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Andy
Gricevich
Poet,
guitarist, singer and actor Andy Gricevich hasn’t written a complete song in a
long time, but makes occasional contributions to the songs of the Prince
Myshkins (a satirical cabaret duo consisting of Gricevich and main songwriter
Rick Burkhardt); years of intensive conversation about songwriting in that
context (as well as with many other songwriters) are the most important source
of the thoughts in this interview. Some
of Andy’s poems have been published in CanWeHaveOurBallBack?,
Disaster, Luzmag, Mirage, Moria, Shadow Train, Unlikely Stories and other
lovely publications. He also performs with the Nonsense Company, an ensemble
specializing in new works of theatre and notated music by exciting younger
composers. More can be found at http://ndgwriting.blogspot.com, http://princemyshkins.com,
and http://princemyshkins.com/nonsensecompany.html. Q:
Do you think of your lyrics as poetry? A:
No.
I see the two as distinct projects, with different aims and ways of treating
language. The two genres have separate histories; poetry hasn’t been
identifiable with song, at least in an unproblematic way, for centuries. By now,
the possibilities open to each are radically different. I can’t think of any
recent or contemporary song lyrics that really stand alone; even the most
“poetic” still seem incomplete without music. One can, of course, come up
with new ways of thinking about one genre as a result of thinking about the
other. In general, I do want song lyrics to involve a precise attention to
language, an inventiveness and an avoidance of cliché, all of which I also
expect from good poetry. Q:
Do you think it is important that songs rhyme and if so why? A:
I can’t think of any good songs that abandon rhyme entirely, though I’m sure
it can be done. I don’t see any reason to abandon rhyme in songwriting. Rhyme
now tends to take over the character of poetry, obfuscating other parameters
(even when it’s good, contemporary rhymed verse tends to seem light or
intentionally archaic). The field of possibilities open to rhyme in song, on the
other hand, is still vast. Only a handful of songwriters have focused on
internal rhyme, with its potential for building layers of different rhythmic
patterns and phrase lengths, to a sufficient extent. The same goes for complex
rhyme schemes. Even the simple end-rhyme hasn’t been exhausted; one can vary
the length of lines widely, using the rhyme as a marker for the end of a unit.
This happens in a simple way in some of Bob Dylan’s songs, and in a more
complex way in good hip-hop, where the recurrence of a rhymed sound can be so
irregular that end-rhyme and internal rhyme blur together. In
addition to these sonic possibilities, there’s also rhyme’s range of
cognitive functions. Rhyme can function as a way of sculpting thought in a song.
For example: When two rhymed words come from very different fields of language
or areas of subject matter (their only intuitive connection being sonic), the
rhyme can suggest surprising connections between the terms, making a statement
by means of friction or mismatch. A variation on this is the conspicuous absence
of a rhyme, as in this lyric by Roy Zimmerman: Suzie
could not keep the job that we got her so
we cut her ration of gruel Jimmy
was jailed ‘cause the school system failed him so
we built a shiny new juvenile facility
(from
‘Punish the People’, on Comic Sutra) The
absence of the obvious rhyming word parallels the absence of the obvious
solution to the social problem. In a song made up of what seem to be initially
disparate parts (say, a series of humorous one-liners), rhyme can hold the whole
thing together as a “glue” until, later in the song, the accumulated
juxtapositions suddenly cohere, and the song seems to be about something built
from counterintuitive connections between the parts (perhaps about something
gravely serious). (I like songs that change their meaning, tone, scale over the
course of the piece). Q:
Do you think song lyrics must conform to recognised song structures such as
clear rhyming schemes, choruses, refrains, hooks and bridges or that songs can
also be like free verse? A:
Again, I don’t think it’s a matter of “must,” but I still see countless
possibilities for these kinds of structures, and don’t see why anyone would
want to abandon them entirely unless they lack any love of formal innovation and
formal meaning (or have a new formal idea that would really be blocked or
overshadowed by these categories). Good “free” verse (which, as Eliot said,
isn’t so “free”) hasn’t been motivated by a desire to escape traditional
patterns, but by a sense that those patterns weren’t appropriate to
contemporary subject matter, or that they blocked desirable new poetic effects.
