The birth of a song is the construction of an entire world. It happens slowly, then suddenly, often while you’re looking off in another direction. You might be humming absently to yourself and messing around with floppy little chords. There might even be a phrase that keeps rolling around in your mouth, curious about itself. But once the song starts to break through, the labor process, which may have been a slog, abruptly becomes a sweet, silky slipstream. You can feel yourself sliding into it, the massive, rivering flow of creation from which all things come. The song that was building up inside you, unseen and unknown all this time, is now being born right in front of you. It is a world made up of people you know, and also of strangers. It has well-known streets, and also mysterious alleys that unfurl as you travel through them. It is both soothingly familiar and deeply strange, unlike anything you’ve ever known before.
Yet inside this world, this song is everything you’ve been needing to discover and express. You are building it with your love and pain. It is your sacred offering, and you open yourself to its power. Your voice, lyrics, and melody are describing its parameters and affirming its existence. Your chords and rhythm are strengthening its impact. It is here at last, and no one can take it from you. You have made it real and whole, and that fact alone is magnificent, and knowing you can do it feels like actual magic. Creating this world heals you, not completely, but enough to keep you coming back. And here’s something else no one tells you: once the song is finished, you will always be able to enter its world every time you play it. No matter what else is going on in your heart and mind, once you start singing this song you will be transported right back to its dominion, and it will embrace you all over again.
©Alicia Dara, 1999 in Seattle
I didn’t think of myself as a world-builder when I started writing songs as a teenager. I was only looking for a way to soothe the pain of my childhood, which was often frightening and sometimes terrifying. Songs helped me stumble toward healing. Down there in the darkness, they kept my tiny flame alive, and gave it desperately-needed fuel. In return I gave them my deepest devotion. I gave them my love, long before I could give it to anyone else.
Until I learned to write my own songs I lived inside the glorious, grandiose pop songs that burst from 80s radio like fireworks: Prince, David Bowie, Madonna, Janet Jackson and so many others. I was utterly transported by them, each one its own planet to be discovered and cherished. Each had its own colors that flew from my mouth when I sang them, and shimmered in front of me so crystal-clear that I would cry with wonder and gratitude. I felt known and loved by those songs. They were my safest safe place.
The radio wasn’t my only source of music. My parents were professional symphony musicians who made their living by playing nightly concerts, which I could attend as long as it wasn’t a school night. A piece of classical music is a galaxy of worlds, ripe for exploration. But no matter which piece the orchestra played I was always left with a weird headache at the end of the night, a liminal migraine that left me withered and spent. It was a mystery I wouldn’t solve until many years later, but at the time I thought there might be something inherently wrong with me, with my ability to perceive the beauty and majesty of those sounds. During the concerts there were no actual songs, just the individual movements of a piece, after which you had to remain silent and reverential, without clapping. And no singing, ever. Singing a song was how I got inside its world, and without that I felt exiled and adrift.
I got to sing plenty of songs in choir, both the regular school one and the semi-professional one I entered at 7 years old. Made up of Vancouver’s best child singers, we had all passed a rigorous audition process and were expected to take the choir and its demands seriously. We performed tough concerts for big audiences (we even got to sing for Charles and Diana during the opening of Expo 86). Hours and hours of songs every week at rehearsal, so many beautiful worlds to experience. No matter how battered or tired I felt, those songs filled me up with joy. All that gorgeous harmony, all those vivid, sublime colors moving together. My voice was in the mix, rising and falling, but always alive and grateful.
I am a strong singer. Not loud, but strong. I can carry a tune all the way home. When we sing in harmony I can back up your vocal so well that you feel like you’re flying. I can also take you somewhere on my own, somewhere sacred and beautiful, to a place of deep emotion that you might not recognize. The foundation of all my songs, all the worlds I’ve ever built, is love. I know what love is, and I can lead you to it with my voice.
To date, the best singing and songwriting I’ve done is with my band Diamondwolf, and before you ask: we haven’t been able to meet in person in a couple of years, so what you can find of our music online is not current. But I am proudest of the work I did for the two of us, my bandmate Glen and I. Before I started working with him I had been fiercely guarding my songwriting process. I needed its magical healing powers all to myself, as a remedy for the damage done in the first part of my life, and I couldn’t let anyone else into that relationship. Glen and I have known each other for 20+ years, and the amount of trust and connection between us made it safe and easy to work together. Aside from producing some award-winning music, our collaboration reminded me that worlds can be co-created, and that co-creation can be even more impactful than the solo method.
©Alicia Dara 2015 with Glen in Woodinville
Any type of world-building is a huge responsibility. Civic engineers and city planners know this, but so do game designers, movie directors, playwrights, and songwriters. In fact, all artists are engaged in world-building to some degree or another. The worlds we build have tremendous power, not just in the Capitalist marketplace, but at the place in our society where culture and politics intersect. Through our hard work and free expression we can change the direction of hearts and minds, and bring focus to social issues that need desperate attention. We also articulate and magnify the best of human nature and human experience, which is why artists are always involved in weddings, graduations, birthdays and celebrations of all kinds.
Know what else? As you read this piece, your brain is creating its own world of images, to illustrate the story I am telling. The world we all live in, the “real world”, is simply a story that we are writing together, a reality that we agree on.
That is why, despite all that we’ve all been through these past few years, and despite the increasingly dire predictions for the future that seem to be everywhere right now, I remain stubbornly hopeful for the future. Because artists will be there, and they will be doing the heavy-lifting of world construction along with all the solar engineers, mushroom growers, lama farmers and whomever else prevails. Art, and artists, are essential for human survival because we remind everyone that humanity has a choice about the kind of world we are creating together. No matter what our current circumstances may be, we can always choose a new vision for ourselves, and a new path forward. Artists can do this under any circumstances, even in the middle of complete chaos, and if you have doubts about that just look at what artists are doing in Ukraine right now. Their powerful and sometimes stark depictions of the cost of war point to the priceless value of peace, connection, love and belonging, and how when even one person loses those things, it demeans and destabilizes us all.
Building a world that we can materially sustain is not enough. To move beyond survival we’ll need to co-create a place that sustains our emotional connections to each other, and helps us all feel included and valued. Thriving is what lies beyond survival, and we deserve to thrive. The world we choose to build together is here, right now. I don’t believe that its outcome is inevitable, because I’ve seen artists build new worlds out of thin air, using nothing but vision, imagination and hard work. The essential pieces are always right in front of us, and the conditions are always right. Whatever we choose to build is ours collectively. We need each other so much more than we know.
You can learn more about my work as a coach HERE.
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