The turn
Somewhere in the middle of my life, I became a poet.
Not on purpose. I was trying to explain something to somebody, and the plain words kept coming out wrong — too small, or too loud, or true in a way that missed the point entirely. So I put it in a verse. And the verse held it.
That is the whole discovery, and it is not a small one. A song can carry a thing a sentence drops. Once you have felt that happen, you do not really get to stop.
I am not a young man starting out. I am a man who found the door late and walked through it anyway. These are the songs from the other side of that door. Some of them are true. The rest are true enough.
The apprenticeship
Six people taught me, and none of them knew it.
You cannot apprentice to the dead in person. You can do the next best thing: play the record until you hear the seams, then take it apart on paper and find out what is holding it up.
-
Bob Dylan
Let the picture do the arguing.
-
Guy Clark
A song is carpentry. Measure, cut, and let the joint show.
-
Townes Van Zandt
Do not decorate the sad part. Stand next to it.
-
John Prine
The funny line and the devastating line are the same line, told twice.
-
Kris Kristofferson
Plain speech, said exactly, is the highest form there is.
-
Leonard Cohen
A song will wait years for you to be ready to finish it.
How I got in
I use Suno, and I will tell you why.
I can write a verse. I cannot arrange a band, engineer a room, or sing in six voices. For most of my life that gap was the end of the sentence — the songs stayed on the page, and the page stayed in a drawer.
Suno closed the gap. I bring the words and the shape. It brings the room. What comes out is not a demo I have to apologise for on the way in. It is the song, finished, close to the way I heard it.
If you have a notebook full of verses and no way to hear them out loud, that is the way in. I am not selling it. I am telling you what worked.
If you write, I will trade verses with you. If you play, I would like a real instrument on one of these. If you only listen — that is enough. That is most of it.