songwriting

“A Song A Week” Challenge: Monthly Recap 3 of 12

Kate Sloan

Song 10/52: “Hey Ex-Boyfriend”

Lyrics:

Hey, ex-boyfriend – I forgive you
Everyone is trying to do their best
Thought I saw a future with you
That’s why, when you left, I got depressed

I only knew the knowledge that I knew
I only had what little sense I had
I only did the best that I could do
It turns out that my best still made me sad

Hey, ex-boyfriend – yeah, you hurt me
Barely ate or slept for like a month
You left me weak, depressed and dirty
But I can forgive you for that stuff

You only knew the knowledge that you knew
You only had the little sense you had
You only did the best that you could do
It turns out that your best still made me sad

Human beings have a habit
Of fucking up the frailest things
Love is hard – it hurts, but damn
It’s worth it for the joy it brings

We’re breaking hearts left and right
We’re crying face-down in our pillows at night
We’re loving no matter how horribly it stings

We only knew the knowledge that we knew
We only had the little sense we had
We only did the best that we could do
And sometimes our best still makes us sad

 

Songwriting diary:

I had a writing session where I was hopping around between a few different songs and none of them were really working. One was about fuckboys and one was about people who constantly ignore you in favor of their phone while you’re together (needless to say, there is some overlap between those two topics). But they just felt messy and chaotic, and I was running out of time in the week to get a song written, so I decided to table everything for the time being and just write something really simple.

I think I had the vague thought that I should just write about an ex-boyfriend because those memories have always worked well as songwriting inspiration in the past. So I started improvising by singing, “Hey, ex-boyfriend” (which, in retrospect, makes the whole song feel like a bit of a nod to “Hey There Delilah,” especially paired with the musical style). Something I’ve been talking about a lot in therapy over the past year is the idea that most people really are trying their best, most of the time; it’s just that we’re all constrained by our knowledge levels and life circumstances, so unfortunately “our best” isn’t always good enough to keep the people around us from getting hurt. This is a super calming concept for me to contemplate and I wanted to put it into a song. I knew right away that I wanted all three choruses to be the same but vary who they were speaking about (I, you, we) to emphasize the universality of this idea.

The second line of the chorus was originally “[I/you/we] only had the wisdom that [I/you/we] had,” but my spouse thought that this line landed weird and I kind of agreed. I brainstormed and tried out a bunch of other alternate phrases for that spot, including “silly heart” and “human heart.” But then, oddly enough, we did a phone sex scene involving hypnosis, intoxication, and impregnation (not that that has anything to do with the song, because it really does not), and almost immediately after my orgasm, this line popped into my head: “I only had what little sense I had.” I hadn’t even consciously been thinking about the song, but I guess my brain was sort of running it as a background task. I scrambled to my notes app and wrote down the line, and thus the song was completed.

Song 11/52: “I Know You Don’t”

Lyrics:

Walking out in the snow, where nobody knows me
I’ve got no place to go, ’cause nobody chose me
Tried to leave you alone; I feel like you owe me
So I’m out in the cold – damn, you expose me

The truth is I’m ready, I know that I’m ready to go
I know you don’t love me; I know you don’t want me to know

Tried to stop and say hey, but you’re not here yet
No clue what I would say – the way isn’t clear yet
Thought you’d love me someday; you haven’t come near yet
I feel you backing away – please don’t disappear yet

The truth is I’m ready, I think that I’m ready to grow
I know you don’t love me; I know you don’t want me to know

So let me go
I wanna be free
I wanna come back
I wanna be me
I wanna be everything loving you wouldn’t let me be

The truth is I’m ready, I know that I’m ready to go
I know you don’t love me; there’s no way that I couldn’t know
The truth is I’m ready, I’m ready to live and explore
I know you don’t love me; I know I don’t care anymore

 

Songwriting diary:

This was one of the most intuitive and easy songwriting processes I’ve had this year so far. I set aside a different song I’d been working on and just said to myself, “I’m gonna write a new song,” looked out at the snow falling outside my window, and immediately improvised the first couple lines of this one. I liked where it was going so I made a recording and built from there.

It’s interesting how a lot of the songwriting books and articles I’ve been reading have mentioned that “the song tells/shows you what it wants to be about.” I don’t always find that to be the case – sometimes I consciously choose a topic for the as-yet-unwritten lyrics of an already-devised musical component – but I do think that the best songs are the ones that announce their subject matter to me early on in the form of conjuring certain emotions or thoughts. Seeing the snow reminded me of this one night in my early twenties when I walked home from the train station, which took an hour, instead of taking the subway or streetcar, solely because that route would let me walk past the house of the person I was in love with at the time, and I was desperately hoping we might run into each other. For the entire duration of that walk, I was listening to the John Mayer song “In Your Atmosphere” on repeat, because it reflected a lot of what I was feeling, so I’m sure that the influence of that song is in this one somewhere.

