Links, etc.: Lyrics

Here's some of the songwriting stuff that's been making me think lately. (The post is overdue, but I logged about fifteen hours of solo performance this week on top of the two day gigs, and I'm just happy to be putting anything here.)

• Ted Gioia on Sappho and the badassery of love songs. God, this is awesome. One thing Gioia mentions is the contempt that critics often have for expressions of emotion, despite the bravery and vulnerability such expressions require. (He doesn't get into the causes of that contempt, but I would bet there's a healthy amount of neo-Platonic sexism involved, the same bias that considers physical expression vulgar and dismisses the pop that teen girls enjoy.)
• Lyrics or music? Where does your ear go, what do you write first? I like hearing from other musicians on this. I rarely write a melody that doesn't come from a line of lyrics. The music is so tied to that meaning for me that I'm always a little awed when I encounter someone who can work on a melody without needing the words.
• An example of one of those people: The NYT Amplifier blog compiled a playlist of Eno tracks. (I have not yet seen the Eno movie, whose contents are digitally shuffled into different orders at different screenings. One of the most interesting classes I ever took was on narrative structure—how the order of the telling, a.k.a. fabula, influences our understanding of the subject—and I suspect I could spend a year analyzing this thing.)
• The Guardian discusses whether lyrics can ever be literature when they are divorced from their music. I tend to think of this sort of a question as a trolley problem—interesting in the abstract, pointless in practice. It's largely irrelevant to the working artist. Still, I'm gratified to know that critics do consider it, when a lot of listeners ignore lyrics entirely. 
• Art Levy breaks down writing an album, song by song. Levy's music incorporates visual art, and his experimental approach makes me feel as though my own long, roundabout process on Posthistoric might not be quite as dysfunctional as I tend to assume. (Coincidentally, he did much of this work on an Ibanez Artcore, the same guitar I usually play live. It's a lovely, versatile instrument.)

Last, this isn't a songwriting link, but writer Sarah Gailey has compiled a thorough list of resources for political actions Americans can take against the continuing genocide in Palestine, as well as ways to donate to victims, refugees, and communities. Here's your reminder that music is one of our strongest weapons against despair.