Songwriters on Songwriting: Paul Simon
“I’m interested in discovering where my mind wants to go.”
I wrote my first song when I was 14 years old. Over the years, I’ve composed hundreds of songs. It was that interest — music — that led me to take a year off from pursuing a doctorate and led me down the circuitous path that has been the rest of my life.
I don’t write songs nowadays, more focused on screenplays and writing about writing. But I can’t help but think at least some of who I am as a writer derives from all that time studying and composing songs.
Which is why I say that one of my favorite ‘screenwriting’ books is “Songwriters on Songwriting, a collection of interviews by Paul Zollo with some of the great songwriters of our time, from Mose Allison to Frank Zappa. For what are songs but stories?
Each day this week at this time, I will post insight from a songwriter about their craft in the hope their words may inspire you as a writer.
Today: Paul Simon
You described yourself when working on the Graceland album, sitting in a room and tossing a ball against a wall while working. What effect, if any, does that physical activity have on your mental activity?
I think it’s very calming. It’s like a Zen exercise, really. It’s a very pleasant feeling if you like playing ball. The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural… and calming that your mind kind of wanders. And that’s really what you want to happen. You want your mind to wander, to pick up words and phrases and fool around with them and drop them.
As soon as your mind knows that it’s on and it’s supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn’t or it produces things that are very predictable. And that’s why I say I’m not interested in writing something that I thought about. I’m interested in discovering where my mind wants to go, or what object it wants to pick up.
It always picks up on something true. You’ll find out much more about what you’re thinking that way than you will if you’re determined to say something. What you’re determined to say is filled with all your rationalizations and your defenses and all of that. What you want to say to the world as opposed to what you’re thinking. And as a lyricist, my job is to find out what it is that I’m thinking. Even if it’s something that I don’t want to be thinking.
I think when I get blocked, when I have writer’s block (though I never think of it as writer’s block anymore), what it is is that you have something to say but you don’t want to say it. So your mind says, “I have nothing to say. I’ve just nothing more to say. I can’t write anything. I have not thoughts.” Closer to the truth is that you have a thought that you really would prefer not to have. And you’re not going to say that thought. Your mind is protected. Once you discover what that thought is, if you can find another way of approaching it that isn’t negative to you, then you can deal with that subject matter.
“I’m interested in discovering where my mind wants to go.”
How often have you brought that mindset to your screenwriting? Or have you focused on structure. Formulas. Paradigms. Trying to fit in commercially.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that approach. But if you want to get noticed, you need to bring your own unique creative voice to the process.
Here is Paul Simon performing the title song of his album “Graceland.”
For the rest of the Songwriters on Songwriting series, go here.