I did some very minimal lyric editing the day after writing this (e.g. changing “your apathy froze me” to “I feel like you owe me“) but otherwise kept it pretty much the same. I wrote it on a Friday and only had until Sunday to record it so there wasn’t time for perfectionism. The night that I wrote it, I felt discouraged, thinking it wasn’t a good song, but fixing up the lyrics made me realize it’s actually pretty lovely. It just had to be polished, like a gem.

Song 12/52: “Vitamin D”

Lyrics:

Such a nice day – well, it would be nice for somebody
But I’ll just stay, stay inside and take my vitamin D
‘Cause any place I go can start to scare me
And nobody can know about the load I carry

Chorus:
Take a pill, take a sunshine pill
Never works, but I hope it will
Drink it down, take your vitamin D
It’s hard to swallow; it had better be

I remember feeling safe, feeling flirty and free
But I never saw this coming, this anxiety
It’s always in my bones and in my belly
And I don’t wanna know what it’s trying to tell me

(repeat chorus)

And oh, I’m tired
Of putting up walls
Of taking the fall
And oh, I’m tired
Of treating a symptom
Instead of the system

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

There have been so many weeks lately when I’ve gotten annoyed with whatever fragment-o’-song I was working on, put it down, and just decided to write a new/different one. This was one of those. I literally glanced around my room, spotted my bottle of vitamin D pills, and started improvising the first lines.

Gadd9 has been an evocative chord for me lately so it ended up being a prominent one in this song. Sometimes the mood of specific chords is what inspires me in a particular direction.

Been working on myself a lot in therapy lately and this song is kind of just an amalgamation of thoughts I’ve been having during that process – mostly, realizing how a lot of the stuff I’ve done for my mental health previously was just a band-aid on the real problem, which is trauma (“treating a symptom/ instead of the system“).

Song 13/52: “Love is Blind”

Lyrics:

We met in a pod
Thank God
Couldn’t have met any other way
‘Cause we got nothin’ in common, and that’s okay

Between us: just blue walls
They’re giving us blue balls

Love is blind
Love is patient and kind
Love is on camera
Love is unable to slam ya
Love is frustration
Love is subtextual masturbation
Love is not exactly what I had in mind
Love is blind

I think we have bigger problems
Do we even wanna solve ’em?
Don’t you hate how we spend our days?
Don’t you feel like rats in a maze?

Love is blind
Love’s whatever you can find
Love’s an “I guess so”
Guess I’m never saying “fuck yes,” so…
Love is whatever
Love is stress more than it’s pleasure
Love is fucking with my sanity, my mind
Love is blind

Don’t want any drama
But did you vote for Obama?
I hope you don’t hate me for this
But honey, are you an atheist?

Is this shit fundamental or inconsequential?
Should I be more gentle?
Am I going mental?
Can I marry my opposite?
Or should I reconsider it?

Love is blind
Love’s the tie that always binds
Love is devalued
Love is a way to corral you
Love is narcotic
Love is raking in the profit
Love is just another resource to be mined
Love is blind

 

Songwriting diary:

I was feeling really burned out on writing personal songs this week – or, as my spouse put it, I “need[ed] to give [my] psyche a break from being plumbed” – and had been pondering the psychology of dating reality shows like Love is Blind and Too Hot to Handle, so this song happened.

Like most of the songs I’ve written for this challenge, I started out just improvising whatever came to mind and built from there. The “blue walls/ blue balls” joke popped into my head unprompted (surprised I didn’t think of it while actually watching the show tbh) and that’s the moment when I laughed out loud and decided to buckle down and write the rest of the song instead of just pivoting to something more “respectable” or normal for me.

On a deeper level, this song feels like an expression of how I thought I knew what love was “supposed” to feel like prior to meeting my current partner, but in retrospect, some of my past romances were far more problematic, manipulative, and/or shallow than I actually realized at the time. Watching Love is Blind as someone who is nerdy about sex and dating, it’s hard not to think about the different “faces” of love and how some experiences that feel like love are actually not, or at least not in the way you thought they were.

“A Song A Week” Challenge: Monthly Recap 2 of 12

Kate Sloan

Song 6/52: “The Museum”

Lyrics:

Special treasures, secret pleasures
For the knowing, patient eye
Look at that painting of a woman fainting
Look at that print of a pie in the sky

Halls that echo – spacious, lavish, wide
Every oeuvre curated inside

I love to visit the museum
If there’s new works, let me see ’em
The Met and the Frick and the AGO
Wear some flat shoes and away we’ll go
Colosseum, mausoleum, you can keep ’em
My muse is amused by the museum

Old collections, introspections
Forced to face the world that was
Clear glass cases, databases
Peacefulest of spots because

Each exhibit has its own mystique
Is that sculpture Roman, French, or Greek?

