Songwriting is a little like approaching Anish Kapoor's ArcelorMittal Orbit, which I had the pleasure of standing alongside at the weekend. Kapoor said, 'I wanted the sensation of instability, something that was continually in movement. Traditionally a tower is pyramidal in structure, but we have done quite the opposite, we have a flowing, coiling form that changes as you walk around it. … It is an object that cannot be perceived as having a singular image, from any one perspective. You need to journey round the object, and through it. Like a Tower of Babel, it requires real participation from the public.' With a song you get a lyrical feel, words that make sense and tied to the music. The songwriter thinks he or she is building a tower but that can only exist in your sense of the whole thing; its not until you release the songs, play them, put them out there, butterfly-like, so that others can see them, hear them, walk around them and through them and experience them, do they become real. And they never sit still because they are always open to interpretation and adaptation. I once wrote a song called 'Hold Me' which was a bit of a rake's progress song. Or at least I sung it that way - slightly embarrassed that a man my age should write a love song. However, my good friends Lorna Bird and Mairead O'Donnell put it on there first album as a love song and the effect is astonishing - so what do I know, what does the writer ever know (only that perhaps its time we sang together soon). This song isn't really about burgundy shoes.
