I’ve frequently quoted in these blogs that ‘Dawn is the friend of the muses’. It is a Latin proverb Aurora Musis Amica which is often taken to mean ‘the early bird catches the worm’ – I hadn’t really considered the early-bird maxim as meaning anything more than getting up early means you can get stuff done. In contrast, I took the muses quote to mean that this is a time of half-awake inspiration: ideas fished from dreams. The muses and the early-bird versions clashed with me, but now, on reflection ‘catching the worm’ could well mean more than I initially thought. As a source of serendipity, the muses proverb finally got woven into an emerging song – ‘Sew Serendipity’ – it is kind of obvious in retrospect.
It is this retrospective aspect that I want to explore in this blog. Musicians often tell me that sometimes they feel like they are simply a conduit to something bigger, being far more than just playing. I also get that sense occasionally when I deconstruct the meaning of my own lyrics. It is quite common to listen to someone else’s lyrics and try to figure out what they are saying – the assumption being that they were fully aware of what they were trying to convey. I gathered that, when writing my words, I knew what I was saying, but being encrypted in poetry, others might reach a different meaning to them. At first, it seemed like a bit of an intellectual cheat to come up with a more profound background to something I had already written, making it a bit more deep and meaningful than what I was really thinking when I came up with the line.
My certitude is now challenged. I do at times sense that I am merely an instrument for the muses to play on; that I am a medium for bringing ideas out of the twilight. I only get a superficial meaning of the songs being played through me until later reflection when the deeper meanings of this koens crystalise into enlightenment. This could equally be the experience of many songwriters. OK, that is a bit metaphysical, even for me so let’s look at this psychologically. I do labour over lyrics, but their source inspiration is a harmonic of ultradian rhythms of chronobiology and the shifting frequency bands of the brainwaves. Periodic slumps in cognition, which occur through the course of a day, are a chance to take a mental break. The brain slips into theta waves: a more meditative and creative state also found in REM dreaming. In these states, the mind is highly active but seems to exhibit more connectivity between the seemingly unrelated thoughts. In sleep, the psychedelic nature of dreams suggests that such peculiar couplings are particularly prominent, but on the amnesia of wakening, much is lost. Perhaps they are not so much as forgotten but rather submerged in the murky other-than-consciousness, only to be elevated into view when some experience “breaks” the dream.
Post rationalising on my own lyrics seems to have this effect. It is as if the words are subconsciously referring to something that I haven’t realised yet; I pen them with only a partial understanding. In recognising this incompleteness, I am afforded with further introspection about what I could be trying to say. I gather that I am not trying to make them appear more cleaver, rather, it is an admission that I was unaware of other underlying interpretations that my unconscious mind was attempting to tell me. In the groggy state of trying to wake up, my mind, half asleep and still dreaming, is still drawing upon its surreal fantasies: Aurora Musis Amica!
Curious stuff. But there is a practical upshot. That tricky second verse is the bane of lyricists – making it fit with the narrative arc of the song theme as a whole. I’m finding that my own initial surface structure understanding of my songs belies their deeper meanings. A song’s theme often turns out to be something more involved and wider than my original conceptualisation. In accepting that I might only have a glimpse of what my subconscious is thinking then the hermeneutic doors swing back open, exposing further fascinating avenues to explore. Summoning the muses gives access to much wider perceptions of the song theme, and seems to make it easier to mould it into a fuller form – and somehow make me feel cleaverer.
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