When it comes to these blog entries, I feel like I spend a lot of time avoiding answering\u00a0the question, or I at least take a boxer’s stick-and-move approach to the week’s topic.<\/p>\n
This time though, I’m going to answer it straight up . . . maybe. We’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n
As far as non-literary sweet tooths go, I am a sucker for a good lyricist. If you can paint\u00a0a vivid picture in just a few words and tell a damned good story in about four minutes or\u00a0less, I’ll be a fan, regardless of whether or not you can carry a tune. That’s not to say I\u00a0don’t love music. I absolutely do. But I think it’s okay to be in it for the words too.<\/p>\n
One guy who’s had my ear lately is Robert Earl Keen. He doesn’t have the greatest\u00a0voice in the world, but the man can tell a story. He’s also funny when he wants to be,\u00a0which gets you bonus points in my grade book. I’ve read that Keen writes a lot of his\u00a0songs based on personal life experiences, and while I have no idea if this is true or not,\u00a0the characters in his songs do have an authenticity that I admire and try to emulate in\u00a0my own writing.<\/p>\n
Another trick of a good song writer is the illusion of shared experiences. If someone’s\u00a0words can make you feel like you could have grown up in the same house with them,\u00a0or at least on the same block, then you’ve just found a talented writer. Lyle Lovett does\u00a0this to me over and over again. I grew up in rural Oklahoma, and I often recognize\u00a0myself or my family in the songs he sings.<\/p>\n
One song of Lovett’s in particular describes the scene of a small boy out for a drive with\u00a0his parents. He’s sitting in the front seat between his them, watching the countryside fly\u00a0by, and there’s a cold can of beer in his dad’s lap “protected by only a small, thin brown\u00a0paper sack.”<\/p>\n
Setting aside the legal no-no’s of this scene, I was that boy, and the moment I heard\u00a0that line, I could picture it in my head. Lovett had me, and I was going to follow that\u00a0song until to its end, no matter where it took me.<\/p>\n
I want to do that to my readers. If I can get them to believe they know me, that we are\u00a0somehow alike, I believe that illusion of camaraderie might keep them reading as I\u00a0stumble through the mechanics of what I’m trying to say. Nostalgia is a powerful thing,\u00a0and people like to reminisce, even if it’s about things that are so very wrong.<\/p>\n
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When it comes to these blog entries, I feel like I spend a lot of time avoiding answering\u00a0the question, or I at least take a boxer’s stick-and-move approach to the week’s topic. This time though, I’m going to answer it straight up . . . maybe. We’ll see how it goes. As far as non-literary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[650,724,951],"class_list":["post-1426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence","tag-lyle-lovett","tag-music","tag-robert-earl-keen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}