So yeah, everybody knows that i don't pronounce my words when i sing in a very clear manner. It's especially hard to understand the words that i sing when you see me play live. The the most frequent criticism i get is that i should sing so people can understand the words to my songs. However, i have never considered changing my singing style for multiple reasons and I feel like addressing this subject right now in a myspace blog.

Well, first of all I'd like to say (for all of you wondering) that the actual reason why I sing the way i do is because... well, that's just the way that i sing and I always have. I might naturally sing that way because of some phonological characteristic i have in my vocal chords... but I think it's because i didn't really start singing till i was about 13 and when i was 13 I listened to Coldplay, Sixpence None the Richer and the Cranberries a ton and would sing along to the albums that i had of theirs and that's how I developed my voice and figured out that I had a interesting voice. And if I think about it my voice is kind of a combination of Chris Martin, Leigh Nash, Dolores O'Riordan and, now, Thom Yorke, since i compulsively listen to The Eraser and Radiohead daily. Chris Martin has an English accent. Dolores O'Riordan has an Irish accent and she does that yoddle voice crack thing that i do. Leigh Nash has a soft purdy voice and she's American so that doesn't have much to do with what I'm talking about. And then Thom Yorke is English and he sings in a style that sounds like he's running all his words together somewhat.. and i tend to do that as well. I know saying all this makes me seem like less of a original... but in all actuality any original creation is inspired by other creations . Any creation is basically a compositional arrangement of selected pieces of other existing things. Anyways...

I was thinking about language today (while i was sitting in my Linguistics class) and how arbitrary meanings for words are to us as humans. It seems like having all these word symbols for everything helps us communicate (obviously) and think more complexly in the sense that we can analyze things down to the small details. But it seems like words also limit us from really comprehending things outside of what we already know and what we are presented with everyday. Having words for everything and a way of describing pretty much everything and having this make it possible for us to relate and understand each other (or at least FEEL like we understand each other) kind of makes us think (consciously or subconsciously) that we have a grasp on existence and life... like we know all we need to know and we have everything figured out and that we control our lives. But in all actuality... these words that we say and think, by themselves, contain no meaning really. Words are just our way of adapting to the environment we're a part of. They are symbols humans created (and create) for real actual things... and the reason we use words (spoken words and signed words) is because we can't really get a grasp on anything outside of us... and we can't even really get a grasp on ourselves if we think about ourselves objectively. We just estimate what we think things are by using words and create names and ideas for things that do not go beyond what our brains can comprehend... and this over simplifies everything. We all have a very simplistic and possibly false idea of what "reality" is. So not only do we have these words make us feel like we get things and get each other which demotivates us to look beyond our everyday life and look into something that hasn't been described or discovered yet... but we each have completely personal meanings for the word we use based on a variety of things (such as: brain chemistry, biological make-up, upbringing, weather our bodies have adapted to, the people we've met, the books we've read, the shit we've been through, etc.)

Sometimes when I'm having a conversation with someone I feel like I have the choice between:
a) thinking that i am connecting with them and therefore feeling understood and comforted
b) knowing that i could be connecting with them somewhat but that any relational warm and fuzzy feeling that comes out of the conversation is probably based on an illusion i created in order to emotionally survive... but then still feeling the feeling... while knowing it's probably leading to unreal conclusions.
c) withdrawing myself emotionally from the conversation and making my new intent into just a desire to linguistically outline only the necessities for developing a relation that will help me and the other person achieve some sort of mutual goal.

I guess I just feel like: yeah, words based language IS the essence of are humanhood. It dictates our culture and our way of life and it directs the majority of our conscience thought... we need it to exist the way we do today... and if it was stripped away from us tomorrow... the world as we know it would crumble into chaos and confusion and struggle... but there ARE other ways of expressing yourself and communicating that have advantages that talking with words doesn't. While words help us mutually understand the details of things so we can accomplish we we need to do in a tangible way... (the house is located on 42nd street... go into the bank and withdraw $80 with the account number 34405...) more abstract and vague forms of expression allow us to connect with each other in a lively, passionate and exciting way. There's visual art (paintings, drawings, photography, film...) and then there's music... ahhh music.

