Last week I was working on lyrics for a patter song when I hit a sticking point: What was the best way to fill the four syllables in this line?

I texted the band for suggestions of acts that scan like "cauliflower" (i.e., trochee trochee). The thing is, though, that scansion is highly personal—try sight-singing from another songwriter's lyric sheet if you don't believe me. It can be specific to the song and the vocal delivery as well. And I hadn't recorded or shared a demo yet.

Thomas came back with a list:
owl city (great example of how a word that looks like a monosyllable turns into two when you sing it)
yo la tengo
michael doughty
billy idol

None felt quite right. I recorded the demo with "Mats reunion," which also didn't feel quite right but at least let me finish without using cauliflower. (I once sent out a demo with the line "I don't want a cauliflower"; Charlie suggested I was missing the opportunity to rhyme it with "I don't want a golden shower.")

When I sent out the demo, Charlie—with the added benefit of context—replied with his own list, as well as the criteria he had gleaned from the rest of the song:
Jesus Lizard show
Lizard Wizard show
Sleater-Kinney show
7 Seconds show
Mr Bungle show
Stabbing Westward show
Smashing Pumpkins show
Jon Bon Jovi show
Jason Isbell show
Billie Eilish show

(Criteria: 4 syllables, currently touring, loud enough to necessitate earplugs, theoretically popular with undateable dudes)

I can confirm that the last Jesus Lizard show I saw was loud enough for earplugs and full of guys I might think twice before dating. What I cannot do, however, is get that combination of s and z sounds out of my mouth in rhythm. It's kind of a fast song; it needs a hard sound or two.

Thomas, ever loyal to the band that brought us all together, suggested "tmbg"—either the abbreviation or the full name of the band, mushed together—but I don't think I can make that work either. So I'm still looking. I think this may become something we change up in live shows. Might as well open the comments here to additional ideas, yeah?

A few years ago I was chatting with a luthier about various resources for learning string instruments. I forget what prompted it, but he commented, "You never practice as hard as you do in high school."

This is, in my experience, not true. I get it: you have more time in high school, and it feels as though these skills might turn out to define you. (In truth there is no time limit on when or how you define yourself. But teenage intensity is real and urgent.) I did practice some things—vocal music, writing—really hard in high school. But I had my first guitar then, the Gibson LG0 that my mom's friend sold me at a yard sale, and I had absolutely no clue what to do with it.

It took years, in fact, before I knew enough of both guitar and music that I could work effectively on that instrument. Several of my most intense stretches of practice have been relatively recent; they've come on arts residencies that afforded time for hours of daily woodshedding. And I don't feel as though these parts of my work are behind me. The more I learn, the more aware I am of how much I want to do.

My first experience with deep guitar practice was when I took Charles Kim's theory/composition courses. Our main textbook was a huge Hal Leonard compilation of Beatles songs. I played through in alphabetical order, gradually getting my hands used to the chord shapes and unraveling the music I'd grown up singing along with. At about the same time, my friend Jesse was running the weekly open mic at the Holiday Club; I started going with a handful of buddies. I had written and arranged songs before—I was in college a cappella, as well as a folk duo that I hope came off as charmingly lo-fi—but things changed when I was playing for the same people every week. I grew impatient with the limitations of my repertoire and my playing. So I had to write new songs, and I had to practice. 

I should note that there's a distinction between practicing instrumental technique and practicing to learn repertoire. The best practice, for me, combines the two. I can't always apply what I learn from Hanon-style scales and drills, but if I learn a pattern from digging deep into a song, it stays with me. (Simon Callow says much the same thing in Being an Actor: Only the lessons of performance stick. That's not a direct quote, because I seem to have left my copy at the old house. But it's the idea.)

"Half" was a turning point for both songwriting and play. (I think it and "Grace" are the only songs from that era that I've kept and recorded with the Baguettes.) I hadn't done much fingerpicking before, and I really didn't want to mess it up in front of a crowd of musicians. Plus, I liked the song; I wanted to keep singing it; I kept discovering stuff as I worked. I practiced until the tip of my right middle finger, rasping against the steel strings, developed a large, nipple-like blood blister. 

Then I kept playing.

The Blister Test has become my shorthand for whether a song demands that sort of compulsive play. It doesn't mean a literal blister in every case, thank goodness (though both the Gibson and the Telecaster have now been baptized in blood). But if I don't want to keep playing a new song, something's wrong with it.

