY story in YOUR song”. Details.

If you sat down with this line for days or weeks or months, you could come up with many, many ways to make it more interesting. Always keep in mind the context of the song…always remember the details.

IJ

Why I Write

 © I.Woloshen

This was a question posed to our newsgroup recently…some questions just get me thinking about the process or the motivation behind writing. I’ll tell you my story if you’ll tell me yours!…

Songwriting seemed to be a merging of two elements for me as a kid…the love of music and the desire to express something. I don’t think I made some conscious decision to be a “songwriter“, but it came quite naturally over a period of time. What it evolved into was a very conscious and thoughtful process of evaluating the events and the emotions of my life, always with an awareness of being able to effectively communicate them to someone else. Aren’t there times when we all have the desire to tell people how we feel? Don’t we all want to be listened to…REALLY listened to?

But there’s more to it than that for me. I’d say that over the many years I’ve been writing, I have “given it up” seriously maybe a half a dozen times. And what I’ve discovered is that I can’t NOT write…it is, as Mary Chapin Carpenter has expressed, the only way for me to make sense of the world around me. And if I don’t have that, then life becomes chaotic again…non-sensical, and difficult to deal with. Writing, for me, is as second nature as all of the basics.

I’ve recently had a serious personal upheaval that has built up over a couple of years…through every stage of it, I have had my writing, and when I look back at the many events I have experienced, both positive and negative, my writing has had an integral part in my ability to understand it. I’ve never had a therapist, even though I’ve had to face addictions and depression. Part of that, I think, is because songwriting becomes my therapist.

This all sounds like a self-centered meandering…but I’ve noticed something else more recently. I have a very acute desire to “entertain”, and many of my songs have taken on that aspect in the last few years, either through humour or “personality”. But songwriting is like that…if you stick with it long enough, it evolves in many ways. Of course, I’m also a performer, so I have this great advantage of being able to act out the song with my face and body…and sometimes I forget where I end and the song begins.

There was a time when I was much younger (!), when I had the idea in my head that unless a songwriter was just expressing a “pure” state of mind, it wasn’t sincere. I never question anyone’s reason for songwriting now, because I know that it comes from many places. There is no need in judging another songwriter’s motives…I wish them success no matter what those motives are. I would like to know what yours are…why do you write? What is your ultimate goal when it comes to your songwriting?

Here’s what Michael Barrett had to say:

“I just thought I’d give a little insight into why I started off songwriting. When I was about 6 (I’m 16 now), a little rhyme came into my head. The rhyme is very daft and I’m not going to print it here unless someone asks me to. Anyway, I forgot about it and pushed writing out of my head. Until I was 12, when I found an old Bruce Springsteen CD of my fathers. At first I only listened to track 1 (Born To Run), but then widened my knowledge by playing the whole CD, and eventually became a big fan. I also started listening to Bob Dylan, Bob Seger-all the ‘oldies’ as they call them. One day I turned on the radio and it was tuned to Longwave 252-people in England may recognize it as the popular music station. They were playing dance music. I thought ‘eww'(never really liked that hip-hop stuff) and tuned it to BBC Radio 2 (because there was a Bruce Springsteen interview on).

“Eventually I heard a song by a band called Stardust, called ‘Music Sound Better With You’. As soon as the first few bars had been done, I knew I didn’t like it. But I kept on listening to the end. I thought ‘gee I bet that song doesn’t do well’. Then I discovered that it was on almost EVERY dance album. I mean, the song was so dead-the rythm had no alterations for chorus or bridge (because there was none), the only lyrics were ‘hey baby music sounds better with you’, I could carry on all night…..Sure there are quite a few good bands out there but this one song REALLY got on my nerves-I’ve even been known to leave shops and cafes when it comes on- so I decided to do something about it and immerse myself in rock, blues, folk. Then I started writing poetry, I can remember the first one I wrote was about Remembrance Day, still got it lying around somewhere. Then I picked up my first guitar and immediately fell in love with it. I began finding things out about myself through the passion I could evoke by certain chords, strumming patterns, slow or fast tempos, soft or hard strums. Soon I found myself thinking ‘wouldn’t it be good if I could bind poetry and music’, and I did-my first song was devoid of chorus, bridge, just 6 lines per verse, and a pretty simple chord pattern-as first songs usually are, this was just my way to cut my teeth in the methods. I found myself thinking deeper and deeper, writing for other people, and mostly myself (the reason why most of my songs are about love and rejection). I was hooked, felt as if I was delving into what I really am and finally actually enjoying the feelings I have, whether negative or positive.

“So going back to your main question, why did I start songwriting? Many reasons:

-So I could get profit (although this one faded eventually)
-So I could be like my heroes (to this day I want to meet Springsteen)
-To separate myself from the masses
-To try to forget about Stardust

But I believe that my main reason, and maybe many other’s reason, is TO DISCOVER YOUR TRUE SELF.”

So what’s your motive, what made you begin this wonderful craft? If you’d like to express yourself about it, why not try my songwriting message board, sign up and participate!

IJ