Free Walking with Plato by Gary Hayden Page B

artist is completely attuned with both subject and medium.
    When I say that the songwriter must be attuned with her subject, I mean that she must have a profound insight into the aspect of experience that she wants to share. There’s a parallel, here, with kado , the Japanese art of flower-arranging.
    In his splendid book The Japanese Way of the Artist , the calligrapher and martial-artist H.E. Davey says of the kado-­practitioner: ‘If she perceives the rhythm and alternation of the ki [life-force] of plants and blossoms – their growth, decline and death, how they change in form and feeling with the seasons – then she can successfully arrange flowers.’
    And that’s precisely how it is with the songwriter. If she’s attuned to the rhythm and alternation of the ki , the life-force, of romantic love – its growth, decline, and death, and how it changes in form and feeling with the seasons – then she can successfully write a love song.
    The song may ostensibly be about just one phase of love, perhaps its beginning or its end. But in the listener it will awaken thoughts and feelings about love’s entire course.
    This means that a truly great song about the joy and innocence of early-stage love will evoke subtle feelings of sadness for love’s decline, and a truly great song about the heartbreak of declining love will evoke subtle feelings of joy for love’s arising.
    When I say that the artist must be attuned with her medium, I mean that she must be skilled in using the tools and techniques of her craft.
    Again, in The Japanese Way of the Artist , Davey recounts how he once watched his shodo [Japanese calligraphy] teacher execute, many times, without the slightest hesitation, a beautiful and evocative brush-stroke. He says, ‘To a casual observer it might have seemed to be nothing more than a quick flick of the brush; but to me, someone who had many times tried to produce this particular and powerful brush stroke, it was much more.’
    Similarly, when a songwriter creates a lyrical and musical phrase that perfectly captures some aspect of experience, it may appear nothing to the casual observer. But to me, someone who has tried many times to capture the essence of a thought, an idea, or an experience in words, it’s much more. It’s a triumph of craft, experience, and skill.
    The first verse of The Shirelles’ ‘Soldier Boy’ is a prime example. They’re just a few simple brush-strokes, but they’re perfectly executed. They make no attempt to describe the naive ecstasy of young love, but they suggest it. They awaken many thoughts and feelings – sad as well as sweet.
    And just as you could look for hours at a piece of Japanese calligraphy – perhaps a single kanji executed from a few swift brush-strokes – and find nothing in it that could be improved, so you could sit for hours and ponder those lyrics, and find not a syllable that could be altered for the better.

    And then, of course, there’s the music. Without it, the lyrics of most pop songs are sterile. Silly even.
    So what’s the magic of music? What gives certain sequences of notes (mere vibrations in the air) the power to bring words to life, and to move us so deeply?
    That’s quite a question.
    I remember, as a child, waking up one summer morning to the sound of music.
    I shared a bedroom wall with the little girl next door. She’d received a Bontempi organ for her birthday, and was practising her first tune, the opening to ‘Morning Mood’ from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite .
    For a long time, I lay in bed listening as she repeated the same notes over and over and over again: C-A-G-F-GA C-A-G-F-GAGA . . . (pause) . . . C-A-G-F-GA C-A-G-F-GAGA.
    It was the loveliest thing I’d ever heard.
    I knew nothing about classical music. I’d never heard of Grieg, and wouldn’t have known Peer Gynt from Carmen . But those notes, badly played, with one finger, on a child’s plastic instrument, filled me with an exquisite longing that