blog post #9

This week, listening to Douglas Kearney was absolutely fascinating.  I've never actually been so interested in the way a poet reads their own work before.  I was totally blown away and almost even immersed.  I wish I didn't have such a hearing problem, I'd love to be able to understand any of the words he was saying while he read from his book The Black Automaton.  As is, his energy and emotion from his voice absolutely carried the entire two day set for me.  I found myself hanging onto every word he had to say, especially once he started talking more about music, my personal forte.

What stuck with me the most was when he commented that he was always shocked at the number of students he meets who love hip-hop, but they cannot recite any lyrics because they do not listen.  Although I did not know this for a while, I actually have this problem, and for a long time I did not realize this was abnormal.  I simply cannot understand any lyrics when they are sung over music, just like I can't hear people talk in a loud restaurant.  As a direct result, all of the thousands of songs I know well tend to have a heavy emphasis on instrumentation, because for me, that was where the real magic was.  Since I only understand every tenth word or so, I always though of lyrics as a way to set the mood for the music, and my personal taste and areas of musical expertise are directly because of this problem.  I learned only a few years ago that there are people who pick their favorite bands based on how strong the lyrical content is, and enjoy music where the music is just a mood for the lyrics to make the real art.  As I have to manually look up words on the internet, these genre's have been slow for me to get into, since my focus naturally gravitates towards other areas. 

Talking to Kearney after the performance, I was able to hear his take on this relationship for a little bit, and he had very interesting examples of hip hop artists composing their lyrics before, after, or halfway through the writing of the music, which also fascinates me because I have never written lyrics to a song before writing all of the music and instrumentation.  I have gone so far as to write vocal melodies with "placeholder lyrics," because my value's have naturally gravitated that way.  I am currently working on writing a song, and have been toying with the idea of writing the music and lyrics simultaneously, and I now feel extra inspired that this could be a new avenue for me to explore.