I sometimes wish I had a better vocabulary of rhetoric. I nerd out very hard over nomenclature and grammar; there is a reason I'm in a band with Charlie, who once drafted a song called "I'm Like a Simile, You're a Metaphor," and Zach, who introduced us all to the concept of pataphor during a rehearsal.

This week a favorite lyric glided into my thoughts: "I'm not expecting that I'll end up with you just because I need to / I shouldn't count on having air around me just because I breathe." That's from the Loud Family's complicated meditation "Not Expecting Both Contempo and Classique," a song that also namechecks "the full devouring will of Aubrey Beardsley in his grave"; there is, as the kids say, a lot to unpack there.

It's been long enough since I first heard the song that I can no longer remember which heartbreak it evoked then. (I've got a guess or two, but on the whole it's a relief to know that I could forget.) I would have been in college—which is when I was most likely to know the name of the device Scott Miller used in that pair of lines. But I don't think I did know then, and it's driving me to distraction now. It's sort of—analogy by juxtaposition? It's not exactly an indirect metaphor (which omits the thing compared), and it's not just plain juxtaposition (which seems, in most examples I can find, to operate more like Shakespearean antithesis, creating contrast by adjacency). Thomas suggested "extrapolative analogy," which I think is more commonly applied in situations of logical fallacy, though I might have to get a JSTOR subscription to know for sure. 

​The efforts to figure it out have led me to some unexpected places, including discussions of programming language and math and whatever this is. I even dug into an old comp lit text, A Dictionary of Narratology (which at least reminded me that, as much as I like rhetoric, I'm glad not to be thinking about lit theory all day).

It's all beside the point of the song, of course. Any song has to work on its own terms, not by ticking a certain number of literary boxes; a rhetorical device can succeed without writer or audience knowing what it's called. But I really like knowing the names for things, and I wish I could figure this out.

Earlier this year, my homemade Roterfaden cover gave out (to be clear, my amateur stitchwork has lasted just fine, but the spring in the wallet clip has sprung its last). This has resulted in the music notebook getting a bit banged up. 

Today, in the grocery store, I reached into my bag for my list. I spotted a bit of paper with my handwriting, and I pulled. And then gazed in dismay at the scrap of lyrics I was holding. (Did I succeed in finding the list while I was in the store? No. Did I remember to buy coriander? Also no.)

Most of the pages that have come free represent either completed songs ("Wake," "Who You Fooling," "The Comeback Kid") or pieces I have tried and found wanting ("Hush Hush No No"), so I don't think I have fatally damaged any work in progress. I'm cranky all over again that Moleskine discontinued its hardcover staff-paper pocket notebooks. And part of me is just sitting back and marveling at this. Of course, of course, in a year when it sometimes seemed I was tearing my own life to pieces, I would destroy my music notebook. 

The thing is, though, that this image is perversely hopeful. The notebook looks like this because I refuse to stop carrying it. Music has been one of the few bright spots this year. I haven't given up on it, and it hasn't given up on me.

Ten years ago today, I convinced Charlie Crane, Thomas Zeitner, Zach Sigelko, and Sarah Scanlon to help me play some songs I'd written at a taping of Chicago Acoustic Underground. During that session, someone referred to the group as Liz and the Baguettes, everyone laughed, and that was that.

At the time, Charlie, Thomas, Zach, and I had already been playing together for a while as the Loudness War, itself in its second version (Loudness War Starship, I suppose). And Thomas, Zach, Sarah, and I were all in the Strange Tree production of The Dead Prince, a folk musical. When I wanted to expand my own sound beyond what I could do alone, it was natural to turn to the people with whom I was already making music.

The CAU session was not the first time we'd played music of mine—"Grace" had been in at least one Loudness War set earlier that year—but it was the first time we kind of recognized the project as something new. A few weeks later I played what was supposed to be a solo set at LiveWire, and the band joined me for most of it. By early 2014, we were recording an album at the Workshop Jones.

Since then the lineup has shifted a bit, ebbed and flowed as lives have changed. Liesl Downey joined us in the recording sessions for Everything I Think I Know Is Wrong. Andy Miles subbed in on drums once or twice. David Chervony played bass when Thomas went off to live in Hawaii. Julie Jurgens started singing harmony during the sessions for Highway Gothic. Every person has made it better.

