White Angels
Episode #195: White Angels\xa0 (Song starts at 5:51)\n\nOn this episode we are looking at the 2nd song I wrote after I arrived in Melbourne in 1997. I'd already written 385 songs in New Zealand before this one. I came to Melbourne as it was a rite of passage, of sorts, for kiwi songwriters to jump the ditch.\nI was here to set up camp, to be here for some time, to continue on - or perhaps more accurately start again - on my creative path. I needed to find some more band players, and I really wanted to get cracking again, here, in a new country.\nSongwriting is something has pretty much always ticked along for me. In 1997 once I\u2019d settled in to life in the city, I picked up a newspaper and there was a headline that really hit me between the eyes: 17 young people had overdosed in 3/4 hour in Melbourne's cbd.\nIt struck me what an awful time that must have been for those involved - the young people themselves, their families, the ambulance drivers.\nA scene unfolded in my minds eye and I didn\u2019t shut it down. It became a movie. This in turn inspired the lyrics. Improvising music to words (or while watching images) is something that I find comes to easily to me. I think it\u2019s because all the emotion is already there.\nI\u2019ve always had the ability to \u2018roll a film\u2019 in my mind. I think we all do, don\u2019t we? (I draw cartoon animals. So if I think of say, a llama playing saxophone, there he is, moving around, eyes shut wailing away..hmm, maybe I shouldn\u2019t mention that publicly.)\nAnyway, as I read the newspaper article, a really strong feeling took hold of me and the words streamed off my pen.\nWhen it came time for the music, a gospel sounding riff came through my finger tips on the piano keys. It set up the first verse and there I was: well underway, again, with another song.\nOver the intervening years, I think I was perhaps a little bit hard on myself, in terms of whether I thought this song was good enough to release.\nUs artists can be too tough on ourselves. Sometimes nothing we\u2019ve produced ever seems good enough, which is strange, really.\nPieces of art & songs, are all like stepping stones along the way for the artist. I think: if the art or music is of a certain standard (it \u2018passes the muster\u2019), put it out there and move on.\nThat\u2019s what I\u2019ve been doing with this podcast - and my blog: 195 weeks of sharing what I\u2019m up to, some of the how to. I'm looking to share and help people along the way. Encouraging people along a creative path is the idea.\nBecause it can\u2019t help to be a healing path. You learn about yourself - like the line in white angels: 'the past clears, the path clears and today is much less blurred.'\nAs I\u2019ve recorded these episodes, I\u2019ve realised even more just how powerful it is to write a song. A song brings back so many memories. It's got be good for your brain to be used like that. The very same song is going to have different connotations, bring to mind different memories, for different people. That\u2019s powerful.\nThe listener has an emotional response and again, this can also be a healing thing. So feels really, really good to be a songwriter.\nIt\u2019s nice to be sharing some of my processes here on this podcast. In this case, I\u2019ve rediscovered a sort of a gospel ballad. I\u2019m so pleased I wrote it\u2002- and I\u2019m pleased that I recorded the demo back in 2000. I have played this song in restaurants as a piano solo piece, but I\u2019ve never sung it live.\nI hope you enjoy another song and chat, here we go,\nMore here: Lyrics, links to music and art www.petepascoe.wordpress.com