Your Prison, Your Rules
It's a new demo. A new song.
Years ago I was reading the Saul Bellow book “Henderson The Rain King”, a novel that came out in 1959 (the timeline is key!), and came upon an interesting passage. Henderson is describing his plane trip to Africa, describing looking out the window of the plane, down at the clouds. It was this:
“And I dreamed down at the clouds, and thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily.”
Maybe it is generally known that this was the inspiration for Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now” but I didn’t know. I only bring it up because it is a great example of someone taking another person’s words or idea and running with it. The concept of looking at clouds from both sides was Bellow’s but everything else was Joni. It sets a precedent. You are allowed to repurpose cool thoughts. The precedent is right there. Take it up with Bellow and Joni.
A few years ago I put out an open call on Twitter for any ideas, anything. I was feeling blocked. Nicole Atkins wrote me and said she had a title she wanted to use. It was “My Prison, My Rules”. I started writing a piece of music that I would call “My Prison, My Rules”. It was instrumental. It was kind of cool. I filed it away. It actually became another song that I cannot talk about. So much I cannot talk about these days. Even songs that you cannot talk about can be repurposed later. Change a few chords, change the melody, the tempo. Voila! New song. I found the rough demo that I made and thought about that title again “My Prison, My Rules”. No, it still means nothing to me. Mix it up, though, and turn it into “YOUR Prison, YOUR Rules”….
Evocative! Maybe it is glaringly obvious why the concept of prison would strike a psychic chord right now. I wasn’t hearing it like “This is your prison so you make the rules”, I was hearing it as “the rules ARE your prison”. The rules you have lived by, they have become your prison. I started thinking about the things that people hide away. What is the saying? You are as sick as your secrets. Why would I be thinking of such things?
I knew someone that had a secret life, secret from everyone they knew. Secrets go from absolutely destructive and dark to benign. I have no deep dark secrets, just the pedestrian ones, but we all carry them. I see it in musicians, in myself, trying to create a hyper-real (super-real?) version of themselves, hiding the real person. Selling the idea that the art they present to the world is genuine, it’s them! It’s really them! Not a construct to distance themselves from who they are! Yes, it’s a paradox. Art is personal but it is also a wall. Before they have a chance to get to know you, you can throw up your wall of song (or a tower of song that would work as well, though not as effective) and you can say “This is me! I am my art! A true artist!”. A song, however, is not life. It is a song. Listeners infuse them with their lives, then it becomes something else. I will always love The Smiths, despite anything Morrissey says or does, because those songs are mine now. He cannot have them back.
I’ve known musicians that are so afraid they’ll be found out. I am one of them. It begs the question: can an impostor have ‘imposter syndrome’? Yes, but they tend to not talk about it. If you truly are an impostor, you need to keep quiet. You can’t afford to be found out. I wanted to use this Substack as a place where I am more “revealed”. The songs do not have to be done. The songs can be in any condition. If I am an impostor, you will find out. Here I am. Here is the song I’ve been working on. I’m not an impostor, by the way. I know, exactly what an impostor would say.
Sorry, this is very stream of consciousness. In that spirit, here is another tangent.
Many years ago in Vancouver I was watching a live interview and performance by The Sun City Girls at CITR, the UBC campus radio station. It was amazing, they were amazing, always interesting, going from world music to noise to spoken word. The drummer, the late great Charlie Goucher, said something that stuck with me. He said:
Don’t push the music around.
What did he mean? Let it flow through you? Be a conduit, do not taint the music with your frailties, your ego and self-consciousness? Possibly. How do you not push the music around? Your job as a musician is to move notes around. I have always been guilty of over-working songs, and I’d sometimes stop myself and say “I’m pushing the music around. Charlie G told me not to do this”. A lot of the time I’d continue bullying the music. It will go where I tell it to. You’re MY song, do you hear me? Mine.
Lately I’ve been trying to follow his advice more. I have been following this song around. Tossing out what I’d carefully written, carefully composed, replacing it with what works in the moment. What feels comfortable to sing. Sometimes the music is telling you that it needs your help. It does this by sucking. It does not want to sound bad. It’s a cry for help. So I step back. There is something in the way, something between myself and the song. A communication breakdown. It takes work. Me and this song, we still have our problems, we probably always will, but we work them out. It’s symbiotic. We believe in each other.
There are many things I should not say right now, but I’m allowed to write songs. So if you want a glimpse into what I’ve been thinking, just a tiny oblique glimpse, a little funhouse mirror inside a locket, here it is:
Your Prison, Your Rules
-------————————-
Was it a skillfully etched portrait,
or a sketch
of somebody that never quite existed
If our legacy's stripped and drowned in the deep blue sea
we are by no means alone here
I have read true crime where much less happens
That's how the monkey's paw works
It's the trap yeah
but they all know your name
Your prison your rules, your prison your rules
It was a skillfully etched portrait
and yet
needed carefully controlled preconditions
It was drained, emptied out,
all in service of
trying hard not to give up your position
I have read fiction where so much less happens
and struggled my way through
That's how the monkey's paw works
It's the trap, yeah
but they're all talking about you
Your prison, your rules
Your prison, your rules
Was it a skillfully etched portrait,
or a sketch,
of someone that never quite existed
Was it a skillfully etched portrait,
or a sketch,
of someone that never quite existed
Your prison, your rules
Your prison, your rules
----------———————
It’s on its way to being something. It gives me enough faith to continue. I don’t want to throw it out. I want to fix whatever is not working. The lyrics feel honest and they also sound right to me. Even if it is all a place-keeper for some later eureka moment, it all feels like it is on the right path. Or near enough to the path. I’m trying not to wander off too much, accidentally step off a cliff. This is where I am right now. I do not know what I’m doing, but I know that if you work at something you eventually get to the end. I don’t know if I’m being pushed around, or I’m the one doing the pushing. It’s another version of the big question: When do you listen to yourself and when do you listen to outside advice?
I always feel a little exposed when I post these new demos, but it feels good to not be hiding. Here it is, warts and all. Doing the work. Following the path. Holding the door for the music.
Song after break. It’s called ‘Your Prison Your Rules’.