Mostly this all feels like incredible luck. ​A lot of bands don't get to year ten. A lot of bands didn't survive COVID. A lot of songwriters burn out. A lot of bandmates can't stand each other. (It's possible that we have avoided quite a few problems by the simple expedient of never making enough money to afford cocaine.)

If you've listened, watched, clicked, clapped, danced, worn a T-shirt, booked us, shared a lineup, worked sound, stamped hands at the door: you're a part of this too. And I am so, so grateful. Thank you, friends. 

I sent a couple of demos to the band a week or two ago. One, "Negative," was a song I've been trying to finish since late 2019—some of the Taos songs were early attempts, though they eventually developed into other things. The other, "Swing the Statue," began as a near-complete set of verses in 2020, but didn't have a chorus until now (and still needs bridge lyrics). It was not at all guaranteed that I would finish these, in short. Finishing anything creative has been a pretty massive struggle this year, but these songs were elusive. I was happy to send them.

Thomas texted today, ominously: "I have thoughts on the demos." What followed was an enjoyable, if blunt, disassembly.

(I don't think I do that much with diminished chords—if anything, I default to major too often—but it's good to be in a band with fellow songwriters who'll pick up on your habits. Getting texts about music theory is no small privilege.)

We didn't reach any definite conclusions, other than that playing through both songs with the whole band was the most useful next step. The conversation did help me zero in on a few things that might be in the way of finishing the "Statue" bridge, though. And "We tried subtle and the world got worse" is an accurate assessment of quite a lot of political art.

​And I'm pretty sure that flat ninth is going to stay in the song. 

My work's all over the place this week, my attention divided between our upcoming photo shoot and a handful of demos I need to finish, so this week's post may be a little random as well. Which is actually on theme! 

Tools that have helped me lately:

• I have a playlist that might as well be called "Hey Future Liz, Listen to This." It's where I store song recommendations, artists to whom I've given insufficient attention (this realization is sometimes prompted by a death), miscellaneous new releases I don't have time to listen to right when I hear about them, etc. I try to grab a few tracks from each artist, not all from the same album and not all at the top of Spotify's recommendation, and then let the player shuffle as it will. The idea for the playlist, as well as the name, comes from my old guitar teacher Chris Corsale, who used to talk about exploring music as finding and pulling threads.
• ​A different playlist, the Amplifier's roundup of bands in uniform, was a useful way to think about how we might dress for the photo shoot. (In suits, but make it rock? How do we avoid resembling a wedding band or a steampunk collective? We have discussed Devo-style jumpsuits, but not for this shoot.)
• ​Austin Kleon's piece on creative surrender is lovely, and not just because he cites some of my favorite writing on the subject by Martha Graham and Kenny Werner.* The approach is similar to what Keith Johnstone talks about in Impro, though the mechanics of musical improv are different—and feel, to me, far riskier—than theatrical improv.
• Tarot as a tool of divination can be just as needlessly restrictive as any other superstition, but tarot as a randomized archetype generator is kind of interesting. Since every symbol has multiple interpretations, the real meaning comes from you, so on the days when feelings are murky, this can be a fun way to focus. (I'm obviously not going to link to that site without clicking, and it generated the Wheel of Fortune: this week really is about letting go of control, huh?)
• I'm about to send the band a demo whose bridge contains some gibberish placeholder lyrics, ending with "cauliflower." I haven't been able to get to the right words, so maybe the group can find them. Or maybe the prospect of an audience will make my brain land on the right words about five seconds after I hit Send. Either one works. Gibberish is more useful than it gets credit for.

*Werner's guided meditation hasn't been quite what I've needed to deal with musical performance anxiety, but a brief daily meditation does seem to help. Maybe that should be in the list of tools too.

As a teenager, I spent months drawing with nothing but Sharpie; my art teacher wanted me to get comfortable with not being able to erase. After contour and texture studies, we progressed to working with negative space—that is, defining an object by what's around it. 

I'm working on a song about someone who's not there, and as often happens, the lessons appeared right when I needed them.

Austin Kleon posted this gem about punk artists defining their work by negatives, with a nice quote from David Byrne on how the Talking Heads set out not to do certain things other bands had done. "The only sensible course was to avoid all of it, to strip everything back and see what was left. ...It was mathematics; when you subtract all that unwanted stuff from something, art or music, what do you have left?" Byrne adds that he later moved beyond that approach, "but the dogma provided a place to start."

