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#I’m the artist I do what I want for the sake of thematic resonance part 2
still-snowing · 3 years
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a sequel of sorts.
turns out, lan wangji does think about it.
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1vintage · 3 years
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Ocean Vuong on Metaphor
below is a transcript of an Instagram story from Ocean Vuong, available here in his story highlights under Metaphor.
Q: How do you make sure your metaphors have real depth?
metaphors should have two things: (1) sensory (visual, texture, sound, etc) connector between origin image and the transforming image as well as (2) a clear logical connector between both images. 
if you have only one of either, best to forgo the metaphor, otherwise it will seem forced or read like “writing” if that makes sense.
~
a lot of ya’ll asked for examples re:metaphor. I can explain better if I had 15 minutes of class time (apply to UMASS!). But essentially, metaphors that go awry can signal a hurried desire to be “literary�� or “poetic” (ie “writing”), which can lose traction/trust with a reader. in other words, a metaphor is a detour—but that detour better lead to discoveries that alter/amplify the meaning of what is already there, so that a reader sees you as a servant of possibility rather than someone trying to prove that they are a “writer.” One is performative, the other exploratory. In this way, the metaphor acts as a virtual medium, ejecting the text’s optical realism into an “elsewhere”. But this elsewhere should inform the original upon our return. otherwise the journey would feel like an ejection from a crash rather than a curated journey toward more complex meaning.
example:
“The road curves like a cat’s tail.”
This is a weak metaphor because the transforming image (tail) does not amplify/alter the original. The transfer of meaning flattens and dies. Logic is weak or moot: A cat’s tail does not really change the nature of the road. You can certainly add to this with a few more expository sentences which might rescue the logic—but by then you’re just doing cpr on your metaphor.
Sensory, too, is weak: a cat’s tail has little optical resemblance to a road other than being curved (roads are not furry, for one.)
So this is 0 for 2 and should be scrapped. (Just my opinion though! Not a rule!)
okay so what about:
“The road runs between two groves of pine, like the first stroke of a buzzcut.”
this is better. the optical sensory of the transforming image (a clipper thru a head of hair) matches well with the original.
but the logic feels arbitrary. again it doesn’t substantially alter the original.
in the end this is just an “interesting image” but not strong enough to keep I’d say.
Now here’s one from Sharon Olds:
“The hair on my father’s arms like blades of molasses.”
Sensory connector: check. A man’s dark hair indeed can look like blades (also suggestive of grass) of molasses.
Logical connector: check. the father is both sharp and sweet. Something once soft and sticky about him (connotations of youth) sweets, has now hardened the confection no longer fresh etc.
It’s an ambitious metaphor that is packed with resonance. In other words, it does worlds of work and actually deepens the more you dit with it. A metaphor that actually invites you to put the book down, think on it, absorb it, before returning. a good metaphor uses detours to add power to the text. poor metaphors distract you from the text and leave you bereft, laid to the side.
lastly, the prior examples are technically “similes” but I believe similes reside under the umbrella of metaphor. although a simile is a demarcation, ie: this is “like” that. but this is “not”, ontologically, that.
however, I think something happens in the act of reading wherein we collapse the “bridge” and the mind automatically forges synergy between the two images, so that all similes, once read, “act” like metaphors in the mind.
but again this is all subjective. you might have a better way of going about it.
Another very ambitious metaphor is this one from Eduardo C. Corral:
“Moss intensifies up the tree, like applause.”
This is a masterful metaphor, risky and requires a lot of faith, restraint, and experience to pull it off.
Difficult mainly because we now see a surrealist “distortion” of the sensory realm: origin IMAGE (moss) is paired with transforming SOUND (applause).
There is now a leap in comparable elements. But the adherence to our two vital factors are still present.
Sensory: moss, though silent, grows slowly (the word “intensifies” does major work here becuz it foreshadows the transforming element). Applause, too, grows gradually, before dying down.
Logic: the growth of the moss suggests spring, lushness, life, resilience, and connotes anticipatory hope, much like applause. In turn, applause modifies the nature of moss and imbues, at least this moss, with a sense of accomplishment, closure, it’s refreshment a cause for celebration.
God I love words.
