Creating metaphors with Pat Pattison

Hello everyone. Welcome to the What's in a Song podcast. I'm your host, Scarlett Keys, and today we will be talking to professor and author and songwriter Pat Pattison. And last week. I had Maddie Diaz on the show, artist, fabulous singer-songwriter, Maddie Diaz. And She briefly mentioned an exercise that she did in my lyric writing one class. back in two thousand five that really informed her writing

changed her writing. She loved that exercise, and I didn't want to stop the episode to take a deep dive into that. That's what this episode is for. You're gonna have the rare opportunity to actually know what it might be like to sit in a classroom and learn from Pat Pattison. Who literally wrote the book on lyric writing? Writing better lyrics.

I know for a fact that that book is sits in the bathroom of John Mayer and he reads it over and over again. I know Jason Isbel is a big fan of that book and many, many other writers. And today Pat's gonna talk us through how he teaches his students to write using metaphors. And there's a very specific exercise in his book, Writing Better Lyrics, that he's gonna talk about. So we're gonna take a deep dive and hopefully you will

come out of this inspired and writing some metaphors. So I love this exercise. It's something that I still have my students do and it really changes your brain forever and helps you make new connections and makes you a more creative writer. So

Uh before ma before I introduce Pat Patterson, I wanna just say thank you so much for listening to this podcast and sharing it. Please follow me on Scarlet Keys Official on Instagram and If you like what you hear and you're getting something out of this podcast. I would love to hear from you. And if you'd like to support this podcast, please go to scarletkeys.com and click on buy me a coffee. It's so nice.

to get a message from you, to hear about what you're getting out of this podcast. I love knowing that I'm on a walk with you right now or a long drive. Maybe I'm helping you do laundry. I know that these podcasts are long. I just can't stop them. They have to be the length that they are. So you can just break it up and enjoy it when you can.

So please uh please support us if you like what you hear and share this with your friends. All right, here is my conversation with Pat Pattison. Hello, Pat. Welcome back. Thank you. Always lovely to chat. It is lovely to chat with you and I always walk away from a conversation with you, learning something or being more curious. And it is so fun to have someone else in the world to talk about songwriting on this level with. And

We both had Maddie Diaz as a student and she was on my podcast, my last episode, and she talked about an exercise that really changed her as a writer. And of course, it's an exercise from your book. Writing better lyrics, chapter three. So I would love to just turn things over to you and have you talk about metaphor, writing metaphor and the exercises in your book in chapter.

I'm not much of a piano player. You're the piano player in the in the family here. Um but uh I'm I'm quite fond of Sitting down at the piano, watching the students' eyes open wide, preparing for the level of incompetence that they're about to see. But I I make a big deal out of it and um uh Then I I hit very carefully a C major triad. And ask for applause. Uh which which they

Uh the uh I talk about the various notes in the C major triad. Um that um uh the tonic and the fifth, uh the C and the G, uh, when you strike them together, there are very few overtones. Um and the um uh the beats that uh uh are created are very wide. Then I add the third and the third then creates uh some significant beats because it uh creates more tension. Um, but still that's mom, dad, and junior. Um and then um we have um uh the various other notes. uh which are not

They're they're not mom, dad, and the kids. In fact, uh, the seventh degree of the scale is Uncle Ed, who uh falls asleep on the couch during Thanksgiving dinner and drools, and there are still stains there, but he's family. So that everybody there is a member of the family. And then I go through the the the then um uh I I strike the F sharp major triad.

And say, you know, that's a family too. And the same kinds of overtones are available in the various notes of the F-sharp major triad or F-sharp major chord. um uh as uh there are in the C major chord. But if I were to strike the two chords together. I would get overtones that are available in neither F sharp major or C major. uh and those overtones are something new, something that is created by the collision of two Um

So something new is created and that's what metaphor is. Metaphor is a collision of two ideas that are not in the same key.

so that we can talk about um the tide as a key. Oh And if we talk about the tide, then there are members of that family. Uh there's a waves Um there's uh the moon if you want to go that far. There's the beach, um, there's surfers, there's all sorts of things that uh happen with the tide. And then if we say something like an army is a tide. Um then we get something really interesting that is an army has its own

ideas that are associated with it, but tide isn't one of them. So that we can say the army flowed over the enemy or the army surged over the enemy. Or we could uh uh say that the tide is currently bivouacked, but will be attacking soon. So that uh once you decide that That metaphor works like music in that sense. Uh once you collide two ideas. Then you can take the nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs in one of the ideas and apply them to the other.

