The ghosts of lives unlived
On hypnagogic states and shower moments, cheerful ukeleles and chunky necklaces, Kate's puzzle of a novel, Nick's recent podcast appearance, and the ghosts of the early 20th century.
For anyone new here, Songwritings is a conversation between Kate van der Borgh (copywriter, D&AD Masterclass trainer, singer, musician) and Nick Asbury (copywriter, poet, Perpetual Disappointments Diarist, with a side interest in Tin Pan Alley songwriting).
NICK
So last time we shared this new song called Been dreaming about you lately, complete with a found video from 1906 (which I’ll explain later).
First, I don’t know if you’re meant to say this about your own work, but I really like the song! Especially with what you did to it. As usual, I sent you a rough guitar and piano recording, and you took it somewhere else entirely.
It took me longer than usual to write—I had the first four lines of melody and lyrics in my head for over a year, but struggled to work out how the whole 8-line verse would fit together. There’s a slight oddness in how the rhyme falls on ‘phanTOMS’ and ‘comes’, or ‘shadOWS’ and ‘goes’, with that slightly truncated last line.
I think of the whole thing as an exercise in the ‘mosaic’ writing, mastered by people like Ira Gershwin (lyricist brother of George). I was conscious of trying to map particular vowel sounds onto different parts of the melody, so that it sings in a nice, easy way. I could nerd out at length about all the internal assonance and alliteration—for example, the soft ‘f’ sounds in ‘fragments, fleeting, floating up like phantoms’. (On the other hand, I might get kicked out of Tin Pan Alley for rhyming ‘lately’ and ‘await me’—technically it’s not classed as a perfect rhyme, but I decided it was OK.)
Two posts ago, we talked about inner monologues, which you have and I lack. I think of this as a kind of inner monologue song, where the speaker is conversing with his/her own brain, wondering why these dreams keep surfacing.
I feel like there are two ‘voices’ in the song, both lyrically and melodically. So lines 1 and 3 have this little melodic flourish, while 2 and 4 are more fragmented and static. Then it switches with lines 5 and 7 being more fragmented and 6 and 8 loosening up. So it feels like it’s alternating between these two registers, and the lyrics do something similar—relaxed, conversational phrases like ‘Been living a life without you’ or ‘Days are normal I find’, mixed with heightened poetic stuff like ‘paths not taken / winding in the shadows’.
So there’s this inner struggle playing out in the whole thing, where the speaker is trying to remain outwardly breezy, but is also perturbed and increasingly haunted. And I feel like that really comes out in the music. Is that how you saw it too?
KATE
Yes, totally—I love that duality. Although it isn’t a happy song, it has such a jauntiness about it. That bouncy rhythm really suits the fragile cheerfulness of the singer: ‘yeah, I’m fine without you, I’m doing well’. I tried to exaggerate the bounce with the ‘dum-ba-dum’ backing vocals in the second verse.
I also loved the twist in your title! In songs, dreaming about a lover is often a fond or reassuring thing, but here it’s unsettling, even creepy. This is regret as recurring nightmare, a love story tipping into horror.
(Of course, there’s also something meta about the song, since it’s such an ear worm—I find that the catchy melody plays over and over in my head, as if I can’t forget it.)
Going back to what you’ve said about internal alliteration and assonance, the two ‘voices’—there’s so much craftsmanship in your lyrics, even though you manage to make each line sound effortless. That stuff about the melody switching from static to loose and back again… How much of that is conscious? I’m thinking of the different ways we often approach creative work: the free, instinctive, dreamy stage versus the more technical refining and polishing part.
I also wonder what you think about those different modes of creativity, either in your own work or in our industry generally. Personally, I wonder whether in this world of productivity hacks and Atomic Habits, of ‘morning routine’ videos that teach us how to cram more and more into our day, creatives are really encouraged to spend time dreaming. (To get a bit literal for a sec, the author featured in this podcast mumbled the central idea for their book while asleep. Thankfully their partner overheard.)
Then maybe we can talk about the ukulele, which was rather more instinctive than refined…
NICK
Yes, good call to talk about dream states given the nature of this song.
I know our mutual friend Tom Sharp is a fan of hypnagogic writing—jotting down what comes to you during that liminal state between sleep and waking. I do it too, in that I often find myself lying half-awake at night or early in the morning, with a vague tune or lyric in my head. Most of them don’t merit being written down, but I like to think the ones worth keeping will somehow stick in my head. (I believe a young Lennon and McCartney had a similar trust in memory. Without access to easy recording technology, they’d leave a song half-finished at night and trust that one of them would remember the tune the next day—and if not, it probably wasn’t worth remembering. I wonder how many promising songs never made it.)
