“The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference,” a friend said to me seven years ago. This provocative idea has rattled around in my head ever since, while I fell in and out of love more than a few times. Then I became a songwriter. I didn’t set out to become one. First, in a bid to keep my sanity, I wrote poems. Then words began showing up in four-lined stanzas and when I read the words, a melody would magically arrive, the way I imagine Aladdin’s carpet did when its master found himself in need of a ride.
Some would-be songwriters study music composition, chords etc., but I’m not one of those students. During my childhood, I danced to the ever-present mix of music blaring from my parents’ turntable: Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Broadway show tunes, Stephen Sondheim, Judy Garland, Lena Horne and opera. Whenever I heard a song that I thought ended badly, I said to myself: Well, they rushed it. They didn’t wait to understand something. But I hadn’t a clue what that something might be. In high school I was a mediocre flute player and read music minimally. In college I studied finance and accounting. Then, at the age of forty, I fell hopelessly in love with a man named Peter. A few months into my nose dive I sensed that Peter was beginning to pull away from me, although he hadn’t told himself or me yet. So, in a kind of preemptive strike, my unconscious wrote a song called, Let Me Love You, which I then sang sweetly into Peter’s voicemail: Close the door on fear no more / I’m your love forever more / Take your part and be adored / Swing open and start. “You sing so pretty,” Peter said sweetly. Even though my song truly pleased him, he could not take the leap into fun-messy-no-guarantees love.
Writing a new song is the most amazing feeling. When I am overwhelmed by emotions that need to get out, I feel a heaviness in the center of my chest that if it had texture would be something like black tar, and I feel a circular opening, to the right of my heart, that acts like a kind of spiritual port. Over time I’ve learned not to be afraid of these sensations. With pen in hand I quietly wait for the song to arrive. If it takes too long, I pour myself a glass of red wine and wait some more. If my two children are around me at this time (my husband died from colon cancer when I was thirty-seven), I say as nicely as I can, “Please go away. Mommy is creating.” Or I put a children’s DVD on. Once my song arrives the open port in my chest closes, I feel elated and I am instantly in love with the newborn “song-baby.” I sing the intoxication incessantly to myself, to my friends’ voicemail, and then to the local Jersey City open mike.
After I'd gone through this joyful experience with five songs, I felt a new desire emerging. I wanted to hear the melodies, which until then had been only in my head and on my lips, arranged and recorded. A bass player friend suggested an arranger, Jeff Waxman. Two and half years ago I began making pilgrimages to Jeff’s studio in his apartment on Manhattan’s upper west side. When he is not arranging musicals, his first love, Jeff is happy to call himself a song midwife. I call him Music Man.
Taking up a third of the space in his studio is a Kawai grand piano, which Jeff bought from Birdland fifteen years ago. Along one wall is a bank of electronic recording decks, speakers, a drum synthesizer and an electric piano. When we work together, Jeff sits with his back to me, facing his equipment, and I sit in the middle of the room on a black cushioned stool, in front of a mike fitted with a circular black mesh “pop screen” that softens a singers p’s and t’s.
After I sing my new song for the first time, I give Jeff any suggestions I might have about what the arrangement should sound like, such as, “This has a Van Morrison feel,” or “I hear banjos and fiddles” or “big brass.” Sometimes Jeff will make me sing the tune again to confirm that the pauses I take are intentional; sometimes he will turn around to watch me sing (which was pretty nerve racking at first) because my arm gestures or foot tapping might give him more clues to the arrangement. Then he puts together an electronic music track complete with piano, drums and percussion, and I sing along with it.
The first time I heard the track for The Flirt giddiness overcame me. I was angry at Peter for not keeping promises and angrier at myself for lingering. He’s just one big flirt / Who flutters words like birds chirping hello / I’m just one big jerk / Who mutters turds as we end this him-her rodeo. The drums and piano pounded the passion. Music was speaking in tones I would never use in conversation. Peter always used to say, “One of the things I love about you is you say the most painful things with laughter in your voice.”
