All right, man.
Did you give anybody prompts?
Was there like a theme?
Thanks for asking.
When I'm first working with folks,
sometimes I'll give prompts.
But this is an interesting thing.
I feel like it's my responsibility to step out
of the way as much as possible.
So most of these songs didn't have prompts.
And there's a risk.
I realized when I first started working with spellers,
I have preconceptions about what songs are supposed to be about.
And so even just by giving a prompt,
I risk making our product more neurotypical,
basically, which is like what I want to avoid--
never want to put any kind of my blinders on accidentally.
So the vast majority of the time,
especially with the folks that I've
been working with for a long time, we just start the session
and I say-- what do you feel like writing about today?
What's been on your mind?
Sometimes we do--
I think of it as being the equivalent of a body scan.
In a yoga class, you do a body scan and feel
where you might be holding tension
or where you might be feeling a little nervousness
or feeling a little excitement in your body.
And I ask a lot of these collaborators
to do a similar thing-- like in their mind,
in their consciousness, scan recent memories,
long-term memories, scan the future,
what we're looking forward to.
And similarly looking for knots--
K-N-O-T-S-- knots of anticipation or a little bit
of discomfort or a little bit of curiosity or whatever it might
be, and then just follow that toward an image or toward
a phrase, and then build our song from there.
But it's really, really, really student-directed.
And that feels super important for me and also super
important to articulate, just to shine the light back
on these writers.
They're doing it on their own.
Is Grace here.
Do we have Grace?
Not sure.
This was also written at one of our songwriting camps.
I think this is one of my favorite.
I love the turn of phrase.
This is called Stalking Straight Line--
S-T-A-L-K-I-N-G. And it's a railroad song,
but it's not your typical railroad song.
I think this one slaps.
So this is by Grace.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
(SINGING) I love the way they sound
Rolling out of town
I feel the stalking of the straight line
On the train line
I see the sky moving by
The train seems to fly
I feel the stalking of the straight line
On the train line
I see the trains outside
I know too, right
I hear the machines
Moving, riding up a mountain
Next stop, all right
It's a long ride tonight
Living free
Come on and ride with me
I feel the stalking of the straight line
On the train line
I feel the machines
Moving, riding up a mountain
I hear the machines
Moving, riding up a mountain.
[GUITAR PLAYS]
[APPLAUSE]
Awesome.
I think this is a big part of my creative life,
collaborating with spellers.
And then also, I'm a touring singer songwriter,
writing my own work and playing with a band
and putting out records of my own and whatever.
And I'm always trying to find, in my own work,
like turns of phrase that where the meaning is immediately
understandable, but also that people haven't heard before.
And it's kind of riding this line between cliche, but then
with just the tiniest little twist or something.
That's what makes a great song, I think,
is something that's familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
And the stalking of the straight line is exactly that.
You know exactly what it means.
It's so stalking, but never would
have thought to write it like that.
So good.