“Songs are part homemade diorama, part gerbil maze, and part eighties music video—location, story arc, and cinematic container. You build all the tiny props inside so lovingly and sometimes they just aren’t to scale, so you have to start over, and it’s crushing. There are tantrums, tears.
"Writing a song starts in the middle of a world you haven’t invented yet. It’s like trying to decide exactly what a city is like based on one postcard with no writing on the back. An impression or phrase builds a little fire of feeling that causes you to react with construction paper and Popsicle sticks and grade-school poetry and Scotch tape. You work simultaneously forward and back from the middle. You must build its container and its atmosphere, and you need to build it so you can live there, too. If you end up keeping the things you make that don’t match the scale of the other things it has to be an intentional ‘stylistic choice.’ You have to arrive at the answer just shy of 'correct.’ You must be precise by eyeballing it, no measuring. It has to be exactly not right. Maybe you stare into it until you have double vision. The ideas, no matter how simple, are tricky and jump around. Like throwing a dart with your eyes closed. You know how to do it, the weight of the dart in your hand, the arc, the direction of the board. But despite all your muscle memory know-how you still may just break a window. You have to build the tools to build the world. It is the finest, most exquisite puzzle that exists, ten thousand times harder than the New York Times Saturday crossword. There’s even danger. You’d dare not forget your notebook in the pocket of the airline seat in front of you or the world could end. The act of creating a song is the closest I have ever felt to understanding the 'place’ of your consciousness. You travel to a mind palace in those moments—a landscape you’ve made, then furnished through memory and invention. It’s the cheapest way to travel.”
—Neko Case, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You
the way neko case writes about songwriting articulates my own feelings about my own art & writing so stunningly & unprecedentedly & i adore how clearly it echoes what i remember of her song exploder episode about “last lion of albion”
