Not All Songs Are Joyful

Song writing is fundamentally really fun, to be honest. Making music fills me with joy. Creating is always filled with amazing surprises. I cannot think of much else I would rather be doing.

But not everything I create is filled with joy. Today I turned my songwriting practice to a deeper source—something I’ve needed to extricate. You could say I’ve got the blues—real bad. Writing heals. Writing words gets to the heart of it, and adding music roots out the pain. It’s like pulling up weeds. They grow really deep. Sometimes I don’t even really know what the source is. That’s the bind—writing blind. But the writing helps define it, helps me dig down and get inside whatever it is that I need to explore—and I’m getting more skilled at getting deep down in the hole—the subterranean cavern of my soul, basically!

I wrote a song today—pulling some crazy crap out—I don’t know if ANYBODY will like it, but that’s really not the point. Certainly, I get satisfaction from knowing that what I write communicates something to somebody else, and even helps them get to their own feelings. But that happens more truly when I just reach in and work through the stuff of my own experience—and imagination—on my own terms!

The song I wrote is called “My Lover/My Abuser.” I don’t want to scare anyone off, so it’s one of those songs that I will probably just laugh off and say—“it’s just a song”— if anyone asks what it’s really about! I mean, it comes from a dark place, and I’m trying to examine my depths in the light of some sense of humor—some sense of exaggeration and irony. But it’s hard to admit that – I can be – um – attracted to somebody for – um – the pain that it puts me through. See, even that much is hard to say. The reasons why, …well… always about healing old hurts. Once you can see a pattern you can decide if you want to continue it – or not. But it’s impossible to live mindfully if you don’t know your mind. Including your subconscious mind. Hence daring to write about it—trying to articulate one little facet of it.

The song is kind of about an (um, ahem) S&M situation (an imaginary one!...kind of...)—so I don’t really know if I should post it online. I mean, I teach at an elementary school. I have to think about my public persona. Perhaps I will create a fake band to release it w/out my real name on it. They used to that all the time, back in the day!

Another problem aspect writing this song brings out is that I’m still defining myself musically. I haven’t settled into a tight boundary yet! This song is pretty hard rock (I pulled out some Iggy Pop as a reference for my mix.… and I was listening to Alanis Morisette the other day). I’m just recording all the tracks myself on Garage Band right now so I dusted off my electric guitar, too! That was fun. But when I get some real musicians to play it will be smoking.

However—I gotta ask myself—does it fit in with my sultry jazzy girly piano/singer persona? I sure as hell do not know. It most DEFINITELY is waaaay beyond anything I ever used to do w/ my acoustic duo, the Jazzabels. Well, I’m not going to finalize that tonight, anyway! And the beauty of the “100 Songs” project is that I can explore anything that comes my way. It’s all fair game! I just have to express myself honestly.'

Aw… if you read this far… you gotta hear it. I’ll put it up. www.myspace.com/kilissacissoko. Tell me what you think! Works in progress, all. I can change them at any time.