Emma Philbrook: STUDENT LIFE

Artistic types go through “phases.”

Picasso is the most famous example. He had his Classical Period, then his Blue Period, then his Red Period, and then several others whose names I have forgotten since my second-grade art class.

I consider writing a sort of art. You do your best to make it pretty, it takes obnoxious amounts of time, and people who do it for a living are generally broke. I believe that that’s all the qualifiers which one needs to declare something “art.”

In any case, a few weeks ago, I entered what history will remember as my songwriting phase. History won’t remember the songs, of course, but the date will live on in infamy for at least the next decade.

My first songwriting attempt was an ill-advised hybrid of a sci-fi topic and a bluegrass tune. I came up with it at Wintergrass, which shows the inadvisability of trying to write anything rustic and soul-filled in an ultramodern business hotel. So far, I have the first verse, the chorus, and a couple lines I’d like to work in there somewhere.

“The days are longer, nights are colder / In these walls of burnished steel / And the world outside my window / looks the same bleak way I feel (minor-key guitar run here)… (cue harmony) Looks the same bleak way I feel…”

If you think that’s bad, just be glad you never heard the accompanying tune – or the banjo break.

My second piece was another ill-advised mashup, this time of a college rejection letter and the dream I had the night I received it. I’m satisfied with the words themselves, which managed to achieve the funky brand of wistfulness I had aimed for. (“There is a forest at the bottom of the sea / I flew out of the water and it came with me…)

There are two problems with this particular work in progress. The first is that the verse (consisting of dream excerpts) is set to a wistful tune, while the chorus (consisting of my being depressed about the rejection letter) is decidedly more rock-and-roll. The verse would pair beautifully with a single ukulele in the background, but the chorus screams for a drummer and an electric bass, or at least a very angry ukulele player on a very sinister-sounding ukulele.

The second is that I thought up this song while listening to a band called Elephant Revival, which plays gorgeous music using acoustic instruments. Unfortunately, all of their songs sound exactly the same, and they all sound exactly like this one. So while I may occasionally be persuaded to pull out my Uke of Death and perform this at a local jam, recording and selling it will likely get my name on legal papers before I’ve even applied to law school.

There’s another song idea in my head as we speak. It’s about a comic/tragic incident involving “three silly girls in a plastic Bi-Mart kayak / goin’ over Pa-loose Faaaaalllllllllssssssss.” It’s catchy, it’s original, and it’s definitely bluegrass. (Well, maybe not “definitely,” given that the girls in question survive the drop and that bluegrass songs aren’t known for the long lifespans of their subjects.)

In fact, I think I may start that one soon. But in the meantime, Switchgrass wants to hear the sci-fi piece, and I still can’t think of a rhyme for “sub-tectonic methane.”