~
I’ve gotten so many responses from folks the past few days asking for a deeper dive into my personal theory on metaphor.
So I'm taking a moment here to do a more in-depth mini essay since my answer to the Q/A the other day was off the cuff (I was typing while walking to my haircut appointment).
What I’m proposing, of course, is merely a THEORY, not a gospel, so please take whatever is useful to you and ignore what isn’t.
This essay will be in 25 slides. I will save this in my IG highlights after 24 hrs.
Before I begin I want to encourage everyone to forge your own theories and praxi for your work, especially if you’re a BIPOC artist.
Often, we are perceived by established powers as merely “performers,” suitable for a (brief) stint on stage—but not thinkers and creators with our own autonomy, intelligence, and capacity to question the framework in our fields.
It is not lost on me, as a yellow body in America, with the false connotations therein, where I’m often seen as diminutive, quiet, accommodating, agreeable, submissive, that I am not expected to think against the grain, to have my own theories on how I practice my art and my life.
I became a writer knowing I am entering a field (fine arts) where there are few faces like my own (and with many missing), a field where we are expected to succeed only when we pick up a violin or a cello in order to serve Euro-Centric “masterpieces.”
For so long, to be an Asian American “prodigy” in art was to be a fine-tuned instrument for Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.
It is no surprise, then, that if you, as a BIPOC artist, dare to come up with your own ideas, to say “no” to what they shove/have been shoving down your throat for so long, you will be infantilized, seen as foolish, moronic, stupid, disobedient, uneducated, and untamed.
Because it means the instrument that was once in the service of their “work” has now begun to speak, has decided, despite being inconceivable to them, to sing its own songs.
I want you, I need you, to sing with me. I want to hear what you sound like when it’s just us, and you sound so much like yourself that I recognize you even in the darkest rooms, even when I recognize nothing else. And I know your name is “little brother” or “big sister,” or “light bean,” or “my-echo-returned-to-me-intact.” And I smile.
In the dark I smile.
Art has no rules—yes—but it does have methods, which vary for each individual. The following are some of my own methods and how I came to them.
I’m very happy ya’ll are so into figurative language! It’s my favorite literary device because it reveals a second IDEA behind an object or abstraction via comparison.
When done well, it creates what I call the “DNA of seeing.” That is, a strong metaphor “Greek for “to carry over”) can enact the autobiography of sight. For example, what does it say about a person who sees the stars in the night sky—as exit wounds?
What does it say about their history, their worldview, their relationship to beauty and violence? All this can be garnered in the metaphor itself—without context—when the comparative elements have strong multifaceted bonds.
How we see the world reveals who we are. And metaphors explicate that sight.
My personal feeling is that the strongest metaphors do not require context for clarity. However, this does not mean that weaker metaphors that DO require context are useless or wrong.
Weak metaphors use context to achieve CLARITY.
Strong metaphors use context to SUPPORT what’s already clear.
BOTH are viable in ANY literary text.
But for the sake of this deeper exploration into metaphors and their gradients, I will attempt to identify the latter.
I feel it is important for a writer to understand the STRENGTHS of the devices they use, even when WEAKER versions of said devices can achieve the same goal via different means.
Sometimes we want a life raft, sometimes we want a steam boat—but we should know which is which (for us).
My focus then, will be specifically the ornamental or overt metaphor. That is, metaphors that occur inside the line—as opposed to conceptual, thematic, extended metaphors, or Homeric simile (which is a whole different animal).
My thinking here begins with the (debated) theory that similes reside under metaphors. That is, (non-Homeric) similes, behave cognitively, like metaphors.
This DOES NOT mean that similes do not matter (far from it), as we’ll see later on, but that the compared elements, once read, begin to merge in the mind, resulting in a metaphoric OCCURRENCE via a simileac vehicle.
This thinking is not entirely my own, but one informed by my interest in Phenomenology. Founded by Edmund Husserl in the early 20th century and later expanded by Heidegger, Phenomenology is, in short, interested in how objects or phenomena are perceived in the mind, which renewed interest in subjectivity across Europe, as opposed to the Enlightenment’s quest for ultimate, finite truths.
By the time Husserl “discovered” this, however, Tibetan Buddhists scholars have already been practicing Phenomenology as something called Lojong, or “mind training,” for over half a millennia.
