Writing songs from the letters of Paul is getting slightly more promising.
I mentioned I deeply hated the first song I wrote. Drawing from Romans, thinking about an NDIS client of mine who unfortunately died.
We’ll I’m quite happy with it now! But I put a bit more subtlety into the arrangement, a bit more humanity with some acoustic guitar, and worked at selling the vocal.
It’s still a weird song.
For each set of songs I’ve written for this 66 song project, each sub-album or EP, I have in mind a descriptive phrase, to lend a little bit of stylistic unity to the collection. For “letters from Paul” I keep thinking “Busy Doing Nothing” (B-D-N), one of my all time fave beach boys songs.
I like the way that song is conversational and chill, sweet to the ear, and goes on a harmonic journey – there’s no chorus to speak of. Also, as a series of letters, I’d like this album’s songs to catch the sense of B-D-N documenting an ephemeral moment or a reflection. The B-D-N lyric references writing down thoughts, and writing a letter. I want to catch a moment of me riffing from my life on an aspect of St. Paul’s letter, not try to completely summarise it’s message.
Anyway, while I have that inspiration, I also feel I’m developing a strange genre of my own that is quite nerdy yet shallow and poppy. The songs so far aren’t shaping up objectively all that great, but they are satisfying me because I feel they’re saying what they should say. So I’m happy. Happy enough to attach the demo version here (final will be mixed and sung better, but pretty close to this, I think)
I usually write songs in the order in which they are in the Bible. That would have meant Corinthians came next.
But that’s the book with the famous “love is…” passage, which intimated me. And with my negativity (at the time) about the Romans project, which is about the most significant statement of Christianity in the whole bible, I seriously lost confidence in tackling one of the most treasured and famous passages!
Also a rough patch in life – Daisy situation lost some hope, most of our family is quite depressed.
So I jumped to the end of Paul’s letters. The Bible orders them basically according to how long they are. I never realised that! I thought the shorter ones would be less intimidating.
I skipped the last, Philemon, because I think the last song of a collection should give it closure, so I will actually write it last. That landed me on Titus.
I’ve started a song in 5/4 called “Good”. At this stage his going to be addressed to two fellows from my church, Sandy and Conrad, who are just good people, and generally be about how valuable good people are.
But in another unfamiliar move for me, I skipped on from that before I’ve finished it, and started on Timothy 1&2. (I’m doing the books with sequels as songs that are connected somehow).
That one is shaping up to be called “Complicated” and be about Kelly/the kids.
So the project is not dead at least, but I do really have to get going with finishing and releasing the rest of the old testament…
So here’s where “wobbly rob” is up to, and where it’ll stay for a while:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11KF02cPCyziwS6VR-4yJflg1GH-UyARY/view?usp=sharing
inheriting the earth 