{"id":876,"date":"2008-11-03T16:05:16","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T21:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/?p=876"},"modified":"2008-11-03T16:22:51","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T21:22:51","slug":"image-rich-lyrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/03\/image-rich-lyrics\/","title":{"rendered":"Image Rich Lyrics"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two kinds of great songwriters<\/em> in the world: those that can tell stories in easy to grasp (yet captivating) words, and those that can paint the richest canvas with image-laden words. Of course, there are many super-great songwriters who can do both equally well, and move between the two at will.<\/p>\n

We are familiar with many such talented songwriters (I wrote about one earlier today, Jack Kapanka<\/a>), largely because Lois has been a devoted listener<\/em> of words forever, and she deeply cares about who wrote<\/strong> the songs (as I’ve written about often) sometimes more so than who made it famous.<\/p>\n

When an artist can also deliver their own creation in a stunning and moving way, that’s when true magic<\/strong> is made. There are many artists who achieve that, including many that we listen to and see frequently. However, no one does it better than Girlyman<\/a> (at least not in our opinion).<\/p>\n

I love nearly every one of their songs, almost equally (though I recently revealed that I still have no trouble picking Hold It All At Bay as the #1<\/a> choice). So, while I’m about to pick one specific song to make my point, I am not suggesting that they don’t have other just as special<\/em> songs, because in fact they have many<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What happens to me with Girlyman songs is that hearing any one of them can suddenly get under my skin<\/em> (that will become even more meaningful, in an ironic way, in a minute), and I end up playing the song over-and-over in my head, sometimes for days on end.<\/p>\n

The current song that keeps playing in my head is The Shape I Found You In. The trigger was hearing Girlyman perform it live in VA (I think it was at Birchmere). We’ve listened to it a bunch of times since in the car as well, but my head plays it back non-stop.<\/p>\n

You can check out the complete lyrics<\/a> (they’re very short). But, as gorgeous as the poetry<\/em> is, this is also one of those songs that take on an even deeper meaning when performed<\/strong>, in this case specifically by the same artist who wrote the song (Ty Greenstein, supported by Girlyman). Even though the lyrics are short<\/em>, the pacing<\/strong> of the song is slow, and builds and emphasizes the deepest lyrics in a very emotional way (giving added meaning to the words).<\/p>\n

While I often hesitate linking to home-made YouTube videos of live shows, because the quality of the sound and the panning of the camera often don’t show off a group as well as the actual show comes off, I’ll do it anyway, to make my point about how the singing of this particular song is very different<\/em> from just reading the poetry. In another small-world story, this particular video<\/a> was shot seven months ago by our recent neighbor at Golding Park Cafe this past Saturday!<\/p>\n

Now, to the point of this post. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

None of us are perfect significant others<\/em>, as much as we’d like to be, or like to believe we are or can be. What we rarely are conscious of though, is that we bring so much baggage<\/strong> from our previous relationships, that it’s nearly impossible to achieve that perfect harmony. When things go badly, we rarely have the insight to realize that a previous relationship created a trigger we couldn’t avoid.<\/p>\n

Ty captures this searing insight perfectly in this song. More important, she does it not by telling a story, but by painting a clear picture, in very few words. The famous saying goes: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words<\/strong>. But, in Ty’s hands, A Phrase is Worth a Masterpiece Painting<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

Here are two phrases that keep going through my head:<\/p>\n

But your heart was busy within
\nBuilding bomb shelters under your skin<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and:<\/p>\n

So I felt around in the dark
\nBuilding rope ladders into your heart
\nClimbing hand over hand to get in<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Earlier, I said that many of their songs get under my skin<\/em>. The first phrase above contains Building bomb shelters under your skin<\/strong>. What an image!<\/p>\n

When I hear Ty sing: Climbing hand over hand to get in<\/strong>, I nearly cry for everyone who has found the right<\/em> person, but can’t reach them, because of the damage someone else<\/strong> has caused, previously.<\/p>\n

I am grateful every day of my life that Lois and I found each other, and battled<\/strong> (in every sense of the word!) through the scars of our previous relationships, to reach each other’s true core, and make a wonderful life together!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two kinds of great songwriters in the world: those that can tell stories in easy to grasp (yet captivating) words, and those that can paint the richest canvas with image-laden words. Of course, there are many super-great songwriters who can do both equally well, and move between the two at will. We are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[31,358,1367],"class_list":["post-876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-2","tag-girlyman","tag-jack-kapanka","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":878,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}