Song #25: Strychnine (2015 52-Song Project)

This is one of the many songs I wrote in the wake of my longest relationship.

In 2008, I recorded an entire album of those songs, called Love Bites. And then I wrote an entire second album worth of songs. That album has not yet been recorded, but in my mind it is entitled "(un)Mutual Street".

This is one of the songs that will go on that album, if I ever record it.

The idea for this song comes from two true stories: the story of Lorena Gallo Bobbitt and a amazing true story that one of my dear friends told me about one of his university friends who was actually poisoned by his girlfriend. She put strychnine in his coffee after she found out from someone else that she was not his only lover. He almost died, but did not. He did not stop having multiple simultaneous lovers, but he did switch from a don't-ask-don't-tell policy to a full-disclosure policy. She sought professional help.

Combined with these ideas, this song explores the difference between using our angry feelings to create art and using them to inflict pain on another person. What this song is trying to say is that there is a big difference between wanting to kill or harm someone and actually doing it. And that creating art can provide the type of catharsis that enables us to resist the urge to harm another person.

Another theme explored in this song is the merit in deciding to leave a difficult situation.

This reminds me of one of my favourite stories. Years ago, I used to play squash at the St. Lawrence Community Recreation Centre. There was an after-school program there and one day, as I walked up to the counter to pay for my court time, I overheard the recreation worker at the desk and a pre-teen after-school participant talking:

Preteen: But she said–

Rec Worker: I don't care what she said. When–

Preteen: No, but she started it. She was–

Rec Worker: I don't care who started it. I know you know what you're supposed to do when something like that happens. I know you know that you are supposed to Remove Yourself From the Situation.

Preteen: But, she was–

Rec Worker: No. I know you know enough to Remove Yourself From the Situation, and you didn't.

Preteen: You don't understand.

Rec Worker: Yes, I do. It doesn't matter what she said or did. You hit her and that's why you are up here with me.

Remove Yourself From the Situation has been one of my mottoes ever since. When something is really getting my goat and making me angry, I know that I have to remember what that preteen was struggling to learn:

If you can't do or say something nice, get outta there.

P.S. I can't believe that in 25 songs, this is only the second one that I have felt I have to age-restrict because of inappropriate language. Who knew I had so many "PG13" songs?

Song Note Sunday #2: The Minnie Pearl (or How Art Breeds Art)

The story behind this song is a story about how art cross-pollinates.

Lunch in Hall's Harbour, NS

One summer's day more than 17 years ago, when I was just beginning to write songs, my mom, my nana and I went to Hall's Harbour to get lobsters for lunch. Hall's Harbour is just a hop, skip and a jump from my nana's cottage in Harbourville* (sense a theme here with the harbour thing? We have a lot of harbours in Nova Scotia.)

It was a beautiful day, perfect for driving across the North Mountain of the Annapolis Valley and seeing the sights. Hall's Harbour has been more tourist-y than Harbourville (at least for the past 20 years or so). In addition to the lobsters, we knew there would be a couple of shops to go into. It would be the perfect outing for a fine day.

While our lobsters boiled and the seagulls wheeled and cried overhead (looking forward to the lobster shells, no doubt), we went into John Neville's studio**. The studio was full of amazing wood block prints. John Neville's wife was there and she avidly told us the stories behind the prints in her authoritative British accent.

Art breeds art

I remember one print showing a bunch of local women pushing a rum-runner's shack off a cliff in retribution for providing their sons and husbands with liquor. But the print that really caught my eye told the story of a man who bought a boat that sank. He raised her up and fixed her up and took her out fishing again. She sank again. So, he raised her up, dragged her up on the beach, doused her with gasoline and set her on fire.

The print was entitled, So I Burned the Bitch.

I loved the story. The bloody-mindedness of that fisherman caught at my heart. I loved him. I loved that he would go to all that trouble to destroy something that had broken his heart. (I am prone to doing those sorts of vindictive things myself – or at least fantasizing about doing them.)

The story haunted me, but I didn't even try to write the song for another 8 or 9 years. When I did try, the lyrics came fairly easily, but the tune and accompaniment bogged it down. About 5 years ago, I workshopped it with my voice coach, Deanna Yerichuk, who told me to sing it as if I felt each emotion as it came up in the song: ambition, pride, devastation, triumph, despair and vindication. That helped a lot. It brought my passion for the song's subject to the fore. But it wasn't until I ditched the guitar and sang the song a cappella that it truly came to life.

There is was: bare and sparse. The sort of song you might sing into the wind while something that has betrayed you burns to wreckage behind you on the beach.

You can listen to The Minnie Pearl here.

*My nana's cottage is still in the family and I still spend time there every summer. For more information about Harbourville, visit the Harbourville Restoration Society Web site.
**John Neville no longer has a studio in Hall's Harbour. The last I heard, he was living and working in Maine.