subjects of your art

I wrote a song about Anton Chigurh and a poem about Robert De Niro when I was a uni wanker. Those are definitely the most interesting ones, alongside a bunch of short stories and poems about former love interests and so on. Not written anything of the sort for many years now.

this was fun

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Me too tbh, I look back at most of them and wonder what the fuck was going through my head at the time.

This one is at least explicable:

“Full playground vs playground sectarian violence” is because my Catholic primary school shared a fence with a Protestant primary school and once went it snowed there was the most ill-tempered sectarian snowball fight I’ve ever seen.

“Pool Party At The Biophysics Conference” is from when my pal went to a conference during her biophysics PhD and the evening social event was a pool party. As one of about three women there, she didn’t go. Such a hilariously transparent attempt by the nerdlingers to see some skin.

“MAGENTA ISN’T REAL” is because magenta isn’t real.

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We only have a crappy phone recording of my atomic bomb song thus far, some ultimate sadlading though

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Howls of political despair and all the lovely things that distract me from howling in political despair, mostly.

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There was film about the Beatles never existing which for some reason literally nobody can remember but me, so I’ve written it from memory to cash in.

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I mostly try to make music that sounds like how various states of shitty mental health feel. I keep trying to do other stuff but that’s what I keep coming back to.

Also FYI all my sauce recipes are deeply political.

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The band I played in as a 17 - 19 year old, (we reformed for my 40th and 50th birthday) had some great song titles and lyrics. Example A.

Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy

Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy
Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy
Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy
Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy

Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy
Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy
Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy
Please Don’t Cut My Hair Again Mommy

Any good? I can post others…

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One of my favourite things to do is to try to write songs about unpromising subject matter, ie

  • being attacked by scorpions
  • Florian from Kraftwerk’s flute
  • what type of pasta goes best with what sauce

that sort of thing. They were all terrible songs, btw

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I also made a longer piece of writing aged about 22 that I referred to as a novel but was actually a collection of mostly rubbish story sketches and things that had upset me in real life with renamed versions of my friends. I deleted it at some point in around 2008 but it was finished.

I wrote a chapter of my magnum opus in around 2007 but didn’t get past that. The story was about a boy and a girl in a relationship and was a thinly veiled attempt to get over a girl from 2004 and another girl who I had mistakenly gotten attached to. It was actually quite promising and I have ambitions to revisit it if I can work out what needs to happen next.

I’ve written about 160 words of my current project. I don’t think I’m still having relationship issues but it’s about a person who works with the dead so it might be about my career.

i can come up with song titles but not songs

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Hard, hard disagree! Often much prefer instrumental music. Bad lyrics and objectionable singing are much more likely to ruin songs in many cases.

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Big television personalities vibes this

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Here’s another from 1988.

Snow

Snow on the floor
It wasn’t there before
Isn’t it funny
And it doesn’t cost money

Snow
Snow
The sun comes
you go

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Hmm subjects of my art (usually music or poetry)

Butterflies
Leaves and petals
Gentrification in Walthamstow
David Cameron whistling
Shakespeare

Mostly just music inspired by incredibly depressing subjects.

Post-Truth Politics
an emotional response to the brexit vote and it’s aftermath.

The Function of Loss
Written when my dad and sister were both severely ill at the same time and almost died.

Collapsule
A way of dealing with the awful experience I was having at work at the time.

Sleep in Perpetual Storm
Climate change and the destruction of society.

Find Me in the Earth, Beneath the Weeds
Inspired by Chernobyl Prayer, by Svetlana Alexievich.

I really need some more cheerful subjects…

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usually dogs

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Monsters and maidens, mostly.

this reminds me, I made an instrumental piece of music while I watched the brexit result happening. unsurprisingly it sounded really doomy

When I’m writing songs, I always try to choose a topic that makes me feel a certain way. Sometimes its something that I’m going through in my personal life, other times it might be based on a piece of media that I found particularly moving. I think its best to draw from a variety of sources really

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