Whereas Husserl believes, in part, that a finite truth does exist but that the myopic nature of human perception hinders us from seeing all of it, Tibetan Lojong purports that no finite “truth” exists at all.
In Lojong, the world and its objects are pure perception. That is, a fly looks at a tree and sees, due to its compound eyes, hundreds of trees, while we see only one. For Buddhists, neither fly nor human is “correct” because a fixed truth is not present. Reality is only real according to one’s bodily medium.
I’m keenly interested in Lojong’s approach because it inheritably advocates for an anti-colonial gaze of the world. If objects in the real are not tenable, there is no reason they should be captured, conquered or pillaged.
In other words, we are in a “simulation” and because there is no true gain in acquiring something that is only an illusion, it is better to observe and learn from phenomena as guests passing through this world with respect to things—rather than to possess them.
The reason I bring this up is because Buddhist philosophy is the main influence of 8th century Chinese and 15th-17th century Japanese poetics, which fundamentally inform my understanding of metaphor.
While I appreciate Aristotle’s take on metaphor and rhetoric in his Poetics, particularly his thesis that strong metaphors move from species to genus, it is not a robust influence on my thinking.
After all, like sex and water, metaphors have been enjoyed by humans across the world long before Aristotle-- and evidently long after. In fact, Buddhist teachings, which widely employ metaphor and analogy, predates Aristotle by roughly 150 years.
Now, to better see how Buddhist Phenomenology informs the transformation of images into metaphor, let’s look at this poem by Moritake.
“The fallen blossom flies back to its branch. No, a butterfly.”
When considering (western-dominated) discourse surrounding analogues using “like” or “is”, is this image a metaphor or a simile?
It is technically neither. The construction of this poem does not employ metaphor or simile.
And yet, to my eye, a metaphor, although not present, does indeed HAPPEN.
What’s more, the poem, which is essentially a single metaphor, is complete.
No further context is needed for its clarity. If context is needed for a metaphor, then the metaphor is (IMO) weak—but that doesn’t mean the writing, as a whole, is bad. Weak metaphors and good context bring us home safe and sound.
Okay, so what is happening here?
By the time I read “butterfly,” my mind corrects the blossom so that the latter image retroactively changes/informs the former. We see the blossom float up, then re-see it as a butterfly. The metaphoric figuration is complete with or without “like” or “is.”
Buddhism explains this by saying that, although a text IS thought, it does not THINK. We, the readers, must think upon it. The text, then, only curates thinking.
Words, in this way, begin on the page but LIVE in the mind which, due to limited and subjective scope of human perception, shift seemingly fixed elements into something entirely new.
The key here is proximity. Similes provide buffers to mediate impact between two elements, but they do not rule over how images coincide upon reading. One the page, text is fossil; in the mind, text is life.
Nearly 5000 years after Maritake, Ezra Pound, via Fenolosa, reads Maritake’s poem and writes what becomes the seminal poem on Imagism in 1912, which was subsequently highly influential to early Modernists:
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.”
Like Maritake, Pound’s poem technically has no metaphor or simile. However, he adds the vital colon after “crowd,” which arguably works as an “equal sign”, thereby implying metaphor. But the reason why he did not use “are” or “is” is telling.
Pound understood, like Maritake, that the metaphor would occur in the mind, regardless of connecting verbiage due to the images’ close proximity. We would come to know this as “association.”
Even if the colon was replaced by the word “like,” the transformation, though a bit slower, would still occur.
In fact, when I first studied Pound years ago, I had trouble recalling whether this poem was fashioned as a simile or not—mainly because the faces change to fully into blossoms each time I try to recall the poem.
Now, let’s look at a simile that, to me, metaphorizes in the same way as the examples above, in the line we saw before from Eduardo C. Corral:
“Jade moss on the tree intensifies, like applause.”
The origin/tenor image (moss) is connected to the transforming element (applause). This metaphor suggests, not an optical relationship, but a BEHAVIORAL one.
Both moss and applause are MASSES that accumulate via singularities: grains of moss and pairs of hands clapping to form a larger whole.
By comparing these two, Corral successfully suggests that moss grows at the RATE of applause, creating a masterful time lapse effect. Applause speeds up the moss growth, connoting rejuvenation, joy and refreshment. That something as mundane as moss deserves, even earns, jubilance, also offers a potent statement of alterity, that the smallest flourishing deserves celebration, which in turn suggests a subtle yet powerful political critique of hegemony.
The poet, through the metaphor, has recalibrated the traditional modes of value placed on the object (moss).
And no other context is needed for that.
You might disagree, but when I read Corral’s line, I don’t SEE an audience clapping BESIDE the moss. I see moss growing quickly to the sound of clapping. Although the simile is employed, the fusion of both elements completes the action in my mind’s eye.
Like Maritake and Pound, metaphor has OCCURRED here—but without “metaphor”.
HOWEVER, the simile is still VITAL. Why?
Because the transforming element is abstract (applause) and looks nothing like moss. We don’t want moss to BE applause, we want the nature of applause to inform, imbue, moss.
The line, I feel, would be quite poor if it was formed sans simile:
“Jade moss is applause on the tree.”
The “is” forces transposition, which is here akin to slamming two things together without mediation. We also lose the comparison of behavior, and are asked to see that moss BECOME applause, which doesn’t have the same meaning as the original.
So, although the simile fuses into metaphor (via association) in the mind, such a metaphor would NOT have been possible without the simile.
Similes matter greatly—as tools towards metaphor. Why?
Because (thank god) our minds are free to roam.
To summarize, one of the central strategies (and, to an extent, purposes) of the Japanese Haiku is to juxtapose two elements to test their synergy. This impulse is grounded in Shinto and Buddhist concepts of impermanence and structural malleability. That is, all things, even ideas and images, are subject to constant change—and such change is the most pervasive nature of perception.
The Haiku then becomes the perfect medium to test such changes. This principle is of central importance to me because it is rooted in non-dualistic (or non-binary) thinking.
The poem becomes the theatre in which fixed elements can be transformed, their borders subject to being dissolved, shifting towards something entirely new—to “create”, which is the Greek root to the word “poet.” The metaphor, then, is more like a chemical, whose elements (like hydrogen and oxygen), placed side by side, becomes water.
In this way, Buddhism’s influence on my work and, specifically, my use and understanding of metaphor, is a foundational QUEER praxis for alterity.
The reason why I emphasize the malleability of simile’s impact is that, although syntax and diction can aide a metaphor towards its more luminous embodiment, the ultimate key to its success is you, the observer.
YOU have look deeply and find lasting relationships between things in a disparate world.
In this sense, the practice of metaphor is also, I believe, the practice of compassion. How do I study a thing so that I might add to its life by introducing it to something else?
At its best, the metaphor is what we, as a species, have always done, at OUR best: which is to point at something or someone so different from us, so far from our own origins and say, “Yes, there IS a bond between us. And if I work long enough, hard enough, I can prove it to you—with this thing called language, this thing that weighs nothing but means everything to me.”
In the end, it is less about how you set up your metaphors (you will eventually find a way that suits it and you) but more about how you recognize your world. THAT is not easy to teach—it comes with patient practice, with a committed wonder for a world that at times might be too painful to look at. But you must and you should.
Good metaphors, in the end, come from writers who are committed to looking beyond what is already there, towards another possibility.
This calls that you see your life and your work as inexhaustible sites of discovery, and that you tend to them with care.
That’s it. That’s the true secret to a strong metaphor: care.
Lastly, I want to recommend the work of BIPOC poet and theorist, Thylias Moss, who discovered the Limited Fork Theory, a theory which suggests that the mind engages with the world, and especially with ideas, including text and art, the way the tines of a fork engage with a plate of food.
That is, only so much can be held on the work/mind with each attempt to consume, and that no “work” can be possessed in its entirety, which I find happily congruent with Lojong.
What a wonderful anti-imperialist and forgiving way to engage with our planet and its phenomena. Thank you, Mrs. Moss!
And thank YOU for sticking around through my little seminar.
I hope this has been helpful. Again, this is just my 2(5) cents! Now I’m going to sleep for four days.
In the meantime, me-ta-phors be with you.
