How to write a song or a speech that matters

 

In 2022 singer-songwriter Dar Williams published a 276-page book titled How to Write a Song That Matters. It follows her having given a decade of annual retreats titled Writing a Song That Matters. I was curious to read it because a typical five-to-seven-minute Toastmasters speech takes the same time as a song (but without music or poetry). Her book is divided into seven sections:

 

INTRODUCTION(S)

INSPIRATION

NARRATIVE

WORDS

MUSIC (IN OTHER WORDS…)

CROSSROADS AND ENDINGS

BRINGING OUR SONGS INTO THE WORLD

THE SONGWRITER (YOU AND ME)

 

In the section on INSPIRATION a chapter titled That First Inspiration begins on page 15 with:

 

“I call it ‘The Window Opens.’

 

Children’s author Natasha Wing calls it ‘Getting the Tinglies.’

 

Novelist Stephanie Kallos calls it ‘Open for Business.’

 

There is a sensation we get when we know that something we’ve heard, or the thought we’ve just thought, has the makings of a work of art.

 

We just have that feeling: this full moon, this stone in my hand, or this strange headline has just presented itself in a certain way. I’m open for business; I get the tinglies; the window opens.

 

In 1994 my housemate, Sarah Davis said, ‘I think you’re going to want to write a song about this news story. There was an ice storm in Philadelphia, and the deejays asked people to turn off their electricity so they could power the hospitals. And everyone did.’

 

That was interesting. I nodded my head. It was a good story about neighborliness. It was great fodder for someone’s song, maybe not mine. Then Sarah added a detail.

 

‘They said you could watch the lights going out in entire buildings. Even the businesses.’

 

This wasn’t just about neighbors. It was about civilization. I wrote a long song called ‘Mortal City.’ “

 

Dar left off that it happens in Philadelphia. She wrote a seven-minute song about a woman having a very strange first date - with the brother of the guy she worked next to. You can listen to it here on YouTube and read the lyrics here on her web site. He walked over to her apartment during an ice storm, and they had a spaghetti dinner. But then he couldn’t go home because of the continuing awful weather. Her radiators were not working, but normally she used electric heat. They wound up in her bed talking while “wrapped up like ornaments waiting for another season.” On page 166 she describes how alternating between two variations on an Em chord that reminded her of a life-support monitor became the basis for that song’s melody.

 

In the section titled NARRATIVE there are brief chapters titled Where Did I Go?, Where Did I Really Go?, What Happened?, What Really Happened? How Does It Feel? How Does It Really Feel?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chapter titled Tell the Story and Notice How It’s Heard begins on page 99. She discusses a James Keelaghan’s song, about the Mann Gulch Fire, which I blogged about on February 7, 2022 in a post titled Cold Missouri Waters – a folk song about a smokejumper tragedy. Dar asks:

 

“How did James distill all of those pages into five verses with no chorus? Maybe James told fifty people the story, or maybe he took some long walks and followed his own narrative intuition. Either way, the song strikes a powerful balance between an exciting plot with intimately observed details and universal perspectives with crushing emotional lessons.”

 

She mentions having performed a cover version of that song with her friends Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky, which you can listen to on YouTube.   

 

In the section about WORDS, on page 119 she discusses the song As Cool As I Am, which you can watch here on YouTube and find the lyrics here on her web site. (The Wikipedia article about Dar mentions that song as being an unofficial anthem for Bryn Mawr College). The first line in the last verse first began as:

 

“Oh – and that’s not easy. I don’t know why you had to get so low-down and sleazy.”

 

But she felt it wasn’t quite right, went back, and revised it to instead be:  

 

“Oh – and that’s not easy. I don’t know what you saw, I want somebody who sees me.”

 

A chapter in BRINGING OUR SONGS INTO THE WORLD titled Performing For An Audience begins on page 243 with:

 

“The words that helped me break through and find my equilibrium as a performer were ‘You are giving a gift to the audience. You are not asking for something.’ The relationship went from ‘Do you like me?’ to ‘This is what I’m offering. I hope you like it.’ A show that feels dead or badly received can still do a number on me. But performing for an audience of ten people or more is how we can find out how our songs connect with the world, imperfect a science as that is, and sharing our art is part of a bigger personal and overall human experience than we have when we keep our songs to ourselves and our pets.”

 

When I read the title of her book, the song I immediately thought of was the first one on her 2012 album, In the Time of Gods. You can watch her sing I Am The One Who Will Remember Everything live on YouTube, and read the lyrics here on her web site. She discussed it in an article by Mike Ragogna at the Huffington Post on July 11, 2012 titled ‘In the Time of Gods’: A conversation with Dar Williams. She said:

 

“Well, it's looking at a cycle, which is something that gives me a lot of priorities to look at. When I heard, after 9/11, that the Taliban was mostly comprised of the orphans from the war between Russia and Afghanistan, my response was, ‘So how do we get in right now to places like refugee camps? How do we avoid conflicts so that you don't have these incredibly marginalized kids who grow up with no parents to sort of temper all of the terrible things of the world and nurture you through it? How do we avoid the kinds of situations that create generations of grown up orphans with no parents, who have no compassion, who know war, who create war, who do things out of fear and a sense of need? How do you break the cycle?’ "