“A Hole in Everything” – Co-Writing Session

That’s a working title for a new song with lyrics by me and Jen.

Co-writing continues to be an enjoyable (if sometimes weird) experience for me. This time it was with Jen, and we finished a song I’ve been working on for almost two years. I had a first verse, and then every time I tried to write a second verse, I just couldn’t come up with anything good.

So I played Jen the first verse (and chorus). It was a pretty bare bones character sketch of two people with very different personalities.

I know you were the kind
to be always one branch higher
Anything to be at the top of the tree
And I was the tongue-tied boy
Rooted and grounded and bored
Maybe a broken arm was all I need

Somewhat ironically, it was Jen who pushed for it to be more of a story, so we talked about what kind of relationship between the characters was implied by what was already written, and then something really fun occurred to us: we made it a duet, which is not something we’ve done ever. This opened up an entirely new way to explore the song, because now instead of one person talking about himself and someone else, it was two people talking about the other person.

Male character:
I know you were the kind
to be always one branch higher
Anything to be at the top of the tree

Female character:
When I finished my climb
I knew I was a flier
My heart wanted much more than you and me

Second verse:

Female character:
Always biting your tongue
You played helpless and quiet
Clinging to restraints you were chained to the ground

Male character:
I was the tongue-tied boy
Rooted and grounded and bored
Maybe a broken arm was all I need

I’m quite pleased with what came out. “Miscommunication” is good fodder for stories. Jen commented that the net result is that there’s a disconnect between them, some breakdown in compatibility and their basic ability to even understand each other to work past it. There’s also an interesting psychological bit with the way the narrators construct their sentences: his lines start have “I” as the subject even when talking about the other person; hers use “I” to talk about herself and “you” to talk about the other person.

Jen is better than I am at actually saying what “she” (or her narrator) means, and also seems to have a much easier time being completely open and honest about her own personal experience, so it’s a good foil to my tendency to be oblique sometimes to the point of obscurity. Her willingness to throw every idea out there really helped put me at ease for the session. Mostly I was relegated to rewording things slightly to maintain the rhyme scheme and rhythm, but lyrically it’s a true collaboration now.

The song has a chorus, and we did some fun vocal things with the harmonies, but I’ll save talking about those for when we have a recording of some sort.

-Jon