All Songs (re)Considered #2: “Cocktail/Baby If You Let Me

THE STORY

For some time, I’ve been infatuated with playing with the line between violence and affection. Both share many metaphors – conquest, scoring, being broken – and both require a level of vulnerability that people don’t normally entertain. So it is with this song, particularly in the chorus line, “Lovers come with hatchets; surgeons and theives come with knives.”

It’s been my experience that the vulnerability we allow to closest to us results as often in injury as in romance and reward.

I’ve always admired Marianne Moore’s poetry.  One of her defining characteristics is her use of the title of a poem as its first line. Also, I’ve always loved Bob Dylan’s song, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.”

The title, “Cocktail/Baby, If You Let Me,” serves as a shout out to both Moore and Dylan.

Also, If you ever want to buy me a drink, Knob Creek Manhattans are the way to go.

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WHAT I LIKE:

I’ll stand behind these lyrics until the day I die. There’s only one verse, repeated twice, but that’s all it needs. Writing it required a fairly intense headspace I’m not terribly interested in revisiting.

Though there are other versions of this song floating around both on the Internet and in my iTunes library, I feel that this version captures best what made me want to pursue the song in the first place:

• A fairly dry delivery of the most intense lines
• A good, simple lead guitar part in the chorus
• The lead line right at the end that sounds straight out of Ravel’s “Bolero”
• This song doesn’t need drums to be what I hear. (I don’t yet have a drummer enlisted in the project – though if you know one interested, drop a line in the comments)

WHAT IT NEEDS:

• Better recording quality. I did this in GarageBand with the built-in mic in the bathroom of my old apartment while my mom was asleep on my couch.
• The same arrangement with my mom meant that I was pretty much whispering the vocals. I’d like to try those again, too.
• Lead parts for this are already written; I’d like to flesh them out with a louder guitar.
• I want to add a keyboard part. I think something like a Hammond organ would sound nice in certain parts.

Bulldog at the Garden Gate, Approximately

I’ve been feeling terribly discouraged. Though I’m producing a poem every week for The Great and Secret Thing, and blogging regularly for Radio Sweethearts, I’ve been feeling that my creative powers are waning.

I’ve started several songs since moving to Memphis, but I haven’t finished any.

I don’t think that means I’m done; however, a year and a half-long creative slump is easily the longest I’ve had. Through sheer force of will, and what feels like a dearth of other options, I’m beginning to claw my way out.

One of the strongest forces in my life is the lack of motivation. If I can’t figure out why I’m trying to do something – like songwriting – it’s difficult to make myself do it.

I’m sitting at Otherlands – one of the best places for coffee in Memphis – trying damn hard to dredge up ideas for this week’s creative projects (thankfully, The Great and Secret Thing is taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s), and listening to Dylan’s eerily beautiful Time Out of Mind, and wondering about its production.

Dylan in Noblesville, originally uploaded by mutineersofindy.

Naturally, I’ve pulled the record up on Wikipedia and I’m learning less about the record than about Dylan’s creative process. Which is highly encouraging.

Bob Dylan, of all people, gets discouraged, too. In an interview with Paul Zollo, likely from the same interview included in Songwriters on Songwriting, one of the most helpful volumes on craft I’ve ever read, Dylan says:

there was a time when the songs would come three or four at the same time, but those days are long gone…Once in a while, the odd song will come to me like a bulldog at the garden gate and demand to be written. But most of them are rejected out of my mind right away. You get caught up in wondering if anyone really needs to hear it. Maybe a person gets to the point where they have written enough songs. Let someone else write them.

I’ve been there. I am there. And though this Web site is intended to be a venue for my insatiable drive to write songs, I haven’t posted any. It might be a while yet before I do, but if Dylan can keep putting out records despite his discouragement, I can try likewise.

Or, to put that a little more strongly: If Bob Fucking Dylan feels like he can’t write songs, then what business do the rest of us have feeling sorry for ourselves?

We have two options: pack it in without really trying, or put it out there and stop worrying about stupid shit like whether our little experiments are worth anything.