I recently had a chance to become aware of a bias of mine. It’s a songwriting bias. The bias is this: when I write songs I think of them as poems set to music. There I’ve said it. When I write songs, I think of them as poems. So what?
Well, not much, except for the following. Now I get to revisit the way I think about songwriting. Maybe I’ll be more conscious and more aware. Maybe that will in turn lead me to be more courageous, audacious, or intentional when I write songs. Who knows. For now, it’s simply something I’ve been made aware of. What becomes of that awareness is to be seen.
So, how did this come about? In an unexpected way. I was listening to a recent episode of Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. His guest was the musician, Lorde. Maron asked her about early influences on her songwriting. In that context she mentioned that her mother was something of a poet. Maron latched onto that point, and suggested it might have something to do with her songwriting. Then she made the comment that she didn’t write poems but instead wrote short stories.
That’s when it hit me. I’ve written a bunch of songs. Some of them have even told stories. But I can’t recall ever thinking of a single song as a short story. Kind of like Lorde rejecting the idea that her songs are poems.
The reflective practitioner in me finds this fascinating. Especially since many of the songwriters that I most admire– Hunter/Garcia, John Prine, Levon Helm, Neil Young, The Beatles— often wrote story songs.
Which leads me to think about why I’ve always thought of my songs as poems and not stories. And what’s gained and what’s lost.
When I realized that I think of my songs as poems I immediately knew why. Most of my songwriting has sprung out of my deep encounter with spirituality and Judaism. In Hebrew the word for song and poem are the same: shir. I’ve been writing shirim: song/poems. It’s really that simple.
When I think about why I’ve been quite content to keep writing shirim rather than song/stories I think the answer has to do with what I hope my songs convey. Stories usually have morals. Poems don’t. Stories usually have characters, heroes, villians, settings, conflict, and plot. Poems less so. Poems allow for multiple meanings to emerge. They allow for impressionistic landscapes. Instead of having characters and plots they have images and ideas. I can’t recall ever writing a song and saying to myself, “here’s the moral of that song.” Instead, I often think about what kind of invitation a song extends. What kind of feeling it evokes. What kind of resonances or possible interpretations it presents.
So, for now, I think I’ll keep on thinking of songs as shirim (song/poems) but I am also going to think about what kinds of stories I might want to tell through individual songs and through my songwriting more generally.
The funny thing is, for better or worse, I can’t name a single Lorde song. Either way, I’m grateful to her for helping me become a more reflective songwriter.