Sojourn Worship Songwriting Workshop, pt 7

Proverbs 11:14 " ... in abundance of counselors there is victory."

"Community" is a concept that many in the modern arts world disdain, prefering the image of the lone, struggling, tortured artist, the strange genius whom mere mortals cannot understand. This is an anti-Christian concept, and one that makes little sense from a historical perspective. It's an image we fight in the workshop, as well as one that Sojourn fights as a whole.

As our pastor, Daniel Montgomery (who, when he calls me, says, "This is Daniel, Your Friendly Pastor") has often said, "Real relationships are messy." Because of this truism, it is often easier to avoid community. But doing so means saying "No" to growth.

Rory Noland writes, in "The Heart Of The Artist:"

I've always been fascinated by the artist colonies that emerge around major artistic movements. My favorite example is Paris in the early 1900s, a place where artists congregated and fed off each other ....

My favorite composer, Igor Stravinsky, was part of this infamous colony of artists, and his circle of friends included fellow composers Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, and Manuel de Falla. It was a time when the arts overlapped in exciting ways as Stravinsky rubbed shoulders with artists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Jean Cocteau. This group wasn't without its disagreements and jealousies, but the artists were friends. They'd go to concerts and art galleries together. They'd get together in each other's homes and talk long into the night about music, art, and literature. On one occasion Stravinsky sat down with Debussy at the piano, and they played through a transcription of an orchestra piece Stravinsky was developing. It just happened to be "The Rite Of Spring", one of the landmark masterpieces of the twentieth century! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall ....

Getting artists who are basically ... independent to function as a team is no easy task. Like many artists who are thrown together with others on a team, Igor Stravinsky had to learn how to function as a team player. Howard Gardner, in his book "Creating Minds," points out that when Stravinsky was asked to join the Ballets Russes, it changed his life overnight. "Stravinsky became a valued member of what was possibly the most innovative perfoming artistic group in the world .... Now instead of working mostly alone, Stravinsky had almost daily intercourse with the ensemble ...

My prefered response, when I play a new piece for the group, is "Wow. That's perfect just the way it is. Don't change a thing."

That typically doesn't happen. In fact, going back to the September workshop, I remember doing a song called "Prophet, Priest, and King" that, in the context of a praise song, describes the different offices of Jesus. After I finished, Jeremy Quillo uttered those words every songwriter longs to hear: "This is a great song." Then after pausing, he said, "Or at least it's going to be." Then he mentioned a couple things I might want to consider changing. Then the others chimed in. This was one of my better-received songs; I could tell people were generally excited about it. However, I must admit that when they were all done, my first thought after considering all the changes recommended was, "If this is how much rewriting they want me to do on a song they think is great, imagine how much work they'd want me to do on a song they DIDN'T like." (But typically, songs that are seen as having potential will receive more critical analysis, attention, and ideas for improvement. If a song just isn't very good, there isn't much to work with.)

Their main point with the song was the lack of melodic development in the verses. I'd lived with the song for so long, though, that it was hard for me to think of ways to spice up the melody. I ended up turning it over to Mike Cosper, a far more capable musician than I am, to see if he could work his magic.

Of course, critiques involve subjectivity in a way that, say, math equations do not. An artist needs to develop his or her ability to evaluate the critism received in a non-defensive manner, and to decide where to go. I'm not going to change everything everyone wants me to change, but I do consider each piece of advice carefully.

We almost didn't have a December meeting. I wasn't sure if anyone would come, since we were in the middle of the holiday season. But we decided we might as well be "open for business," even if there were only two or three of us. It turns out we had nine, our biggest group to date ....

TO BE CONTINUED