It’s been a thoughtful week.
I played with my lullaby in a huge project space in Margaret St on Wednesday. I fiddled with speakers, volume, balance, position, channels. I sat, stood and wandered about. I listened to different edits and mixes and made some decisions I was happy with. This was how I wanted it to sound. Smiles and cups of tea all round. Nodding occurred.
Then I had a tutorial.
Humph.
Then I was grumpy. I left the building feeling all the decisions I had made about my work were not valid, or strong enough. If you’ve followed this story of music as art you will know I was a bit wobbly about it anyway, so this knocked me a bit. I have written lists of comments and questions made, and tried to answer them. I know that’s what I signed up for, so I’m not really whinging about the process.
I think the main issue for people (other than musicians apparently) is the fact that it is a song. I make no apology for this. It is fairly polished in its production, and it is musical. I make no apology for those things either. That’s what I wanted. I wanted a contemporary lullaby. Older tunes and older words didn’t fit for me. I tried them, that’s why I ended up writing my own. I want it to sound like a “proper song”. I want people to hear it as such. The successful display / playing of it with the other work was the issue for me.
No, I don’t want it sung by a “younger” voice. Mothers are mothers. My voice has just as much validity as any other mother. More, in fact, because aspects of the work are personal to me.
No, I don’t want to make it rougher, just so it can be more comfortably fitted into the “Sound Piece” category and be less of a song… in fact, I have quite a problem making something complete sound rougher by taking things away from it and effecting a false roughness. I like the fact that the sounds I recorded are hidden and woven into the song.
The embroidery that I do is subtle within the garments… the match works for me.
And alongside all this that I’ve had to think about, I am STILL no closer to answering the display / play questions.
Now, I find I’m wrestling with an almost moral issue: do I fight for my song to be how it is, or do I just make another edit, rough it up a bit and jump through the hoop. (I have made this edit, and it’s crap, and I hope it never sees the light of day). If I wasn’t doing an MA, I wouldn’t even be contemplating making these changes.
I have spent some time thinking about whether these two aspects of my work, the audio and the visual, have different audiences. The conclusion I have come to is that the song is happy to sit on its own, but now, without the song, the textile pieces are less.
What does that say about where I take my work in the future?
I heard this week that a friend is very ill and has a long stretch of surgery, treatment and recovery in front of him. This arty bollocks pales into insignificance.