These days, voice notes make things easier. Before that, it was dictaphones. I remember reading about Robert Palmer keeping one by his bed for ideas that came to him during the night. Apparently that’s how he wrote Addicted To Love—it amuses me to imagine him singing that opening riff into the recorder while his wife sighs and rolls over.
Going back to the writing of this song, my description of the process makes it sound more conscious and methodical than it really is. Most of it is instinctive in the moment, and I’m not claiming it’s a massively complex technical achievement to write a verse that vaguely flows. But there’s a lot of plodding, conscious thought that comes in between the instinctive parts—just generally listening to, reading about and pondering songwriting, so that when you’re in the instinctive place, your instincts are more refined.
I think a lot of the creative process is like that—the ideal is to get into a kind of flow state where it feels like your mind is working almost independently of any management: all the cogs just whirring in this instinctive, pleasurable way. That makes the process hard to remember afterwards, so all you can do is post-rationalise it. It’s tempting to see it as a kind of magic, and maybe it is in some sense—lots of creators (and maybe songwriters in particular) talk about this feeling of the song coming to them from somewhere else. I can’t exactly say I’ve experienced that, but then I’ve never written Yesterday or Like A Rolling Stone. But I still glimpse it—it is weird how the key moments of inspiration are the hardest to remember.
I don’t think I’ve ever written copy in a hypnagogic state—I wonder how that would work out. How about you? I imagine hypnagogic states can be pretty useful for novel writing or working out some tricky plot point.
KATE
Unsurprisingly, this all makes me think about Dali and his ‘slumber with a key’. You’ll no doubt have heard how he’d sit himself in a chair, with a key in one hand and a plate on the floor beneath the key. Then he’d rest—and as he dropped into sleep, the key would fall noisily into the plate, waking him immediately. It meant he could briefly access that hypnagogic state, but quickly be conscious enough to remember it.
Also, I’m pretty sure Stephen King has a similar approach to Lennon and McCartney in that he doesn’t jot down story ideas, but rather trusts himself to remember the things worth remembering. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know how many chilling stories never made it onto the shelves.
Given the creatives who endorse hypnagogic states, it’s a bit daft that I haven’t explored them myself. Saying that, the idea for my novel (which I really hope to be able to tell you more about at some point) came in a subconscious way: it was an honest-to-god shower moment. There I was, washing my hair, and the central idea plopped into my soapy head. Frustrating, as I’m not sure how to make it happen again…
But most of the novel writing was a very conscious puzzling-out, like doing a Rubik’s cube or something. Given the story I was telling—which is about a college friendship that goes badly wrong in a spooky sort of way—I knew there were certain things that had to happen, certain scenes that would need to appear in some shape or form. For instance, it seemed clear that the first half of the story would be about the friendship developing, and the second half would describe it falling apart. Which in itself suggests some kind of turn at the midpoint. So it was often a case of me thinking ‘how do I connect these things’? Sure, there was plenty of space to be dreamy while thinking about character, setting, all the rest of it. But those things had to fit within the objectives of each scene (OK, by this time he needs to fall in love, by this point he’s going to feel betrayed etc.). I guess it was like building the the East and West wings of a house and then working out how to join them up. Certain things suggested themselves.
NICK
All totally makes sense, especially the shower moment—it’s one of the few times in modern life where our brains get forcibly detached from our phones and other sensory inputs for a few minutes, so the subconscious stuff spots its chance and rushes to the surface. I’ve definitely had a few ideas that way.
I hope we’ll get to talk more about your novel at some point—it’s a form of writing that I’ve never come close to tackling. All the macro-thinking about plots and characters intimidates me—I think I’m more comfortable wrestling with syllables and lines.
Going back to our song, I really like the ukelele driving the whole thing—I guess it’s the instrument I associate most with Tin Pan Alley. A couple of years ago, I discovered Charlotte Pelgen on Instagram—she does some lovely, simple versions of songs from that era, often based on sheet music she’s found and dusted down.
For example, I love this version of ‘I’m a dreamer (Aren’t we all)’. (Another song about dreaming, now I think of it.)
I like the way ours starts off with ukelele, but then builds into this richer soundscape, with the musical-hall-esque piano (which is so well done) and that very appropriate siren sound going off at the end, emerging in a way that suggests it’s been there all along.
KATE
If we’re talking about the arrangement now, I should say (if it isn’t already obvious) that I don’t actually play the ukulele. But when you said you imagined it in the song, I felt I should at least try to make it happen. I was Up North visiting my parents at the time, so I asked around to see if anyone local had an instrument I could borrow—and Martyn Smith from the Cliviger Ukulele Band very kindly lent me his. After that, I did a bit of Googling to find the right chords, and thankfully I only needed a handful.