Ever since i was little (yes i still do this) i've written the music before i write the lyrics to a song. ( well actually when i was little i would just run around the house singing random stuff with real words and gibberish made up words and i don't remember it really but i have videos of it... it's pretty crazy to watch.) When i write a song now I usually just sing gibberish words or words that don't relate to each other because certain sounds just naturally come out that pertain to the idea that the song has derived from in my head. like an "sssss" sound could be kind of haunting and a loud "aaaaaal" sound could be kind of desperately miserable or something. I don't sit down and think "i'm going to write a song about that bird that i saw flying around today and how it reminded me of my childhood"... I just get a spontaneous urge to write a new song and then I grab my guitar or sit at a piano and just let the chords and notes come out... and i use my voice like another instrument and just sing along with it and after i do that i gradually start to get an idea of what the song is materialistically about and then I put words to it. Like maybe I'll feel calm and contemplative and peaceful but also kind of unsatisfied and bummed... and i'll feel like making music to express it and then as i play i realize that a part of the reason I feel that way is because I hate the way my relationship with my brother is but i'm tired of feeling sad about it so i have turned the sadness into somewhat of a numbness with a hint of neediness for change (i just made that up by the way.) But before i started playing music knowing that other people would hear it and maybe purchase it... i basically just recorded gibberish singing sounds accompanied by guitar or piano or cello on a digital recording device i had at home and just listen to it later and just FEEL something that i couldn't describe in words but i was still totally familiar with. And in some ways I feel like that was much more of a real and deeper and more universal musical portrayal.
Jonsi, the lead singer of the band Sigur Ros, writes and sings lyrics that are either Icelandic or "Hopelandic...." and hopelandic is his name for gibberish... i didn't find this out until about a year after I started listening to them. But either way... i don't speak Icelandic or his form of gibberish... and i still LOVE LOVE LOVE the music the band makes and the melodies he composes and his voice and the overall feel of the music. I relate to the music... it describes things to me that i didn't think of before... but in a vague and abstract form of description... and this leads to a much more personal realization because the one who realized it was the one who knew the thing that the realization was regarding the best and that "one" is ME! the listener... and i mean "me" as any part of my thought coming out from any part of my brain which could be conscience or not. I find that I help myself more than anyone else helps me most of the time when it comes to finding some sort of a solution or direction or perception... and i pretty much always help myself by using music... so it's not just me helping me but it's also the one who wrote the song and played it and whoever gave me the album and a bunch of other shit...

I guess what i'm trying to say in all of this is that words are cool and needed and stuff... but music and tone and tune and key and arrangement of notes and chords and melodies and harmonies and just the pure sounds of words void of meaning... are another way of communicating and I really don't think lyrics should ever be placed over the actual music. i don't even think that the value of the lyrics and the music should be equal... people can take a statement like,

"all you need is love"

and sing it in any way that comes to them... and however they sing it will totally effect the way it is received and interpreted... i could be listening to a song and feel a similar emotion to the person who wrote it but be thinking about something completely different than what they were thinking about when they wrote it... which means that it's the musical description that is the root and the essence of the song...

let's say me and some girl that lives a few streets down from me both lived with cats that we had for 3 years and they both died on the same day by getting hit by a car... i could be totally miserable and scarred and she could be relieved or something because she didn't have the money to buy the cat it's flee medication anymore. but maybe the feeling i had was somewhat equivalent to the feeling she had when she found out santa claus wasn't real when she was 6 years old. The only way the two of us would be able to communicate our relationship with this emotion would be to hear some vague abstract description of it that shows the feeling of the emotion but doesn't say one certain circumstance that brought the emotion into existence.

Okay, I'm getting pretty tired of writing. But yeah, anyways I hope that made some sense. Basically... music and sound is rad and it accomplishes things that words can't and that in a song it's the music and dictates the way the lyrics come off... and if you don't know the words... it doesn't mean you can't feel the feeling of the song and sometimes not knowing the words is better! With the music i make in particular i really encourage people to listen to it and regard the way they hear it and the way they process it as their own and apply it to their lives and think about things through their own heads instead of just analyzing mine... and after that if anybody wants to read the lyrics i wrote because they are curious about me and my tangible take on the music they can go read them on my website, www.jennipotts.com

But how the music i make makes you feel is much more important for you than how i felt when i wrote it or how i feel when i listen to it. And my lyrics aren't even really that cool anyway... i'm not a poet.