Surviving Line To Line

Larry Charles, the writer and director of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm fame, tells great stories about working with Bob Dylan on a defunct slapstick comedy they pitched to HBO in the 90s. (Click here to listen; it will be well worth your time.) Charles spins some yarn about Dylan’s “coffee test” and the black duster Dylan wore to intimidate HBO executives, but one of the most interesting stories he tells offers insight into Dylan’s writing process.  

As the story goes, during one writing session, Dylan brings in an ornate box — “like a sorcerer would,” Charles adds — and dumps a heap of scraps from hotel stationary on a table, each with a “weird poetic line” scribbled on it. Coyly, Dylan tells Charles: “I don’t know what to do with all this.” 

BULLSHIT!

Dylan knows exactly what to do with this stash of poetic gems. I agree with Charles’s conclusion: 

“I realized, that’s how he writes songs. He takes these scraps, and he puts them together and makes his poetry out of that. He has all of these ideas and then just in a subconscious or unconscious way, he lets them synthesize into a coherent thing. And that’s how we wound up writing also. We wound up writing in a very ‘cut-up’ technique. We’d take scraps of paper, put them together, try to make them make sense, try to find the story points within it. And we finally wrote…a very elaborate treatment for this slapstick comedy, which is filled with surrealism and all kinds of things from his songs and stuff.”

What makes Dylan great is that his songs survive line to line. Each line or couplet can stand on its own. When Dylan’s at his best, every line could be a great opening line. And that is because he writes down every line that comes into his head and weaves these lines together like some mythic spider into songs that force you to keep up, force you to decode, force you to make the thematic connections that are there and not there at the same time. In a way, Dylan’s cryptic, line by line songwriting approach invites you into the process. In that magical invocation from writer to listener these lines become a song. It’s true sorcery. 

The best songs often start with a great line. And the line comes to you when you least expect it. I’ve taken to carrying around a small notebook with me and keeping one in my car. One must always be ready. (The voice memo app on my phone is likewise invaluable). When the melody, phrasing, and line come all at once, you feel more like a vessel than an agent. So, I get why Dylan just writes down everything that comes in his head. (Check out D.A. Pennebaker’s penetrating 1965 documentary Don’t Look Back. Dylan is always writing. Or, check out these pages of handwritten lyrics to “Like a Rolling Stone.” The proof is right there.) It’s a great way to approach songwriting. Write it down now, make it a song later. 

CAUTION: What shouldn’t be missed here, however, is that great lines come to artists because they are searching for them. I don’t want there to be any confusion — songwriting is not a passive endeavor. Great lines and songs don’t just come to anyone. Somnambulant demi-humans need not apply. They come to those who have focused their full energy on finding them. They come to those who strive to maintain a heightened and special state of awareness and receptiveness. They come to those who know where to look and what to look at. Good songwriters are observant, patient, and greedy. Think of songwriting more as a state of being, and you’ll better appreciate how these great lines manifest. 

When the first line of “Beyond Good and Evil” came to me, what followed was a manic series of questions: “She said, ‘God is dead,’ and took a long slow sip / I used to love the smell of Scotch and Nietzsche on her lips” Who says such a thing? What’s her backstory? Why is she saying this in conversation? Who is she saying this to? Who’s this “I?” Is this true; is God dead? An image of a dark, femme fatal formed in my head, and the more I inquired the more her story took shape. When lines pose questions, you become more of an inquisitor than a songwriter. Inquiring rather than knowing is a good place to be as a writer. 

Such a line by line approach offers no guarantees, and it is by no means the only way. No writer is singular in his or her process. Much of what you scribble down will be garbage. What you’re hoping for, though, is that one line that contains within it a world of possibilities. It’s as close to being a sorcerer as you’ll ever come.