I love to visit the museum
If there’s new works, let me see ’em
The Louvre, the Tate and the Guggenheim
There are way worse ways to spend some time
Colosseum, mausoleum, you can keep ’em
My muse is amused by the museum

I’d be remiss not to mention
The ideological tension:
You can’t claim to care about history
While stealing from other societies
Have you ever looked at your work through the prism
Of white patriarchal colonialism?
Now give back the gold or we riot
If you don’t believe me, then try it

I love to visit the museum
If there’s new works, let me see ’em
Some of these artists did not get paid
Did not get to access the fortunes they made
‘Cause you steal ’em, wheel and deal ’em
Now, return them
Or somebody may need to burn them

 

Songwriting diary:

I had been reading about this weekly songwriting game/challenge that Austin singer/songwriter Bob Schneider created, in which he sends out a song prompt via email to some musician friends each week and they all write something. I felt inspired by this and picked up the Oliver Sacks book I’m reading, in the hopes that I would come across a phrase that had an inherent musicality like Jeff Tweedy talks about in his book How to Write One Song. I literally hadn’t even read an entire page before I got to this linguistic gem, in a piece about his love for museums: “special treasures, secret pleasures, for the knowing, patient eye.”

I did go to the Met with my friend Steph a few months ago and did recently read a book on the Sackler family so I had some thoughts and feelings on museums to pull from. But mostly I just listened to words in my head, and dug through Thesaurus.com and Rhymezone.com to find the perfect words for each convoluted rhyme.

Initially I was only writing lyrics, assuming I might make them into something else down the line. I sat thoughtfully in my chair and crafted lyrics to a meter I was inventing but trying to stick to. I knew I wanted to at least acknowledge the shady practices (to say the least) of many museums, but didn’t decide in advance that the whole song would take a sharp left turn at the bridge.

Picked up my uke when the lyrics were done, just to see if anything would happen, and of course it did. I had smoked some weed beforehand which I think made my brain make more creative connections and focus more on puzzle-like wordplay, and also made the whole writing process feel playful and fun.

Song 7/52: “Subtweet”

Lyrics:

Nice clean hit of dopamine
My favorite neurotransmitter
It’s probably a bit of a problem
That all of my crushes are people I follow on Twitter

Craft that joke and send it out
Hoping to make you smile
I could be more direct, I guess
But I don’t think that’s really my style

Yes, this is a subtweet
If you know, you know
Who knows if we’ll ever even meet
Or if we’ll get ratio’ed

It’s hard not to stare at my phone
When everyone sexy is in it
It’s tough to tame the craving
It won’t leave me alone for a minute

Friendly reminder that I am available
I’m not a tease on the timeline
But my small talk is not sensational
You say “What’s up?” I say “I’m fine”

Yes, this is a subtweet
If you know, you know
I would slam that retweet
If you told me so

You’re in my DMs
But are we just friends?
Is it so unusual to swoon over your mutual?
Is the feeling mutual?
Or am I delusional?

Yes, this is a subtweet
If you know, you know
If you said we must meet
I could not say no

 

Songwriting diary:

I was idly thinking about my various Twitter crushes while trying to improvise the start of a song. Initially the lyrics contained way more Twitter jokes, but I felt like they’d get dated fast, so I cut most of them. “Friendly reminder…” is still in there, though, because it makes me laugh.

The song was originally in the keys of A♭ and F#, which are both wacky keys for the ukulele (all barre chords all the time!) so I was finding my hand would cramp up painfully by the bridge. Shifted it up one semitone so I could actually play it and it’s much better now.

The lyrics required multiple edits, large and small, after the initial writing session. (The first part of the second verse was originally totally different: “Wish I could call you in out of the cold/ Come over for Netflix & chill/ You laugh at my jokes and you make me feel bold/ In this essay I will…”) I am a more disciplined writer now than I used to be, so I no longer feel married to every song’s first set of lyrics and am more able to shift stuff around, cut things and make changes. But there is still a period of time after which the song feels “set” and it becomes much more difficult to change anything.

Song 8/52: “Can’t Stop”

Lyrics:

Wish I could focus on anything other than you
But baby, it’s clear that my brain won’t allow me to
Needless to mention, all my attention is split
The thoughts are invasive, and very persuasive, I admit

I can’t stop thinking about you
You cast a spell – now free me from it
I can’t stop thinking about you
I don’t know how, but I know I’ll overcome it

Meeting my deadlines, but barely – it’s happened all week
I feel like a failure, I feel like a certified freak
I turned off my phone and hid it inside of a drawer
But who could have known that it would just make me want more?

