I realized just now that I have very little control over the type of music I write. Sure, I can cross out words and rearrange chords, but the type of song I've got rolling around in my ribs is going to come out one way or the other, like it or not. Okay, so maybe my songs have grown a lot since I wrote my first one way back in middle school. But then again, have they really? Sometimes when I listen to my old stuff, I think, "geez, I would never know how to write something like that now! It's so free and sprawling and sincere." In another few years, I may say the same thing about the song I was working on today.
If I've learned anything in my few years as an artist, actor, musician, writer....it's that sometimes you have to kinda forget what you've learned. It's great stuff to have and all, like a backbone. An outline. Discipline, structure. But in the end, what matters is creative drive and work ethic. I don't mean to slip into self-help mode here...I guess I'm just trying to talk myself through some of these realizations that I've had many a time, which will probably repeat their appearances in the future.
There's definitely a kind of song I'm after. An honest, woodsy folk song that has elements of true folk music (lyrics and ideas being passed down from one generation of singers to the next) as well as elements of my own personality and outlook on the world. None of that's easy, really. I'm tempted to say that my own viewpoint and take on things is the hardest to grab the reigns on because it's still developing...but then again, the folk element is equally daunting, because it could be so easily forced and tarnished. In the end -- the temporary one anyway -- I'm left with whatever spills out of my fingers and my mouth.
Meanwhile, I'm listening to sequencer-laced, synthesized songs by Tangerine Dream that call to mind crystal-grid mountains in a glistening computer world. Go figure.
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