In November last year, I was preparing for an upcoming recording session, the results of which I’d publicly committed to releasing to the wider world. I had a “long-time unfinished musical business” itch that needed scratching. (If I am honest, I also had an “ego-bruised, post-breakup, must create things” itch. While the need to finally put out some old songs that had been kicking around for too long was strong, there was now an additional need for it to be good. After all, if in my thirties I’m going to put out a record and ask people to listen to it, it needs to be worthy of that request.
As part of good, I had to be able to stand over my own lyrics. This meant engaging with the younger self who’d written many of them and challenging that writer on why things needed to be so angry or immature in places. If that writer was also the performer and it was a different time, I might have been happy to sing words which were rhythmically solid but otherwise unremarkable and a little näive. An audience wasn’t going to see the distinction of time passed since though. They’d see that this performer seemed to have the same name as that writer, and then there might be trouble. I will happily be hung for the bruised and smarting words of thirtysomething me. After all, if they are hangable, then I should know better. In balance, maybe if I’m troubled by something it’s worth being troubled by and is therefore worth singing about. BUT! I do not wish to be hung for the bruised and smarting words of the twentysomething who didn’t have the maturity, the experience or the self-awareness to see nuance.
This realisation led to a somewhat brutal cull of old work. Lyrics went into three piles:
- “This is a song, even if it needs work”;
- “This has an idea with potential, badly articulated”;
- “This is a journal entry disguised as a song, or it’s something I don’t feel enough connection to in order to want to finish”.
I put pile 1 aside to be kept. I took some notes from the pile 2. A snapshot of the kernel of the idea. I then packed piles 2 and 3 and brought them back to The Burren where I took great delight in putting them into an end-of-year bonfire.
The weight of work that requires finishing is heavy enough without the weight of work that doesn’t merit finishing.