I don’t think songwriting is in this situation, partly because there’s been
so much less radical formal innovation in the field (perhaps because songwriters
tend to be less methodical and analytical than poets in their work?). Few
songwriters have explored the realm of multiple distinct bridges with different
structures, long and/or complex verse structures, choruses that repeat verbatim
but change their meaning radically due to shifting context, verse or chorus
structures that repeat over the “wrong” music (of a bridge, etc.), and so
on. At
the same time, I certainly see connections between some of my favorite songs
(and the bits of songs I write) and some fine non-traditional verse (for
instance, the incomparable lyrics of Peter Berryman often employ rigid formal
constraints reminiscent of the Oulipo, and Paul Kotheimer’s early songs
sometimes sound like a rhyming Whitman).
Q:
When you read poetry in school or elsewhere did you recognize any
connection to the music you enjoyed? A:
Sure.
My introduction to Rimbaud (in the 8th grade), one of the truly transformative
literary discoveries of my life, came through an obsession with Bob Dylan and
Jim Morrison. Reading the Illuminations pretty
much spelled the doom of my fascination with the Doors, and made me think of
Dylan’s prose poetry as pretty poor, but I still loved many of his songs (and
still do), and could see the resonances with Rimbaud. In high school I saw a
connection between songwriting that tried to express epiphanic or transcendent
experiences (I’m too
embarrassed
to list names here) and the writing of Ginsberg, Whitman and others. A focus on
the fantastic and the mythological was common to some of Poe’s poetry and the
early King Crimson albums. It took me a lot longer to discover poetry that was
stranger than Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, which is probably an exception to most of what
I’ve written in this interview. Q:
Was there anything about poetry in books that influenced your
songwriting? A:
Yes. In high school and early college I wanted to write lyrics with a
“visionary” or ecstatic character, and this had more to do with the poetry
of Cummings, Eliot, Shelley, Rimbaud and Merwin than with any of the music I was
listening to at the time. At the same time, I was also writing hundreds of
disjunct, ridiculous (and intentionally juvenile) songs with friends, and these
took some inspiration from Lewis Carroll (whose complexity they didn’t come
near), as well as Dada poetry and children’s rhymes. The
way I think about songwriting now certainly owes a lot to years of thought about
the work of the so-called “Language poets,” particularly as regards their
varied use of parataxis. Thinking of parataxis in a non-literal way (i.e., as
applying to the juxtaposition, without subordinating connections, of any parts,
whether they’re sentences or not) has been extremely valuable in thinking
about all art. As far as songwriting is concerned, I’m extremely interested in
the juxtaposition of topics or “content areas” that don’t seem to go
together. When it comes to political subject matter, this can be especially
interesting, suggesting connections between issues or scales of experience that
are kept separate and compartmentalized in even the best news media, and (by not
stating the connections) avoiding the pitfalls of the authorial voice with its
political “message”. There are plenty of other ways in which “parataxis”
as a category can be deployed in writing songs (I stretch the definition of the
term so that it covers melodies in a different key than their accompaniments,
for instance). Q:
Why do you think songs are more popular with people than poetry is? A:
Music, for a lot of people, is something you put on in the background. This
probably has something to do with the marketing of music as an accompaniment to
one’s life, or something that just makes you feel a certain way. I think
it’s definitely related to the social division between “work” (one’s
paid labor) and “free time” (when one is off the clock). You’re not
supposed to work in your free time, if you can avoid it. Listening to music
actively is work, as is reading poetry, but music has the potential to be
treated as a component of “leisure activities” in a way poetry doesn’t
(you can’t just “put poetry on in the background”). Then
there’s the image of poetry as written for highbrows, cultured people,
intellectuals or “soft” romantics. Despite the problems with this image,
there’s some truth to it; music is
more accessible than poetry. There’s a sensuous immediacy to music, a
directness and a presence that poetry doesn’t have (even when it tries to, as
in certain performative modes). Music can also have a collective aspect that
reading, mostly solitary, rarely does, and could therefore be described as
intrinsically more “popular” (though we live in the age of the IPod, the age
of computerized references to “my music” and “my songs,” a
personalization of music that reduces it to a commodified expression of personal
style, the material of a portable protective environment). I
don’t find this difference in popularity troubling. I don’t think putting
music on in the background is utterly dreadful (I do it myself on occasion). It is
amazing—and very troubling—that the idea of actively listening to music has
never even occurred to many people; that signifies a situation that’s been
pretty bad for music. The major problem is (ta-da!) oppression, the division of
labor, the draining of pleasure from work and the ban on complex experience in
pleasure. I didn’t expect to end the interview that way.
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© Andy Gricevich |