There was a time when I stopped writing songs. As if my ability to put words to music and music to words had upped and left me, and I might never pen a half-decent tune again.*
It started right after I had moved to Austin for graduate school. Here, in the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the World, I was experiencing a prolonged songwriter’s block. I’m not entirely sure what was blocked, as I was hard at work on other creative endeavors. It was just the songwriting bit that had evaporated. The duration of this musical blockage overlapped with my pursuit of my master of fine arts degree in theatre directing, which kept me busy for three solid years, followed immediately afterwards (well, overlapping that final year, truth be told) with the co-founding of a theatre company, The Public Domain, which was even more time-consuming and just as creatively demanding. So while I was pursuing all sorts of creative arts projects, an arts business and a degree in the theatre arts — ironically, often overseeing the musical aspects of the on-stage work — my songwriting foundered. It turned into a four-year void in my musical creativity, and I was at a loss as to when, if ever, I would write anything worthwhile.
Then came this song.
It isn’t all that much. A story about a misguided love affair that leaves her bruised at the hands of a brutal him. Not particularly edifying, but as soon as there was the slightest sense of traction, I made the conscious decision not to interfere with whatever combination of words and music were duking it out. I got out of the way. As the thing began to take a rudimentary shape, I thought about that category of Elvis Costello musical missive in which nice young women encountered not-nice men to ill effect. This sort of omniscient author songwriting was a bit alien (I tend to go for first-person narratives), but I gave in to the storytelling and let the thing go wherever it wanted. I tagged along and cleaned up bits as needed. Plus it was short, clocking in at around two minutes long. I could get through that, right? Nothing epic, nothing with great meaning. Just a short, sharp, sonic shock to my idle creative self to jolt it back to what I had known.
It did the trick.
Once I finished this little number, I began writing (what I consider) some decent new material, and plenty of it. Immediately after “So Cruel” came “The Bitter End,” “Falling Down,” “Extra Ordinary” and “Idle Infatuation.” You can hear “Extra Ordinary” on 2017’s Thug Nation EP, and I just submitted a new recording of “Idle Infatuation” to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Competition (there is a sonically meatier version here). My daughter Ari took the recording of “The Bitter End” and turned it into this video. Maybe I’ll do an updated recording of “Falling Down” next.
*Wags out there might opine I have yet to write a quarter-decent tune, let alone a half-decent one. Let them all wag, I say.
So
Cruel
She
wasn’t looking when he caught her eye
All
of her friends said he would make her cry
In
the time it takes for explanations
She
got her hopes up, he got expectations
She’d
kid around afraid to face the truth
He’d
deck her out in shades of black and blue
In
the time she takes to make her mistake
His
grip tightened, she plotted her escape
She
turned away and said she’d had enough
He
spun her round and started acting rough
In
broad daylight in the middle of a crowd
Later
that night, all alone, she cried out loud
Why
do you have to be so cruel
When
you’re the one I should be running from
You
break more than the rules
But
I’ll break that spell to get from under your thumb
She
packed her bags and tried to get away
He
let her go after he made her pay
In
the time she’ll take to recover
He’ll
wreak havoc with another lover
Why
do you have to be so cruel
When
you’re the one I should be running from
You
break more than the rules
But
I’ll break that spell to get from under your thumb
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