If one of my songs calls for backup singers, I become them (and give them nicknames). Anne, Lavonda and Sheryl backed me up on Dream A Baby, Dream Again. When I wrote The Hello Lullaby I felt as if I were walking on clouds while carrying a lantern and I envisioned the three Sisters Mary backing me up. (Thirty-years ago on a religious retreat I was sent into a dark candle-lit church to reflect. After I sat down in a wooden pew Neil Diamond’s deep voice singing, Hello my friend hello, bellowed through the church’s speakers and I was comforted. Clearly, it was that moment that inspired my own, very different Hello song.) But when the time came to record Hello Lullaby, I thought we could skip the Marys; sometimes my musical ideas, after the fact, feel silly. But Jeff encouraged me to record the song as I’d first heard it, and now when I hear the Three Marys echo my Hello or support me after I sing I’m here by singing She’s here, I’m walking on clouds again. Almost every time I record a song I say to Music Man, “Everyone should be this lucky to have this much fun!” Then I take home my CD -- the ultimate goodie bag! -- and listen to the song nonstop for days until I’m sick of it. Only once was I not happy with a recording session. It was for my song Alleluia Sea, about a very intimate love affair. I had told Jeff the song was “in the house of Van Morrison”-- whose sound I love because it’s never bitter. Jeff prepped for the session by listening to Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, and also Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville (because he had a clear vision of me in a hammock by Caribbean blue waters, waiting for my love). “What do you drink on islands?” Jeff asked me.
“Mai Tai’s,” I answered.
“Imagine one in your hand as you sing.”
For the first time, singing my own song was hard. I felt nothing. I couldn’t emotionally swim in the lyrics: I see your face / Glaze washes over me / Our love was grace / Two nested chicks / I hesitate / Toddler taking first steps / Our love was faith in the alleluia sea. I had written this song in a few minutes, after an accidental drive-by sighting of the faithless Peter. He was standing on a street, looking handsome in a dark brown suit, waiting for someone else. My car slowed down, my head turned and our eyes met. I turned away without even a hello and drove on while watching him look at me through my rear view mirror.
Jeff recorded my voice for Alleluia Sea as best he could and I listened to the CD on my drive home. After a few times I said, “Enough!” and hit eject. The radio automatically came on and Van Morrison was singing, “I’m not feeling it any more.” I said, “Yeah,” called Jeff and we agreed to record it again another day. At our next session I kept trying to add emotion and variation to the melody that I did not feel. Then Jeff suggested, “Sing the song unattached.” The thought that maybe I needed to drop my bitter feelings towards Peter crossed my mind. I still don’t love the recording, but I can at least listen to it.
When people learn I compose songs they always ask, “What type, what genre?” My answer is, I write love songs, blues, country, jazz, punk, Irish storytelling, Broadway showtunes and folk; the genre depends on the emotion I am steeped in. When I finally realized that Peter was gone, gone, gone, I wrote a rock song called He Broke My Heart I Wish He’d Die. Emotion not only tells me when it’s time to write a song; it dictates key and tempo.
A little while ago I wrote two more songs about heartbreak that I called Manhunt and Dance Me Jimmee. Then I asked myself, “Why am I telling this same story again and again?” When I analyzed the lyrics I saw a subtle difference. In ManHunt, I have the singer’s best friend act out the anger: My best friend wiped his tears away / Raised him to his feet / She socked him gave his ear a tug / She told him, Leave Kate’s scene; and the song ends on a note of quiet rage. In Dance Me Jimmee, I have the broken-hearted singer vocalize her own anger: I cried and I cried / Wanted to snuff him / Hang out his hide; and the song ends with the singer admitting she will always love Jimmee but will no longer be his pawn. When a song works for me, as these two do, I feel the emotions are now “out there,” no longer binding or gripping me.
I have written thirty-five songs. Jeff and I have recorded twenty-six of them. One song, The Red Door, showed up without a melody. The singer chickens out from knocking on her ex-lover’s door. As she runs away she bumps into him on the street and they are reunited. I sense that the reason the melody did not come with the lyrics is because I never lived that euphoric moment and so I don’t know what key and tempo that emotion is. One day I hope to connect with the composer, a future me or someone else, who will know.
At one of our recent sessions Jeff shook his head in disbelief and said, “You’re always on pitch.” Since I am not musically trained I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I like hearing it. Jeff has even discouraged me from learning to play the piano, because he thinks it might limit my song-writing ability: “You may end up writing only in the keys that you are able to play. Right now you have access to the whole piano in your mind so you can write in any key.”
One evening I saw Peter at a local fundraising gala a week after he had sent me a birthday card. Clearly, he wanted to be “friends.” I did not. Seeing him that night with another woman caused me great pain. The next morning I wrote True Lovers in the Sky. When we recorded it Jeff asked, “In this song at practically every verse there is a key change. The last note of one verse points to the key change in the next verse. Without musical training how did you know how to do that?”
“I don't know,” I said, “I just know when the last note sounds wrong and I change it till it sounds right.”
“It works,” he said. “Many of your previous melodies have been simple, but this song is melodically complex.”