I think, as well as harking back to Tin Pan Alley, the ukulele fits with the ‘cheerfulness’ we’ve talked about. It’s a fun instrument that doesn’t take itself too seriously, so helps create that (albeit superficial) lightheartedness. Same goes for the music-hall-style piano, with its festive clanging. Along with the vocals, these two instruments seemed enough—there’s a temptation in Garageband to keep on layering and layering, but I’m finding that (much like in writing) the trick is often in knowing what to leave out.
The backing vocals are of course meant to sound like ghostly oohs and aahs. And in the bridge, I wanted to create an effect almost like a church choir, something a bit faux-serious and baroque—hence the interlocking vocal lines. You might be surprised to hear that I was kind of inspired by ABBA’s Lay All Your Love on Me and its incredible chorale-style chorus.
The only other thing in the mix, bar the string-siren effect in the bridge and at the end, was the chunky chain necklace that I used as percussion. This was my cheeky nod to another phantom: Jacob Marley and his jangling shackles. Couldn’t resist.
To make a brief diversion into the world of ghosts (one of my fascinations, as you know), I like that your song has the feel of a ghost story. Yet this ghost is not the soul of someone dead, but the impression of someone living. It makes me think of this brilliant book, which explores the changing nature of ghosts—how, after the Reformation, they became ‘doctrinal impossibilities’ (they came from the purgatory-belief of Catholicism, which was all being binned), and so had to reinvent themselves, first as demonic spirits, later as tricks of the mind. Hilary Mantel, who talked about ghosts a lot, posited that they could be unfulfilled potential: ‘When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners.’ Just like all those unwritten Beatles songs and Stephen King books!
NICK
Damn, I love that ghost as unfufilled potential idea—I think it’s exactly what the song is about. Ghosts not as dead things, but as lives unlived. In which case, we’re all creating ghosts every second, as infinite potential paths in life collapse into the only one that we’re able to choose (at least in this particular universe and timeline).
Domestic wraiths and phantoms also bring to mind the film that accompanies the song, where mundane items of furniture come to life. It was a slightly random find—when we share these things online, I feel like some visual support might increase ‘engagement’, but we haven’t exactly got the budget to hire a yacht and go full Duran Duran. So I found myself searching for out-of-copyright footage, which led me to The Public Domain Review and a 1906 film called Dream of a Rarebit Fiend.
It’s such a strange film—I believe it was produced as a promotional piece for the Edison Company, and the ‘special effects’ were designed to show off its advanced technical skills. The story is based on an inexplicably popular New York Herald comic strip that tells the cautionary tale of a man who steals some Welsh Rarebit (the actually-really-nice melted cheese on toast delicacy). The thief is punished by having weird cheese dreams. Without doing any actual editing, I laid our song on top of the last three minutes of the film and it actually fits pretty well, with a few happy coincidences—like the bed flying out the window as the bridge starts, or the man covering his ears as the siren goes off at the end.
I like that the film comes from a similar era to the music—maybe I should try it with some of our other songs. I’m no expert, but am increasingly drawn to that whole period of early-20th-century history. That film would have come out during the Teddy Roosevelt era, when he was doing his best to rein in overweening corporate power—plenty of parallels with today. And songs like I’m A Dreamer would have come out during the Great Depression, when the roaring ‘20s came to a traumatic end, adding some extra poignancy to the lyric—“He's ideal, but then he isn't real / And I'm a fool, but aren't we all?”
KATE
I could hardly believe it when you told me that you hadn’t edited the film. It fits so perfectly.
And I’m glad you bring up that period, because it’s also the golden age of… the ghost story! There’s a suggestion that people turn to the supernatural at times of uncertainty—for instance, I’ve read that fishermen who sail on the wild and unpredictable sea typically have more superstitions than fishermen who sail on lakes. We lean towards magical thinking in times of upheaval—say, times of great technological and scientific progress (I have to remind myself that when Dickens wrote The Signalman, the railway was not a quaint spooky thing but a relatively new and dazzling technology).
So, the turn of the 20th century is when you get key texts like M R James’ Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, W W Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw… It’s also when there’s a massive interest in spiritualism (famously embraced and promoted by Arthur Conan Doyle), accelerated by the awful loss of life during the First World War.
Feels strange to think that the technologies causing us so much anxiety now will create different ghosts: an AI Lennon, putting out new music, reopening some of those potential life paths you mentioned. An alternative Stephen King, writing stories that the man himself never got around to. Creators who need no hypnagogic state, who will not dream, and whose process may be no more knowable than our own.
That last sentence feels like the ending to a decent ghost story, so we’ll pause there for now. Thanks as ever for reading / listening—always great to get comments and emails, especially from people pursuing their own musical adventures.
Some readers may be interested in Nick’s recent appearance on the Penteract Press podcast, where the conversation eventually gets onto songwriting, having covered politics and poetry, constraint-based writing, branding and self-directed learning.