In a Chicago rock discussion group, someone posted Paul Westerberg's interview with Musician, in which he discusses how artists define themselves in relation to others, whether they're aspiring to be in the in-group or to break away: "It takes a lot of courage to be different but it takes a great deal of hard work to be the same. I think in the end you get the same result but you've got to be what you are." (I've always had the impression that Westerberg had little choice about being different; he's constitutionally perverse. In Trouble Boys he says that if you tell him "White sheet rain," he'll come back with "Black blanket sun.")

What do those things mean for the song? for me as a person? Defining by absence is useful, but there's a point at which it becomes too reductive. What isn't starts to obscure what is and what can be. I was stuck on a refrain of "I won't think about you, I won't think about you" until I figured out that it needed to break so the song could become a whole song, not just an idea. Ultimately the no isn't enough; you need the yes too. Or I do. 

A few weeks ago, to general woe, Café Selmarie announced it would be closing. I've lived a block away for the past eleven years, and being able to wander through Giddings Plaza for a perfect croissant or a cup of veg chili has always been one of the best parts of the neighborhood.

Right after the announcement I took an evening walk down Lincoln. The windows of another restaurant were papered over. The urgent care clinic sent fluorescent light out of what used to be the Brauhaus. By the fountain a familiar cellist was playing a Bach melody I've learned by heart this year. It felt like an elegy for the Square as I have known it, for this whole stretch of my life.

We cling to the illusion of permanence because it provides the even more important illusion of security. Or that's what I told myself as the streetlights came on against a blue twilight.

I moved out last week. This blog is not the place to go into the details, but the past couple of years have been the hardest of my life. Sometimes the difficulty seemed permanent in a way that began to feel secure, which terrified me.

I've left behind the music room where we recorded most of Highway Gothic and a lot of Unswept tracks. The hundred-year-old piano from "Gen X" and "After All" is still in the front room. My sticky-note project is still on the wall; I will collect it at some point, but inevitably pieces will be shuffled and jumbled. It won't be the same. Nothing will. 

Bach is a good choice for an elegy. His music provides a sense of having tapped into a deeper natural order—and I still don't know whether it's an actual natural order or merely the comforting illusion of one, rendered exceptionally well. The cello suite dances on a sharp edge of paradox, offering permanence in a melody, something that vanishes even as you experience it. Perhaps that, in itself, is the natural order.

One of the band’s funnier recent text threads began when Zach got a song stuck in his head and couldn’t remember what it was. He recorded himself singing the melody and sent it to us—truly, this is trust—and we tried our best to identify the thing. Two weeks later, after the thread had delved into Mungo Jerry, Gershwin, the theme from Driving Miss Daisy, Taj Mahal, and so much Randy Newman that Spotify is still tossing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” into my algorithm, he figured it out himself. That’s a long time to be haunted by a song.

Once when I was freelancing at a large marketing agency, a couple of designers spent an afternoon wandering about, disconsolate, singing a motif they couldn’t identify: “Da-duh! DUH! DUH! Do you know what that song is?” Somehow no one did.* (This is perhaps not surprising, as it’s the same office where I once heard an intern confidently define ska as “rock, but with like a blues feel.”)

The ways we remember music—or almost remember it—both fascinate and scare me. Sometimes when you’re writing a song it comes so fast that it feels more like recall than creation. Sometimes it does turn out to be recall, accidental or not, and then you lose a court case. Which makes the songs that come fast more than a little terrifying. You feel as though you’re dealing with music as an elemental force—unless you’re just regurgitating something you heard once in a Walgreens—and for a while you genuinely don’t know which is true. That frantic not-knowing is part of what “Cryptomnesia” is getting at (though that song began as a dream, and to be honest I still don’t know what every last part of it means).

A song I’m almost done with is still in that state, which means I’ve been carrying it around for a week or two while my brain pings between things it might be and pops random melodies into the ol’ mental algorithm. I’ve practiced it for the sake of putting together a demo, and now I can’t tell whether the chord progression feels inevitable because I’m used to it, or because it’s a song that already exists out in the wild. I am probably not going to know until I play it for the band. This too is trust, huh?

*They didn’t ask me—no one ever asks the freelancer—but it was the theme from Carmen.