"Well, navigating love is complex," I answered, “and maybe the key changes are something like stepping on stones that zigzag across a river to get to the other side.”
At the New York Botanical Garden I discovered that birds sing for two reasons: to attract a mate or defend a position. I’ve discovered I write songs for the same reasons.
For a long time I believed Peter was my soul-mate because I found my voice while loving him. The birthday card Peter sent me right before the gala said, “Sometimes we see glimpses of heaven right here on earth ... in people like you.” The gesture confirmed that he still had feelings for me but they weren’t the kind of feelings I needed in my everyday life. Seeing him at the gala I wanted to yell, I loved you and you loved me, but instead I walked around expressionless with my hands clasped behind my back. Thus True Lovers was written to get out those big feelings. After I wrote the song, I let go of the soul-mate notion. I had come to realize that writing a song after seeing Peter doesn’t mean that he and I belong together, it only means I know how to convert pain to paper.
To warm up my voice Jeff had me sing the song a few times. Every time I belted the lines, They are the ones we love / Who fit like ball in glove / And everywhere we go / They’re tucked inside us, I felt uncomfortable. After a few missed takes I said, “I really need to light two candles while I sing this one.” I had never made that request before and felt a little dumb asking. Jeff, who is like a benevolent big brother to me, got a glass bowl, placed two tea lights in it and put the bowl on his grand piano where my glass of water sat on a napkin.
If I have a song memorized I sing with my shoes off and my eyes closed. But with True Lovers I felt a need to change the words here and there, so I kept my eyes on the lyric sheets. When I got to the final line, Only heavens in the sky has the story and the glories of true love, I closed my eyes and placed the music on top of the piano and held the final note for four seconds. When I opened my eyes the lyric sheets were on fire. Jeff had not seen it happen because his back was to me. I quickly blew the flames out, scattering grey ashes all over his piano top. Luckily, the wood was not damaged. The music sheets were scorched at the edges, but no words were obscured. We both began laughing. What did it mean? Was this proof of how hot the love affair had been? Or was this a sign that even in the pain of rejection, you could capture that heat and turn it into art? As Jeff vacuumed up the ashes, in between more laughter, I said, “You gotta give me the keys that each of my songs are written in and break down True Lovers so I can see if there is a pattern between the keys I write in and the feelings that drive me.”
I’ve become haunted by the question of whether certain keys correspond to certain emotions. When I’m blue, do I always write in the same key? Do other songwriters express similar feelings in this key? And what does my purely intuitive choice of keys say about my friend’s theory that love and hate are not emotional opposites but linked in ways that the rational parts of our brains have trouble comprehending? When Music Man told me what key each song was in I created a spreadsheet, listing song, date born, genre, key and the feeling that motivated me to write the song. My earlier tunes were simpler melodies. Every stanza was in the same key. When I sang about disappointment I invariably wrote in A flat. My more recent songs contain many key changes. Sometimes there’s a key change at every new stanza, sometimes even every line. The chart looks like this:
Key Mood Description A Flat Disappointment Love has failed. A Major Depressed Blue. B Flat Uncertainty Love-related questions. Should I stay or should I go? B Major Clarity Love feels pure or anger feels justified. C Major In Love In love and giving or in love and withholding. D Major Vulnerable Revealing. E Flat Happiness Liked whatever it was. E Major Control I am steering. F Major Certainty The love is over and I say it. G Major Reflective Looking back and painting a Hallmark picture.
Peter and I had our it’s-really-over conversation one sunny afternoon in a park near the Hudson River. I had asked for the meeting because I still didn’t understand why we were ending. I was seated on a bench and he sat next to me on a chair sipping a Pepsi through a straw. A kindergarten class passed by at one point and Peter said, “I’m sure you caught the irony ahead of me of these children walking by us while we talk about love, something they won’t understand for a very long time.”
“No,” I said. The truth was I was so lost I didn’t notice anything but Peter. Then he said the words I’ll never forget, “You deserve better. You’re the real thing. I’m like my father, a coward.” His words saddened and angered me. “Don’t I get to decide who’s good enough?” I said. “Loving you made me happy.”
But that was it. Peter and I were done. Then years later, one quiet morning while I sipped tea and the birds chirped outside my window I thought about what we had and lost and I wrote a song that turned out to be about the rapid changes in emotion we all go through in an up-and-down love affair. And I found that each emotional up and down was expressed in a key whose sound seemed to fit the feeling. I asked Music Man to give me the key changes for this song line by line. Loving You Makes Me Happy felt very different from my earlier songs, which had stayed with one emotion all the way through. Here’s a breakdown of my new song, stanza by stanza, key by key:
The days were bright My spirit light Loving you Made me happy The first stanza begins in F Major, my certainty key, but the last line ends in B flat, uncertainty. This singer is actually wondering, Was I happy loving him?
