– Sully (aargh, not Sally as my Dragon voice activation software styled it a couple of paragraphs up)

I think your connection between writers and musicians is quite insightful. I am an academic who specializes in literary criticism, and I scrutinize lyrics with a great deal of care as well. You’re dead on in that the medium has its own rules; a musician can evoke emotion with the tenor of his/her voice, with the chording…. there doesn’t even have to be words at all. (I’m not just talking about the old-standbys of Beethoven, Mozart and Vivalidi; see Glenn Frey’s beautiful “I Dreamed There Was No War” on the Eagles’ new album Long Road Out of Eden).

We know that poetry has a lot more leeway in this regard as well; it’s only the writers of prose who must continually mind their comma splices and verb tenses. Why? Because grammar mistakes distract from the story and remind us of its artifice. We don’t want to be reminded that there’s some guy typing this out on a keyboard, drinking coffee, getting ulcers, agonizing about deadlines, and making mistakes. We wish to be transported beyond that reality into the world the author creates. In non-fiction, the grammar errors simply take away from the ethos of the author entirely. Regardless of the intelligence of the author, all it takes is one reversal of “their” and “there” to induce cringing.

The rules are different for musicians because we want different things from them. Seeing the person behind the music doesn’t remind us of its artifice – quite the opposite. It reinforces its authenticity. We look at them onstage and we want to see beyond the lyrics to the person underneath – not necessarily the artist per se, whom we cannot truly know, but the “everyman” he represents. We want to see him up there, pouring out his heart, soaring to the heights, plunging to the depths, and taking us with him for the ride.

When I read Pride and Prejudice, I connect with Elizabeth Bennet, not Jane Austen. There’s a protective barrier between creator and creation. That does not exist for the musician. When he sings those songs, he has to sell them himself. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t write the song, or if he’s telling a story without having lived it. When he’s up there, he needs to make the audience BELIEVE he’s lived it. That’s how we connect with the music – through the performance of the artist (whether in person, or on a recording). It’s why most covers don’t work. The song can be sung perfectly, note for note, but if we don’t feel the emotion, it’s not going to have any power. Glenn Frey’s skill at conveying the emotion of the music is what has garnered him so many loyal fans. There are a lot of folks who can sing and play. There aren’t a lot of folks who can pack the punch of Glenn Frey.

Just my opinion. Thank you for your thought-provoking piece. I have read this with interest and look forward to more.

- Nancy K.

P.S. Don’t worry, you’ll get to see “Take It to the Limit.” The Eagles are infamously predictable regarding their set lists – once established at the first show, it’s set in stone (well, they occasionally drop some, to the hardcore fan’s dismay). Luckily the setlist they’ve created for this tour includes several new songs. I am especially eager to hear “Somebody” and “Waiting in the Weeds” live. Only a few more days for me – I’m seeing them in Chicago on the 25th!

– Sally

– Sully

“Words and music, word man, words and music”

☮

I have been involved in some group creativity in the past…one such group was stationed on the Paul F. Foster many moons ago, floating around the ocean. We had guitarists, artists, writers and a couple of poets…every night the group gathered and worked and shared. Some of us are still in touch after decades…

D

– Sully

“We can’t just inform, we have to arouse.” Indeed, a necessary goal of any writer or musician; and it is not so only for the benefit of readers. Your statement that “anything beyond the level of a shop manual written in Taiwan should pay attention to the silent music of words” reminds me of a writer of a Redstone missile “user’s” manual that tired of the mundane language typical of such publications. In a portion of a manual that had a first column listing such instructions as TURN THE IGNITION CONTROL TEST SWITCH TO THE OFF POSITION and a second column listing their associated results such as THE RED SAFETY WARNING LIGHT WILL GO OUT, his long-festering need to express something in a more poetic style overwhelmed his natural conservativeness and prompted him to enter: THE INTENSITY OF THE RED SAFETY WARNING LIGHT WILL DIMINISH TO A POINT WHERE IT CAN NO LONGER BE OBSERVED.

Such attempts at novel creativity don’t always have a positive result, however. One attempt led another writer to refer to equipment mounted in huge fire control trailers that controlled the launches of missiles at nonpermanent launch sites as being mounted on the trainer’s “curb side” and “street side.” A number of these trailers were then sent to the UK.

Amalgam

– Sully