Writing Yourself

In Literature, we are strongly discouraged from assuming that the main character or narrator of a piece is the author himself. In fiction, a writer has to create a personality, a persona, which fits the story that they want to tell. Often though, if you look at the life of the author, you will see a number of similarities between the writer and the character. Those similarities certainly don't mean that the character IS the author or vice-versa, but it can often cause me to question where the line is. At what point does the character separate himself from the writer (or is it the writer who separates himself from the character)? I certainly know from my own writing that it would not be as powerful as it is or communicate the message that I am attempting to convey if the characters did not have a little bit of me in them. On the other hand, if the characters were me entirely, my writing would be very boring! I am not all that exciting a person. So how much of a writer is present in their characters, and in their works? This is an idea that intrigues me. When reading Don Juan or another poem by Lord Byron, with a Byronic Hero, is it safe to assume that the Byronic Hero is Byron himself? Not exactly. Though he was described to be "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know," this isn't exactly what a Byronic Hero is. When looking at poetry such as "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, can we assume that the speaker is Plath herself? Not exactly. While there are certainly a lot of similarities we can draw between Plath and the speaker, they are not expressly one and the same, for certain. In music, the same questions appear. Is the lyricist the one speaking, or is it a persona that they have adopted who is speaking? This, it seems, depends largely on the lyricist.

Former INXS frontman Michael Hutchence was one who liked to write lyrics that could be interpreted in a number of ways, to mean a number of things, depending on who was reading them. They may have started out as a very personal experience or thought, but he worked to turn them into something universal. While he certainly achieved that, how much of himself did he leave in the songs? On the band's album Elegantly Wasted, Andrew Farriss said that Michael was in a very different "head space" than what he typically would be, and his lyrics were far more about what he was dealing with in his personal life than usual. Songs such as "I'm Just a Man" and "Searching" certainly point to this, especially when considered in relation to his life circumstances at the time.

U2's Bono began to adopt a persona through which to sing at some point possibly as early as the 1988 album Rattle and Hum, but certainly by the 1991 album Achtung Baby. The lyrics on that album began to touch too closely to his real life, and he found them too personal to be able to perform them as himself. At that point, he became The Fly for the ZooTV tour, and was able to sing those lyrics as someone other than himself. Each persona he has adopted over the years has shown itself not only in his dress, but also in the voice he uses to sing the lyrics. By being someone other than himself, Bono is able to sing about himself.

Taking a look at a newer band and singer, Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October writes intensely personal lyrics and attempts to take himself back to the moment he wrote them when he performs live. When the band first began to write songs, Justin took his personal journal and diary entries and turned those into songs. His lyrics speak of addictions, mental breakdowns, anger, and so much more.

Even knowing how intensely personal these lyrics are by these singers, can we assume that they are entirely THAT PERSON? I think that it is doing them a disservice to make that assumption, because while they may have come from a very personal place, an intense part of their lives...there is so much more to them. We can't know everything there is to know about Michael Hutchence or Bono or Justin Furstenfeld by listening to their lyrics. We can however relate to the emotions which their lyrics express. Just as in poetry, we can find things within the song which touches us on some level and take from it what we will.