How long for a song?

Sweet Hubby and I watched "Bohemian Rhapsody" last night, and it got me thinking: I wonder what it actually looks like when someone writes a song.  In movies, it's always made to look so easy.  Songwriters in films come up with one phrase or a few notes and suddenly have the song in their heads and down on paper.  But my experience as a writer is not like that at all.  The closest to the real thing I can remember seeing is Jane Fonda pounding away on a broken manual typewriter in "Julia".  

I've only written a couple of songs, but they are of the "A-B-A-B-A and so on" variety, with about as much nuance as a Sousa march, clump-clump-clump.  What does it take to come up with a song a real song with verses and chorus and bridges, a song that builds in intensity or tells a story, a brand new arrangement of a very limited number of notes and possible tempi?  

I know what it takes to write a play, at least the way I write a play.  At first it's almost always being caught up in a spark, an excitement, the dazzling promise of a new story or character idea that flows onto the paper in a rush until the heat has cooled.  The next day, reading the initial draft can sometimes ignite the same fire.  If it's a short play, sometimes two days (for some people two hours) is enough to get down a rough draft.  Full lengths take longer, but not much longer when the fever is upon me.

But then comes rewriting, editing, refining, polishing, exploring, trying trying trying.  A completely different part of the brain has to come forward and make itself heard.  Conscious choices have to be made.  Characters have to be forced to do what the story needs them to, not just whatever impulse inspires them to.  Delicious lines have to be cut and new lines need to be invented, and they have to have the same flavor, the same passion, the same flow as those first impulses.  There are readings, feedback from fellow writers, more rewrites.  Writing a play that's as good as I want it to be can take a long, long, long (I really don't want to admit how long for some of them) time.  So I do wonder, does it take that long, take that much work and sweat and thought, to write a song?  I'll have to ask Stephen Sondheim, should I ever run into him.  "So Stephen, how long did it take you to find a way to rhyme 'raisins' with 'liaisons' in a way that would scan correctly?"  I do wonder.

Dancing and death and stuff

As I was dancing my ass off recently, it occurred to me to tell Sweet Hubby that if I should happen to drop dead while dancing, he is to remember that I died completely happy, fully alive, and full of joy.

But when I think about our deaths, mine and SH's, I realized with a cold shudder that someone is going to have to clean up after us.  Someone, probably a niece or nephew, is going to have a come into our home and make a decision about every single tchotchke, scrap of paper, utensil, t-shirt, earring, photo, etc.  To whomever she or he or they end up being, first of all, my deepest apologies, and second of all, my deepest thanks.  Do what you like with all of it.  Keep it, share it, sell it, donate it, throw it away.

I've hoped that someone might enjoy our vast DVD collection, but now I realize the younger generations stream their movies.  Same for our CD collection.  Same for our book library.  Our stuff is the stuff of an older generation, a different time, already artifacts.  It's hard to imagine anyone will want any of it.  It's too bad just to throw it away, but if someone keeps it who doesn't want it, then it is clutter and a burden. 

Sigh.  I wish we had less stuff.

Is it all just going to end up on a trash heap?  Or worse, in the ocean?  Even if we start lightening our load of possessions, as we do in very small increments, it still goes somewhere on the planet.  SH does his best to find someone who wants what we're giving away, and that's reassuring.  But most of it is going to outlive us even after it has outlived its usefulness.  I am painfully aware of how all this stuff burdens not just us and those who come after us, but the planet as well.  It already exists, so me getting rid of it just moves it someplace else.  

Why do we have all this stuff?  My closet is full of clothes I don't wear.  Every article is nice and fits and is perfectly fine, but I tend to wear the same clothes over and over, so too many garments hang there unused.  I keep photos I don't look at and books I haven't read (yet, is what I tell myself) and scraps of paper with ideas for writing and mementos of occasions I barely remember.  And that's just my stuff.  SH's stuff triples the load.  I feel terrible for whomever has to deal with it in the end, and even worse for this poor planet who will have to deal with it into eternity or until full decomposition, whichever comes first.

