Which song fits you as a writer?

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For me, it would have to be Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure". It somehow just connects to my struggle to write.

^ yeah thats a good song.

Here's something I stumbled on yesterday, its apt for your excogitation..

" O H M Y
S W E E T C A R O L I N A "
B Y
R Y A N A D A M S .

BY NICK HORNBY

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[In celebration of the release of Nick Hornby's Songbook, we will be publishing brand-new essays all this week on the subject of favorite songs. Today's is from Mr. Hornby, and does not appear in his book, or anywhere else that we know of. We hope you enjoy it.]

- - - -

A long time ago, when I was still teaching English to foreign students in a London language school, I gave private conversation lessons to an unhappy man who called himself Edward, even though that wasn't his name. Edward was an African living in Rome, where he was a foreign correspondent for his home-town newspaper, and he was unhappy because he was going through a divorce. But he was lucid in his unhappiness: he talked with regret, of course, but also with insight, and enormous intelligence, and his melancholy took him off to all sorts of interesting conversational places — places I never normally got to visit in the normal run of things. I remember the concentration our talks required, and the stillness and intensity they engendered; I knew that he was in pain, but when our fifty minutes were over I felt invigorated and inspired. When it was time for him to return to Rome, he asked me to go and stay with him, and I accepted the invitation.

But when I got there, a few weeks later, he wasn't unhappy any more. He was revelling in his status as a single man, a status that, apparently, required very little self-reflection or intelligence: on the night I arrived, I found that he'd fixed us up with a couple of call-girls. I copped out, in my prissy English way, but he disappeared for forty-eight hours (leaving me with sole use of a beautiful apartment in the centre of Rome); when he came back, he told me he was engaged.

Some people are at their best when they're miserable. Ryan Adams's beautiful Heartbreaker album is, I suspect, the product of a great deal of pain, and "Oh My Sweet Carolina" is its perfect, still centre, its faint heartbeat, a song so quiet that you don't want to breathe throughout its duration. (It helps that Adams got Emmylou Harris, the best harmony vocalist in the history of pop music, to sing with him on it.) On Adams's next album, Gold, he seems to have cheered up, and though that's good news for him, it's bad news for me, just as it was when Edward stopped being miserable. His upbeat songs are fine, but they sound a lot like other people's upbeat songs (you can hear the cheeriest incarnations of the Stones, Dylan and Van Morrison all over Gold); his blues gave him distinction.

What rights do we have here? Are we entitled to ask other people to be unhappy for our benefit? After all, there are loads of us, and only one of them. And how can you be happy, really, if you are only ordinary in your happiness, but extraordinary in your grief? Is it really worth it? It sounds harsh, I know, but if you are currently romantically involved with someone with a real talent — especially a talent for songwriting — then do us all a favour and dump them. There might be a Heartbreaker — or a Blood On The Tracks or a Layla — in it for all of us. Thanks.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/01/13hornby.html

A tune that fits topic

We Run by Strange Advance

Hard to say really. Is this question referring to personality? Or more like what song describes your style of writing?

Same question as above, then I can reply.

I can tell you what song sums up my ambition. 'Black Dollar Bills' by Hope of the States. The length, the production, the dynamic, the strings and horns - it's everything I want to do with music in one seven-minute chunk.

Probably 'Brigadoon'; I so seldom actually sit down and write...

As a film writer or a lyricist?

I've wrote both screenplays and lyrics.

"Somewhere out in Space" by Gamma Ray - most of my thoughts are out there since I write Sci-Fi based in fact.

-TB

Well, mine's not as inspirational. I've always connected with...



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwap79uy1G8[/youtube]

Dang it, I just want to write a good story, awesome characters with depth and some nice surprises, a big armload of my own personal opinions and jokes on modern society, cleverly camouflaged philosophy and a lesson or two, some tense bits and oh, it turns out that so-and-so is really Somebody Important Person, because it turns out his parents were actually TIME TRAVELERS!! ! And humor! And a heart-stopping action sequence (anticipated by a lot of littler ones, where the hero turns into the who knew, and the girl he thought he wanted was only this, and the girl who was his friend is the one he wants) and a satisfying resolution that leaves room for sequels.

