‘Gonna throw that dog right into the sea’. The line came immediately we had finished our collaborative story building process, and the rest flowed from there. A little like automatic writing; a little more like a world had been peopled, filled, given textures, contours and rivulets, and from out of that new world a poem (or song) just poured out.
On Saturday 9th March, the day after International Women’s Day, when yes, I felt all fired up and empowered and like I could storm the world with my ultimate feminine powers, I went to an hour-long song composition workshop led by Laura Durdey, Penryn-based songwriter and musician (https://soundcloud.com/laura-durdey), entitled ‘The Female Voice – An exploration in genre, characterisation within lyrics and the female narrative’. This workshop was part of the Benow festival at the Falmouth Art Gallery and the festival’s theme this year was ‘Women making a noise’. Well, this noisy woman (me) could get on board with that!
I’d like to celebrate this workshop as an example of what can be achieved in an hour of simple and well-structured tasks – I love how prompts, activities, and stimuli can unlock creativity in us all and this workshop felt fun and inspiring. I am currently filling myself up with new ideas and trying them out in my own facilitation processes… reminding myself that we need to keep feeding ourselves as artists and finding that nutrition can be sourced widely.
So, back to the inspiration:
To begin with, on the table there were songs by four female musicians – Billie Eilish, Little Simz, Dolly Parton and Kate Bush, as well as large-print words – past, future, rebellion, desire, love, hate etc. I chose not to sit by ‘past’ and ‘future’ (I was not in the mood for reminiscing, dwelling or aspiring) and found myself drawn towards ‘rebellion’. I like the active nature and potential of it. The moment itself. The turning. The fire and the propulsion.
In the centre of the table there were magazines and books, and alongside all of this, there were a series of word clouds. These, we were explained, were created out of an AI generator analysing the most common words in each of these musicians’ songs, though Laura has also at times done this herself before, painstakingly, meticulously, without the help of AI.
A large part of the way that Laura Durdey works, I gather, is through analysis. She gives herself inspiration and feeds her song-writing power through building foundations of words, ideas and preoccupations extracted from the song-world, out there, beyond herself, in the collective (my interpretation of her practices, not exactly what she said!) She also works through character, releasing herself from the pressure to pour out her own soul, reach into her depths and write from…herself. Now, this is the bit I found really inspiring. A layered, complex character, situated in a time, a place, a story… drives ideas, words, phrases, and more… and yet inevitably and beautifully, something of oneself comes through too. An intriguing synergy, a composition, a fusing… creativity.
We were introduced to a portrait by Paula Rego. Many in the group recognised the subject as Germaine Greer though the portrait had not explicitly been chosen for that reason – and we looked at it without focussing on this background knowledge. Together, we created an idea of this woman’s story – where she lived, why she was there, what her relationship with that place was, what had happened to her, through her, with and without others, if there were important people in her life, who they were and how much they mattered to her, what she liked to do, what her dreams and ambitions were, and what she cared about. When we had created a full enough (metaphorical) picture of her, mining and imagining it from the (actual) painting of her… we were released to write our songs.
Laura, I hope you don’t mind that I have divulged the secrets of your first ever workshop (I think you said that it was) to my small blog audience, but I want to thank you. I have been inspired to write – to really commit to writing – by your workshop, and I have used this portrait and collective story generating technique as part of a workshop in a project I am doing with people experiencing homelessness, which I have to say, produced astonishing results! One participant remarked ‘I had some ideas about what the workshop was going to be about, but I didn’t think I was going to be writing a song about a satanist parrot who went to jail and then became prime minister!’ (For another blog post perhaps…)
I know how you feel Rhys. I didn’t know I was going to be writing this when I woke up on Saturday 9th March, and yet the words ‘gonna throw that dog right into the sea’ popped into my head, and then the rest (of my possibly unfinished song/poem) just poured out.
Lockdown Dog Gonna throw that dog right into the sea. Holding me down Final anchor of a life up turned: You see my drift, need to be free. Break the chains, it’s time for me. Looking through your doughy eyes Lockdown dog. So much wisdom, so much joy. Symbol of a need for comfort But now we need fire Now we need ire. Holding me down Like my bones, cracking to the beats Of my previous life. I never thought a dog could make me frown. Brought me comfort, brought me joy In a time when the world shut down. Now the woman in me needs to rise And spread my limbs, my voice, across the skies. Looking into your doughy eyes, poor dog - I’m planning a revolution. As the sea levels rise.
