A Quote by Harold Budd
Sometimes I write them down in musical notation as a trigger to remind me about certain directions to go. Or I can be specific about a sound I'm looking for.
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In fact, quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and, you can't notate that. You can't notate the sound of "St. Elmo's Fire." There's no way of writing that down. That's because musical notation arose at a time when sound textures were limited. If you said violins and woodwind that defined the sound texture; if I say synthesizer and guitar it means nothing - you're talking about 28,000 variables.
The notation is more important than the sound. Not the exactitude and success with which a notation notates a sound; but the musicalness of the notation in its notating.
I write about what is getting to me at the time, about the things you need to talk about, but which would sound silly if you sat down and told them to your friend. I only write for myself, to get my emotions out. It's self-therapeutic.
I think our particular sound has come by just not adhering to any specific sound. For us, it's about the song, and being able to fit in to what is appropriate. When we sit down, we're not talking about what type of band we're gonna be within a specific genre - there's a uniqueness to all of us individually that throws putting anything in a box out the window.
One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it.
I know I have patterns and I've always tried hard to avoid them. There are definitely certain things in my music, if I'm looking back, "Well, that was a period where I was experimenting with a certain kind of chord structure or a certain kind of sound." I've tried really hard, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what that sound, what that tangible sound of "me" is.
It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.
Someone wanted me to write a profile for ESPN about the commissioner of baseball, and I said, "He's just some suit! Some Republican. No!" I mean if you want me to write about baseball, boxing or football, I'll write about those things because I watch them, I think about them a lot and I like them. But I don't want to write about Barry Bonds.
Not to any really influential effect, but certainly there have been comments that have surprised me. It's surprising sometimes to get particular perspectives on your work, and it's enlightening sometimes to know that non-writers and readers out there have certain assumptions about everything that I both want to keep in mind and want to forget about why I write, and about the connection between me as a private person and the stuff that I think about on the page.
I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.
The main thing you worry about is just coming up with songs at all. I don't sit down and write stuff like certain writers do. They think about what they are going to write first and then they write it. I just get what comes in at me. It's like I'm a musician and if I can keep my mitt on, I can catch the balls that come at me.
Sometimes I write it down, sometimes I freestyle. I get lines coming to me randomly throughout the day and I'll jot it down and build on that. If I get a line that's about love, it starts up a whole love verse... And if a beat speaks to me, it's like I already know what to write.
Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.
I don't want people to feel like they have to state something in a certain way because so-and-so might be around on the site. It's nice when people have a forum to discuss things among themselves. If you had a certain special-occasion blog I could probably contribute...I normally post on my site if I'm writing about music, and if you have a specific issue you're addressing or you want me to write about certain topics, then I'd be happy to try.
I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines. Spaces within a line, double colons, slashes, are indications of pause, of breath, of urgency, they are not metrically exact as in a musical notation but they serve (I hope) to make the reader think about the sound of the poem - just as traffic symbols, when driving, make us almost unconsciously aware of a steep hill, an intersection, an icy bridge etc.
Most of the time, the lyrics are kind of like my secret messages to my friends or my boyfriend or my mom or my dad. I would never tell them that these songs are about them or which specific lyric is about somebody. Often, when I sit down to write a lyric, it is in the heat of the moment, and something has just happened.
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