I can’t stop thinking about you
You cast a spell – now free me from it
I can’t stop thinking about you
I don’t know how, but I know I’ll overcome it
I can’t stop thinking about you
I don’t know why, but my mind won’t let you go
I can’t stop thinking about you
I can’t stop, I can’t stop

Every memory, every interaction
Has a reaction and fuels my attraction
I can’t take my eyes off your smirk
And I hope I don’t sound like a jerk
But I need to get back to my life and back to my work

I can’t stop thinking about you
You cast a spell – now free me from it
I can’t stop thinking about you
I don’t know how, but I know I’ll overcome it
I can’t stop thinking about you
I don’t know why, but my mind won’t let you go
I can’t stop thinking about you
It’s just too bad that I’ll never ever let you know

 

Songwriting diary:

One of the most satisfying parts of this challenge so far has been returning to my initial drafts of song lyrics, hours or days after writing them, to edit them, sometimes ruthlessly. I’ll cut or change anything that I just can’t make sound natural in my voice, or anything that catches my ear wrong every time I hear it in the demo, or anything that I’m at all morally or aesthetically uncertain about. I’ll stare into space (and at the Rhymezone and Thesaurus apps) until I come up with a better line. I’ll rebuild the mediocre parts around the parts I think are working, the parts that made me want to bother finishing the song.

This one reminds me of songs I used to “write” by singing into a tape recorder when I was a kid, in that I didn’t play any instruments yet so the style and feel of the songs I heard in my head were not constrained by the medium in which I performed them – so I would write songs that I “heard” internally as being punk, or orchestral, or expansively 1970s, or whatever. Similarly, this song I heard as a big, spaciously-produced, glimmering pop song, the likes of which someone like Carly Rae Jepsen might do.

Song 9/52: “Oh Robin”

Lyrics:

Oh Robin
How we miss your smile
It’s been a little while
How have you been? I wish I knew

Oh Robin
You always made us laugh
The world just isn’t half as fun these days
Not without you

I think of you a lot
Especially when I watch your movies
I think of what we lost
I think of all you made that moves me

Oh Robin
They say that you were sicker than we knew
Oh Robin
I know we never knew the real you

But we saw you from the crowd
Your legacy of love and laughter
I hope you’re in the clouds
Laughing in the great hereafter

Oh Robin
You had a spark of madness in your mind
Oh Robin
I hope you feel the love you left behind

We knew you as a star
A jester and a genie and a nanny
I don’t know where you are
But anyway, I really hope you’re happy

Oh Robin

 

Songwriting diary:

Had been messing around with this chord progression for a few days, and one day I just started randomly singing about Robin Williams over it. A bunch of different Robin-related things had happened that got me thinking about him (although, frankly, I think about him fairly often anyway). Matt and I watched Awakenings together, which I’ve seen many times but they hadn’t seen before; I’d been reading yet another Oliver Sacks books and wanted to revisit the movie they made from some of his case studies. Robin is absolutely wonderful in that movie. I also saw on Twitter, a day or two later, that there had been some hubbub when some guy posted a photo of Robin with a quote pasted over it that wasn’t something Robin had actually said, and his daughter Zelda jumped in to say that that wasn’t cool and that people have co-opted her dad’s likeness and message for their own purposes.

I wanted to write a song about Robin but didn’t want to do the very thing that Zelda was denouncing. So I focused on my own feelings about him. Initially the third verse contained an anecdote about the time my mom interviewed Robin for work while she was pregnant with me (“Oh Robin / Before I was born, you met my mum / You touched her pregnant belly / She asked you for advice; you gave her some“). I ended up returning to the lyrics the following day to edit them, and replaced that section with more general/hopefully relatable sentiments.

A lot of the writing process was improvisational and based on what I was hearing in my head, as per usual lately. The chord progression is a bit 1960s – it reminds me of some Sam Cooke and Beatles songs I learned back in the day – and has this circular/cyclical vibe that feels like a life cycle to me. I’ve noticed that when I write a song (or part of a song) that’s legitimately good, it’ll get stuck in my head intractably for hours or days; my brain keeps working on the puzzle of it, even when I’m not consciously focusing on it. Often I’ll have “solved” the part that was bugging me by the next day, seemingly through this subconscious processing.

The line about a “spark of madness” is a reference to my favorite quote of Robin’s: “You’ve got to be crazy; it’s too late to be sane… because you’re only given a little spark of madness, and if you lose that, you’re nothing.” I figured it made sense to quote him directly, both because Zelda said that’s what he would have wanted and because that’s just such a great fucking quote. I’ve always related to it, as someone who has struggled with mental illness but has nonetheless managed to routinely channel those struggles into creativity.

“A Song A Week” Challenge: Monthly Recap 1 of 12

Kate Sloan

At the beginning of 2022, I became acutely aware of how out of touch I’d been with a previous favorite hobby of mine, making music. I’ve always covered other people’s songs a lot but haven’t done nearly as much songwriting in adulthood as I did during my teen years and early twenties, when I would sometimes write multiple songs a month. So I challenged myself to write one song a week in 2022. They don’t have to be great, or even good; they just have to be songs.

