3/5/06 12:54 AM
I may be repeating myself, but there are a few ideas in relation to the play that I may not have fleshed out, and I wanted to get them down now. The process of writing for Immaculate Misconceptions has been very rewarding. The writing and recording process has been very organic, and has allowed me to explore areas that I always knew I could work in, but had just never tried. I am pleasantly surprised by some of the subject matter I was able to touch on in these songs, and how they fit together as a “set”. The pantheon for this play has not been nailed down completely yet, but the majority of the songs that I came up with during the writing period do go together.
Despite my initial interest in moving away from political-topical songs, I seemed to go headlong into such material. This was, thankfully, balanced by the amount of more ambiguous material inspired by my poetic interests (Sufi, Hafiz, Rumi, Yeats). Had my time been spent solely on political material, I think I would have grown discontent with this project…
I’m grateful to Steve for asking me to be involved in this project. I still consider my music to be only a small part of the overall play, and while I am pleased with how it turned out, the experience up to the play is what I will treasure the most.
The general approach was one of throwing stuff at the wall to see if it would stick. In some cases it didn’t. But in many cases it did.
I could see my topical writing informed by my rhetorical studies and much more grounded than it used to be. I could also see more room for literary references where perhaps in the past they would seem forced.