I think we humans hold onto the artifacts of our lives, maybe partly because we want to remember our pasts, but mostly because we don't want to become nothing, don't want to face how ephemeral we truly are.  Our stuff says "I was here, I was this kind of person, I did this, I owned that."  This is a first world problem; not only a problem plaguing members of the first world, but a problem with which we first worlders plague the rest of the world.

Simple - but not easy

 As insipid a saying as it is, and as often as I sneered at Nancy Reagan for promoting it, finally it does come down to just saying no.  I'm speaking specifically about kicking an addiction, but the same simple wisdom applies to making all kinds of personal changes.  Say no to playing one more round of Candy Crush.  Say no to eating unhealthy foods.  Say no to being an asshole.  Say no to putting up with what you hate.

Join all the programs you are drawn to, go to rehab and therapy and meetings.  It will still, finally, come down to that moment when you say no.

If all that no feels too negative, then say yes.  Yes to taking a walk through the woods, to reading a book, to calling up a friend, to getting around to mowing the lawn, cleaning out the refrigerator, visiting Grandma, learning a new language, sitting quietly with a cup of tea or glass of wine.  Yes to eating what you know is good for you.  Yes to being more patient with your kids.  Yes to quitting the job you can't stand and trusting yourself to find another, better one.

It always has and always will come down to me - and you - making a decision and making it stick.  It's that simple.

Damn.

Observations about Randy Newman. Also Dumbo.

A friend recently, and rather inexplicably, sent me the first season of Saturday Night Live on DVD.  I'm not sure why.  We hadn't talked about it, and I was never a consistent viewer.  But I thought it would be fun to take a look at this phenomenon, this long-running show, to see what all the fuss was about.

In the first episode, Randy Newman was one of the musical guests.  He sang his lovely "Sail Away", a song I've heard many times.  For some reason, I'm not sure why, perhaps because of my growing political awareness, I heard it with sharper ears this time, and discovered an element of the song I'd previously missed.  I don't know if it was the lyric "You'll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree", or the refrain "We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay" that made me perk up and pay attention, but I suddenly understood that this song is sung from the point of view of a slave trader trying to convince Africans to come to America, where they would, of course, not be as happy as monkeys in monkey trees but would be sold in auction, Charleston Bay being a notorious slave trading port back in the bad old days. 

I've mentioned this observation to friends since then, and for some of them it is a revelation, as it was to me, and to some, it is more "You're just now recognizing that?"  Sly Randy Newman, hiding a harsh, devastating message in a lyrical, sweet-sounding song.  Makes me wonder what else I've missed, in Newman's songs and in other artworks in general.  Artists always have something to say; pretty pictures are never pretty only.

And speaking of observations, this next one is from a bit longer ago and has not been accepted by everyone I've shared it with.  I grew up watching and delighting in the classic old Disney animated films. and as an adult have collected them on DVD.  Many of them contain cringe-worthy moments or characters, such as the awful "What Makes a Redman Red?" musical number from my beloved "Peter Pan".  As a child, of course, I had accepted that song as a fun characterization of Indians.  But watching and hearing it as an adult, I actually gasped at how insulting it is to native peoples.

Anyway, when I purchased "Dumbo" and watched it for the first time in more than a half-century, again watching with more politically awakened eyes, I saw something which once again made me gasp with understanding.  The adult elephants in the movie all have small ears, which makes them Indian elephants.  These are the female elephants who ridicule Dumbo and his mother, Mrs. Jumbo.  Dumbo, of course, is ridiculous to them because of his big, floppy ears.  Those ears mean he is an African elephant.  Oh my gosh.  Mrs. Jumbo had sex with an African.  

Could it be that this is the actual reason he and his mother are unacceptable and unaccepted?  Was this racist element conscious in the minds of the writers?  It seems pretty obvious to me now, and there are those characters the crows, clearly supposed to be Negroes, to cement my belief that this story is racist in the most casual, and therefore the most dangerous, way.  Which is exactly how racism has lived in this country for centuries: acceptable, unexamined, usually not even conscious, and all the more insidious because of it. 

Wow.