As part of the challenge, I’ve been keeping a “songwriting diary” in which I reflect on the process involved in writing each song. Here are January’s songs, including videos, lyrics, and the diary entries I wrote about how they were created. Enjoy!

Song 1/52: “January 1st”

 

Lyrics:

There’s always a sense, on January 1st
That things will get better or things will get worse
A twist in the plot, a fulcrum for change
If you don’t get better, then you’ll only age
At least that’s what they say

Chorus:
Will I ever chill and be content?
Will I live in the moment, as if I knew what that meant?
Wish I knew what that meant

A list of my goals, as long as my arm
Debatable whether they help or they harm
The future is bleak and scary to ponder
I’d solve all its troubles if my mind wouldn’t wander

(repeat chorus)

It’d be easier to breathe
If dread and doubt stopped hounding me
It’d be easier to live
If something finally had to give

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

Hey bitch, some things to remember about this songwriting process:

  1. You wrote the whole thing in less than 30 minutes, after listening to part of an interview with Paul McCartney about songwriting.
  2. The melody and words of the first part came to you organically and you built from there.
  3. There were 2-3 moments when you considered stopping/scrapping it because it wasn’t working, but you pushed through and deliberately finished it anyway.
  4. You’d set out thinking it was a song in E, but you listened to the melodies your voice naturally sang and realized it was in B.
  5. You used Rhymezone.com, Thesaurus.com, and your voice memo app, but otherwise ignored your phone throughout the process.

(Maybe I should do a little postmortem journal entry like this for all this year’s songs…)

Song 2/52: “Bi Enough”

 

Lyrics:

Chorus:
Am I bi enough?
What would it mean to be bi enough?
Do I wear enough rainbows? Did I buy enough?
How else can I prove that I’m bi enough?

I met this cute guy
We were hitting it off – he was good in bed
I said, “Hey, I’m bi”
And watched his eyes pop right out of his head

I’m sick of the stereotypes
I’m sick of the biphobic jokes
Don’t you know that jokes are supposed to be funny, folks?

(repeat chorus)

I met this cute gal
We were hitting it off, til it went awry
I told her “I’m bisexual”
She broke my heart, she thought I’d leave her for a guy

I’m sick of the stigma and shame
I’m so sick of being erased
Being a bigot to bi folks is a fucking waste

(repeat chorus)

There might never come a day
When impostor syndrome goes away
So I guess it’s up to me
To be the best bi I can be

Am I bi enough?
Maybe we don’t ask about the “why” enough
Like why I even wonder if I’m bi enough
By the way, if you are bi, you’re bi enough

 

Songwriting diary:

Had been chatting with my therapist about bisexual impostor syndrome and later had the thought that I should stop doubting my queerness because I am clearly “a gay-ass grown woman,” a phrase that I wrote into a line that actually didn’t even make it into the final song because the different components felt too separate so I wrote a different prechorus instead. (It originally went, “Never cared much about your sex chromosome/ I’m a gay-ass grown woman with impostor syndrome.”)

The melody of the chorus came naturally, like I was hearing it in my head, as these things often do. Verses were similar. I returned to it the day after writing most of it to write the new prechoruses and bridge, which made it much better, I think.

Song 3/52: “Old Friend”

 

Lyrics:

I still love you, my old friend
I know we said we’d call it quits
Said I’d gotten over you again
I guess my heart is on the fritz

Do you miss my kisses?
And being so much closer?
Do I know what this is?
I’m sorry to say no, sir

If we gave it one more shot
I wonder what we’d find
I still think you’re smart and hot
You haven’t changed my mind

Do you ever think of me
When you’re in bed beside your lady?
Or am I not your cup of tea?
Not a yes, but maybe

I wish I had a magic spell
I wish I had a wand of gold
You warm me up, I wish you well
I always left you cold

 

Songwriting diary:

Was thinking about how I used to feel, when I was about 23 and in hopeless unrequited love with a friend of mine, which was awful. (Conjuring up old emotional memories is helpful for songwriting when one’s current emotional situation isn’t quite as dramatic.)

I didn’t really like this song that much when I wrote the first draft of it on December 23rd. Set it aside and worked on other stuff instead.

But then on January 13th I had it stuck in my head, listened to it several times, and decided all it needed was for me to 1) rewrite a couple lines of lyrics and 2) nail down the weird-ass melody. I could hear how I wanted it to sound in my head but hadn’t nailed the singing of it. So I practiced the odd interval jumps until I more-or-less had it, and it sounded much better.

Once again, this challenge is teaching me that a big part of writing songs is FINISHING songs – I’ve always been okay at generating initial ideas, but the more difficult and sophisticated process of pushing through doubt, uncertainty, etc. to finish the song is the part I’ve always been less good at, and this challenge is helping me hone that skill especially.