And that gives you uh just an incredible um artillery, ammo dump. of um of waves and um floods. Ha ha ha. Wow, you really spoken in both languages, both keys at the same time. W earl early on in uh teaching people metaphor. Uh once once you establish the idea of collision. Then uh I just ask in a in a class, I will um uh divide uh the class of say 12 people into two groups.

uh group a and group one because self-esteem is important. Uh and then I will have I will say to group A, um Uh write down three interesting adjectives. And they'll write down three interesting adjectives or what they think are interesting adjectives. And group one will write down three interesting nouns.

And then I'll ask, I'll just pick the first person in group A and the first person in group one and have them do the adjective noun and see if it collides and then ask people, you know, what that collision could possibly be. Uh um so um uh uh wrinkled hope, for example. Ooh, that's interesting. Uh wrinkled hope. Oh Uh and and so we'll go through the collisions and by the t by the time we're done there will be eighteen possible collisions because each

A group of six had three. And those um those collisions, probably in nouns and adjectives, we will get. uh maybe three to five that are really interesting and the rest of them aren't. Let's take um uh the the adjective rushing. Rushing and what's what is the noun waves. Rushing waves. Well waves can rush. And then we point out that that's not a metaphor, because of course waves can rush, and a metaphor must always be literally false. We also find out that there are adjectives

That have something to do with the object itself, the noun itself. And then there are some adjectives that have to do with my opinion. So if my adjective was beautiful. It really doesn't matter what the noun is. I'm not going to get much of a collision because beautiful says not something about the object, but says something about my opinion of the object. And I call those subjective adjectives. As opposed to objective adjectives.

So you're not going to get much of a collision. So that first round of adjective noun is really useful because it allows you to talk about uh subjectivity.

and adjectives that really are not uh useful in metaphor. So uh and then uh I'll have them I'll have group uh group A do three nouns apiece. and have group uh one do three verbs. And now things start crackling with the nouns and the verbs. I mean, some of them of course are are going to be um baseball uh strike. Uh no, um but because they it can. But otherwise, uh we'll find out out of the 18, there are probably at least twelve, maybe s maybe more that create interesting collision.

And then, you know, we start talking about the power of verm. And how important they are. And the third uh the third time, uh nouns and nouns. That that gives them a sense of the collisions and that prepares them then for exercise eight. Step one. I think this is where Maddie really, really got going. So uh step one, just write down five interesting adjectives. and spend a day or so.

Take the first one, whatever that may be, wrinkled, for example, and go through the cosmos looking for a noun that really creates an interesting collision. And don't don't just find one and write it down. Uh spend some time. What else can be wrinkled? What else can be wrinkled? Um uh uh the pond can be wrinkled. Um uh Uh a wrinkled lawn. What's a wrinkled lawn? I don't know. Um

And just keep keep going until you find something that's oh wow and then write it down. Then take your second adjective and so on. And this uh looking for nouns from adjectives should take you. Maybe several hours. And sometimes you won't be thinking about it, but then you'll come back and you'll think about it again. Wrinkled wind. Um Uh and certainly back to wrinkled hope, uh wrinkled face, you know, some of the abstract terms might work nicely with something as specific as wrinkled.

And so you do that, and by the time, by the time you finish, you have five really interesting collisions. Then the step two, you write down five nouns and start looking for a verb for each one. And to take take as long as you like. Step three, and this whole thing should take you about a week. Step three, then you write down verbs. five good verbs and look for nouns. Um that reverses step two. So once you get into that.

