I had so much fun collaborating on this! The 2nd issue of Scout & Birdie podcast features a compilation of fab artists who's submissions surround the theme of "Messy". I teamed up with my dear friend, Carolyn, to create a song from one of my poems.
In the podcast, link below, you'll hear about the inspiration behind this one and see how the poem evolved into a song:
https://www.scoutandbirdie.com/dark-deep-side-by-lauren-oconnell-carolyn-molloy
A little back story on how it came to be...
Carolyn and I were not able to sit down and focus on this together until hours before the deadline -- procrastinate much? Hey, it's the artist's way, right? We were throwing around some ideas for which poem to use. We had been working on a different poem of mine that just didn't fit with the theme. We were rummaging through my poems and then all of the sudden I got stuck on this one. The second Carolyn picked up the guitar, it just came out of her. I was sitting across from her with a huge smile and silently, not to throw her off, thrusting my fist in the air, (I am a great "Hype Man", ya'll) and knew it was the one.
I am always in awe of musicians because I have zero musical talent. This is probably my one life regret -- I quickly quit piano lessons for sports when I was a kid and while I can throw a baseball better then most of my guy friends, I can't exactly entertain guests with it in my living room. I digress. So, Carolyn immediately spewed out the first and second verse (hello, talent) and said that we needed to pick a bridge and chorus. "Umm, sure, sure --what's a bridge?" I said. Ha! Seriously, not musical. I knew I loved the "climb up my ups..." part as the chorus. I at least knew the chorus was the part of the song that repeats, guys. She crafted the bridge and she was the one that found the focus of the song -- the "dark deep side" which also ended up being the title.
Some changes from poem to song...
"Deep dark side" got switched to "dark deep side" -- a small change but Carolyn sang it this way and it just seemed more captivating. The poem had the word philosophize in it (a big theme of Jupiter) but it just didn't sound pretty and it's a hard word to fit in a song. Unless you are the freaking musical unicorn, Kishi Bashi. So, we played around with that part of the song for a bit and settled on "take me for a ride" to keep up with the sexual theme of the verse and having the protagonist putting the partner in control of this part. Another change we had to make was breaking up the line "dare you to show me your secrets" into "dare you to show me, show me your secrets" for flow. Those, and a lot of added repetition of words by Carolyn that really makes it what it is.
I view this poem/song as a twisted but sexy back and forth game/challenge between two people. It is sassy AF. It was fun to write about something like this. The protagonist is a little bit of a "Mess" (theme) but is in total control of it, owns that shit and views it as one of her greatest attributes. She knows her emotions are all over the place but challenges the partner to explore the depths of them, rather then most people I know, myself included, who may hide these attributes of ourselves. It's a total woman in power piece.
I am totally in love with the song and geek out every time I hear it. Bringing words to life with music is such a high and I am glad I have musical friends because I sure as hell couldn't do it. I love collaborating with Carolyn and can't wait to see what we do next. I learned a lot from this experience and hey, maybe I can even write in bridges and choruses into poems now!