CLEVELAND (June 21, 2009)
'Songwriters are artists who compress their message into 3 or 4 minutes of elegant, powerful viral marketing we call ‘a song.’ Our world needs honest messages from creative thinkers and doers.'
Susan Weber was the lyric writing judge for the 2009 Cuyahoga County Public Library Generation Next Creative Writing Contest.
She made the following remarks at the Gen Next awards ceremony before presenting area teens with first, second, third place and honorable mention awards.
A recording of her remarks is available above and on the library's website.
Text of Susan's remarks:
Love. Rejection. Sacrifice. Family. Discovery. Longing. Doubt. Humor.
All these, and more, speak to me through lyrics I’ve been privileged to explore for this year’s Creative Writing Contest. I hesitate to call myself a judge, but one thing I’m very good at is listening.
Early in my songwriting career, I sent some lyrics to a songwriter in Boston whose work I greatly admired. To my surprise, he wrote back, with some advice. “You obviously have a great love of songwriting,” he said, “and a prolific pen. I suggest you perform your songs in front of people. They will tell you what works, and what doesn’t.”
So I did this. Before I was a seasoned performer or songwriter, I got out there with my songs. And you know what? My audiences not only taught me what worked (and what didn’t) - they inspired me to get better.
But way before you get in front of an audience, you listen every time you invent a new song. You listen to your feelings, your ideas, your desire - whatever is telling you to write this song. And when you see the lyrics take shape on the page, you listen again. Songs are for hearing, not reading. So you need to put words together that your tongue likes to pronounce. And of course, we know that finding all the good words can take time. Metaphors and hooks and rhymes can get tangled up and messy - before we know it, the spark of inspiration is lost in the process. So we need to edit. Sometimes I think of editing as a comb. I comb through my lyrics, taking out the knots. (not this, not that! We’ll keep this...) I don’t stop until there are no more knots.
Songwriting is fun. There is no better feeling in the world than coming up with a song you love and sharing it with your people. Songwriting is work. If a perfect song drops out of the sky someday and hits you on the head, consider it a miracle. And you may want to get out your comb and run it through the song a few times, just to make sure about the perfection part. And songwriting is necessary. Songwriters are artists who compress their message into 3 or 4 minutes of elegant, powerful viral marketing we call ‘a song.’ Our world needs honest messages from creative thinkers and doers.
Through my years of writing and performing, I’ve thought so much about ‘the necessary work of art’, it’s become a central theme in my work. It permeates my website, my community of artists and my creativity. I cordially invite you - and I mean all of you, whatever your art form, including the art of life - to join me and our creative community online anytime you please at susanweber.com.
I want to say thank you to the Cuyahoga County Public Library, for inviting me to be part of this exciting contest, and to all the songwriters for sharing your work with me. To you I say, keep writing, keep listening, keep combing and keep doing your necessary work of art.
Susan Weber
April 18, 2009
