What is the World Coming To?

This week for CIUT 89.5 fm's morning show Take 5 I was encouraged to write a song in honour of upcoming Global Orgasm Day on December 22nd. Last week, one of the show's reporters interviewed the founders of the first-annual event. They are a free-spirited and loving couple in San Francisco, both seniors, who invite everyone in the world to envision world peace while participating in an unprecedented surge of coordinated positive energy.

Now THIS is a song topic!

At first, I figured I'd simply roll with the double-entendres and the giggles, maybe throw the "F Word" into a lyric (rhymes with luck, buck, roll in the muck...) and have a good ol' romp in the studio on Friday, the climax of the week.

Then a funny thing happened. I went to the Global O website and saw how serious it is...and realized I couldn't make fun of it in good conscience.

I also realized, as I started to write, that it's a lot easier to write a good song about two people (even if they're fictional) as it is to write a song about Everyone-In-the-World-All-Longing-for-World-Peace. (Or, for that matter, to attempt to write the official Global O theme song.) Because my weekly task is to write a good song, fast, I can't hold out for "Imagine". I have to write something simple and immediate and true. This is an excellent rule-of-thumb for the successful writing of any song. Keep it simple. Start small and build up.

I started with several "small" ideas, and started assembling. The ideas were:
1) one clever lyric that said something meaningful ("what is the world coming to?", a pun which refers to both orgasm and the complexity of world problems), 2) a romantically bluesy chord change (because I wanted the song to sound sexy), 3) the notion of how this might concern one couple, not the whole world, and 4) the Internet. Why the Internet? Because this is the sort of story people exchange links over and laugh about from the remove of e-mail. I have always wanted to successfully make reference to e-mail in a song. (After hundreds of songs written about telephone conversations, it's about time.)

When I start with a combination of strong song elements like that, the creative process generally kicks into gear. Then, often, the song turns out to be something surprising and unexpected.

In this case, "What is the World Coming To?" turned out to be not upbeat and funny, but somewhat bittersweet...hopeful yet sad. And that seems right to me. Our lives (and loves) are seldom simple...and they blend pleasure and pain in all kinds of ever-changing and dynamic ways. That's true of our relationship with the planet as well as with each other.

(You can find the song to listen or download in Take5's archives.)