Um once you see the power of verbs, now we're going back to adjectives and nouns. And I'm having you uh list nouns, five nouns, and find an adjective for each one. And because we've done verbs. I can now introduce very useful category of adjectives, adjectives ending in ing, wrinkling. Wrinkle it. And of course, then being the sadist that I am, I ask them what the ing form of the verb is called.

And they'll get they'll get gerons and all of that stuff. And I uh I say, you know, back in Fifth grade, uh you learned the word participle, which is a verbal noun. Present participle wrinkling and a past participle wrinkled, wrinkled hope. Which means it's already and then wrinkling hope, which means it's in the process of So once you now understand that adding an ing to a verb turns it into an adjective, now you have a whole other list.

of possibilities when you're looking for collisions with nouns and adjectives because you have uh participles to work with. And uh, you know, back in fifth grade when you got it either right or wrong on the test, you figured, I'll never need that again. Uh well, guess what? Now they become your best friend when you're looking for metaphor. And then finally, step five is to write down is to have a list of five nouns, and you look for then a noun that collides with each one.

An army is a pack of rabid wolves. So this is called expressed identity where A equals B. So those those five steps. which should take you about a week, are, as you say, going to create new neural pathways. Uh it's really, really uh a lovely, lovely way to live, actually. Aristotle said that the ability to see one thing as though it were something else. only truly creative human end.

The ability to see one thing as though it is something else, as though it is another thing, is the only truly creative human. Uh I don't know if that's true, but Aristotle said it and it seems to me to be pretty true. What it does is it creates in in your neural pathways the ability to stand on a cliff by the ocean, see the waves and see the foam.

coming off of the waves and think, wow, there's a lot of foam there. But if on the other hand, you've read T. S. Elliott's the love song of J. Elford Profrock, I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Do I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach. I've seen I've heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves, combing the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black. combing the white hair of the waves blown back uh uh when when the wind blows the water white and black. So once you start seeing the foam that's blowing as white hair Then you see that the waves have made a long journey. Uh and finally in their old age gathering all the force that they can muster. They crashed to the shore. Um man, that's how I want to go.

You know, that's Verdi is my hero. Oh at uh age 89 he wrote Falstaff and Otello. his two masterworks. And then he died. And you can you can see the white hair of the waves. Um as generations. uh that this generation now has crashed and yet here comes another generation uh getting old with its hair streaming back, its white hair streaming back as it surges for the beach.

Um and man, you know, it what it does is it makes your life so much richer to be able to see so many connections between things. And that's what metaphor does.

And for the songwriter, it also can You know, we we start with sort of a very common theme emotionally, the breakup or the whatever. And now it's time to reinvent that emotion in a new way. And one of the ways that we can do that or describe it in a new way is is by using a metaphor. You know, you have John Mayer in a relationship where he's fighting all the time and

No one really wins because they're just fighting all the time. And that's not really songworthy until he goes, hold on, what else is like that? Ah, warfare is like that. And then he writes heartbreak warfare, which is two nouns colliding together. You have heartbreak and warfare. And now he's bringing the language of warfare into this. Lyric, and now I'm interested in his tumultuous relation. Now I'm interested because that's really fresh language.

Yeah, my my favorite of those from John is um Belief is just a beautiful armor. Belief is a beautiful armor. Um, but it makes for the heaviest sword. It's like punching underwater. You never can hit what you're trying. Belief is a beautiful armor. It's just it's so amazing. Uh the comment on. And that's the it's probably one of the uh one of the most effective anti-war songs that I know. Uh what puts uh what puts the folded flag inside the mother's hand? Belief can.

Belief can. And he says if if belief is what you're fighting, we can we'll we'll never win win a war if belief is what we're fighting for, because everybody has different beliefs. And so if you're fighting for belief, uh you're gonna be fighting forever. It's a beautiful armor. T. S. Elliott has a term which I really love. He calls it the objective correlative, objective correlative, an object. That correlates my feeling with yours. And that's what metaphor is. It shows you something.