That's all I want. It's not to make money, mind you... as a rule. I love a good story with all those things. I love 'em. I wanna make one, too.

If I could ever finish a plot, it would help. Can anyone tell me how to tell where one scene leaves off and another begins?

I do often feel inspired by the song "Mission" by Rush.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se1rXDxtPYU[/youtube]

Hold your fire
Keep it burning bright
Hold the flame 'til the dream ignites
A spirit with a vision is a dream
With a mission

I hear their passionate music
Read the words that touch my heart
I gaze at their feverish pictures
The secrets that set them apart

When I feel the powerful visions
Their fire has made alive
I wish I had that instinct
I wish I had that drive

Spirits fly on dangerous missions
Imaginations on fire
Focused high on soaring ambitions
Consumed in a single desire

In the grip of a nameless possession
A slave to the drive of obsession
A spirit with a vision is a dream
With a mission

I watch their images flicker
Bringing light to a lifeless screen
I walk through their beautiful buildings
And I wish I had their dreams
But dreams don't need to have motion
To keep their spark alive
Obsession has to have action
Pride turns on the drive

It's cold comfort
To the ones without it
To know how they struggled
How they suffered about it
If their lives were exotic and strange
They would likely have gladly exchanged them
For something a little more plain
Maybe something a little more sane

We each pay a fabulous price
For our visions of paradise
But a spirit with a vision is a dream
With a mission

I think I'd say "I spy" by pulp as its kinda how I see the world...
I see life as many films or novels filled with characters and its kinda helped me cope in the world...its weird but meh!

"I spy a boy, I spy a girl.
I spy the worst place in the world, in the whole world.
Oh you didn't do bad, you made it out, I'm still stuck here oh but I'll get out.
Oh yeah I'll get out.
Can't you see a walks among you seeing through your pretty lives.
Do you think I do these things for real?
I do these things just so I survive. And you know I will survive.
It may look to the untrained eye
I'm sitting on my arse all day
And I'm biding my time until I take you all on my Lords and Ladies
I will prevail, I cannot fail.
Cause I spy.
Oh I've got your numbers taken notes and all the ways your minds work out.
I've studied and your mind's just the same as mine except that you're just clever swines
You never let masks slip, you never admit to it, you're never hurried.
Oh no no no.
And every night I hold my plan how I'll get my satisfaction
How I will blow your paradise away away away ooh.
Cause I spy.
It's just like in the old days - I used to compose my own critical notices in my head.
The crowd gasps at Cocker's masterful control of the bicycle
Skilfully avoiding the dog turd next to the corner shop.
Imagining a blue plaque above the place I first ever felt a girl's breasts,
the whole 'nana.
You've got to wait for the best.
You see you should take me seriously. Very seriously indeed.
Cause I've been sleeping with your wife for the past sixteen weeks
Smoking your cigarettes, drinking your brandy,
messing up the bed you chose together.
And in all that time I just wanted you to come home unexpectedly one afternoon
And catch us at it in the front room.
You see I spy for a living and I specialise in revenge
On taking the things I know will cause you pain.
I can't help it, I was dragged up.
My favourite park's a car park, grass is something you smoke,
birds is something you shag.
Take your year in Provence and shove it right up your arse.
Your Ladbroke Grove looks turn me on, yeah.
With your frightened eyes and roach burns under your eyes and addresses
And thousands of tiny dryna-slides running a path,
running a path to the corner of your eyes.
And every night I hatch my plan, it's not a case of woman v man.
It's more a case of haves against haven'ts and I just
happen to have got what you need, just exactly what you need yeah.
La la la la la la la la la la, in the midnight hour.
La la la la la la la la la la, I will come to you, I will come to you
I will take you from this sickness, dinner parties and champagne
I'll hold your body and make it sing again. come on - sing again, let's sing again.
Oh yeah, cause I spy, yes, I spy, ssss.
I spy a boy and I spy a girl.
I spy the chance to change the world, to change your world."