Meeting Outline 5-5-02

The main theme of this meeting was inspiration, music and song writing. The activity continue on 11/3/02.

Part 1; 10 minute freestyle writing on the question, "My most inspiring experience related to music was?" A lot of interesting stories came up.
Part 2;  Brainstorming: We brainstormed on the question of what sort of an exhibit we could create for our Inspiration Project Exhibition.  Shadow characters, a toilet,  hands-on, interactive, the ideas just kept flowing. Part 3.  Show Your Art Time, We take 15 to 20 minutes to show any personal art or tell a story, etc.  Ida, Sandra and K.C. show and tell about their art. Part 4.  Harry led the group in a song parody writing activity. See the beginning of the Inspiration Project group anthem. See the details below.
	Harry guides us in writing a song parody

Part 1. 10 minute freestyle writing on the question, "My most inspiring experience related to music was?"

Edwin -   I am trying to remember.... I've heard lots of music that has moved me, sometimes to tears. It's been a while since I've been inspired b some music. I recall laying in bed listening to "space music, like form Hearts of Space. I've enjoyed the relaxing quality.

But then I've been inspired to dance by some music. Feeling the beat moving my body. That' a lot of fun. So inspired to tears, inspired to dance. Now the "most" inspiring experience. Nothing comes to me. The most inspiring.....my poor memory is going.

What would happen if I lost all of my memory. All my memories of inspiration would be gone. I hope I don't get Alzheimer's.  Make a song about inspiration and loss of memory.

Back to the "most". I wish I could recall. Probably tonight when I'm laying in bed, half asleep I'll recall the the most inspiring music. The struggle of trying to recall... I should really lay back and relax to recall.

KC -  It was one of those days at NIAD. Things were going wrong more than usual. Peter had lost the mug painting he had been working on. Someone had stolen Jimmy's Red pencil and Erica wanted ice cream she knew she couldn't have. And to top it all Sandy couldn't find her white. No matter what I gave her she said, "That's not white" A bit that worried me about my ability as a teacher and a painter - not being able to provide "white".

And then Naomi stated  crying. She is not good with words, only Andre, the head teacher understands her. But that day she didn't want to talk to Andre either. And I would see she was getting sick, crying and crying and crying.

I tried everything. I gave her every paper crayon, clay, plaster, charcoal paint. I gave her wood and metal and beads and canvas and cloths - big brushes, smaller ones, pens, pencils, markers.. Nothing... more tears, more screams.

Joan - Music is the sound that helps me to find who I am. Feelings can be ignited quickly from the quiet strains of a familiar sing, the lushness of a symphony ablaze, the integration of a chamber music, the flow of notes that connect with the ballet dancer in me, the beat of sounds that surround me during high school and collage days. Music has always as long as I can remember  transported me to a place and helped me to feel my inner self. It is interesting how music can be a vehicle to travel to so many different places and so many different parts of myself. What would the world be like with out this nectar of life? There would be a huge void, one that would be difficult to replace with anything else.

Gary - My most inspiring experience related to music was being exposed to Disney's Fantasia as a child. I must have been about 10 hears old when it was released. I naturally tended to enter visual and kinesthetic fantasy spaces through music, and this movie was a thrilling exploration of that. Viewed again as an adult, it has its moments, but perhaps disappoints a bit. Apparently public reaction was not as favorable as to other Disney offerings and they never again ventured into pure creativity in the same way. Fantasia was seen as too "high-brow" for the consuming public. Today, I don't frequently put on music and do nothing but listen to it the way I used to.

  -  I was 8 years old and I was singing Karen Carpenter's Top of the World and I was walking on top of a hill walking to school and the words came to me. I started singing the words and when I reached the top of the hill - at the same time I reached the lyrics. I'm on the top of the world.....

Playing a ch..d?, three dimensional and color (Bach, Double concerto in C minor) listening to Meiferze? playing Bach prelude - God ?? be a minor deity w/out Bach, the gentle had of God reaching down and stroking your cheek... the voice of God.....

Ventura County Album, St. Stephen Grateful Dead - reaching that every note was directly wired to   my pleasure center tasting  the soul realizing that I was obliterated by the sound, I was nothing but a note (gritan? note) soaring, flying until, reaches of silence, annihilate, ecstasy (rapture) no longer existing (colors, sounds, vision, hearing, entering the soul of my own body, deep inside my own thought, singing the universe. Vibrations/Dancing my body, ??? to the same vibrations - moving as the thought phases encapsulated in music - larger myself, but just vibration movements, though phases and emotional vibrations, ??? just carrying and lashing through my body before I dissolve again into weightless.  Each note, the body as an instrument, the notes played on my body, the vibrations, the cords........

