What's my style?

When you stop and think about it, it's easy to see why so many philosophers have moments of existential crisis and go insane (if only for a little while).  Life is so grand in scale, and we have such a short time here, that thinking about what has meaning and is valuable to you can be daunting and panic inducing (if you're a bit unhinged to begin with).  While my ambitions of personal thought, and the topic of this blog post, aren't at the macro level of life in general, I have recently been pondering what my poetic/musical style is, or should be, and have decided that deciding is decidedly difficult.

For instance, do I want my poems and songs to be well composed, using all the tools in the language toolbox to create sweeping mental pictures in those who read them in a perfect, transcendental manner?  Or should I go for hooks, with catchy tunes and choruses that may not say much, but just feel good with a nice rhythm?  Or perhaps go the route of John Darnielle (lead singer of The Mountain Goats) and pour my personal life and feelings (which I pretty much wear on my sleeve anyway) onto the page for everyone to see, no matter how vulnerable that is?  Or maybe I just want to find someone else to sing with, for some great harmonies like the Avett Brothers or Dispatch.  Writing music alone can be so limiting.  Alternatively, I could work on the music first, and try to disconnect the words from the interesting guitar lines, like DMB seems to do so well (seriously, try listening to Satellite/The Stone/Rhyme & Reason/You Never Know for examples of how the hands and vocal chords can by so out of sync and still sound great).  Or maybe it's all about the raw, truth of the lyrics that Bob Dylan pulls off so well.

In any case, I have not yet decided, and everything I write seems to fall into random categories without a cohesive vision.  I don't yet know if that's due to an immaturity of the writing, or whether my eclectic tastes just make it difficult to shoehorn myself into a category.  In any case, at least I still find value in the act of writing.





Note: If you're interested in diving deeper into a discussion of values and worth, I highly recommend reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance