The Art of Living Creatively:

 with Lu Lu and the Duz - S1 Ep 3

Conversations between the bandmates of the ARTs dept.

Lucy Dallman and Billy Van Duzor

L: Welcome back, lovely listeners to another episode of “The Art of Living Creatively.” I am Lucy Dallman and I am sharing the mike with Billy Van Duzor or “the Duz” (pronounced DUES)

B: Wow, your NPR voice is quite fabulous.

L: Yes, thank you. Are you ready?

B: (laughing) Yep.

L: Last time we chatted you mentioned losing yourself in the process or “the flow.” A psychologist coined that phrase. I used to know who. I will have to look it up next time. 

B: Right – flow.

L: Let’s get back to our conversation about process vs. product.

B: Sure. As I’ve said before the product is not super important to me. I think part of it is that I never seem to be completely happy with a product. I don’t think I ever say, “Oh, that song is finished. I did it.” I usually just stop at an interesting spot.

L: Right. Let’s talk a little bit more about that. I think that most artists are never satisfied with their work. I know I often have to just stop myself in a writing piece and call it finished. And at some point, you have to stop because of a deadline. Or, as you mentioned, you stop at an interesting place.

B: The difference for me, at least we record our songs. So in that sense the songs are completed. But every time we play live. I am always tweaking how I perform our songs. 

I do like the feeling of accomplishment, but I am still more enamored with the process of the whole thing. 

L: Do you ever have something in your head, that you think, “Oh that would be a good song.” But then when you sit down to try to put what’s in your head into practice, it just doesn’t present itself as you hoped.

B: Like every day. Now part of it is because I don’t have time to chase ideas on a daily basis. 

L: Right. You have two cutie pie little girls and a wonderful wife who occupy your non-working hours. 

B: Yep. I wouldn’t trade them for the chasing of a song. I definitely do find myself seeing something and not having the time to follow it. It is a challenge. I have thoughts and ideas, and when I have time, I sit down and just start improvising and trying to let go. I hope that when my kids are a bit older, I start having more time to work on creating original music.

L: That is a whole other conversation-making time for creative endeavors. Put that on the list for a future podcast conversation.

B: Someday I hope, I’ll do better at that. All the time I think of things, or it will be a concept or a phrase or a word and I think, “That would be a good idea for a song.” 

L: My notebook is filled with little bits. I’m always surprised by how full my notebook of ideas is getting. It just means for me, that I haven’t taken the time to sit down and flesh out the ideas.

B: I used to have a picture in college of a list of future song titles. Ideas. The song titles were what I wanted to write songs about. I wonder if I would still think those were good ideas now,15 years later.

L: It would be interesting to cross check that list to see if any of the titles have made it into your current work. Because maybe, as we’ve said before, some of the ideas that you mulled over back then have seeped into your songs and you don’t even realize it.

B: I still have a folder in my phone of just first lines of songs or first lines of verses.

L: I sent you one today.

B: See you are good about sharing in process work.

L: I don’t know. It might be annoying, me sending you little bits.

B: My “not sharing” is probably an annoying introverted trait that you have to endure. Nobody knows I have secret folders. If I died tomorrow no one would even know they exist. 

I’m just not good at sharing things which are halfway completed. There’s another psychological evaluation of me for the future.

L: Let’s table the psychological analysis and jump into how we collaborate. In my essays-

Our listening audience, can go to heartfeltcreate.com, our publishing arm to purchase; Magic Happens; the Songs in my Head, for a mere $21.95. And you too can find out how “the ARTs dept.” came to be.

(recited in a low tone NPR voice)

Let’s be honest, I pushed the collaboration of song writing for our duo. I am always and forever thankful and grateful for our song writing journey. I often say it’s been the “best possible mid-life crisis.” SO, thank you, my friend.

B: You are welcome. (Billy V. bows his head in recognition)

L: I can’t do this songwriting thing on my own. What is interesting to me is that you have all the tools to do this adventure on your own. You have the musical knowledge. I am continually amazed when I bring you a set of lyrics and say, “I want it to sound like a floaty lullaby,” for example, you come-up with the root of a melody on the spot. (laughing) I am not sure there is actually a question or lead in about our collaborative process?!

