Isn’t the Light OK?

Tues­day night I sat in on a songwriter’s group in Brunswick, orga­nized by Jud Caswell. We did quite a bit of “object writ­ing,” ie. tak­ing an object, per­son, or sit­u­a­tion, and describ­ing it in as much sen­sory detail as pos­si­ble, with­out wor­ry­ing about rhyme, meter, or even basic prose. The idea is just to get what you see, smell, hear, touch, and taste on the page.

As a song­writer, I’ve been pretty stuck in my own head for as long as I can remem­ber. I tend to favor impres­sion­is­tic lyrics, snatches of ideas mushed together into a whole that I hope is greater than the sum of its parts. More often than not, the phrases tend to reveal some­thing big­ger than them­selves, but don’t really tell a story in the tra­di­tional sense.

I usu­ally asso­ciate that kind of “story” writ­ing with cheesy coun­try bal­lads and CCM artists singing about the love of their daugh­ter, but real­ized that some of my favorite song­writ­ers (par­tic­u­larly Ben Gib­bard from Death Cab for Cutie) also use it to great effect.

I guess I’m start­ing to learn there’s a ben­e­fit to get­ting out of my own head.

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