 

Harry - Two incidents come to mind but perhaps the most inspiring. About 8 r 9 years ago, I decided to write a piece for a men's choir I was singing with. Previously when attempting to write for voce or voices, unless the text was chosen in advance, or selected by another person, I found that the search for the "right text" - whatever that meant - took inordinately long. This time going to circumvent my text problem by using scat syllables or nonsense words. I had done improvisation occasionally - I could always spin out melodies - but I'd never tried to apply improvisation to a creative venture. Very quickly, I developed a main theme for a slow movement and soon after, another for the following fast movement. It was first a piece in 2 movements for a 2-part men's choirs, obo, hand percussion and was later adapted for women's choirs, now with flute and a first movement added. This has been on of my most spontaneous efforts.

 I recall a bed-and-breakfast around Montera. After arriving. I wandered to the back of the property, overlooking the ocean, where a drummer was playing. I asked him if I could play with him and he agreed. I brought out my flute and we has a 20 minute session in the beautiful environment and lazy ocean breeze of a clear afternoon.

Sandra - Dancing, together and apart and twice I had danced with a man when we were in the rhythm of the music together. This was a rare and exquisite experience and sometimes I long to be this in tune with myself, someone else and music together again. 

Part 2.  Brainstorming: We brainstormed on the question of what sort of an exhibit we could create for our Inspiration Project Exhibition.

• Improv Story Telling
  • collective story telling
  • Collective Poetry Writing
  • Word at a time stories
  • Word at a time writing
• Design a bestiary of inspiration, including numerous characteristics of inspiration plus original designs/beings/animals associated with each of these characteristics. Perhaps there could be an alphabet - if that is appropriate.
• A toilet where people could write their inspirations on the walls.
  • make a stall with a toilet in it
  • have a window so you can see through it.
  • there is no restriction in a toilet.
• Have a lot of hands on activities that people can do. like the Exploratorium
• Shadow figures cut outs, place a mask on the faces
  • the figures could be cut outs so you can walk through them
• Photo of person in 3 stages, one stuck in corner, one moving towards creativity, one in inspiration
• The concept of inside and outside of inspiration. Out side your looking, inside your doing inspiration
• Blocks come from having to do something
  • a pile of blocks, each one has a block to inspiration, people can write on them.
• How do you get unstuck
• create interactive mural for cloth, squares of material
• the inspiration gym
• a collage form found objects
• something with breath
• the timeline history of inspiration
• A humorous spoof exhibit of grey inspirational objects through history, great ahas!
  • Newton's apple
  • Ezra pounds black leaf
  • proust's Madeline
  • Helen of troy
  • Archimedes bath tub
  • a bus stop kekule
• Notions of inspiration of different countries,

Part 3.   Show Your Art Time

We take 15 to 20 minutes to show any art or tell a story, etc.  in the photos below, Ida shows photos of a chair she made out of cardboard for her architecture class. Sandra talked about turning her house into a work of art and overcoming  the clutter. K.C. showed some of her art work..

Part 4.   Harry led the group in a song writing activity.  We ran out of time so we will continue it at another meeting in the future. (more to come for this section)

Dear Edwin

I just finished writing up something that seems like a lesson. Yet, it is an attempt to summarize my short session. I leave it to you to figure out how much of it you will be able to use.
-------------------------------------

On Sunday, May 5, Harry Bernstein laid the groundwork for a songwriting activity. We began by sharing our personal connections to music. Individuals often revealed strong feelings about music or a connection with it, even when they do not make music themselves.

My goal was to give participants the experience of writing a song without necessarily having knowledge of musical notation. This will be accomplished with song parodies--overlaying new words to an existing song. I created one example, quoted here, to show what I had in mind. Although we didn't discuss the technique, in general it is important to match the accents of the new text with those in the music. (Many other examples of parody texts can be found in _A Prairie Home Companion Folk Song Book_ by Marcia and Jon Pankake (Viking, 1988). Parodies were also a regular feature of "Mad" magazine.

note: the syllables between underscores take two notes of the tune, except that _clown_ takes four notes; the syllables in parentheses take time from the note on an adjacent accented syllable


My Old Car
(sung to the Beatles' tune, "Yesterday")


My old car.
For long years it carried me so far.
Why'd I stay so _long_ in that bar?
I lost my car three days ago.