I just heard a song uh last week actually on a Deep House channel. I don't expect to hear good lyrics on Deep House, but um you know I wasn't paying much attention and then this line popped out, you're still the coin in the air. You're still the coin in the air. I mean there are there are songs that spend the whole song saying, I don't know what you're thinking. I don't know whether it's yes or no. What are you but when you say you're still the coin in the air.

Uh i it's just right there and that's the objective correlative. Everybody knows the feeling of seeing the coin in the air. And so my feeling and your feeling are connected by the fact that we both have a feeling for the coin in the air. It was it was really a treat to um Uh go back and look at that song. It was full of metaphor and simile and everything else. It's uh uh called my reflection and it's L-E-E-L-I and Fur F-U-R. Well let's go ahead and play the song.

Yeah, you're like an atlas. Note by the way that that's a simile. You're like an atlas somewhere that don't exist. Um up in the cloud up where the clouds never reach. All I need's direction. Um uh what's interesting about the simile there is that it's not a metaphor. And it's more than just using like and as. Um, what it does, what it what a simile does, is it keeps the focus on the you. You're like an atlas. So we're not taking the atlas seriously, we're not committing to it.

um we keep looking at you in you're like an atlas. Whereas if I said you, you're an atlas, then I'm gonna be talking about at So that so that when you use simile, you're you don't have to commit to the second term. Continuing the verse, maybe it's magic, maybe I like control, but you're still the sand on my skin. the dust in the wind. You're the sand on my skin. That that really commits, that metaphor really commits. Hard to get off. The dust in the wind.

Oh and then the course so it goes, I had your love. Now I can't live without it. I can't live without it while you're still in my reflection. So for for me, the the place that I went uh uh is looking in a mirror. uh and I'm looking in the mirror and I see not only myself, but I also see you. Uh and as long as that's the case. Gosh, I don't know. I don't know uh how I can see myself again. Uh just see myself. And uh I also Are you hearing the word still used in two different ways?

I hear it as an motionless you are you know does you you are uh yes. continuingly in my reflection, and you are motionless. You are unmoving in my reflection. Yeah. And then my reflection, of course, is uh is my reflection in the mirror, or I like to think of it as uh a narcissist.

uh staring into the water, echo up behind him or something like that. And then then there's you're still in my reflection. Every time I reflect on something, you're there. So you get you get a double meaning on still and a double meaning on on reflection. Then we come to another uh another simile. You're like a magnet, so you're not a magnet, you're like a magnet, similar to, but not the same as a magnet. Uh my compass uh hooked on you taking me further away, so pulling me away from myself.

And what do you think would have happened if it was you're a magnet? Uh then I'm focusing on the magnet. Then I then I see in in metaphor uh expressed identity, you equals magnet, the is, you are a magnet, uh passes the current. And so the second term in metaphor absorbs the first term. Magnet, you are you are a magnet. Now I'm thinking, now I'm now I'm talking about magnet. You're like a magnet, and I'm talking about you. I mean it's a really interesting and

Uh it's a difference in kind. It's not a difference in degree, it's a difference in kind. Maybe I lack control. You're still the coin in the air. And I don't know where that leaves me. Heads or tails, wings or sails. Where do I go when you're looking back at me? Yeah, in the mirror. a coin in the air. So yeah, I mean, and these are singer-songwriters who are basically DJs.

They're out there, they're out there like Skrillix and all the other folks, uh having these big DJ parties and spinning, working with Ableton Live, I think, is is is the the way they go. Interesting group.

So you had a student for years uh that that continue to be your student and probably still is, Gillian Welsh. Uh you can find her writings all through your book. Um, some of her writing examples in writing better lyrics and She had a new song that just came out. And speaking of noun-noun collisions, the title of that song is a noun-noun collision. Empty train loop. of sky. The sky is an empty train load. Ant empty train load is the sky. So yeah, let's go back to noun noun collisions.