Song 4/52: “Spin the Bottle”

 

Lyrics:

Spin the bottle, going ’round the circle
Shyness is my burden and my hurdle
When it lands on me
I look around and see who I see:
A boy who sparkles, dressed in royal purple

And he’s got a friendly face
He smells like beer and leather
And I’m feeling out of place
We put our lips together
The voice inside my head
Goes quiet as a whisper
And my only thought instead
Is “Wow, what a good kisser”

Spin the Bottle captures my attention
Its magic can defy my comprehension
When it lands on me
I kiss the first lady I see
Her lips are from a lovelier dimension

And I kiss her through a grin
My senses are elated
And I try to take her in
I’m so intoxicated
Am I doing what I’m s’posed to?
I guess it doesn’t matter
‘Cause this goddess I’m so close to
Her kiss can kill the chatter

Spin the Bottle parties make me nervous
But nervousness is nice when it’s on purpose

 

Songwriting diary:

A glance through my Facebook “memories” reminded me about these parties I used to go to in my early twenties, where people would play Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare. It was one of the only instances I’ve ever experienced of “icebreaker games” actually breaking the ice, i.e. functioning as a way for shy wallflowers like me to actually integrate themselves into the social groups present at the party even if we knew absolutely no one when we arrived.

I truly don’t remember how this song was written because I went into a fugue-y flow state as soon as I started. But I came back to it a day or two later to fix up some of the lyrics (“she’s strong, with velvet skin” is on the cutting room floor, among other things, because it sounded awkward in my mouth). Spent a while contemplating whether it needed a bridge, a departure into a totally different mood or style somewhere in the middle, but ultimately I like how it has this plodding rhythm that feels like my hardened heartbeat when my turn is coming up soon in a game of Spin the Bottle.

Song 5/52: “Brave Little Girl”

 

Lyrics:

Everything is scary now – the streets, the heat, the news
We’re all feeling wary now – the fright is like a bruise

When will our cortisol calm back down?
Will we see peace and accord?
When will we stop feeling broken-down?
Don’t we deserve a reward?

Chorus:
Where’s my treat? I have been a brave little girl!
Strong and sweet – aren’t I a peach? Aren’t I a pearl?
Nose to the grindstone, pedal to the metal
I have got a backbone, I will never settle
Where’s my treat? I have been a brave, brave little girl!

Sorry I ignored your text – it’s next, I swear
It’s just that I’m distracted – it’s not that I don’t care

All my excuses are nothing new
I’m not in the mood for flirtation
We’re getting tired of just getting through
Don’t we deserve compensation?

(repeat chorus)

Imagine a sunny day
I know it seems far away
But hold the thought in your head
Without hope, we’re basically dead

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

Wrote this based on the prompt “Where’s my treat? I have been a brave little girl!” which was given to me by one of my Instagram followers (not sure if they want to be identified so I have redacted their username here). I had no idea when I wrote this that the phrase is apparently a TikTok meme, but the song definitely fits the vibe that many TikTokers are giving the phrase so I think it works.

I was looking for the natural musicality of the phrase, listening for its natural rhythm, which is an idea I picked up from Jeff Tweedy’s book How to Write One Song. I made a recording of the very first thing I sang, and it was kind of an ideal melody so I built from there.

Took me about 45 minutes to write the rest of it. I listened very hard to the song in my head, which suggested to me the rhythms before I even wrote words for them, as sometimes happens. The key change in the bridge involved listening to the chords in my mind and just figuring out what they were, which was the most time-consuming part of the process.

I never really consciously decided to write about COVID, the current state of the world, etc.  but a lot of these songs at least allude to it, because how could they not?

How I Find Creative Inspiration When Life Becomes Monotonous

Kate Sloan

I’ve been reading a lot of books and articles on songwriting lately as I dive back into it for my 2022 “A Song A Week” challenge, and there’s a pretty fundamental divide between people who think “writer’s block” is a bullshit excuse you give when you just don’t wanna sit and write, and people who think a lack of inspiration is a valid reason for not writing.

I fall on different sides of this debate depending on when you ask me, and what art form we’re talking about (I write nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and songs, all of which have somewhat different needs in terms of inspiration). But for the most part, I believe inspiration is something you can conjure, not necessarily something you have to wait around for, praying and pondering until it “strikes.” The important thing to know is: your life and thoughts aren’t always going to be rife with creative prompts, but that doesn’t mean other people’s lives and thoughts can’t inspire you.

This has been a vital lesson for me throughout my life, but especially when I was essentially trapped inside for extended periods, as with many Canadian winters as a freelancer (including this one, during a pandemic), or when I was so depressed and demotivated that my own life temporarily contained none of the passion and intrigue that would normally inspire me. It’s then that I have to be extra proactive about finding inspiration and incorporating it into my work.

Here are some methods I use, all of which may work better for some art forms than others, but all of which can always stir something inside me, something that might transform into a blog post or an essay or a poem or a song.

