Last night, there was a show-and-tell, in which the writers read and the artists showed slides of their work. Most of all, I enjoyed listening to the artists describe their work. They are unapologetic about their obsessions, and unquestioning. “I’m interested in furniture.” “I’m interested in props.” “I’m interested in machines that either work or work metaphorically.” “I’m interested in myth-making.” “I’m interested in making a life-sized colossal squid.”
-Amanda Rea
Songwriters can learn from artists in at least one regard: by trusting their instincts and hunting for supplies.
“Wow, I could do something cool with that.”
Artists are lucky, because they have a really fun source of inspiration to visit: the art supply store. Have you been in one recently? Did you see how many different brushes, canvases, surfaces, types of clay, sketchbooks, and tubes of paint they stock there? It’s staggering. I’m not even an artist, and I’m still inspired by all of these tools and surfaces.
Music stores get some of us equally excited—and rightly so. All those different instruments! All the guitar effects and synthesized textures of sound! Each is uniquely inspiring.
But what about the writing part of songwriting? When words are the medium, how could we possibly fondle our medium?
Since we can’t literally touch them and take them home, we have to focus and exercise a lot of imagination while we’re learning literary terms and techniques. One of my favorite things to do after dark (which falls early in Maine this time of year) is to browse either The Book of Literary Terms or The Book of Poetic Forms by Lewis Turco.
There. Now you know what a literary geek does for excitement on Friday night.
Reading one of Turco’s books is like browsing an enormous art supply store, with shelves upon shelves of information about metaphor, rhyme schemes, sensory description, plot, character development, art movements, famous authors, exotic poetic forms… the word painter’s equivalent of a thousand different canvases and colors.
Mixed Media
Like a visual artist, you can take any object and paint it into a scene, ponder its symbolism and personal meaning; take it apart, incorporate its pieces into a work-in-progress—and as Amanda Rea observed above, you can develop one intriguing idea into a full-blown obsession. Many fiction writers return to certain topics again and again, making art of them. My favorite writer, Jorge Luis Borges, often explored tigers, mirrors, secret codes, and labyrinths in his stories, and following this common thread makes his fiction a joy to read.
Go Searching…
- …for writing tools like simile, alliteration, parallel construction, etc.
- …for interesting images, people, and objects to use in your songs.
- …for the pet obsessions that make you and your art unique.
More on Searching
- Object Writing: Diving Deep for Song Ideas
- How to Use a Dream Dictionary to Generate Dozens of New Song Ideas
- The Courage to Paint Over Your Own Paintings
- Another Idea that Songwriters Can Steal From Painters: The Lyric Palette
I love Stephen Fry’s The Ode Not Taken, for poetry writing prompts and explanation of all aspects and great humor (he used to be Hugh Laurie’s…Dr. House’s….comedy partner).
No kidding! Thanks for the book recommendation, Ruth–I’m always looking for something to read. And I’ll need something new as soon as I’m done with Dante’s Inferno.
That’s a hell of a book…