B: Listen, you couldn’t do it (song writing) on your own. I wouldn’t do it on my own. Those two things coming together, I think work really well. I needed you to push me into doing something, anything. Because if left to my own personality devices I would just be stuck in my own little head, producing songs for no one. I find that when you suggest something, that does spark for me quite a few fun and creative paths that I never would have thought about on my own.

L:  Our crazy creative collaborations which I know a few of my family members question. 

B: Right! I don’t think my wife would have been that happy if I had come home seven years ago and told her I was going to start a band with a woman my age or younger.

L: AND if the gender tables were turned and I was a 60-year-old man and you were the 37 year old woman people would, I am sure, question our relationship. 

Which actually kind of pisses me off. Why can’t I be an interesting older woman whom a younger man would/could be possibly interested in?

B: (laughing) You have a point. The Patriarchy at work again. 

L: That you are my son’s age puts a very large kabash for me on any illicit thoughts. ANY WHO, back to the creativity discussion.

B: Phew!

L: Let’s talk about the more global aspects of collaboration. 

B: Yep.

L: We collaborate differently on different songs. For the song, “Fleets,” I came- up with a concept of creating a song for the two influential bands of our youth. I brought fully formed, fleshed out lyrics to you and you put music to those lyrics without changing any of the words.

B: You pretty much gave me a poem and said, “Write a song based on this.” I think you said try to make it sound like a combination of Fleetwood Mac and Fleet Foxes. I thought, “Great, that is exactly the direction I need.” Here’s where it gets muddy. I don’t exactly know how I began. Obviously, it always begins for me by trying things out, sitting down with my guitar or piano and improvising. But I don’t really know how I come up with the melody of songs. This is where talking about creativity gets tricky. The details of it all. How does a melody form? I don’t exactly know.

L: Well, I’m going to speak about my process. It always starts with some sort of phrase. I don’t sit down cold without an idea or phrase ringing through my head.

B: I am trying to recall our song, “Fleets.” That was one of our earlier collaborations. I believe it came together rather quickly. I can’t remember if you were there when I was writing the chords or if I wrote them and later came back to you with what I wrote.

L: Yeah, I don’t remember.

B: For “Fleets,” the first chord was the most important. It was a weird C-extended thing that had all these funky notes in it. That was the inspiration for the rest of the song. It was so weird: I had to look at what my fingers were doing and play each note separately to even understand what the chord was. I had to analyze the song after writing the notes down to figure out what the chord was.

L: Did you make that chord up?

B: Well, I’m sure other people have played the chord, prior to me playing it. But as far as I know, I have never played that chord in an original song.

L: I am going to say you created that chord. GENIUS, yet another example.

B: Once again, I am not a genius. I am just obsessed with what I am interested in and have knowledge of. 

The chord you’re asking about, I can’t remember what it is. It is something like a C major 13 with no 7.

L: He is speaking Greek. Once again, ladies and gentlemen. (spoken in a hushed public radio voice)

B: (laughing) That sound, which is very Robin Pecknold (the Fleet Foxes dude) became the starting point for the chords of the rest of the song.

L: With my, oh so limited, music knowledge, the whole thing about chords and moving from chord-to-chord-sounds like there is a science or rules behind it.

B: There is and there isn’t. There are rules only because people have tried to understand music in the past. Guitar rules would suggest that you move from one chord to another. But you can do anything you want. “Fleets” is a good example of that. It is a little bit modal. It’s not a typical chord progression. There is that first home chord which is a C chord. Then the chorus is in the world of G. That’s why the song feels kind of floaty. It doesn’t live in a rule or follow a standard progression.

L: SO interesting. I understood about 30 percent of what you just said. Regardless, the way you talk about your music theory parallels my writing practice. I sit down with a phrase or theme which has been needling me, a pen in hand, a notebook and my phone set to a thesaurus app. As I write the lyrics to a song I am playing with words; rhyming, not rhyming. Throughout my writing time I’m playing with words looking up meanings and synonyms trying to capture the best language for my thoughts. I lean back on the rules of written language. When I first started writing lyrics, I wrote lines counting out syllables: first line 13 syllables, second line 7, etc. I would use that formula to build the verses and chorus of a song. I don’t do that as much anymore. I think, maybe I’ve internalized that strategy and don’t need to actually count syllables anymore.