—O
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IT Chapter Two
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I wish I had been writing reviews in 2017 when the first IT came out, because it was one of my favorite films of that year and by far one of the best Stephen King adaptations I’ve ever seen. As a lifelong fan - I was reading The Shining in fourth grade while my peers were still hanging with the Boxcar Children - I know it’s not easy to capture King’s imaginings on film. On the surface, IT is the story of a group of childhood friends battling an evil shapeshifter that often takes the form of a clown. That’s cinematic as shit! But it’s ALSO a deep dive into the 400-year-long history of the town of Derry and the big showdown is a psychic battle of wills taking place everywhere and nowhere in the cosmos. There’s also a preteen orgy. You take the good with the weird with Mr. King is what I’m saying, and not all of that (good OR weird) is translatable to the screen, so I was quite curious how IT Chapter Two would stack up against its charming and thematically rich predecessor. The Losers’ Club is all grown up and back in town to face off against Pennywise 27 years after their last encounter with It, and this time they aim to finish the job. Can their attempts to defeat the demons of their childhood possibly be as interesting as seeing those childhoods play out so successfully on screen 2 years ago? Well...
I wish I could say yes. IT Chapter Two has a lot of strengths, its casting chief among them, but ultimately it suffers from a number of modern cinematic choices that didn’t seem to touch part one with its 1989 nostalgia quite so glaringly. 
Some thoughts:
There 100% needs to be an Academy Award category for Best Casting because Rich Delia has earned it 100 times over. Each of the adults are perfect counterparts to their childhood selves, but it’s downright eerie how good adult Eddie (James Ransone) and Richie (the incomparable Bill Hader) are. They walk away with every scene they’re in. 
On a side note, I’m wholeheartedly convinced Bill Hader is our generation’s Jimmy Stewart. There’s nothing he can’t do, and between this and his tour-de-force performance in HBO’s Barry, I am more and more impressed with him with each passing year. 
Much to-do has been made about Hader’s character and some implications about his love life that aren’t included in the novel. Personally, I feel like the changes make sense for the character and for the way that relationship is treated both in the novel and in the films. And much like Beverly’s terrifying and complicated relationship with her abusive father, the film doesn’t shy away from showing us through Richie’s story that the most terrifying things in Derry are the things humans do to each other (and themselves) in the name of fear and hate. 
With an almost 3-hour running time, you would expect the film to feel overstuffed, but I found the opposite problem to be true. It feels like not much is happening for long stretches, or perhaps it’s the problem of knowing that we have to get a flashback scare and a present-day scare for each of the returning Losers - either way, it all starts to feel a little by-the-numbers. 
A spoiler/content warning for those who are sensitive to such things: as in the book, the big inciting event of It’s return to terrorize Derry 27 years after It’s battle with the Losers is a horrifying and graphically violent anti-gay hate crime. I found this to be even more horrifying than in the 1986 novel simply because it’s now 2019 and this still felt like a plausible and unsurprising attack. 
I thought it was a truly excellent touch that Myra, Eddie’s wife, is played by the same actress who played his mother (Molly Atkinson). A+, guys. That made me laugh out loud.
Same with the detail of Stan (Andy Bean) and his bird puzzle. I still think a giant bird would have been way more terrifying than some of the CGI creatures the movies dreamed up.
Another note on pacing - it felt like we really blazed through each of our introductions to the grown-up Losers in favor of moving things along quickly to get them all together again (smart) but also to get them back in Derry so they can get to the “main event” and each have their one-on-one scares with Pennywise (less smart). Both of these films are most winning when they focus on the humans that Pennywise is terrorizing. I wish we’d had more time to get to know our grown-ups before the rest of their screentime was devoted to running and screaming and being covered in all kinds of muck.
On a related note, the scenes that are really allowed to linger and creep along - I’m thinking of a small, memorable sequence with a little girl who encounters Pennywise under some bleachers - are by far the best. I really wish the extended scene with Mrs. Kersh hadn’t served as the first trailer for the film, because I think its unsettling creepiness is the closest the film gets to the big scares of the book and I just wish there had been more of that, less of CGI creatures running around gibbering.
