Gertrude Stein

Writing the second 'Fashion Song', a setting of Stein's 'A Long Dress', I spent weeks listening to  as many of the poet's own recordings as I could. Trying to capture her elusive rhythmic delivery and the typical pitch-patterns, I used a frequency analyser at one point to help pin it all down. And then it seemed quite natural to listen to rap, because there's just so much of that in her delivery. So it was song after song. particularly by Drake. And then I had to let it all  ferment and try to forget about it. The result - fifteen bars of mayhem written in two days, no alterations to the line structure, no repeated phrases, just the words as they are on the page.  I am, every time, perplexed by how these things arrive on the page, good, bad or indifferent. It's a complete mystery.