When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life. So I bit my tongue. I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.
I couldn't write a song to save my life. I wouldn't say that I started to panic, but I was definitely getting frustrated. I couldn't even cross a t or dot an i.
I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.
Now the bright morning-star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
The place that I worked I used to joke about it. There was a, every morning at 10:30 I'd come into work and I'd go into this cubicle that had a little upright piano and fake white cork bricks on the wall, and a little slate that came out of the wall that you could actually write on. And a door that locked from the outside. Every day from 10 to 6, we'd go in there and pretend that we were 13 year old girls and write these songs. That was the gig.
This song of mine
Is a song of the vine
To be sung by the glowing embers
Of wayside inns,
When the rain begins
To darken the drear Novembers. and
For the richest and best
Is the wind of the West
That grows by the Beautiful River;
Whose sweet perfume
Fills all the room
With a bension on the giver. and
When you ask one friend to dine,
Give hime your best wine!
When you ask two,
The second best will do.
We just do what we do, we're grateful every night when there's people in front of the stage and singing our songs back at us. We're all fortunate to be able to be doing this for a living, so we're just grateful to be here and we just do what we do and we let the people decide.
Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands. Curtsied when you have and kissed The wild waves whist, Foot is featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bear. Ariel's song, scene II, Act I
Sometimes I'm trying to communicate a feeling. Sometimes I can't piece it together into any kind of coherant thesis. I'm just trying to evoke some kind of mood, and put some kind of idea in somebody's head. If Marshall McLuhan or Harold Innis were looking at it, they would tell you that the genre of rock music isn't the best way to deliver a political message because it distorts it, it makes it into entertainment. Perhaps the best political message is just to speak it to somebody. I think that's something I'm always writing about in songs, just how to mediate, how to present something.