There is a real magic in the chemistry The Losers have together, and those scenes are the other main highlights. The Chinese restaurant scene is a real standout and maintains the sudden, creeping dread of the same scene in the novel. But even with that magic, the adults camaraderie pales in comparison to the kids’ when they’re all together. It’s really a shame they decided to split the films up chronologically because the scenes with the kid Losers are just more interesting and more emotionally resonant in every way. 
Didn’t love the de-aging CGI they had to do on the kids’ faces though. And the ADR did something strange to their voices. In some scenes it wasn’t so bad, but particularly in the clubhouse scenes, there’s some uncanny valley effect going on.
Y’know, for Silver being so important to Bill, he sure does clank it to the ground every fucking time he dismounts like Silver ain’t shit.
There’s a fun, and fairly extended Stephen King cameo that I enjoyed very much.
Did I Cry? Yes, for Stan and for Eddie and for Richie and for all the Losers at the end as they process all the events that came before. 
Frankly, my biggest complaint is an overall feeling that Gary Dauberman’s script is overwritten, too quippy, too punched up. There’s a big scary encounter that gets completely undercut by “Angel of the Morning” blaring for 3 seconds, then cutting out. Why was that there? There’s no radio in the scene that gets knocked over or something, it’s a completely artistic choice that robs the scene of any tension or fear for the sake of a cheap (not even that good) laugh. Same with a quip from Eddie about a character’s haircut after an intense act of violence has occurred - the line isn’t even an Eddie line, it’s a Richie line, and it all leads to a feeling like these are characters acting out a script. That’s never what I want a movie to feel like, especially not one where suspension of disbelief is so vital to selling the audience some pretty weird stuff.
There are two dogs - one scary and one Very Good Very Not Scary dog at the end :)
In many ways, the scares here just aren’t really that scary and end up reminding me of better films. Stan’s spidery head is a clear homage to The Thing, the underground cavern feels very much like Alien, Bev’s encounter with the blood feels reminiscent of both Carrie and The Shining - it all adds up to a feeling that, like Pennywise, the film is just a mimic trying to capitalize on easy, surface-level scares. I wanted to love this more, but somehow there just didn’t seem to be much heart in it. Maybe they’ll try again in 27 years and get it absolutely right.
If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.
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jessicakmatt · 7 years
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Inspiration Is for Amateurs: EmmoLei on Lyrics, Music Videos and Process
Inspiration Is for Amateurs: EmmoLei on Lyrics, Music Videos and Process: via LANDR Blog
LA-based songwriter and producer EmmoLei doesn’t wait around for inspiration.
Emily Jackson, a.k.a. EmmoLei Sankofa is never not creating.
After a Master’s degree at Savannah College of Art and Design in her native Atlanta, she moved to LA to make and teach music. She has since developed her artistic practice in all directions.
EmmoLei makes music, scores film and videos, runs a collective called Bèl Son (from the creole ‘beautiful sound’) and exhibits visual work too.
Her most recent release is the beautiful LANDR-distributed single “Relax”:
Her latest project JustBcuz is a 30 day series of music for animations. She explains her process, workflow and creative vision. Let yourself get inspired—or by EmmoLei’s definition, let yourself get to work!
Can you describe the process of composing for animated videos?
For the series JustBcuz, I started out by identifying the visual rhythm and tempo of each video.
Then I experimented with ways to make people perceive that visual rhythm differently through music. It’s like watching an action-packed chase sequence in a film that has a slowly evolving underscore. The music completely contrasts the visual rhythm on screen.
A post shared by E. Sankofa (@emmolei) on Jun 25, 2017 at 10:20am PDT
So I look for areas where I can provide contrast between the visuals and music. From there, I sit with the colours and marinate on how they make me feel—along with what I’m actually going through that day.
Sometimes, I observe the collective energy of my peers or people on Twitter to establish what topic I want to address lyrically. The lyrics end up being advice that I’m giving myself. It just happens to resonate with others too!
The lyrics end up being advice that I’m giving myself. It just happens to resonate with others too!
The instrumentation usually boils down to what feels right—or collectively possesses the timbre that supports the visuals.
I’m not really sure what happens between the time I play the first note and actually finish composing the song. That space usually gets foggy for most people. I almost never look at the visual while I’m creating. The time I spend with it before even making a sound is where I’m sure to capture a mental picture of what’s happening.
