How a Bad Pun Birthed a New Song - Carolyn Arends

Knowing how many writers frequent this blog, I thought you might relate to this recent post from my own blog about the serious business of playing with words:

I've always loved puns. I was never particularly adept at schoolyard games, but I could make words play. (You can imagine how popular this made me in grade school.)

For a little stretch his past month, I enjoyed posting a daily pun on my Facebook page and watching my friends cyber-groan.

I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop anytime.

I'm reading a book on anti-gravity. I can't put it down.

Don't trust atoms. They make everything up.

and:

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

An unexpected thing happened with that last pun. I'm spending these warm days summer working on a Christmas record. It began to, well, dawn on me that at the heart of the  "dawn on me" joke there beat a rather promising song idea.

I started to think about what the first dawn after the birth of Jesus must have been like. I wondered if an exhausted Joseph, holding his adopted newborn in the aftermath of one very strange night, suddenly remembered the words of the prophet Isaiah:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. - Isaiah 9:2

I found myself writing the following lyrics from Joseph’s perspective:

What was he thinking in the starlight?

Did he have time to think at all?

A carpenter his whole life

Now he was a midwife

And then the shepherds came to call.

When Joseph held the newborn baby

Was the whole meaning still unclear?

A man can get so tired

Even angel choirs

Just leave a ringing in his ears.

Was it all a blur, all too much?

Until at last, the sun came up …

Did it dawn on him

At the moment when

Morning chased the night away?

Did it dawn on him

This was God with him

In the light of Christmas day

At about this stage in the songwriting process, I began to wonder if one can legitimately write a song inspired by a bad pun. I worried for a bit. But then I thought about the fact that what makes a pun work is the delight (or dismay, depending on how you feel about puns) of discovering that one word can mean two (or more) things.

A baby comes. He means disrupted sleep and diaper changes and all the usual baby things. He also, if the angels are to be believed, means Salvation. He is a word - the word - made flesh, come to play among us.

"Is it possible," Frederick Buechner wonders, "to say that it is only when you hear the Gospel as a wild and marvellous joke that you really hear it at all? Heard as anything else, the Gospel is the church’s thing, the preacher’s thing, the lecturer’s thing. Heard as a joke – high and unbidden and ringing with laughter – it can only be God’s thing."

I decided it was OK to write a song based on a pun. And so I wrote verse 2.

Now we put Joseph in the stable

We put the stable on display

A sweet nativity scene

Fragments of an old dream

What kind of difference does it make?

But if that baby in the manger

Came to be Light for everyone

Maybe all the darkness

Deep inside our hearts is

A sign that only he can come

And end at last the tyranny

Of endless night and set us free …

Let it dawn on us

Like the morning sun

Let him chase our night away

Let it dawn on us

This is God with us

In the light of Christmas day

Shortly after I finished writing the song, my friends over at Andrew Peterson's Rabbit Room blog reposted a CT column I had written a while back about the possible link between pleasure and worship. I'd talked about how eating the delicious chile con queso at my favourite TexMex restaurant was a worship experience for me. I'd defended my line of argument by noting that CS Lewis claimed every sensual enjoyment (properly received) could be a "tiny theophany" -  a small but important revelation of God.

The column, perhaps predictably, ended with a pun: "I rest my queso." In the comments section, someone named  J. T. Adamson posted encouragingly, and I had to grin at his final sentence:

Well said, well said…and ended with a pun, and a pun (properly received) is a “tiny theophany” (at least for me).

Ha! So come, let us adore the tiny theophany in the manger, the word who's meaning can never be exhausted. Whether it's June or December, I pray he dawns on each one of us today.

Merry Christmas!

Carolyn

www.carolynarends.com

CDs and Books and Massive Anxiety Attacks, Oh My - Arends

There is a lot of talk these days about the perilious future of both recorded music and book publishing. As a recording artist and author, I furrow my brow in the general direction of both topics. I was intriguiged by this recent article by music journalist Chet Flippo. He refers to a "massive anxiety attack" that has plagued the music industry for some time and discusses specifically his concerns that commercial uncertainty is breeding an artistic insecurity that is robbing recording artists of their "mojo". (I think one can draw some parallels to what is happening to many authors in the world of book publishing as well.)

I just began recording my 10th CD in August, and I have difficulty giving a solid business rationale for the undertaking. Digital distribution models (both of the legal and pirate variety) have radically changed the income potential for artists, which is a nice way of saying I won't make very much money. And my plans to record songs that would fit neatly in the direction my speaking and touring career has been going were all shot to bits when a passle of new songs literally showed up and wrestled me to the ground -- songs that remind me of a line from an old Mark Heard song: "I'm too sacred for the sinners, and the saints wish I would leave."

So what am I doing? Why am I doing it?

The other day an acquaintance asked me (in a non-threatening, interested way) what my objectives were for the new recording I was working on. And I hemmed and hawed for a bit and then finally told the truth.

I want to sing honest songs. I want this cd to be better than the last one--a deeper pocket or a sweeter line. I want to record some bit of something that gives me and maybe someone else goosebumps. I want to be moved, and to move someone else.

Like most artists who are also Christians, I walk a fine line between calling and indulgence; I could not honestly tell you the ratio between flesh and spirit at any given moment. But this is what I know. We must all tell our stories, as truthfully and as beautifully as we can, and God is such a good God He can and will use our efforts. I've seen it more times than I can count. And I don't know if that gives me mojo, but it gives me motiviation. And I can't wait for the next recording day.

I think the Flippo article reaches a pretty fine conclusion:

"So what can we as individuals do? I try to follow the advice of my high school Latin teacher, who I have increasingly realized was a very wise woman. 'Just tend to your own garden," she would say. "If we all do that, things cannot help but get better.'"

I don't know the future of recorded music or book publishing or painting or sculpture or theatre. But if we tell our stories, as honestly and beautifully as we can, things can't help but get better.

CA

I blog, therefore I am at:

Songville (brand new site for songwriters)

Conversantlife.com (where I muse on Stuff That Matters)

Wrestling with Angels (where I park my Christianity Today columns and other pieces)

Carolyn Arends Newsblog (where we post goings on, twitter updates, and other news relating to my work as a recording artist and writer)