A equals B. Hope is a butterfly. A hope B butterfly. Hope is a butterfly. There are two other forms of that, the butterfly of hope or hope's butterfly. So A equals B, the B of A, A's B. Hope is a butterfly, butterfly of hope. Hope's butterfly. So you have all three of those forms of expressed identity of noun noun collision. So empty trade load of sky is one of the forms of uh expressed identity. Well let's go ahead and play it. Here is empty train load of sky.

which is th the most recent release by Gillian Welsh and Dave Rollins. A metaphor is What it is. I'll say that again. The metaphor is what it is plus more. So that when you're working with metaphor, that is When the metaphor is one that is going to dominate your song rather than just be a little blip in a song, uh a central metaphor, we call it at Berkeley, I find it really interesting to be its most literal early. And then you can move past it and say what else it can be or what else it does.

After that. So Gil's first verse here is, Saw a freight train yesterday. It was chugging, plugging away cross a river trestle so high. just a boxcar blue showing daylight clear through. Just an empty train mode of sky. So now we have the literal picture. of a train going over a trestle and the boxcar's doors are open and you can see right through it. It's empty, but it's full of sky. You see the blue from the other side of it. This is an AABA song, by the way.

And A A B A song form is verse verse. Well it hit me and it hurt me, made my good humor desert me. Desert me for a moment I was tempted to fly to the devil or the Lord, as it hung there like a sword, just an empty trainload of sky. And note the simile of like a sword. It's not a sword, but it hung there. The train on the trestle hung there like a sword. Now you can see the shape of it. Bridge. Was it spirit? Was it solid?

Did I ditch that class in college? Pulled a curtain from my eye. I said, hey, hey. My my saw a freight train yesterday, it was chugging, plugging away. Just an empty train load of sky. Just an empty train load of sky. Just an empty train load of sky. Really simple A A B A, gorgeous, gorgeous piece of writing. Train load of sky, it feels like a puzzle.

Like w what? What are you what are you talking about? And also then we go on to sort of explain what we mean and she gets to play with that collision that makes what she's saying so interesting and unique.

I remember sitting in a class with you and you would try when you're trying to collide two things together that might not seem like they belong together, you would start with the characteristics of those things. For example, you might start with an adjective, you know, caffeinated, and then find a noun, table. and s ask yourself, you know, what do these two things share in common? And immediately you kinda go, Well, you know, table is solid and caffeinated feels very jittery and in motion.

I don't really feel that's gonna be a match, so I might move on to something that does share something with caffeinated like a noun like conversation. so you could feel that sort of buzzing, frenetic conversation and then you have oh, you know, I couldn't wait to escape that caffeinated conversation. Do you still do that? Do you still find that important to have those two words you're about to collide together and ask what do they share in common before you collide them together?

Oh yeah, that's it's the most helpful way to find metaphor. You know, exercise eight uh prepares you for that. Uh it's it's um It's it's really fun. Okay, let's try it. How about I'll pick a noun, uh water bottle. What quality does a water bottle have? Well, I mean I could say it's round. But that's not really a quality of water bottle. What if find an essential quality? What does it do? Okay, it quenches thirst. Water bottle quenches thirst. What else quenches thirst? A library.

a library. So um uh I can now take nouns adjectives and adverbs and verbs uh diatonic to either one of those um and apply them because they have in common that they both quench thirst. um thirst for knowledge, uh physical thirst. I took a long drink of Faulkner today. You know, I've been pretty dry. I haven't been reading much. have been pretty dry and went to the library today. And oh my goodness, um uh it energized me and it just keeps me just keeps me going.

You have another book that really expands chapter three. titled Songwriting Without Boundaries and you have all of these wonderful exercises in that book on how to build metaphor, but not only to build metaphor, but to really um write better songs in general using the language of something else to write about something else. So we're taking these common themes that we all go through and want to express as songwriters and as human beings, and we're just trying to find new ways to say them.

And the seasons they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down, We're captive on the carousel of time. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the circle game. Joni Mitchell Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now. Cartwheels turn to carwheels through the town. They tell him, take your time, it won't be long now. till you drag your feet to slow the circles down. I thought getting old would take longer.

Drag your feet to slow the circles down. So that uh uh you know, this whole thing about uh the I mean her whole song Circle Game. Once once you introduce the um the metaphor of the uh painted ponies, the carousel of time, then you're continuing to go around and around and the idea that you can't ever Return, we can only look behind from where we came. We can't ever get younger. All we can do is remember what that other circle was like.

