Have you ever had a brain dump?
Just sit down and type the first thing that pops into your head. It doesn’t matter if it will sound good when you read it again or not. This is something you can do for yourself. I find that it makes me feel better about something, just to get it out there.
So sit down and write the words that come not from your mind, but from your soul.
Don’t think about what words are going to sound good or make sense next. Just write.
Here, I’ll show you what I mean. This is tonight’s brain dump, no later editing:
The best songs tend to have lyrics that seem to just flow off of the tongue, like honey, as it flows from the tree of life into the minds of the young and reckless. The rhythms spin tapestries of grand design around your heart, and exhume your thoughts. They caress your emotions in a bundle of sounds that carry you through the rocky waves that is our journey to the Kingdom in the Sky. And after all the words have fallen from your lips and stopped ringing in the cavern of your heart, you realize that that is what true songwriting is made of.
Lyrics should spin the fibers in your head, should make you stop and evaluate what you are doing right now at that very moment. Let your mind wander to the river that is free-spirited music. Don’t listen for the dissonance, but listen for what is being conveyed. Hear the organized chaos. Art is not creation, merely management. The composer heard a story in notes and arranged them into a form you can understand, into a form you can connect with. Listen with both ears open to the sound, and your heart open to the meaning.
Can you hear it?
Like a gentle rain in the night, the melodies of composers past float about the airwaves, searching for wanderers with open hearts they can worm their way into. Music has not changed — how we convey it has. We think it changes because we have a need for something different, a need to innovate. But the meaning behind music, and the reason for it is all the same. See, there are thousands and thousands of musicians out there, and if you want to stand out, it will take more than a soap box. It will take something so crazy that people will have to listen. No, I’m not talking about dancing in your underwear, or wearing tight pants. The realms of sound are full of endless possibilities. We can write different music if we only really, truly, step outside the box. And to do that, we have to first understand what is inside of the box.
Start at square one, home base, the top. If you want different, then you have to go searching for it with a bat and gun, because your prey isn’t going to just run up to you with it’s tongue hanging out. It will take knowing true self-worth, and having a genuine interest in sharing with others what you see and hear in the world around you.
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Now, I challenge you, tonight, when you finally sit down to relax or go to bed, to do a brain dump. I think that it feels very… Liberating? That sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Try it.
Bourque's Breakfast 