Darwin Song Project - Krista Detor
writes: There was the minute...
There are some minutes that define days or years. I walked into the Songhouse not knowing what would come of it. This idea of "creativity on demand" - never having collaborated much as a writer - seemed daunting.
Writing something out of the air has always been, for the most part, a lone endeavor - and sparked by some random occurrence; this other kind, this "collaboration" I was aware of, and had qualified internally as either Nashville Briefcase Writing - the stuff that craft is made of, that nearly all of Big Money Music is made out of; scratched out of formula, common sense, and a solid hook - or the magical stuff that happens with the perfect meld of a talented duo and cosmic alignment: the Gershwins, the Bergmans, Taupin & John,
Pratchett & Gaiman, et.al. Either collaboratively contrived or some mystical convergence.
But there I was, in the midst of some of the finest folk writers in the world, and about six days to reconsider.
There was the minute on Saturday, when I left the house and walked to the bridge and held my head in my hands and stared down at the grass growing where the railroad ties had been in the land that gave rise to Charles Darwin.
I held my head in my hands and considered the gods that Darwin didn't believe in and the forces he couldn't deny entirely, and wished hard for something that might carry my across prejudice against the idea of craft, and the of intimidation I felt in the wake of the genius that was Darwin, and the ever-increasing volume of the songs springing up all around me...
And there was the minute when I realized he'd simply been a man who looked around and noticed that what was before him was directly connected to what had been. And he wrote it down.
And then, so did I. And through the cracks in my composure, it grew, steadily, in the key of C.
Krista Detor
Read more blogs from writers involved in the over the next week and you'll be able to hear interviews from the songhouse as well as some of the newly composed songs on The Mike Harding show on Wednesday 8 April.
Comments Post your comment