Hive Open Mic ( #openmic ) is a global community celebrating live music on Hive. Each week is a new event, encouraging musicians to share songs with an international audience.
I admire this week's invitation to express a song without words. It inspires me to look at a pattern I have in my songwriting process. My pattern is to try to make a melody into a message, always striving for an expression in words. But really, though, I think the melody itself is where the highest vibration is. The melody is closest to Source, in my view.
Of course, I respect songwriters with well-written lyrics, and in fact I have often prided myself on being an aficionado of good lyricism. Sometimes I think my ego gets a little over-inflated when I look at my own songbook. Not one of my 100+ songs is an instrumental song. I haven't yet left that option open. I aim to change that now.
Words can be limiting. In poetry, for example, some juvenile writers try to rhyme the lines, like Dr. Seuss. I do acknowledge that this is a talent, but I think this practice is limiting in the storytelling. I am also a student of indigenous music, where there are fewer words, and more vocables: expressive vocal sounds.
Maybe the music's feeling is more important than the way it makes us think.
Cannon in C
Last week, I suffered a nervous breakdown, and it caused me to re-assess some patterns in my life. I shed a lot of tears. Even when I knew I could manage my emotions, I surrendered to the sadness. I felt alone, isolated, lost, and abandoned. I questioned my path, my faith, my existence…
Questioning everything, I brought my energy into the garden, and went to work weeding. The radio was playing "Jack & Diane," by John Mellencamp, in which the words say: "Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." How sad! I always thought of that as a happy-go-lucky song, but the underlying message is about an old age without any thrills.
In my sad state, I remembered a tune that soothed me in my younger years. It was a music box that played the melody to “Love Me Tender,” by Elvis Presley. This feeling reminded me of my childhood home, at a time when my mom played “Canon in D,” by Pachelbel, on the piano. Slow and cozy, the soothing music vibrations made lasting impressions that continue to reverberate and resonate, years later.
Acknowledgements
Hive Open Mic - Week 108 is underway right now, with the current theme: “Undisclosed Words". We introduce new themes every Sunday, inviting musicians to share a common current. Musicians always have full freedom to bring whatever music feels inspired in the moment. There is still time to jump in and enjoy this week's Hive Open Mic event!