How I Write My Songs

I've been buying a lot of pizza dough from the grocery store "Trader Joe's." Just spread it out (for now I use a pan, not a peel and pizza stone), top it as you like (lately, for me, a few dabs of ricotta cheese, sliced up chicken sausage, fresh tomatoes, and mozzarella) bake it, and homemade pizza!

I wrote a marriage proposal song. It worked! Now if I could only write a get rich enough to get out of my soul draining day job song.

It rained and rained, and the basement flooded, but the stream of rainwater flowed around, rather than through, the musical equipment.

Notwithstanding the complete absence of feedback I present an actual unfacetious verse. The chords for the first four lines are: C F C F G Am G Am; for the last line they're Dm G. The melody is amazingly catchy--or it will be when I change the existing one to something that is. The working title of the number, taken from the chorus, is A Happy Song.

Nothing good to say today
Something in mind; it slipped away
The world drifts; cockeyed it spins
We lose our balance once again
It opens up and pulls us in

It has come to my attention that you are not reading this. There's a box along the edge of these entries that tells me so.

I find this frustrating. Why aren't you reading? Do you not find my writing entertaining? Have I done something to offend you?

Hoping to hear from you soon,
J

My analyst recommends I try talking with my father. The problem is, he died in 1966, when I was six. So it's difficult. I'm going to try writing some poems, see if I can trick myself into doing what she recommends, see if it takes me anywhere useful.

Idiots

Your picture on my mantle: sweat beads up
a high forehead, eyes glare
through thick horn-rimmed glasses,
slicked wavy hair, suit and thin tie,
hint of a grimace. My mother
sees it and sighs, always, says,
always, "He was so sick then."
It's mostly what I have:
a black and white of a sick man
I don't remember. Though there's
an image or two: sitting up in bed,
shades down, flicker and chatter and crack
of Saturday afternoon baseball;
in your office, Susie and I
warbling a Christmas song
into a tape recorder, laughing
at the play-back. Did you sing along?
I doubt it. You held the microphone,
snapped the camera shutter,
stood back and watched us
splash and ride walking stick horses
and dress up like idiots. We have
those pictures too. Once in a while
you'd say "Say cheese,"
and we'd turn back to you
and say "Cheese," then return
to our games. Then one day you grew quiet
for good, and we turned back
to an empty front lawn--your parents'--
alongside the garden, hills of potatoes
we could have dug together,
enormous yellow squash we all could have picked
and carved as pumpkins. I'm told
at the funeral home I piped up
"Are you sure he's dead, Mommy?
He looks like he's just sleeping."
Of course you sleep still,
and every so often we look back again,
watch for a return that only an idiot,
or a child, could hope for.

You'd probably like to know who some of my musical influences are. It's a difficult question, since my own work is so darned unique. But I'd have to list Steve Earle (country and cool), Loudin Wainwright III (self-absorbed but funny), Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (old time music for modern times), Elvis Costello (well, early early Elvis Costello), Fred Eaglesmith (country-ish, another fine unknown), and the old-time Nashville folks too numerous to mention. I would say Dwight Yoakum, but I've turned against him, wrote a song about it, "Dirt Sandwich" (as in "You're no better than a dirt sandwich"). Sort of a "How Do You Sleep" if John hadn't met Paul, knew nothing about him except his music.

And the Beatles, of course.

Dylan? Nah. If anything, I'm an influence on him. Probably he never could have written what he's written, even the early stuff--especially the early stuff--without my more recent shining unknown nearly overwhelming example. If you were to hear some, dear reader--and if you try hard enough you almost can, there at the edge of the horizon, a faint, deep warble, a windblown strum, a song you could sing along with if you only knew the words and the tune--you'd surely agree.

Or you travel, alone, to Munich. (And when I say you I mean me.) You walk and walk and walk. You stop in every chilly deserted baroque church you come across. You attend the surprisingly inexpensive opera, learn that stehplatz doesn't mean seat, it means standing place. You wander through the bombed out and recreated residences of princes, dukes, electors, kings; you wonder how those who were not obscenely wealthy lived. You inbibe a certain quantity of locally brewed beer. You decide, all in all, you'd rather be in Belgium.

