If I had a major (or maybe an advisor) at Song School this year, it would be Richard Shindell. He’s one of the guest songwriting instructors this year, and he also taught a guitar accompaniment workshop today, and I’ve taken three classes with him so far in two days of Song School. He has been one of my favorite songwriters for a long time; his narrative songs, often written from perspectives or about stories that aren’t his own, are the kinds of songs I aspire to write. I wasn’t sure how his classes would be, though so I didn’t necessarily expect to be spending so much time with him this week. First, because he’s not one of the usual instructors, I expected his first class to be mobbed. Instead, there were only eight of us there. Which meant we could actually do productive work. And second, I wasn’t sure how he’d be as a teacher; not every great songwriter is good at explaining great songwriting. But he had a plan for what he wanted to teach us. His theme initially (and it continued into the second class, which was twice the size) was the authority of the song. The voice of the song should be completely authoritative within its world – in other words, the narrator should be a consistent voice, and the perspectives, observations, knowledge, and language should be consistent with that person’s experiences. He started out by reading us a short story by Raymond Carver called “I Could See The Smallest Things.” It’s a fascinating story that basically drops us in the middle of a scene without explaining the backstory; everything we learn about what’s going on we learn from context and the perspective of the person telling the story. Someone narrating the events that are happening in her life is not going to start by saying something like “Cliff and I got married sixteen years ago” or even “Cliff is my husband” or “Cliff has a problem with alcohol;” instead she’s going to assume those things (because she knows them), and just tell the story that’s happening. The story also doesn’t resolve much, either – you know that it is going to go on after that point at which you’re no longer watching it. His point was that good songs do that too – they don’t set the stage for you; you are just immediately entered into what is going on. And that’s part of the authority of the narrator, because you’re seeing the world as the narrator sees it. It also expects a lot of the audience: to be able to deal with ambiguity, to pay enough attention to the details to get the bigger picture. Those are the types of songs I like best. They feel more real, and they also reward multiple listens. But it is not the Berklee-Nashville approach to songwriting that’s the modal format at song school. That’s my guess about why the class wasn’t initially as full as I was expecting – a lot of the people here aren’t really in that particular singer-songwriter world. And there were indeed a few people who seemed a bit skeptical, but everyone was willing to jump in nevertheless. That first day of class he charged us to give that type of songwriting a try. We were sent off on our own for 30 minutes – to write four lines that puts us into the middle of something that’s already going on, without explaining the backstory. I often start songs that way. Most of my song start with a line or an image rather than with a plan, and I love the process of figuring out what story the song wants to tell. In this case, the exercise was difficult because I didn’t have a situation or an image or an interesting turn of phrase to start with. I grabbed a garden image that jumped into my mind, but it was a real struggle and I didn’t really like the lines I came up with. When we were talking through the results of our exercise, there were a couple things in my lines that Richard and others pulled out that had potential, and we talked about some directions it could go. But I didn’t feel any attachment to it, so I said I didn’t expect I would do anything with it. But he took me to task, saying that I really should work on it – and quoting someone who said that you shouldn’t throw out anything until you know what you’re throwing out. So I decided to work with it. And boy was it work. This is just four lines of a song. But I really tried to work with what would keep the scene true but make it more compelling. And I wrote a verse melody as well as a chorus melody that I particular like (though I don’t know what the chorus lyrics will be yet, largely because I still don’t know what the story behind the song). This was one of the most torturous songwriting endeavors I’ve been through – I worked on those four lines for hours. But I eventually came up with a version I like: The breeze that creaks the empty swing just work me up again I’d trade this morning’s coffee for a taste of last night’s gin I might as well get started pulling brambles from the clay I guess I thought that new raised beds would keep the weeds away I still don’t know the story, but it now seems like there might be an interesting one. So I’ll probably keep at it. With authority, I hope.