 

1. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes

This is so crucial. I’ve been doing this for a long time. When my own romantic life was so barren as a teen that I struggled to find any inspiration for songs, for example, I would watch romantic TV shows or read romantic fanfiction and write from the headspace of a beloved fictional character about their situation.

You can “mind-meld” with a character like this, or with a real person (e.g. “How does Ariana Grande feel about all the Pete Davidson memes popping up everywhere?”), or with a theoretical person (e.g. “How do I think 19th-century sea captains, 20th-century party strippers, or 21st-century high school kids might feel about this pandemic?”). In a way, I think this exercise is really about getting more in touch with your own thoughts through the lens of someone else’s.

 

2. Borrow someone else’s idea

Now, I am not advocating for plagiarism (I’m strongly against it, in fact), but rather for the creative process of incorporating a kernel from someone else’s creation into something of your own.

Sometimes, for example, I try to write new lyrics for a song I already know and love, replicating the rhythm and meter but changing all of the words and what the song is about – and once I have my lyrics, then I can make an entirely new melody for them. I might also use a famous quote as a jumping-off point for an essay (always attributed), write ruminations on topics other writers are better known for, or build on someone else’s argument (again, crediting them as appropriate).

We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants, as the old saying goes – and like the author Austin Kleon argues in his book Steal Like an Artist, repurposing bits and pieces of other people’s work into your own is a time-honored tradition and is actually fundamental to how art functions.

 

3. Work in someone else’s style

In high school I had some friends who were also songwriters. One of them, Kaiya, wrote meandering, esoteric folk-blues songs that I loved, but that were utterly different from my own style, which was plainspoken, quirky, and musical theatre-inspired. At one point, each of us challenged the other to write a song in the other person’s style. In some ways it was difficult – I couldn’t rely on any of my usual tricks or formulas, and had to dig deeper and really think about each and every choice – but in other ways it was easy, because I knew my friend’s musical style so well that I could almost hear her in my head, singing and strumming, showing me where to take the song next.

Still to this day, when I’m feeling uninspired, sometimes I’ll pick up a book by a writer with a distinctive style – anyone from British neurologist Oliver Sacks to hedonistic poetess Rachel Rabbit White – and flip through until I anchor their voice in my mind. And then I’ll start writing, on whatever topic I feel like tackling, channelling my writerly muse all the while. Often I end up making changes in the editing stage, bringing the piece back into the land of me-ness, but sometimes doing an “impression” of another writer is the best way for me to get the gears turning in the first place.

 

4. Revisit the past

Even if nothing much is going on in your life right now, there are always memories you can pull from. For example, I can dependably write about first dates and heartbreaks just about any time, because those memories are so vivid for me, even though it’s been years since either one of those things happened to me.

 

5. Just make stuff up

Look, as long as you’re not trying to pass off fiction as nonfiction, you can make up whatever the hell you want. Sometimes when I want to write about a sexual subject but don’t know how to approach it, I might write a fiction vignette or erotica story, featuring totally invented characters in the very situation I’m pondering. Likewise, when I feel utterly uninspired but want to write a song, I do what people like Regina Spektor do, and just write one about a made-up person’s life/brain/situation.

It might seem like it would be hard to access any real insight or poignancy or authenticity when doing this, but actually I find that creative inventions often act as a prism, helping me see inside my own life and thoughts more clearly, much in the same way that a tarot reading doesn’t necessarily “predict the future” but can help you reflect on your own patterns and associations.

 

Where do you pull inspiration from when you’re stuck?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2021: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Content note: There’s some depressing stuff in here about climate change, fascism, etc.

 

February 7th

A Spiritual Practice for Quarantine

wake up, take your meds
stretch & pee & check your phone
stretch & sigh, ignore your phone
brew some coffee, clear some cobwebs
set some goals & test your brain
watch the news, turn off the news
feel grateful you’re not on the news

don some ruby lipstick no one will see
take butt selfies in bed
suck cock every lazy morning
scribble notes to future selves
let haters tire themselves out
slither into slim-cut sweatpants
comb your hair for no one
read a book for pleasure
drink a boozy revelation
squint your eyes until you see
a pale unfocused vision
of the You you want to be

 

April 19th

Life all feels so absurd when you’re living through a global pandemic and a fresh wave of fascism and the end of the world due to climate change. I really don’t know how we are supposed to deal with it. There’s not even a frame of reference, a touchpoint in human history we can point to and learn from where we idiot’ed ourselves out of being able to even inhabit this planet anymore. It’s all new and a lot of it is bad.

I think one of the only things you can do to cope with all this is to do what the existentialists did and accept the liberating but terrifying meaninglessness of it all. I can’t affect humanity’s problems on a scale that would be effective, so I may as well feel pleasure and create joy where possible. I don’t mean it’s okay to be selfishly hedonistic all the time. I mean that we’d go nuts if we never allowed ourselves to be selfishly hedonistic. We’d be squandering the best parts of the very world and civilization our anxieties are trying to save.

