THIS IS NOT A SONG

This is Not a Song is my attempt at making sense of the difference between music and between what one would call “a song”. It is an attempt to address the difference between art thats primary purpose is to be enjoyed and art that’s primary goal is to make a specific point. John Cages 4’33” helped to inspire a lot of my initial thoughts abut this. Silence is a great starting point for this conversation. Silence is an important part of music and is arguably a piece of music itself. That having been said entertainment and enjoyment are not a huge part of the concept of music being silence. Another source that addresses this point of the space in-between music is at the beginning of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. The central unnamed character enters this space in a dream like state in the beginning of the novel. He finds people there preaching and addressing ideas, more specifically topics pertaining to religion and race. This stood out to me as a testament to the importance of there being layered meaning in music as an art form but not necessarily as a form of entertainment. As I began to write the song I spent some time thinking about how straightforward I wanted to be with in expressing these ideas. I thought about McCloud’s Setting the Record Straight. I liked that the he used a very straightforward approach to express his ideas. He choose to speak directly to the audience. I knew I wanted that at some point but not throughout. There is part of the song where the lyrics directly address the confusion. I ask, “ what is the difference between music and a song?” I give certain suppositions but do not try to define. I leave it open, as “art” usually does. I also use more subtle approaches to address this idea both through lyrics and song. At one point I try and bridge the gap between song and painting by implying that describing a painting is the same as painting one. Underneath that a deep bass drum can be head which is actually me beating on one of the canvases of a painting of mine. I use many non-musical items like this to push the idea or theory that everything is music. Among these items are a waterbottle, a bowling pin, a hole puncher, scissors, and even the pages of the book Invisible Man as I read and sing from it. The last portion of the song addresses the opposite of the first. Where as the first is a pensive speculation of the ideas of music art and silence in regards to music the last third of the song address the opposite. Thru yelling and loud noise it tries to make sense of the emotional side of music, it is less subtle in both sounds and lyrics. The piece tries to address the nature of music and hopes to be music while failing o be a song.