I’ve been noticing lately that the art that interests me most is art about art. Art that deals specifically with the struggles artists go through, and especially art that comments on that through it’s form, not just it’s content. Like the song “Dynamic Calories” by Stephen Malkmus, where he chronicles an 80’s band through the years, and uses 80’s style guitar effects in a way that manages not to be cheesy because the little chorus&delay licks set the scene for the story. Or the movies “Clean” and “Late August, Early September” by Olivier Assayas, where he uses gaps in the narrative to show how shifts in personal relationships affect the perception and appreciation of works of art. Or the book “Days Between Stations” by Steve Erickson, where the fabric of reality seems to shift and tear when a filmmaker’s crowning achievement fails and is never completed.
I’m not sure if I identify with this kind of art because I relate to it as a musician who struggles to make something I’m proud of, or if this kind of art is inherently easier to appreciate because the writer or songwriter etc. is closer to these kinds of struggles himself…that is to say, these struggles are truer to that artist’s experience, so the art has a ring of truth. It’s probably a combination of the two. In any case, this is something I’m trying to explore with my own songwriting.
Now the obvious pitfall here is that nobody wants to hear a song from the songwriter’s perspective about how hard it is to write a song. God, that would be awful. What I would like to do, and what I’ve been trying to do, is write narrative songs about other (fictional) artists and their struggles, their failures, and the ways that their lives intersect with their art.
So I want to use all you Harolders. I’d like to approach some of you with certain questions about how you approach your art, where you look for inspiration, how you deal with “writer’s block,” how your creative endeavors inform and complicate the rest of your life… Have you ever had a “breakthrough,” a moment of clarity where what you do and where it fits in suddenly made sense? What sacrifices have you made through the years for your art? These are just starting points, I would have specific questions (I’m working on this.) I’d like to record short interviews with some of you, so I can also use the sounds of your voices in my music in some way.
The idea is for me to get past random ideas jotted down on torn pieces of newspaper and get more specific. You’d have to be willing to let me use your lives for my music (names changed, of course; amalgamations of multiple people likely.) Ideally, the exercise would give me a finite set of material to work with that has a common theme, so I could make an entire cycle of songs that all relate to each other in a cohesive way. And, ideally, talking about your art with a stranger might give you some perspective on what you do and why you do it, and get you thinking about it in a different way. If I manage to break through the wall that’s keeping me from writing songs I’m proud of by writing songs about your experiences breaking through that wall, well, that would be a neat trick.
Let me know in the comments if you’re interested. I’ll be around week2.
Jacob Kart
