Let’s make good music

After about a month of hot, hot weather, the sky has opened up. It has been raining since yesterday evening and the beach looks quite gloomy even now, at 2pm.

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I’ve never heard of Rosanne Cash but her piece in the NYT about collaborating on a song is lovely. The rough copy of the song too. (Free registration required)

A note: It is not in my nature to co-write; I would rather go deep into the underworld alone, like Persephone looking for the pomegranate. The solitude and the simple satisfaction of having my own phrases laid out like beads on a necklace, while fine-tuning my melodies, suits me entirely. But I have pushed myself to be a co-writer more often in recent years and to force myself to forgo both the arrogance and the insecurity of the solo voice. My songwriting style is a synthesis of my strengths and my limitations, and occasionally it behooves me to borrow from someone else’s strength, and offer a key to the locked door of someone else’s limitations. I had to give up the pride of thinking myself only a journalistic songwriter, in order to become a better writer overall.

Joe and I have already weathered the most uncomfortable moment in co-writing: the take-back. Last year, he had asked whether I minded if he took a prose work of mine called “What Did You Dream This Time?” to use some of the lines and ideas in a song, which we would co-write. I agreed, but when he actually did it, and I heard my lines inside his song, I felt suddenly and acutely territorial. It took me a couple weeks, but I gathered the courage to tell him that I wanted those lines back, and that he couldn’t use them in the song. We got through it, preserved our friendship, and got back around to writing together again.

Sometimes, it’s good to work on a creative project together, eh.

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Tiket RM1 burn…