So establishing the metaphor uh and then being able to to do stuff with it, I think is pretty pretty cool.

Absolutely. Do the exercises um and um Uh I'd certainly recommend I mean, yeah, exercise aid in writing better lyrics is good, but if you really want to deep dive into it, uh, in songwriting without boundaries, Um the first it's divided into four 14-day challenges. And the first fourteen days are uh sense bound writing, um which I call object writing. Um uh

And I do I divide that 14 day challenge into four different kinds of object writing, four different ways of object writing. Object writing for things. Object writing for time, when, object writing for place, where, and object writing for who. And then starting with the second 14 day challenge, that's finding metaphors. And you'll get all sorts of exercises there. Um and prompts to work with. And I've also added responses to the prompts from um really good writers.

And the third uh is also extending metaphor and re uh uh the reversing metaphor. So there's 28 days of metaphor challenge uh in that book that you can do. Then the fourth challenge is doing sense-bound metaphor writing in rhythm and rhyme. Um and I set the templates for that. So I think that's a place that um uh folks will get a lot of mileage out of. Yeah, for for me the process starts with getting experience at sense-bound writing. Um Uh the i the the step is okay, find your things. Now.

See that thing? What else can it be? But you need the thing before you can look through it to see what else it can be. so that I I recommend uh the object writing sense bound writing exercises first and then the metaphor exercises. Uh the metaphor exercises go so much. Deeper. if you are focused on sense bound writing. Learning to show rather than tell. is really important. Um and it's it's it's really simple. Um we have such a limited time in a song to get a message across.

Um, and so we need to be as efficient and effective as possible. Um and so showing is really interesting. So if if the lines are turn down the lights. Turn down the bed. Turn down these voices inside my head. Everybody has a picture of the bed. Uh they know what color the bed spread is. Um, so that Mike Reed and Alan Chamblin's words. Are full of your stuff. Therefore the song's about you.

If I say The smell of fresh cut grass, a slight breeze blowing through the through the pines, and the sound of a train in the distance. I know where I am, but because I've stimulated your senses, my words are full of your stuff, and it's about you, not me. So my job as a songwriter isn't to convince you that I am very Deep interesting. I'm a really deep interesting person. My job as a songwriter is to show you what a deep interesting person you are.

And you do that by showing again T.S. Elliott's objective correlative. Pretty profound stuff.

Thank you for being here today. Certainly my pleasure. And I would love to have people get your book and read chapter one. Then read chapter three and um, you know, maybe find me on Instagram and send me their favorite metaphor that they came up with after this. That's nice. Yeah. Will you share those with me? Yes, I will. Um so everyone, that is the legendary Pat Pattison coming on to share uh, you know, some of his work from

the best selling songwriting book there is, which is Writing Better Lyrics. And it is just still my favorite book to this day. So thank you, Pat, so much for being here. And I'll let you know what they send me. Okay. Thanks a lot. All right. So that was a basically a class with Pat Pattison. and he r was just I remember being at Berkeley in nineteen something

And taking his lyric writing one class and his poetry writing class and just feeling like the luckiest person in the world to be in that room and to be learning from him. He is such a phenomenal master teacher. So thank you so much again for listening to the podcast and I have some wonderful guests coming up. Next week we're gonna hear from Ben Camp, who's also a professor at Berkeley.

We're going to talk about using AI as a songwriter. It's here. We need to talk about it. So that is going to be the next episode. So I wanna thank Peter Sykes for mixing this episode and Otto Gross for co writing, producing and singing the theme show song and

Um, I do want to challenge you to do that r that metaphor writing exercise in chapter three of Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics book. Do it for a week. You have this as your assignment. Send us So I don't know how often people get to hear a song written by Pat Pattison, but I asked Pat to send me a song that I could share with you to end this podcast today. So here is a song written by Pat Pattison and although I really want to share

One of his more beautiful poetic songs. This is one of my favorite songs ever written and it's called Leave My Like Alone. In a hill