 

May 29th

Lately I keep looking at real estate listings of 2- and 3-bedroom houses and condos in Toronto and New York and dreaming of what it would be like to furnish and decorate my own office in my own home. There would be lots of framed photos and art. An altar featuring citrine, blue topaz, and perfumed incense. Big white bookshelves displaying books, old journals, striking sex toys, and a rainbow of vintage typewriters. A smallish piano and my ukuleles and guitar. A luxuriant daybed for lounging and naps. A big plush armchair for reading in. Stacks of empty notebooks waiting to be filled with thoughts and ideas. Organized drawers containing my entire sex toy collection. A sex toy charging station à la Piph. Sophisticated coasters for having drinks at my desk. An array of fine pens and pencils. Tons of natural light, plus several lamps for atmosphere. Ahh, bliss.

 

June 9th

I bought a secondhand digital piano yesterday. Been wanting to get back into songwriting. It has been about 3 years since I’ve written a song. It’s just so weird because in high school I wrote multiple songs per month. It no longer feels like a skill I can access. I try playing and singing improvisationally but everything sounds terrible and doesn’t flow out of me the way it used to.

I think if I asked younger-me for advice on this, she would advise me to spend more time just idly messing around on my instrument(s); inspiration can’t show up if you’re not there to greet it. But I can’t shake the feeling that I was connected to some divine source of musical ingenuity and I no longer have a stable connection to wherever that came from.

I guess part of the reason for this is that my life now is fairly settled and content – I am married to the love of my life and our relationship is stable and healthy, so the main sources of interpersonal angst and sadness I used to pull songwriting inspiration from are just absent. I guess this means I have to carve out new ways of being a songwriter, ways that don’t rely on romantic drama. Writing from fictional characters’ perspectives is often helpful for this, I’ve found.

 

July 7th

Things to remember when I hate myself and feel like a failure:

  1. I will have had 2 books published by the time I turn 30.
  2. I am happily married to the love of my life, who is perfect for me on every dimension I can imagine.
  3. I live comfortably on the money I make as a self-employed person/freelancer in the sex media field. Dreamy.
  4. My work means a lot to people and they tell me so nearly every day.
  5. I am working through my traumas and flaws with a therapist, and I’m making good progress.
  6. I have a cozy home that I love and have put a lot of effort into making it feel as comfortable as possible.
  7. I achieve an amazing amount every single week for someone living with an invisible disability/chronic illness.
  8. I have made a lot of art that I think is good, and I will make a lot more.
  9. There is always more to learn, to see, to experience.
  10. Every single thing in life could change in an instant so the only thing to do is appreciate it when you have it.

 

July 26th

I’m emotional tonight, for a couple reasons. Firstly, today 11 copies of my first book showed up in the mail, and I got to hold it, and read it, and sniff it, and take selfies with it… I am truly so fucking proud of myself, and the pride feels unusually tangible to me today. It’s a really good book and I think people are going to like it.

The second emotional thing that happened is I went for drinks with T___, who I met several years ago because they were friends with L___ when I was dating him – and they told me that basically they never really liked him that much. They felt he was “a sad man who sucked” and didn’t treat his partners very well. (Uh, can confirm.)

My mind is honestly kinda blown. All this time I had believed what L___ said, which was that the two of them were very good friends, maybe even best friends – and I had felt that L___ must have some essential goodness or coolness because T___ thought he was cool, but in reality all this time they’ve seen him the same way I saw him on my most self-righteous and self-possessed days: as a sad, selfish, confused and confusing dude who wasn’t a very good boyfriend at all.

He was a person who frequently represented himself as perpetually right and good, as if his way of doing relationships was the best way or the only good way, and as if I was in the wrong for ever taking issue with anything he did. He was an extraordinarily bad boyfriend to me but framed himself as a generous and tolerant caretaker and protector.

Our relationship was this fraught mirage, always seeming like it had the potential to be so good and healthy and satisfying but never actually allowing that reality to materialize. He paid lip service daily to the kind of boyfriend he wanted to be, and wasn’t. He was a complete and total fuckboy, who would’ve been appalled to hear himself referred to as such. The only reason I stayed with him after he seriously hurt my feelings was that I believed deeply that he was desirable and special and “a catch” and that I was incredibly lucky to be with someone like him. That’s all it was. I mean, yeah, NRE makes idiots of us all, but I really think most of my poor decision-making in that relationship was directly related to me 1) assuming his inherent worth because he was a man who expressed an interest in me, and 2) thinking so poorly of myself that I couldn’t see how valuable and desirable I myself was. I didn’t know I deserved better, or that I was allowed to expect better, but I did and I was.