User
Reviews 6 Approval 91%
Soundoffs 12 News Articles 1 Band Edits + Tags 26 Album Edits 97
Album Ratings 1107 Objectivity 85%
Last Active 09-04-14 3:53 pm Joined 07-23-12
Review Comments 281
| Music That Makes Me Write
Now obviously I'm no published author or anything, but I like to write poetry both in my native Finnish and English which *almost* feels like a native language for me. Most of the time I need something to give me a little friendly shove to get writing, and more often than not music does the job. A few releases that get me going. | 1 | | Wire Snakedrill
Wire's music in general is dense with fascinating ideas that work well towards making you write. "Drill" from this EP has an enticingly attractive contrast between the space afforded by the minimal beat and the subverted harshness of the scratching guitar sounds. | 2 | | The Field Cupid's Head
Particularly "No. No..." is evocative of a singular state of mind. While there's always more to hear after countless repeated listenings, similarly to "Drill" above the 'static' nature of the music makes this feel like a brilliant poem - layering sound upon sound to portray a fleeting but entrancing moment or emotion in almost suffocating detail. Also, it can be fun to try and in some vague sense emulate the rhythm of the music in writing. | 3 | | Can Monster Movie
Can's music just gets my mind going with its mix of rhythms, textures and mercurial vocals. Monster Movie, as its title suggests, feels more visual than the later, denser (but also more fascinating) albums with Suzuki. | 4 | | Life Without Buildings Any Other City
The interplay between the backing music and the unusual vocals possesses a hypnotizing tension that is a part of good writing. | 5 | | Brian Eno Another Green World
Oh man. Brian Eno's early off-kilter pop records are a gold mine of frantic, whimsical ideas and outlandish turns of English, his ambient records offer any kind of non-intrusive but gorgeous backdrop you could want, and his world-music influences make sure you don't forget the exotic. And all this music is oh-so-visual. Another Green World is to me the closest thing we have to a perfect synthesis of the many sides of Eno, and inspires by its sheer magnificence. | |
AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Music has a lot to offer me when I write, not just in offering a mood but more often a certain rhythm to the writing. | Rowan5215
09.08.14 | You should put something you've written up here dude I'd love to read it | bakkermaarten007
09.08.14 | Do you follow certain poetry forms when you write? I don't, but I'd like to hear what you do and why. | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Nah. I suppose a large part of that is that I'm Finnish. There's no tradition of particular poetic forms (either metre or verse) in Finnish poetry, and since I still mostly write in Finnish free verse stuff comes naturally while writing in English as well. | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Oh right forgot to mention Eno is also great for just inspiring creative angles to making stuff happen. His early approach to lyrics was just recording himself humming a melody indistinctly for a track, then listening to the recording and having his mind make out words from the humming here and there, and repeating the process. Tried something vaguely similar a couple of times by "editing" a poem by having a first version, then waiting a while until I didn't remember it all and re-wrote it from memory, then that, etc. resulting in various distinct versions while certain key ideas remained. And having all those versions at the end, I could just pick and choose nice bits from one version or the other and graft them together. | NorthernSkylark
09.08.14 | let us hear some of your english poems? | osmark86
09.08.14 | sounds like a very interesting creative process. I'll second Rowan's curiosity. please do link to some of your works. | NorthernSkylark
09.08.14 | and yeah, early eno is great for writing - especially Another Green World. I usually listen to stuff i
know really well, like the national albums, and sometimes when writing i just pick out words that i
really like and just try to make stuff happen with words that aren't my "own", if you know what i'm
getting at. | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Uhh, getting a bit nervous but here goes I suppose:
He’d like to
come home at least twice a day,
flip open a weightless prop door
-a waiting, pregnant family
for his frequent birth.
The sad truth is he doesn’t leave the house on weekends.
Even when he’s rushed out, work’s only once a day.
Returnings can be counted with a single finger of his choice
(on Mondays the middle one)
and the entrance isn’t right.
Getting the keys from the bottom of the pocket
is like waking up; haphazard, slow and ultimately
not worth it.
A heavy door begrudgingly but always lets him in.
Inside:
yes, it is there.
too small for anything but a premonition of home.
| AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Crap how do you get italics here if not like that? And yeah I definitely know what you mean Skylark. Used to write almost exclusively by a collage-like method of stringing together words or phrases that had something attractive to them.
Unserious disclaimer: if the above was less than perfect in any way, I'm excusing myself by claiming I write much better in Finnish. | NorthernSkylark
09.08.14 | the first stanza (or what you might call it) has a really nice flow! second stanza - don't hide your
jokes in (are you finish?) a parenthesis, if it's good showcase it.
third stanza: the first three lines are good. in the last line i feel like heavy and bedgrudingly is
basically the same, i mean i know there's a difference, but both things indicate that the character
finds it hard to enter/exit that door. last stanza - Did you by any chance get premonition from a
fleet foxes song? by that word i get the feeling that he doesn't even feel home at home. is that what
you are trying to get at? anyway, a pretty good poem for someone who isn't a native english speaker.
(i'm not either) | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Ah, no premonition didn't come from anywhere in particular. And yes, the "premonition" at the end hints that the he of the poem is still looking to the future for a place he's satisfied to call home, rather than the present. Thanks for the opinions about the rest, not sure if I'm going to change anything based on them but good to keep in mind. Particularly, I think the way parentheses turn a line into an off-the-cuff side remark suits what I'm after better than if the line was unsupported by them.
I should probably encourage others to share stuff here as well should they wish to. I won't bite, at least (obviously can't promise anything for anyone else). | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | So no italics no matter how much I cry crocodile tears? | NorthernSkylark
09.08.14 | between stoplights:
I have spend most of my days chasing the light green
Now I'm just sort of drifting somewhere in-between
It's not as simple as giving up
It's more like trying to stay above. | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Anything here that was particularly inspired by music? Also, you mentioned you're not a native speaker, so (if you don't mind, of course) may I inquire as to what is your mother tongue?
Also after editing out the useless italic bbc code all line breaks disappeared and my poem is flatter than a pancake, and editing doesn't do a thing for some reason. Dang it. | NorthernSkylark
09.08.14 | no, not really - just tried to describe a feeling. but i mainly write poems in danish, which is my first language. | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Oh, Danish! I was in Denmark this summer as part of an Interrail trip of Central Europe mostly, and in Roskilde a year ago. Wish I lived in Denmark what with Roskilde and a lot of promising music coming from there. | NorthernSkylark
09.08.14 | yeah, there are worse places to stay to be sure. i suppose you mean the festival? i was there in 10' and 11' and it was great both times. did you notice any cultural differences whiile you were there? that's always interesting to hear about. | AgainAnd
09.08.14 | Yeah the festival of course. Not too many cultural differences I suppose except Danish people are way nicer drunks than Finns, and maybe in general more friendly towards strangers except that's probably just meeting people at festivals as opposed to meeting random people on the street. | NorthernSkylark
09.08.14 | haha, yeah i suppose that we are. but i know for a fact that it's way harder to get through to us when we are sober, it's like we have some sort of invisible border between ourselves and strangers. but then again, if you break through, you're through. it's hard to generalize about that sort of thing tho, as some people are immediately kind and openhearted. |
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