A post shared by E. Sankofa (@emmolei) on Jun 27, 2017 at 5:47am PDT
After that, I let it swirl around in the back of my mind while I allow my sonic ideas to flow. Every now and then I stop to see if what I’m creating even makes sense!
How do you work with lyrics and image? How do they relate to each other?
The lyrics come from what’s on my heart that day. If I come up with lyrics and a melody first, I flesh out that idea by choosing a video that somewhat matches the message. Other times, I look at a video, the lyrics jump out at me, and I run with it.
What do you think is the current role of the music video?
To me, good music videos have always had two major functions.
They’re either a way for your audience to gain clarity on the meaning of a song, or totally disrupt what they thought the song meant.
A post shared by E. Sankofa (@emmolei) on Jun 30, 2017 at 9:48am PDT
Music videos currently still serve that same purpose. But I think people underestimate the art of storytelling and feel compelled to throw a music video together for the sake of doing so.
People underestimate the art of storytelling and feel compelled to throw a music video together for the sake of doing so.
I’ve really been digging Kendrick Lamar’s videos lately. I’ve also gravitated towards music videos from Flying Lotus, Missy Elliot, Tyler the Creator, Björk, Outkast, and Kanye just to name a few.
A post shared by E. Sankofa (@emmolei) on Jul 13, 2017 at 3:10am PDT
Can you describe the process of making JustBcuz, what it stands for and how you made it? What have you learned?
I woke up one day and just decided to do this. That’s how the series got its name JustBcuz—I’m creating and sharing this just because I feel like it.
The idea came to me after thinking about ways to share more of who I am as an artist—and what I am capable of. It’s become an exercise that gets the juices flowing and forces me to come up with fresh ideas everyday.
A post shared by E. Sankofa (@emmolei) on Jul 14, 2017 at 6:33am PDT
I’ve been thinking differently since stumbling across this famous Chuck Close quote: “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you’re not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process—they come out of the work itself.
Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. —Chuck Close
My best ideas truly do come from being in the trenches and just trying shit out. I was already creating everyday, but I started to sense a disconnect between me and my audience. I was hoarding everything because I’ve been experimenting with my sound and I’m a perfectionist.
All the best ideas come out of the process—they come out of the work itself.
My work is everything and sometimes, I get sensitive about how it’s perceived. Most people still don’t know or can’t believe that I’m the one singing on my songs. I still critique my work after it’s released so I can assess how to make my next song better.
A post shared by E. Sankofa (@emmolei) on Jul 22, 2017 at 8:05pm PDT
So I’ve learned a few things. This has taught me more about design and arranging. I’m learning how to fully maximize the capabilities of my DAW and essentially “sharpen my sword.” I’m employing different songwriting techniques, learning how to shape rich harmonies, fighting my insecurities, and learning more about the people that connect with my work.
Can you walk us through your process of going from the finished song to the release? What are the crucial things for you?
There are so many factors! The process I take depends on the magnitude of the release. I’ve also been experimenting with more creative ways to release music.
A post shared by E. Sankofa (@emmolei) on Jul 17, 2017 at 12:00am PDT
The crucial stages for me are: mixing and then making the art for the overall presentation of the release. Releasing music gets trickier by the day. My main concern right now is getting it to the people that care about it the most. The early adopters and die-hard Emmo fans. They magnify the impact of what I release a lot better than I do.
What is your ideal context for your fans to view the audio visual work for JustBcuz?
I just really want be people to be open. Each piece presents a different idea. While this work is thematic, each piece can stand alone. That way, people freely gravitate to what resonates best with them without needing to connect all these dots. There’s a time and a place for that: my next album.
Watch the entire JustBcuz series on EmmoLei’s Instagram. 
Follow EmmoLei on Twitter, Facebook, Bandcamp, Spotify and SoundCloud. Add her new single “Relax” to your Spotify favourites.
The post Inspiration Is for Amateurs: EmmoLei on Lyrics, Music Videos and Process appeared first on LANDR Blog.
from LANDR Blog http://blog.landr.com/emmolei-justbcuz/ via https://www.youtube.com/user/corporatethief/playlists from Steve Hart https://stevehartcom.tumblr.com/post/164217107524
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