* Trains on Time As I unwind Loving You Made Me Happy One could interpret trains being on time as: Life is running as it should. This is sung in E flat, the happiness key. By the end of this stanza, the singer is singing in C major, the being-in-love key.
* Birds they chirp Men aren’t jerks Loving you Made me happy By the third stanza the singer is again confident. She states the obvious, Birds they chirp, in the key of F major, certainty; and ends in G minor, reflective, the key of looking-back-as-if-life-were-a Hallmark-card- painting.
* Champagne with fizz The loving dizz Loving you Made me happy She is talking about champagne while singing in E flat, the key of happiness. By the end of the stanza she confirms her insight with the key of C major: Yes, she was in love.
* But so it goes No one knows Doors do close And now I’m sappy The first two lines also use the certainty key of F, but to very different effect from earlier stanzas. Now the singer is resigning herself to the inevitable: That’s the way it is! This brings a sense of vulnerability in the third line, which slides from the vulnerability of D major back to the sad certainty of F major, and the last line careens from G minor, the looking-back-to-make-it-prettier key, to C Major, the in-love-but-withholding key.
* Oh how I growl No longer prowl Because a foul Left me lonely Here the singer begins in B flat, the questions-about-love key, as she asks: How could my love do this to me? She descends to A major, depression, and concludes in D major, vulnerability.
* Oh how my love Was love undone? When we were two Happy mooners The first line of this stanza stays with the vulnerability of D major: Her love has left her. How could this happen? But by the last lines the singer has shifted to E Major, as she tries to control the memory. For a time at least, we were happy; this I know.
* Now I croon As lovers swoon Who cares it’s June? I’m feeling lacky She is crooning at the moon, which in this instance isn’t a good thing. She begins in the key of depression, A major, then grovels in C sharp and G sharp, the keys of in-love and painting-pretty-pictures, and concludes in F, the love-is-over key, with a sharpness to it.
* A lack of wanna A lack of hope Am I a goner? Or just plain wacky? As she lists all of her “lacks” she sings in F, the knows-it-over key. But instead of resigning herself to the inevitable, she concludes this stanza in B major, clarity.
* I really wanna Be in love Play the fool In giving sun Her clarity forces her to open her heart to what she really and truly wants in D major, the vulnerable key.
* To catch the jewel The lovers coo Loving you Made me happy She is looking back, reflective, and sings in G major as she remembers the joy of being in love.
* It’s true it’s you I still I do Can we be two? And I’ll be happy When she first admits that she still wants that love, even though it’s been taken from her, she sings in A major, the key she uses when she is depressed, because she seems to be going around in circles on this up-and- down ride. Yet she concludes the stanza strongly in C major, the in-love key.
* Now you’re back And I am glad Men aren’t bad I’m hugging sunshine She opens this stanza in the key of certainty, F major, and while “hugging sunshine” she sings in the love- related-questions key, B flat.
* Oh Valentine Yes you are mine Men are fine And I am happy Once again confessing her true desire, she sings in the vulnerable key of D, then slides to C, the in-love key but sharp, and finally to the certainty key of F, but also sharp.
* Loving you Loving you Loving you Makes me happy She sings all three loving you’s in F, the key of certainty, and concludes the song with “Makes me happy” in the key of B flat, the one she uses when struggling with love- related questions.
The day I went into the studio to record Loving You Makes Me Happy to Jeff’s perfect piano accompaniment he said, “This is by far the most complex thing you’ve written. Way above. I don’t know how you did this. But when I broke it down, line by line, I kept saying to myself well of course this is the next key she would use.”
After analyzing the song myself I see now that the key choices make sense. Whether I am vulnerable in True Lovers In the Sky for a whole stanza or in Loving You for one line, the key for me is D Major. Whether I am painting a pretty Hallmark picture throughout Alleluia Sea or for a single stanza in Loving You, the key for me is G major. The three-minute-and-forty-three-second Loving You encompasses all of the emotional logic of keys that I discovered in my earlier, simpler he-broke-my-heart songs.
Whenever I sing my songs, both giving love and withholding love come out in the same key, C major. Does this prove that love and hate are more closely related to each other than either is to indifference? For me, that’s as clear as do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do.