We Are Emotional Spies

April 17, 2008, 8:27 pm
We Are Emotional Spies
By Darrell Brown

While I was finding my way as a songwriter, a colleague of mine, Ed Sanford, told me something I’ve since found to be very true. Songwriters, he said, are “emotional spies” — little creative crazies creeping around, sneaking in and out of our own emotions, watching, listening and remembering every bit of conversation with friends, family and every stranger we meet.

Yes, we are a funny, greedy group of people. If a song is cowering deep inside someone else’s divorce, engagement, seduction, innocence, sickness, recovery, treachery or resurrection, we long to see every crevice of it revealed in the light,
all dressed up in grooves, chords and poetry.

We record everything we witness in some way or another, taking notes on scraps of paper or recording snippets of melody or other inspiration into our voice mail so when we are alone we can retrieve and use them later. Another friend, Mary McCann, a poet who lives in Seattle, summed this process up pretty well: “Keep livng and take really good notes.”

All this came to my brain while thinking about a song I am working on now with my dear friend and great songwriter partner Lindy Robbins. It began like this.

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Grace Note: Showing Up

Remember “showing up” is a major part of getting songs to come out of you. By that I mean even when you do not have a clue to what you’re going to write, you must still give yourself the time and space to write. Don’t cancel on yourself or others. Get yourself to be mentally alert and spiritually available to see what surprise your creative self wants you to write. Be awake emotionally and learn to be intuitively aware of your surroundings. Just show up and sooner or later it will start to pour out of you. — Darrell Brown

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Back in September, my life partner Roger was throwing a birthday party for me at our home. A lot of people had been invited. While Roger was getting ready for the party, he discovered me sitting cross-legged on the floor in our shower.

He asked me if everything was all right. I confessed to him that I was trying take a moment, with the shower pouring down on me, to accept the love of my friends who were about to come over and celebrate this birthday with us. I had always thought of myself as a person with an open heart, but I was nervous about all these sweet people in my life at our house just to celebrate me. … Dumb, I know, but I was feeling numb and I was just trying to take some time to take it all in.

So after the birthday candles were blown out it was time for me to give a thank you speech. I started telling everyone about how I was sitting on the shower floor not long before … trying to take love in. I started tearing up hard as I tried to thank individual friends for being there with us, but at the same time something was happening in my brain. I began to spy on myself. I made a mental note: “Take Love In” was a good song title. So there I was having an authentically emotional moment with a house full of friends and family and all the while the emotional spy in me was whispering, “Don’t forget it, don’t forget it. There’s something there in that title for you.” All through the cutting of the cake, every hug, thank you and kiss I found myself constantly mumbling that phrase and as soon as I found a moment snuck off and wrote the title down in the notes application of my iPhone.

So now, some six months after my birthday party, I am working with Lindy. We had no idea at first what we were going to write. We always just show up and see what happens.

As always we started catching up with each others’ lives and our conversation turned to the subject of trying to accept the love that people are every day trying to give, but somehow being unable to receive it. Of course, the birthday party experience popped into my head. So I pulled out my iPhone and started reading it all to Lindy.

It was not long before the lyrics started falling out of our brains. Here are a few of them.

The first two verses starting flowing out right when we hit upon this simple, moody minor chord progression: D-minor to C-2 to B-flat to F — then D-minor to C-2 then hold on B-flat. You can listen to a very rough audio sample of our session, above.

Take love in
Easier said than done
If I am gonna take the chance tonight
You will be the one I’ll give my heart to
That would be the bravest thing to do

To take love in
seems a simple thing to ask
If you can run a little faster
I’ll slow down the best I can
Please give me your faith
Trust there’s still some good in me to save

The chorus became…
I know the damage done
I am my father’s father’s son.
But maybe here with you is how the hurting finally starts to end
And where I begin
To take love in

This song is still in progress. Lindy and I still have the third verse and bridge to write. We tried to keep it as conversational as we could, in the same manner of language as our own conversation.

In general, it doesn’t matter to me if a title is the first thing to come out or the chord progression or any part of the melody or lyrics. I just want anything to come out so I can start writing (or the song can start writing itself). And I don’t judge during the writing. It doesn’t even matter to me if it sounds like a commercial hit song or an art song. I just want the song to be true to itself. As both a songwriter and a human being, I try to keep myself open and give back as much as I take in. After all, I am surrounded by emotional spies of my own day in and day out. I need to be spied on as much as the next songwriter. It’s a win-win situation.
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Darrell Brown is a songwriter, arranger and producer who has written hit songs for dozens of recording artists, as well as music for film and television. Recently, he has co-written songs for country music stars LeAnn Rimes and Keith Urban (including the Grammy-award-winning song, "You'll Think of Me") and recently collaborated with Neil Young on his records "Living With War" and "Chrome Dreams II." He lives in Los Angeles and Nashville.