Play Your Song
The power of music is about its ability to etch something deeply into our minds. How often does the refrain of a song work its way into our head (over and over again)? It may appear arbitrary and random. It is not.
Where did that song come from? How did it get to me in this moment?
Songs are persistent. Some color a whole season, some a particular series or event, others a moment or a day. The refrain repeats almost like a voice from the Spirit reminding, consoling, and even guiding us somehow.
A lyrical song is like the seeds of a farmer. The lyrics go out like a random sprinkling of seeds thrown down a certain walking lane. What will happen to those seeds? Will there be enough rain? Will it flood? Will it rain at all? Will birds come down and eat the seeds before they are planted?
So many scenarios can happen to those seeds. How rare and how wonderful a miracle it really is when a seed makes it. Once the seed makes it into the soil, it does what it is planted to do. Those refrains are like that seed. They make it through all the hoops to get into our subconscious.
That is special (almost untouchable) space.
Of course songs can get worn out, spread too thin from the beginning (by our own endless repeats or from its popular use in media). The very thing that attracted us to it can eventually repel us from it. But this contempt for the familiar is not the song’s problem, it’s ours.
As a matter of form we tend to despise what is common. We search constantly for something “new,” for something better, or other. We (it seems especially in America, but perhaps everywhere now), innovate to our own demise. We forget to enjoy a thing for what it is.
So instead we incessantly reinvent classic ideas, melodies, progressions, themes - over and over and over again. In our lust for "new," we still plaigarize the past (sometimes we acknowledge this, sometimes we don’t). Herein lies is the tension between our craving for originality and the need for authenticity.
[Let's own the fact that we are simply putting the thing in our own voice.]
Are artists today really less creative or inventive? Of course not. But there are decades, and centuries in certain genres, that have already been tried. Sure technological advances have created new opportunities to create in digital sonic landscapes. But are there new notes or sounds?
Are we still not working with the same eight notes in every octave?
No matter how we dress up the notes, and their combinations, we can not invent new ones. But that should certainly not keep us from making beautiful new arrangements of them, timely pairing music with lyrics that speak powerfully to our unique time and place.
The naysayer may say, “What’s the point? We’ve already heard this.” Maybe. But not from me. And not in this time and place.
