Brian, one of the organizers of the open mic I attend now, issued a songwriting challenge last week. The input/theme was “stand up”. I started scratching out lyrics in Drafts on my iPad right away that same night, and finished them up on Saturday afternoon. Jon, my music partner, came over Sunday and we hashed out the music in about an hour. I went with the vocational interpretation, and wrote about a standup comedian who did a few gigs back in the day, let a decade slip by, and is thinking of getting back out there again. I told Jon I had a Mountain Goats vibe in my head for it, and we listened to a few tracks to get the pacing right and borrow some strumming patterns. Picked a chord to start with and just went for it, and got the whole thing done in under an hour.
The song went over okay last night; I’m actually pretty proud of it, but I think it might work better after a few listens. Or else it’s not as good as I think it is. 🤷🏻♂️ Anyway, I’m on a reading-about-John-Darnielle kick again and was struck by this quote in an AMA he did on Reddit:
Suffering is seldom joyful, but expressing one’s capacity for survival almost always is. I think what I mainly sing about is survival, tenacity, practice[, and] patience.
John Darnielle
Expressing a capacity for survival…spitting the bullet back out and asking the world “Is that all you’ve got?”…that’s an emotional space that’s always interesting to me, and the kind of thing I’m drawn to sing about, too.