It Wouldn't Be Hard - A Jungian Epiphany

I think it was Carl Jung who said, every person who appears in your dreams is a fragment of your own psyche. I’m here to say that the same might true in Songwriting.

Under the weight of this truism, I have a new secret favorite ShipeSong. “It Wouldn’t Be Hard,” from The Beast Is Back album. It just wrecks me when I play & sing it. I finally realize why, and I think I can explain. But let me digress first. (BTW: Lyrics Below)

I never really subscribed to the idea of songwriting-as-self-therapy. I felt that such an approach runs the risk of aggressive mediocrity, by virtue of merely setting one’s diary to music — just applying pitch & rhyme to self-indulgent prose. Melodramatic, banal, and histrionic. Though I frequently go on-and-on about the Gestalt aspects of the songing process, like deep-diving into the embodiment of characters, opening available to any-and-all emotions that might arise, I have remained clinically committed to the agenda of songcraft. I might encourage young budding songsters to go ahead and “deal with their problems” through songwriting. But I fancied myself above such personal journalification of one’s repertoire. For me, it was all about the storytelling craft and the broaching of universal subject matter. “Dealing with your problems through Art” was just a thing to say, to motivate and justify to the endeavor.

Now, as I look back on my body of work, it turns out,,, that’s all I’ve been doing! Dealing with my sh-t. Perhaps not overtly. But, oh my gosh, it’s clearly obvious! Song-after-song, my original repertoire is a thinly disguised sketch of my autobiography — highlighting the rough patches. It began decades ago with my first childishly naive unrequited love song, and continues up through my most recent title cut.

Recently, as I was singing “It Wouldn’t Be Hard,” on stage, I had such an emotional epiphany, I nearly had to stop mid-chorus and collect myself.

In the song, my narrator is singing in second person point of view, (the “you” POV) to a long lost friend, lamenting their distance. He himself is an ordinary family guy, with real life day-to-day concerns, while his beloved friend is off living the adventurous life of a free spirit who “packed up his stuff in a beat up car and found someplace new.”

When the song came to me, I presumed to identify with the latter guy — the free spirit. You know, the Artist’s Life, like an errant knight, celebrating personal liberty and freedom from convention. He was sort of an exaggerated romanticized composite of my apirations of pure individuality. But damn! How did I get the song so right when the whole time I’m singing in the voice of the uptight guy?

I realize now that I am both dudes, in equal measure. This hits me hard as I listen back to the studio version, produced brilliantly by Tyler Fortier. (On the record, he added a second vocal to the arrangement — Erin Flood Fortier’s. I wondered why such an intimate, lonely song should have a second voice harmonizing almost aimlessly throughout. It makes such sense now. This was a bright intuition of Tyler’s; we never talked about it. Erin’s part, which she created on the spot by pure feel, does not glue to the melody as harmony usually does; it pulls the melody away from itself, reflecting a divided psyche. It’s often it’s own distinct melody, suggesting a dual experience. It is utterly beautiful, while at the same time un-easing.)

I come to find that “It Wouldn’t Be Hard” is not a story about two strangers I made up in my imagination just to illustrate the theme of a certain kind of friendship. These characters are both me: two parts of my own psyche, foils for one another who cannot and will not ever reconcile. The once craves personal liberty and resents constrainment. The other requires grounding, needs structure and stability. Niether personal archtype is supreme here. Neither is better than the other. They struggle, neither against each other, nor in concerted collaboration. Wishful optimists might try to describe their struggle as arriving into “Balance.” But… nope. They just struggle, forever. And they diminish one another. Neither stability, nor liberty is the outcome. Liberty is constrained. Stablity is sabotaged.

It kinda made me sad about myself when I figured it out. But then it filled me with a thrill, knowing that such a bummer of an inner conflict could manifest in such a gorgeous piece of music that I could do record my friends. (especially my longest music companion Mike Walker on the organ.) And that is how art is supposed to work, isn’t it? I dealt with my problems through songwriting, and I didn’t even have to feel the unpleasantless of knowing that I had those problems.

Ha! Take that, Mister Maladaptive Dysfuntion.

Anyway, getting back to this whole thing of dealing with problems through music. Well… wow… just wow… I can’t help wondering; what sort of strewn about mess of pieces would my life be if I hadn’t been indulging in this glorified hobby all along? And: Why is it only now that I am able to recognize this and cop to it? Has the “craft” done its work on me at long last? Has it fully integrated my psyche in the way a creative outlet is supposed to do? That would certainly explain why my last batch of songs has a much more clear, affirming quality than previous batches.

Does this mean that my current dry spell is emblematic of personal, permanent mental health victory? Does this mean I’m done? If this dry spell is actually a good sign about myself, it would mean that my music endeavor was never about possessing the identity of Songwriter — a badge or label to apply to myself. It was never about pursuit of accomplishment in an industry. It was always about the cathartic substance at the core of musical and poetic storytelling. A series of shared lived experiences. It was about having a long-ass protracted private experience in a public manner.

So, what now? Shall I go out and acquire more problems so I can write more songs? Hmmm….That wouldn’t be hard.

Oh, the lyrics:

“I wonder where you’ve been.

It’s hard to tell from the picture you sent.

You’re looking pretty thin.

I haven’t seen you since the day we went

To the Church Revival, when our hearts would ache.

We prayed for salvation, but it didn’t take.

So what else could you do?

Packed up your stuff in a beat-up car,

And found some place new,

Where no one knows who you really are.

And you could take the risk, and follow your dreams,

With nothing to lose, and nobody seems to judge you.

It wouldn’t be hard to say we’re sorry,

If it meant that we could see your face again.

If it meant that we could laugh at all the crazy shit

You say that comes out of nowhere.

Everybody’s jealous.

You oughtta hear the excuses we make,

When there’s no here to tell us,

That anything you want is yours to take.

You see we’ve all got responsibilities --

The mortgage, the kids, the utilities.

That’s life I guess.

That’s life, that’s life I guess.

It wouldn’t be hard to welcome you back,

To give us a glimpse of the life we lack,

To shed a little a ray of sunlight

On this endless gray.

Thank you for the picture.

Yes, I’m sure it’s worth a thousand words.

But I miss you.

If it’s any consolation,

I’ve taken up guitar and I wrote a few tunes.

No, I ain’t no sensation,

Just working up the nerve to play ‘em out soon.

But I can’t help thinking what it’s like for you.

That doors just open ‘cause you want them to.

Everything here for us is in plain view.

It wouldn’t be hard to admit you were right,

If it meant that we could hang out together tonight.

We could have a conversation like we never really had.

We could lay it on the line, just lay it on the line.

And it wouldn’t be hard.”