The 80s
Write What You Know?
I got married in the early 80s (not to my present wife, whom I married in 2003 and with whom I get along splendidly). That earlier marriage lasted about nine years. We didn’t have any kids. Some of you knew me then and knew my wife as well. It was great at times, but in the end it didn’t work out.
Song lyrics are always a real challenge — every part of the process of writing them. What should the song be about? What do I have to say on that topic anyway? Who cares? Where should the rhymes be (if any)? How do I make a line of lyrics that not only fits the melody but says something coherent and “scans” (the emphases are in the right place, the words aren’t clumsy to sing, etc.)? And on and on. Not that the music isn’t hard, but somehow it’s a bit more natural for me.
I also complain to myself all the time that my lyrics are too prosaic, too talky, that I’m too explicit, that I don’t leave enough space for the listener to fill in their own interpretations.
And…I seem to write a lot about ideas (Hope, When, Caramel and Fleur de Sel, Feeling It Now) rather than about real events. There are exceptions: The Jake Shuffle is about my grandfather, and Can’t Take Mississippi has some veiled references to things from my upbringing in the South (like fire ants and eating lots of butter).
My impression is that the “write what you know” dictum is sometimes maligned by folks who teach writing, but I figure it’s not a bad idea for me to try, even it does skew towards the prosaic versus the poetic (hard to do it all in one song). Anyway, I thought I’d write a song about that failed marriage in the 80s and to be a bit more specific than usual. I don’t name any names, but I do say some stuff about my experience more directly than is usual for me. It feels odd to be putting some fairly personal stuff out there rather explicitly. I feel a little exposed, which isn’t my comfort zone. And I wonder what those of you who knew us back then will think.
Neither the song nor this post is really about the 80s, although that was the NYC milieu in which my wife and I got together and tried to build a life together. A lot happened: We had an eclectic crew of friends whom we ran around with, we went to see live music and the theater, we traveled to France and to South America, I produced and directed and performed a “performance art” piece in the East Village, I composed music for the very talented performer John Kelly, my wife had an office in the Empire State Building for a time, I got a cool job at Bell Labs and we cruised around Manhattan on Malcom Forbes’ yacht while eating 80s-worthy hors d’oeuvres. One highlight was when we got married in the Moondance Diner, which was just our regular local joint, not yet the setting for Spiderman’s exploits and other noteworthy events that it became known for later.
Well, HAH, none of these particular details are actually in the song. So where do I come off saying that I’m writing “what I know”? I guess I’m hoping that I’ve pared it down to those essentials that are worth sharing. Too many details can be kinda talky — and I did say I’m working on that. I hope that listeners can find their own personal connections to what I’m talking about, and cramming it with too many details can maybe interfere with that … I think.
So here’s the song, decorated with some “impressionistic” eye candy. It's what I know ... about that time in my life:
Please send me your thoughts about anything, either in the comments on this page or by emailing me directly at guy@storytownband.com. And go ahead and share this post with a friend who might enjoy it. Do it!
Until next week….