As a person, I’m very lyrical in nature. I’m armed with a racing mind, and have always thought of myself as sharp tongued. My extroverted personality has coupled well with this in my life, and I knew that my idea for a solo performance would have to revolve around my strengths as a person, as well as a performer. As a young artist, my creativity with words and interests in the art of spoken word rap music, have often inspired me to dream about creating such types of work. Indeed, one of my true passions is in rapping. I often freestyle to hip hop instrumentals, challenging myself to use complex lexical choices, in order to train my mind to think on its proverbial feet. This previous experience has lead me to think that perhaps a freestyle rap, or a performance where the content would be specifically musical, and rhythmic in nature would be something I could develop for my maiden solo voyage.
Since I was very young I have listened to rap music. I worshipped artists such as Eminem, whose gritty persona and horrifically dark content matter are morphed into beautifully crafted lyrics and expertly executed word-play. His mastery of creative vocabulary made his lyrics diverse, although he chose to make his songs dark in nature and dealt with the taboo freely. He used his demons as a catalyst for his creative powers, and I’d like to do the same. I’m a strong believer in the idea that, if your work stems from something you feel strongly about, be it positive or negative, that emotional energy will pay dividend in how effective the work is at getting its message across. Wordplay has often been, for me, something that I can always go to, because I feel comfortable there artistically. Eminem takes wordplay to a very complex multi-syllabic level, using the rhyming, fricative vowel sounds, and his own colloquial twist, to rhyme words that wouldn’t usually be seen together. He does this to great effect in the video below:
However, Eminem didn’t just inspire me simply because of his lyrical prowess, I was most amazed with the way he evolved into an alter ego, Slim Shady, for some of his works. In particular, the songs that were criminal in nature, plummeting his listeners into the deep abysses of his mind, where his difficult childhood had exposed him to terrifying experiences, which were then expressed through songs in which Slim Shady was the story teller. Sometimes, he would threaten, and vividly describe the horrific acts of which he had fantasized about, or indeed experienced himself. This alter ego of his expressed some of the thoughts and feelings he genuinely had, but needed to create an entirely different persona, embedded with pieces of himself, to express them in their entirety. For example, Eminem, or even Marshall Mathers for that matter, was not a chainsaw wielding maniac who enjoyed the killing, raping and mutilation of women on a regular basis. He did, however, have an anger problem stemmed from a difficult childhood, and used his persona as Slim Shady to express and vent this anger in an artist way, as graphic as that content may have been. In the video below, we can see Eminem as his alter ego, Slim Shady, parading across the stage holding a chainsaw for the excitement of his fans. This for me, was proof that the use of an alias, or alter ego can be an effective method of projecting your views across to the audience, without entirely losing your own traits as a person in the process.
My fascination with lyricism stretches over several mediums, for example, I have always appreciated the imagery in gothic literature, the likes of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe in particular. Poe’s dark and rhythmic works, most notably ‘The Raven’ is renowned for its gothic overtones and sense of narrative structure, a story taking the reader from one plain of disparity to the another of regret and hopelessness. In the case of The Raven, this disparity comes from the loss of a ‘lost Lenore’ and the questioning of an enigmatic raven who only answers “Nevermore”. A torturous narrative that is so intricately woven it became arguably the most famous lyrical poem from an American author. The contrast of such rhythmic and delicately phrased poetry to the melancholic and mysterious content matter, creates a supernatural feel to the piece, and that resonated with me profoundly. After digging deeper, and seeing the sheer volume of people, some famous, some simply poetry lovers; I was surprised at just how fascinating it was to hear these words brought to life dramatically. The thing that surprised me the most was how much more invested I became in the poems narrative, now that I was hearing the words directly from someone else.
My mind began churning out ideas about what I could do to create a similar effect, the sound effects that I could place, not only behind it, but in between it as well. All with the purpose of enhancing the sense of narrative within my work. You see, I had already explored the performance of rap music, as it had been a hobby of mine since I was a child, writing, free-styling with my friends, and listening to every rapper under the sun had made me rather well versed in the art of rap. However, poetry was something that wasn’t my speciality, albeit I do have a rudimentary knowledge of some famous poets: Shakespeare, Carol Ann Duffy, Oscar Wilde and indeed other gothic novelists, like the unerring Stephen King. But I had yet to explore the writing, devising and performing of this art form. I decided I would begin with ‘The Raven’. Searching on the website for the poetry foundation, I was able to acquaint myself with poem in a performative sense, attempting to unlock a more complex understanding of the gothic themes, by experimenting with a dramatic reading of my own.
www.poetryfoundation.org
This would cement in my mind two things. Firstly, I will be setting out to build my performance around lyricism, with the textual content and the manner in which it was read being at the epicentre of the show. In addition, my taste for the dark and sometimes offensive or taboo subject matter will ensure that my work be of a particularly dark, or gothic nature. For some reason, that I can’t quite out my finger on, I’ve always had this fascination with the evil and macabre. That, coupled with the narrative structure I want my piece to have, will require me to think about what specific gothic avenue I take my work down, but it is something I am looking forward to in the coming weeks.