B: I am doing the same thing essentially with music. If I take a progression, for instance in “Little Girls, Little Girls,” one of the first songs we collaborated on, It starts out in the key of G. You had come to me with a simple melody you had sung into your phone. It was G D C Em. Which I transcribed and then played with. When I started working with those chords and my musical equivalent of a thesaurus instead of going from a C to an Em, I asked myself what a B7 sounds like to replace the Em? I just start playing with basic chord and adding color.

L: You just mentioned “Little Girls, Little Girls” which is an example of a completely different collaboration sequence for us as compared to “Fleets.” I came to you with the lyrics and melody sung into the voice recorder on my phone. You took my simple tune and expanded on it. You also suggested a few lyric changes. That’s the first time I stood up for my lyrics and did not go with your suggestion. It was very hard for me to do that.

B: What do you mean?

L: When we first started this musical collaboration, I would defer to your opinion, your thoughts on how the lyrics should flow. Back then, I thought to myself, “Billy V. the music expert, why would I question his thoughts on my lyrics?”  But on this particular lyrical pattern I did question and I’m so glad I did.

Little girls, little girls you have so much to do

Running and jumping and hiding too

Go climb a tree, dance on your toes

Sing out sing strong and always be heard.

You wanted me to find a rhyming word to replace “heard.” I was insistent on keeping it because girls’ stories need to be heard! It was more important to me to get the message across vs. whether it rhymed. In that instance, I believe, by not rhyming, the message is delivered all the more powerfully.

B: Both of those are examples of breaking rules to make your song more meaningful.

L: Another example of our collaboration would be that we’re willing to change what we have worked on. I remember during the writing of “Full” we had completed the song. Or we thought we had completed the song. I came to you after having sat with it for a couple of days and I said something like, “The ending needs to be more of a question. Can you make the music sound like the singer is questioning everything?” I didn’t have any of the musical terms, but you were able to take that direction and changed the song.

B: What I did was take the C chord and took the third out. I made it a chord without a third, which makes it sound ambiguous. That little tweak fixed the whole song. When you listen to “Full,” it is not major or minor. It is just living in this unclear space. Which I think works really well.

L: We are so brilliant. OK well, really, you are so brilliant.

B: (laughing.)

L: One more thing before you have to go teach, in like three minutes, our song “Wading” was an interesting collaboration, one that we’ve only done once- in that particular sequence. I came to you and said I wanted to create a retirement song for a mutual friend. I wanted a real song not, a parody.

B: I wasn’t excited about that request. It was so gross to me, “ Hey, we’re gonna miss you.” Yuck, I did not want to put my time and energy towards that! I remember we would circle it. I avoided it. Every time you would ask how the song was coming along I would reply, vaguely, “It is going great.” And honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it.

L: That was not lost on me! There were many days that spring where I thought to myself, “The retirement song will never be written.” But then you came up with a complete first verse and a concept for the entire song.

B: And you wrote all the rest of the lyrics.

L: We sat down and finished writing the lyrics together, bouncing ideas and words back and forth

B: That was fun too. It was a completely different kind of collaboration. I think you changed a few words in the first verse. At the onset of that process, you gave me no specific ideas except that it was a retirement song for our friends. And I came up with the boat and lighthouse motifs. If I remember correctly you were a bit resistant about the whole sailor thing.

L: (laughing.) The sailor theme was pretty stereotypical male in my mind. But hey, you’re the genius expert, who just happens to be male. So, I went with it.

B: I was so excited that you were willing to go along with something you were not completely on board with. You just went with it. That is a lesson I need to learn from you. AND look. The first graders are here for music.

L: Thanks for your time Duz! And thank you dear listeners for once again tuning into:

                      The Art of Living Creatively: with Lu Lu and the Duz.

Quick Follow-up to Episode 3

A few days later

L: I want to quickly circle back to ideas. For me all the observations and the wonderings that I do seep into my being. Those questions about human behavior - love, life, living-ultimately, the journey to the end-all appear in the words I write. My lyrics are my trying to explain my place in this life journey. Most often for me this starts as a question:

Why is this, whatever this is, happening?

What is my role in the drama?

How do I respond to life’s events?

All of that is just me trying to figure out how to live my life, and sometimes I can answer the questions easier in my lyrics than in real life.

Duz, you mentioned once that all of your songs are about your family. Do you think this is still true? Have you started looking at bigger issues in life? Where are you Duz? Our listeners are curious.