You don't even take a guitar.

You write some early drafts of poems and, finally home, type one out on your computer.

AT THE ALTE PIN0THEK, MUNICH, 8 APRIL 2005

They are only representations--
slicks of oil on canvas or wood.
And we only look at them--skaters,
say, on a frozen town moat in 1618.
Several people glide on one foot;
others swat at something with sticks;
one slides a carriage.
The sky's cerulean,
layer of high clouds,
punctuation of tiny birds.
Over the wall--buildings, a town.
The world bustles, nearly teems.
But I am not entranced,
not exhilarated, not even
particularly interested.
I've never skated, not once.
I wander into the next room,
where I spotted two drunken men--
soldiers, maybe--cavorting with
two young women--prostitutes,
probably--in remarkable representations
of light and shade.

Occasionally I take my songs and air them out in public, see if they stink or smell OK. Recently, for example, at St. Elmo's Coffeehouse and Pub in Del Ray, Virginia (part of Alexandria, Virginia), I performed three songs. I led off with Big Breasted Woman, after explaining how it's non-sexist if you listen to it. Dumb jokes made by another performer and the emcee suggested that, well, people like dumb jokes. Maybe they also suggested that people couldn't hear or weren't listening.

Then I went with She Isn't Quite Done With You Yet. Not much reaction to that. I finished with She Likes to Knit. The next performer said something about it; I don't remember exactly what, but apparently she was listening to some of it. As were the two friends I brought and the woman who sat down at the table with them. Otherwise during my performance the handful of people at the coffeehouse chatted or worked at their computers or read. People weren't there to listen, other than a few who were there to listen to particular performers. That's a challenging audience for performers. You need to grab the audience, give them some reason to pay attention, not give them the option of ignoring your energy and/or sincerity and/or humor and/or musical skills. And some nights you're going to fail no matter how much you try and how good you are at what you do.

And what you do is often not what the audience would prefer. They might prefer covers. They might prefer something more raucous. They might prefer something more finessed, something sweeter and prettier, and at the same time, lyrically, something more earnest. The acoustic music audience (folk audience, if you will) doesn't always require irony or nuance. Fairly obvious broad statements can suffice, like how life is difficult sometimes for everyone but if you stick to it you nevertheless can manage to squeeze some pleasure out of it.

Folk audiences also tend to like broad humor. For example, I heard a song lately called "Life Is Too Short To Fold Underwear." It's a well done song, for what it is, but what it is is, well, not exactly the sort of thing that some other people are trying to do.

But who am I to evaluate it? The blurb for the album on which the song appears says, "'Life is Too Short to Fold Underwear' strikes a chord with many live audiences." Why would it strike a chord? Because everyone can identify with it, because everyone wears underwear and washes it and puts it away folded or unfolded? Because underwear is a slightly naughty subject, at least when you're five to twelve? (Not that there's anything wrong with music aimed at, or most appreciated by, five to twelve year olds.)

Thinking about it, I think "Life Is Too Short to Fold Underwear" probably would have gotten a better response at St. Elmo's Coffeehouse than my numbers. Maybe because it's more perky, more upbeat, more happy all the time. I, on the other hand, generally am not perky, not upbeat, and much of the time not happy. I often, to quote poet John Berryman, am

heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry [a fictional character, Berryman's alter ego} bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,
Who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.

Berryman ended his difficult, brilliant life by jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis onto the frozen Missippi River. I drove around Minneapolis recently, including to the U of Minn where Berryman taught. I went back and forth over a number of bridges, maybe including the bridge from which Berryman jumped. The Mississippi was frozen. I thought, among other things, that Berryman didn't take an easy way to go out. Now, I'm thinking that Berryman wouldn't have appreciated, "Life is Too Short To Fold Underwear." He wouldn't have appreciated it at all.