3/5/06 12:54 AM
I may be repeating myself, but there are a few ideas in relation to the play that I may not have fleshed out, and I wanted to get them down now. The process of writing for Immaculate Misconceptions has been very rewarding. The writing and recording process has been very organic, and has allowed me to explore areas that I always knew I could work in, but had just never tried. I am pleasantly surprised by some of the subject matter I was able to touch on in these songs, and how they fit together as a “set”. The pantheon for this play has not been nailed down completely yet, but the majority of the songs that I came up with during the writing period do go together.

Despite my initial interest in moving away from political-topical songs, I seemed to go headlong into such material. This was, thankfully, balanced by the amount of more ambiguous material inspired by my poetic interests (Sufi, Hafiz, Rumi, Yeats). Had my time been spent solely on political material, I think I would have grown discontent with this project…

I’m grateful to Steve for asking me to be involved in this project. I still consider my music to be only a small part of the overall play, and while I am pleased with how it turned out, the experience up to the play is what I will treasure the most.

The general approach was one of throwing stuff at the wall to see if it would stick. In some cases it didn’t. But in many cases it did.
I could see my topical writing informed by my rhetorical studies and much more grounded than it used to be. I could also see more room for literary references where perhaps in the past they would seem forced.

3/4/06 7:24 PM
At some points the songs came to me like images – sometimes stills, at other times movies.

3/4/06
What became abundantly clear in the writing process for this project was that I could actually write, almost, on cue. The result may not always be what one would expect, and the piece may not even be useful (a lot of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor), but the writing process was much more active rather than proactive.

In the past, my writing has – overall – been a process of allowing the muse to strike when she may, hoping I was open enough to capture something. I will probably always do that, but it seems like skills have developed over the years that allow me to create much more quickly and effectively without that trial and error process of waiting for the muse.

The only way that I can describe how I write these days is to compare myself to a sponge. I am a sponge. No doubt about that. I soak up everything around me, and then the results come out at a later time (sometimes much later). But with a little push, the way things come out can be tailored to what is needed for the present moment. Current writing tools: darbuka and softsynths – worlds apart.

I’ve always felt that my lyrical writing needed beefing up, so I immerse myself into poetry (knowing full well that music lyrics are not always poetry.) Reading Yeats and doing lots of web research. Watching “Law and Order” most nights. My usual tactics of free association and “waiting for the muse” were explored more fully on this project.