Writing Lyrics and Poetry (Under The Radar & Eden’s Wall) Part One

 

 I close my eyes and try to remember

Thinking back on it now it seems so much like a dream

All the places I’ve ever wandered

All the kisses I’ve ever stole

Yours are the ones I still remember

They never grow cold

They’re just under the radar

 

   Pete Hamill, one of my favorite writers, once said that the act of writing is the art of remembering. It can be a treacherous path. Our memories are chock full of blind alleys and vagaries, while, conversely, the tone of conversations, the kaleidoscopic imagery of people and places in our mind’s eye, the shading of a room, the tinge of color in the sky, the brilliance of a full moon, the profound joy or hurt from any number of episodes in our lives, all the intricate details of life, can be as clear and sharp as if they had just happened a moment ago.

   It all began as a simple act of sharing. In one of my infrequent trips to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in the comfort of the camp my wife, Cheryl, had rented off of Lake Superior-a summer ritual of the last few years-I  made an impulsive decision to share my writing with some friends and family gathered there that summer afternoon.  

   My recollection is going into the small and cluttered bedroom and digging through my computer bag for some papers I had printed various lyrics and poems on, plus a journal that I had written in and always carried with me, and took them back out to the living room to read them to Gary Bays, my wife’s cousin, and Cindy and Dickie Self, Gary’s best friends and fellow golfing enthusiasts, who just happened to also teach (Cindy was, and is, the head of the English Department) at Michigan Tech (MTU). I read several of my poems and showed how a few of them had made there way into lyrics for songs I had composed for Little Feat, the band I played with. Cindy asked me if I had ever had any of my poems published and I told her no, the thought had never even crossed my mind. She had a plan, which is what I love about Cindy-she is one of the most proactive people I know-she asked if I would consider teaching a master class and also consider speaking to a general audience about writing lyrics, poetry, the differences between the two, and what it was like to be a working musician. For a guy that had dropped out of a junior college in central California, I was floored. I said yes.

    February of the next year I was in front of an afternoon class of ten or so students, and that evening to about seventy five or eighty folks from the town, speaking to both groups about the pleasures and terrors of writing and performing. Cindy Selfe, and to a large degree, Gary Bays, set in motion something I hadn’t done up to that point, taking my writing seriously. I was also provided an opportunity to give something back to the community, and hopefully, give insight and inspiration to someone out there struggling with how to get started.

         My approach to lyrics and poetry is informal. What memory banks I have left are devoid of any instruction from school I received in the definition or assemblage of poetry. Regardless, it has not stopped me from investigating putting my experiences, real or imagined, into word pictures. My love of writing, in any form, is the destination of intent. What are you trying to stimulate in the reader? Are you purposely trying to give a clear statement, without ambiguity, or is the desired effect to allow the person to use their interpretive skills to fill in the picture, or a combination thereof? This is the alchemy of writing. The weight of words and their importance is in abundant evidence in poetry, creating a music in the way the words fall (the cadence);  often times our understanding of the “music” reveals itself much later, we are simply drawn into the flow of the words, attaching meaning where we can. Poetry is the intimate act between writer and reader and the shared response between the two. Add music to the “music of poetry” and you have lyrics. Not unlike music-in my case, I play piano, organ, and synthesizers-writing involves the transference of mind to body to instrument, critical facilities in the process of creating.

   I have kept many journals throughout the years documenting everything from lyrical ideas, poetry, musical notations, business dealings, muses on life. I am convinced that the singular most important action you can take as a writer is to get the thought on paper, computer, on the back of your hand, whatever it takes, while the idea is still fresh in your mind. Inspiration is ephemeral, unfortunately. They are a lot like dreams; we wake up and try to remember what it was we dreamt, many times to no avail.

   Writing provides a snapshot of our life’s development. Under The Radar and Eden’s Wall are what I call bookends. Born out of reaching a plateau in life, they represent discovery, acceptance, reflection, hopes, dreams and aspirations, leading to the delineation of the next path. The themes are similar, but arrived at quite differently. Under The Radar was written following a period of hardship, while Eden’s Wall was the concluding statement to my sense of getting on with life. The construction of both songs were also dramatically different. There are many ways to conjure the creative spirit, elusive as it may be.

  Under The Radar was written as a song. The music actually came first, and the inspiration, once again, was Gary Bays. I’ve listened to Gary perform at many a late night camp fire session on the beach at Lake Superior with family and friends singing along. He has a wonderful voice and guitar style; hearing him play and sing is something I always look forward to. I wanted to write a song that I could imagine Gary singing and playing under the stars at night. Back at home in Los Angeles, I used a sequencer to record my musical impressions using several synthesizers-nothing on tape, all on the computer. The music conveyed a dreamy mood-similar to Gary’s performance-and I took that, ultimately, as my cue for the lyrics.

   The title, Under the Radar, was another story. I had been using that phrase in interviews to describe Little Feat’s career. We were not, and are still not, a band that has our music played a lot on the radio. Hard core fans knew us, but you really had to dig deep to find us, thus, we were sitting below the radar screen for most people. The title, which was beginning to suggest something different to me, seemed to overlay perfectly with the music I had written. In writing the lyrics I came up with several “scenes” in my head. Each at a different time in my life, each with a memory evoking change and growth. The lyrics slowly began to take shape. Listening to the music playing back on the sequencer over and over again, the musical track was driving me on an emotional roller coaster; I merely connected the “lyrical” dots. Keeping the mood of the musical piece, and singing the lyrics, I musically reworked the piece to compose the song’s chorus:

 

                                     Under The Radar

                                     A place where all’s forgiven

                                     Under The Radar

                                     Where love never grows old

                                     It’s lying just below the timberline

                                     where the spirit carries on

   I made use of real life situations to write the verse lyrics. When I was eighteen or nineteen, I hitchhiked from Ventura, California, to San Antonio, Texas. It was an adventure I wouldn’t recommend to anyone, but I took my impetus from Jack Kerouac's, On The Road. It was an eventful week of hot days and cold nights in the desert;  an overly friendly senior citizen with his hand on my knee in Palm Springs (yes, I escaped molestation); sleeping underneath the stars and traveling with a group of hippies  and their psychedelic painted bus in Arizona and New Mexico; staying in a $5 a night flophouse in El Paso; getting a ride from a friendly trucker, with my long hair pulled up under my cowboy hat, through El Paso to Big Horn to Midland Odessa, Texas, where I finally said “No mas” and took a Greyhound Bus the rest of the way to my friend’s home in San Antonio.

                                       I was standing on a stretch of hiway

                                       Going back to see a friend

                                       I thought I’d reached the point of no return

                                       But came back under the radar

                                       I’ve been there ever since

    True, the actual lyrics don’t convey the adventure of the trip or the circumstances of any of the details I just described, but nonetheless, the collage of memory and experiences was distilled into the lines I wrote for the song. The song’s lyrics reveal what “happened” to me; I was not the same person after that trip, that somehow I had changed forever, that life is about the paths we choose or abandon, that the journey, and the insight we are provided-understood or not at the time-is the most important part of our lives.

You can trace your thoughts of darkness

with the movements of the sun

When you see what stands before you

and allow yourself a dream

Though it’s not far from sight now

no it’s not far from sight

 it’s just under the radar

 

 Bill Payne

South Beloit, Illinoise

July 2001

 

 

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