This might be the second or third verse of a song called
Behold the Cross
Behold the cross
When ambitions soar
And worldly dreams of wealth and fame
knock at your door
Behold him there
crownless, enthroned in pain
he gave up all to serve
so let us serve again.
When ambitions soar
And worldly dreams of wealth and fame
knock at your door
Behold him there
crownless, enthroned in pain
he gave up all to serve
so let us serve again.
sar 2012
Ooh yes - a song devoted to teaching a theology of the cross and how it constrains our lives - yes please!
ReplyDeleteThat is, I think most cross songs talk about the relationship between me and God/me and Christ/Father and Son. Can't think of many that talk about me and the world...
I absolutelylione it. Brilliant.
ReplyDeletelione=love. Obviously.
ReplyDeleteI'll be the dissenting voice. I agree with Anthony about the kind of song, so would like to see this tweaked.
ReplyDeleteBut this feels too prosaic and not poetic enough atm. All its punches are spelled out at a degree of length with minimal imagery. As it stands I think it would be sung a couple of times then dropped relatively quickly. Others may well disagree with me on this.
I keep on trying to write a 'how should we live' song. They are so hard to write. Philip always rejects them (rightly). Going to keep trying.
ReplyDeleteAnthony and Al - Thanks for the encouragement.
Mark - I agree. I'll work on tweaks. It's only had 5 minutes so far. But not sure it would even make it with 20 hours. Why don't you and Jennie give it a go? I'm sure that Jennie could come up with something reasonably enduring.
Simone
Hi Simone,
ReplyDeleteDoes Philip have final say? What's the process of lyric-vetting at Emu? (I'm interested in the process!)
Hi Anon.
ReplyDeleteI can only speak of our process. Basically, I write a draft and Philip may or may not set it to music. (I wouldn't give him something in the form of the above. It would need to be a more or less complete lyric - there are many things that I start and then realise they don't have legs. No point Philip wasting his time on something I'd soon work out has no future.)
He rejects many things I write. Maybe I'm writing heresy. Maybe the content and expression just doesn't grab him or the metre is awkward. This often annoys me at the time, but a bit later (when I'm not so emotionally involved) I look at it again and see that it's rubbish. Often he writes some music for something and I don't like it so send it back. Often he writes some music for my lyrics and then I go and do a complete rewrite of the words because I can see that they need fixing. Mostly, there is much to-ing and fro-ing and then (80% of the time) we both know it's not good enough to go on a cd so throw it away. Oh well. What's 50 hours?
So does Philip have the final say? Maybe. Probably. But we both need to be pretty committed to a song for it to go anywhere.
For last year's cd, we worked hard on about 10 songs. I think we submitted 6 to moderation by others and got 2 on the cd. This is a pretty good result. In my itunes library I have 20+ different versions of one of them.
Does that answer your question?
s
Yeah, that's really helpful.
ReplyDeleteOur church musos are having a go at writing some stuff, and I'm trying to get my head around the process, and the interplay between lyrics and music.
I also had in mind a bit of a dispute that's going on at the moment regarding "Father's World" which was on Emu's "Songs for Little Rooms". Our musos love it (musically), but a bunch of people don't like some of the lyrics. Someone said in conversation that if Emu published it, then the lyrics must be ok. But I think you've outlined quite a personal process between you and Philip, which probably doesn't apply to the other Emu material.