Beyond confession 1: Collaboration
After I wrote last week’s post about ‘No fear (1975)’, I realised, a little embarrassingly, that all three posts so far have discussed songs of a ‘confessional’ sort; i.e. songs about the songwriter.
I have to admit that a lot of my songs are confessional. That’s hardly a surprise given that one of the things I like about songwriting is the way that it helps me interpret and make sense of my own life. After all, as Socrates said, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. Then again, he may have been a self-obsessed middle-aged man too!
One of the ways that I try to escape the confessional (as it were), is through collaboration. As I wrote in the ‘About’ section of this site, my songwriting began in the context of a project (www.voxliminis.co.uk) that uses collaborative songwriting to spark change and build community in and around criminal justice. In these contexts, the songwriting is often collaborative in two senses.
Firstly, people work in pairs, usually where one is an experienced songwriter and musician and the other is not. Often, but not always, the experienced person helps the inexperienced writer to explore and express their experiences or their take on a particular issue or topic. Sometimes, they both bring experiences or opinions into dialogue in a slightly different sort of collaboration.
Secondly, the pairs are part of a larger group (usually of 8-10 people, so 4-5 pairs) who form of temporary community that goes on the songwriting journey together, comparing notes along the way and, always in my experience, sharing each others’ joy at what they manage to create.
This week’s song — Trouble — is the product of a different and, for me at least, fascinating kind of collaboration-at-a-distance.
My friend Ruth Story is a gifted photographer who occasionally publishes zines; beautiful artefacts that combine her pictures with intriguing captions. Ruth and I share quite similar musical tastes (as we discovered by showing up — virtually of course — at some of the same online gigs in lockdown). So, it seemed a natural thing to try to write something together. I asked Ruth if she could provide words or lyrics that I could mess around with. Without any explanation, she sent me what I later discovered were unused captions left over from her latest zine, which was entitled ‘this is fragile’.
I edited these words (very lightly and very little) into the following lyrics.
Lyrics
I placed my heart into your hands asked “will you hold this gently?”
You said you would but to tell the truth, I don’t think you know your own strength
I felt you fade, I watched you drift as you tried to read the sunstone
You would not let me sneak a look: Did you even know where we were going?
And what am I even in this for, when I feel an ill-wind blowing?
And what do you even need me for? And where is this ship going?
I took your hand on Brighton beach; I told you unknown secrets
And knew right then, among the stones, a heart lost in deep trouble
And what am I even in this for…
I want to be here -- be here in this mess
I’ve always stood -- with my arms wide open
But maybe there’s no way to sail, when the mast’s already broken
And what am I even in this for…
Meaning?
What do these lyrics mean? Well, your guess is as good as mine, really. But to me, they suggested a relationship in which a traveller has lost trust in someone she had seen as a reliable confidante and navigator. She feels that they are adrift. And the question she confronts is whether or not to change that situation.
Musically, I think I had been listening to Bruce Springsteen around the time that I came up with the tune. I wanted a simple chord structure that made good use of repetition, but that also allowed me to stretch my vocal range (to breaking point, you may well say!) in trying to convey a rising sense of anxiety.
Link
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the live demo of the track, which is now available on the ‘Videos’ page and on You Tube here: https://youtu.be/8EIKMzTKUgg
(c) Fergus McNeill and Ruth Storey 2021. All rights reserved.