I was there
cele_brat_ing without a care
the quick ending of my last affair.
That brought me down so very low.

Most of all I wanted to tamp my feelings down.
(I) woke up on the floor feeling sad as any _clown._

Now I'll say--
wish I knew just where I parked that day.
My car disappeared--it's gone away,
but misery is here to stay.



During the presentation I listed a few well-known songs to be used as song models. They illustrate a few common poetic feet. The trochaic pattern (using the units called trochees), accented-unaccented or strong-weak, occurs in "Yankee Doodle." (It uses duple time, with two beats to the measure). The contrasting pattern of iambic feet, with the weak-strong iambs, usually begins on an upbeat in music. Suggested models are the Christmas carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" (duple
meter) or "Amazing Grace" (triple meter). Another pattern can be seen in the dactylic pattern (with dactyls)--strong-weak-weak--as in "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" (with an upbeat). The various poetic rhythms predominate in these particular models, but most songs have much freer rhythmic patterns. These simpler songs should be easier at the beginning.

Since we are not writing a melody but will be adapting an existing one, our intention is to create lyrics to fit an existing melody of our choice. I offered some suggestions for selecting a tune. Consider the nature of the tune and the original lyrics. Are there primarily long lines or short lines? (It can be difficult to find just the right words to express your ideas with very short lines.) Is there repetition (as in "Old MacDonald" and the refrain of the song, "Bingo")? Is the song lively or slower or gentler--a ballad? You may want the mood of your song to be similar to that of an existing song or to contrast with it.

To generate the lyrics, I borrowed an exercise from Jimmy Webb from his book _Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting_ ((Hyperion, 1998)--see page 51. Webb suggests that you write a letter to yourself, or someone else, concerning the idea you wish to express in your song. Length doesn't matter at this point. Let your feelings flow and don't edit or censor yourself. Your writing will have images, expressions, etc. from which to draw later when you are writing the song. Alternatively, he suggests writing down on a legal pad every word, phrase, reference or other connection associated with the idea you wish to explore in the song. Either approach should be productive. We spent 10 minutes writing, without my suggestion that, for starters, the song topic might be a particular place, a special friend, a birthday greeting, an activity of your choice, a memory or feeling. (The techniques will be more productive if the topic you choose has special meaning for you rather than being neutral.) In a future session, we'll explore the distillation of the material generated into a song lyric.

At the end of our session, we began to think about writing a song (or songs) about inspiration. Participants suggested several songs, including

• "the Star-Spangled Banner,"
• "God Bless America,"
• "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In" and
• "the Battle Hymn of the Republic."

What song would you choose, or what other ones would you nominate? What aspect of the song you're suggesting appeals to you most strongly?

Finally, John mentioned the concept that there are four types of rhyme: perfect rhyme--a rhyme with the word or sound itself, that is, repetition; ordinary rhyme; gibberish words; and any words sung with conviction. This would expand the choices available for creating our songs. So, take one of the suggested models or select one of your own and go to town. Have fun and feel free to share your reactions and experiences with the group.    

       Harry Bernstein

 

Edwin - here is what I wrote for the song brainstorming.

To the tune of When the Saints go Marching On

(I thought of how the inspiration  project group is slowing moving forward.)

The Inspiration Project goes marching on. Il like to write something about  the inspiration project. The group is moving along. I had fun with the brainstorming. 2 new creative people attended who brought some new energy. Joan has been the main facilitator, today Harry is doing the facilitation. So there are small steps forward.

I want to say something about creativity, the creativity is expanding? people are sharing more experiences during the sharing time.

Ahh but are we getting inspired?

Do we know what we are doing

Does it matter?

We're having fun

Stick to anything long enough and it comes together.

some lines that came up in the discussion

Oh say can you breath.....

Boredom inspires us

Chaos we love

Creativity for ever more!

Ida

As always, the workshop was engaging, informative and fun.  much thanx to everyone and, especially, Harry.  too bad it felt quite a bit hurried today.  forgot to turn in my 'song.'  it's meant to be sung to the melody of "Jesus loves me."  for whatever it's worth...although, if you knew my history, you will know that the lyrics as written have deep meaning for me, for i truly feel my country has betrayed me. 

I shall love me this I vow

The question is not when but how

My country has abandoned me

All but cast me out to sea

 

Yes, I shall love me

Yes, you shall love me

Yes, we shall love all

Or else we’re doomed to fall