Tag Archives: blogging

Songwriters as Storytellers, Or Why My Heart Still Belongs to 70s Soft Rock

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I often feel sorry for kids these days. I grew up in the 70s, when we weren’t marinating in mass media. TV wasn’t on 24 hours a day; reruns were a disappointment. You actually went outside and played, and you learned to entertain yourself. My friends and I invented characters, intricate plotlines, and sets and costumes. A lot of kids had imaginary friends. We knew how to create something out of nothing, no problem. We were storytellers, or “content creators” in today’s terminology.

Since we had a lot of time to fill, our minds were allowed to wander. My favorite daydream time was during my family’s weekly trips to my grandma’s house, 20 to 30 minutes away, depending on which route we took. There certainly was a lot of fighting and fussing in the station wagon. But there was a lot of peace, too. We usually listened to AM radio, soft rock that was unthreatening, soothing, and sappy. Cringey.

I listened and I heard. The stories told in these songs were more enlightening than any Grimm’s fairytale. (I could never figure out what lesson I was supposed to take away from those things.)

But 70s soft rock spoke to me.

She ran calling Wildfire.

Don’t it make my brown eyes blue.

Sara, smile.

You fill up my senses like a night in the forest.

I listened and I learned. I imagined the singers and their muses. I developed plot points connecting the origins of the song to how they played out, and beyond. I puzzled over some very adult themes, far more adult than my elementary school brain could comprehend. I get it now.

And sometimes I cringe, but doesn’t John Denver sort of hit you right in the solar plexus sometimes? Don’t you want to walk right into one of his stories, clad in flannel with your shoulders warm from the sunshine, and hang out for a while? I sure do. Still.

Introducing Lisa Kaiser, The Writer’s Blog

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Hi, I’m Lisa Kaiser. You know—Lisa Kaiser the Writer. Thanks for coming to my blog! I’m going to use this space to explore issues like writing, procrastinating about writing, and feeling better after having written something.  The age-old worries that every scribbler, chiseler, and scribe has felt when confronting a blank page or stone tablet. Don’t worry—I’ll be sure to write a happy ending for all.

Folks often ask my why and how I became a writer. I can’t say I was always driven to do so. I loved stories, but so does every kid. I wanted to be a poet, though, and was able to publish two poems (age 7) in the local newspaper. And I wrote a journal of our family vacation in Florida on a memo pad, so I guess a slight talent for observing and reporting was already bubbling up to the surface. But I can’t say that I was encouraged to keep writing—and certainly not to become a professional writer. I was told that “writing is the most egotistical act one can undertake.” And as a nice Catholic girl, I knew that pursuing anything smacking of ego was going to land me in the confessional for a long, long time.

So that was that.

Fast forward to a recession and a lack of opportunities, and a love of taking photos that needed captions, and the realization that if other people could do it, so could I. Egotistical, sure. But at this point I no longer feared darkening the door of a confessional.

I promise that my future blog posts will not be so egotistical. Thanks for reading!