I was hanging out with an actress

[lotuscent]

I was recently hanging out with an actress - she did not believe that the characters she played were "real," that they were a complete fabrication of her will, and not at all an actual part of her.

So I asked her of she could get herself to "feel" and "experience" the character she is playing, all the emotions, all the gestures - the totality of being someone else. - and she said "yes, but it still isn't me."

when I write songs, I often write from a point of view that I may have never actually experienced, an emotion or feeling I just want to explore,I may tell a s story that didn't happen or whatever, the point being that my body of work requires many different attitudes and personas and narrators, all of whom I could say are fictional. But they all seem to be me, even if it's not everyday me...

If I don't feel comfortable being the character in the song, I usually can't deliver it well, and than I eventually change it. I attribut this to "not being me"

What do you all think? Do write this way? Do you become your different characters? Do you agree with the actress?

Anyway. it's late, I'm babbling

 

[joro]

Anyway. it's late, I'm babbling

No man...you make sense and ask a good question....
I recently wrote a tune that puts the singer in a not so good light with the audience.......a few comments were made to that effect...
but the character was me...for sure....it always is when I write.....
and I feel it too....

Joe

 

[christiaan]

There are writers and there are performers.
Some are both, a lot just aren't.

 

[joro]

There are writers and there are performers.
Some are both, a lot just aren't.

What use is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play......
Life is a Cabaret old chum..........
Come to the Cabaret...............

 

[terocious]

Lotuscent,
A good friend who is teaching acting to young people said: "teaching theater is blowing my mind its like teaching moss to grow or dust to talk its teaching how to make nothing real for just a moment till it disappears."

The entire range of human experience is available thru our imagination. Coaxing that into a momentary reality onstage is as personal a mission as I can imagine so I will not say that I disagree with your actress friends position. I do think that there is a point of altered reality during performance which resides in an entirely different part of the brain than our theories about how we get to that magic moment.

I can really relate to your comment about writing to explore. I am always looking for somewhere new to go. I write in different characters and then let them inhabit me. Letting them seems to be the key. I find the more I write that some characters keep showing up. They are all me, as Joro said, and some of them are not all that flattering.

-b

 

[limoguy]

I have a hard time writing songs that are about subject matter I cannot relate to personally. It doesn't as you say, " feel real." It's hard to make the lyrics like this come across so they impact on me emotionally on some level but that is not to say the the listening audience can't relate to it. It's my tendency to think that if they don't sound "real" to me then they aren't going to appeal to someone else but I guess this isn't necessarily true either...it just feels that way to me.

My lyrics always sound better to me if they are based around real experiences that I have had.

But I digress

Limoguy

 

[Peter D]

I've learned that one thing that many writers and actors share is a good ear for manners of speech or describing sounds in unique ways. When it happens and you recognize what's going on, you can actually see them studying the way someone speaks or listening acutely to a sound.

What got me to pay attention to such things was getting caught doing it. A Scottish friend of mine who is a novelist and screenwriter asked me one night if I was writing a song about a Scottish character. I said no, I hadn't planned on it and inquired why he asked and he said that he noticed I had been patterning my speech after his and using phrases that I normally didn't use.
He said that he often found himself doing that when he was working on a book.

Suddenly, it made sense to me because I was always getting in trouble because people thought I was mimicing their accents or manner of speech.

I'm not real sure about this stuff of disassociating oneself with the subject or protaganist in their writing, but I guess there is some modicum of me in everything I write and sometimes there's too much of me.

 

[Jagular]

I almost always write about things that didn't happen to me. However, ususally these stories come from some deep seated emotion that is bubbling up at a given time. So...I guess I use fiction to paint a picture of what I am feeling at the time.

As far as writing about touchy subjects that are not flattering to a character, they are bonafide feelings and issues and fair game for writing (what isn't" ). However, if one is after a commercially viable song, it better not be first person (not that everything we write needs to be commecially viable ). I'm actually in the middle of writing one of those now. The thought came about as I was thinking of my own iniquities (we all have them ) as a human being. I think I figured a way to twist it around so that it might work (commercially) while making the song kind of surprising and interesting at the same time. From the stream of ideas that flew out during the brainstorming process, the story resembles nothing in my life, although it is based on my very own feelings. I also did a major shift in direction in the story line in the middle of writing lyrics. I almost have two parallel songs going with differnt "problems" and a similar message & hook. Guess we'll have to wait and see how it works out in the end

 

[matty_boy]

I think the challenge is to find common ground with the "character". Trying to understand the perspective that you are writing from. I believe that empathy is important in this process.

 

[zer0sig]

i mean what i say in my songs, even if it isn't true. if i've penned it, i've lived it, even though there is no "real life" corroboration to it. believing what you're writing is more important than the actual correlation between your work and your life experiences, in my opinion.

 

[Brad]

Yeah, I have had to explain this type of thing to my fiance. If I write a song about wanting to kill my lover, that I don't mean it and it is not about her (that is just an example, I didn't really write a song about wanting to kill my lover). Part of artistic expression has to sometimes involve stepping out of yourself, I think.


I think that it's a good practice, but it can be tough to explain to people close to you. "Baby, I am not really psycho!"

I mean, you probably are, but you can still try to sell it to your loved ones as artistic expression.




"Hey honey, I am writing a song about banging three-dollar whores, wanna check it out?"

 

[Scottgman]

"Hey honey, I am writing a song about banging three-dollar whores, wanna check it out?"

LMAO!!!! Man you just described my current situation. A couple weekends ago I was working on writing a song. While brainstorming for lyrics I came up with a line I liked and fit the guitar part:

"One last time let's go for a ride."

So, when songwriting, I try to stick with a story or tap into a particular emotion and commenced to writing a song about a guy in a relationship (implied) wanting one last fling with an ex-girlfriend. Man it was going great, the lyrics were flowing and the song was working. I proceed to call my buddy to come over and lay down the vocal tracks because I sing like a cat in heat. It wasn't until I was listening to him sing the lyrics that I realized what I had done. Oh Shit! I'm going to have to play this for the wife eventually!

I am not actually trying to have one last fling with an ex-girlfriend. The song wasn't about an actual event or even an actual person. But it was an emotion I could relate to and I'm sure 99% of guys in long-term relationships can relate to it also. So even though the story isn't real, the emotion behind it certainly is real. I still haven't played it for the wife yet... yikes!

Lotuscent, I agree and disagree with your actress friend. On one hand, if the actress did not write the character, I can understand how she can say the character isn't part of her.

On the other hand, if I was an actor and was forced to portray John Macenroe (the legendary asshole of tennis), I'm sure I could dredge up enough anger to pull it off even though I am a very laid-back and non-angry kind of guy. But I get angry and thus that aspect of the character would be part of me. I may only get irate and blow my top once a year (while Macenroe might do it once a day) but we all have the same emotions-- just to a greater or lesser degree. So in that sense, any character an actor plays is a part of themself.

Cheers!