B: Well, just for me, I’m writing about my life and my own experiences. You and I have often talked about writing fiction. I know you want to write a murder ballad someday, and that would be complete fiction. Unless you have some skeletons in your closet you haven’t confessed.

L: (laughing.) Not yet!

B: For me, right now I can write only about what I experience and know. I’m immersed in my family and have very little time to worry about anything else.

L: I remember those days with little kids. You barely have time to shower, much less think about the wider world and what’s happening outside of the day to day.

B: At some point I would like to explore other points of view. I believe that would be a rich and interesting experience. For right now, for good or for bad, my music is just trying to deal with feeling emotions and analyzing sentiments within relationships and trying to put words to all of that. To be able to express different things that I’ve gone through in my life. I think that is what I’m ultimately doing with my music.

L: That is a perfect segue for us to circle back to process vs. product. You have stated that catharsis comes in the process for you and not the product.

B: Really, in just thinking about different situations, that is how I deal with my feelings. When I put these experiences and feelings to music, then thinking about them artistically and poetically is cathartic for me. Sorta the meta of music, at least that is my experience. If I’ve been struggling with how I have been feeling about a specific situation, looking at it and trying to put words to it – poemize, it really- I seem to be able to cope just a bit more with my life. I have found it’s easier to write about feeling bad, sad and difficult times, as opposed to joyful ones, which is sorta counterintuitive, isn’t it?

L: I would agree with your last statement – writing about difficulties or problems seems to be easier than writing about joyous occasions. 

B: I’m trying to make a conscious effort to be more positive, at least in my current iterations of song writing. I am trying not to dwell in the negative. Be a bit more optimistic, intentionally optimistic. I’m trying.

L: Wow Duz, less angsty? Such a grownup thing to do.

B: Now it’s your turn to shut up.

L: (shakes her head and laughs)

L: One last question before we have to go teach. So sorry, dear listeners, the future of America is waiting to be inspired.

B: Uh-hmm.

L: This music/songwriting adventure is a new one for me. Three years or so. The further I get away from the initial writing of the lyrics, the more ability I have to step back from the emotion. I was weeping while writing the lyrics for “Judy’s Song,” I was so wracked with grief as I was writing about the death of my friend. Then when I brought the initial story and the outline of the song to you, and we worked through the lyrics, melody, etc., the act of creating turned into a joyful experience. Not that my grief in losing my friend went away, but it definitely lessened. I look back on that experience, and I would say now that it was a magical, even joyful, process. The whole thing allowed me to grieve and yet honor my grief. It truly is a powerful experience to be able to bring a song to life, even a super sad song.

B: That process is really satisfying to me too.

L: And then, as we work through the rewrites and the final song appears, the product, as it were, I’m able to step outside of the emotion of the song and perform it like I do the rest of our songs. It is just added to the group of songs we sing together.

B: The pool of music we sing together, yes.

L: What is kind of magic for me, maybe even miraculous, is that I can then sing through sad or heart wrenching songs without breaking down. I can sing the emotions without being devastated by them like I was in real time.

B: That is what’s weird for me about writing a song about a very specific time and place. It’s like that emotion or experience was true at the time. Yet with time the feelings you currently feel about the experience changes, and should change. You can sing your song about a specific time and place, yet you are no longer in that time and place.

L: Right!

B: This is an interesting type of dissonance we are delving into. I wonder if that’s why the catharsis for me is in the process. The emotions have passed when we finally get to the finished product. My expression, and feeling the feelings, are in the past. It’s almost like I put it in the past on purpose. And then re-visiting it never feels the same.

L: I think we are saying the same thing. Maybe this songwriting thing is where the healing is for us? I don’t know.

B: Yeah, I don’t know either.

L: This cathartic adventure is new to me. How about you? I KNOW it is not new to you, but just how long have you been writing your own music? 

B: Oh, I don’t know. I guess as a little kid I was writing and improvising on the piano. Probably when I was seven or eight.

L: Oh wow.

B: But again, never sharing them with anyone. 

L: Right. They’re just things that you did. Like other kids-built Lego creations, you built songs.

B: The little, kid joy was in the improvisation, in creating. Maybe that is what I’m trying to capture all these years later. A bit of joy just for me.

L: Until the Wack-a-do next door decides otherwise.

B: ( laughing)

L: That is for another day, dear listener.

B: Thank you for listening. And thank you to Pfizer, our wonderful sponsor.

L and B: (both laughing as the recording cuts out.)