THE MAKING OF PLATITUDES FOR MORONS

NOLITA WERRETT

22nd June 2021 - Revised 26th July 2021

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago (1964) a young female was born who dreamed of becoming a worldwide rock superstar and recording an album that would heal the world.

THE DREAM

My dream was an ambition without an implementation plan. Without any demonstrable musical talent either. Perhaps those factors explain the delay in recording any album at all, never mind one that would be the catalyst for a planetary consciousness upgrade.

I did not stop dreaming despite repeated failures whenever I attempted any musical activity whatsoever. I will tell you about the most significant attempts.

THE REALITY: MONSTERS

When I was around five years old, my family attended a very sparsely-attended social event at the Labour Party Hall in the town where I grew up, Witham, in the county of Essex immediately north-east of London, England.

I think it was The Supremes playing through the speakers after the DJ had just finished talking on the PA’s microphone. I’m sure I asked before picking up the mic and singing along with Diana Ross.

The people at the only other occupied table in the room turned their attention on me and for a couple of bars I was enjoying being in the limelight. I stopped immediately that I noticed the attention from the male at the table was creepy.

In the early 1970s in England, creepy men were everywhere and totally brazen. Popular culture celebrated predatory male sexual behaviour, especially against innocent young females. Jimmy Savile was far from being the only monster in the public eye or away from it and I had already learned to avoid their attention.

THE REALITY: SILENCING

I was inspired by the visit of musical entertainers to my primary school when I was around eight or nine. It was a unique event during my time at the school so perhaps the novelty of their act increased my assessment of their talent.

Looking back with adult eyes, I suppose that the group were arts students needing to perform an act live as part of their course. Perhaps one of them was related to a school staff member. Regardless, they wore brightly coloured clothes, acted some funny skits and sang some songs while one of them played guitar.

I was captivated. I imagined being the performer with the guitar and the cheerful, confident air. I was not as captivated at the thought of performing to schoolchildren if it needed the permission of teachers. By that time I had observed that their primary function was to be obstacles to any fun and that their secondary function was to silence me.

When the school introduced recorder lessons I happily started to learn. I do not remember how my relationship with the instrument ended but I suspect it was very soon after and probably related to my mother’s belief that children should be seen and not heard.

THE REALITY: OTHERING

My mother did encourage me to join the guitar club at my secondary school. She made great financial sacrifices to get me an acoustic guitar. I hope she did not lose too much money when she returned it very soon after.

I grew up in a working-class area and went to primary school in my home town. At the age of eleven I went to school in a town fourteen miles and an hour on the bus away from home.

It was the kind of school that called the first year the Lower Fourth Form. It was the kind of school where I was the only non-white face in the entire year and one of just a handful in the whole school.

I was the only student in the first guitar club meeting who had not played before and the club members made it clear in that polite English way that they would prefer that I did not return for the second meeting.

My spirit resonates more with Malcolm’s than with Martin’s and I chose not to fight for acceptance in an optional space. I was already busy with plenty of battles in the compulsory spaces.

THE REALITY: SELF-SABOTAGE

My family emigrated to newly-independent Zimbabwe midway through my A-levels. My first year of A-levels at an Essex college had mostly been spent in nearby pubs or listening to the jukebox in the student common room.

I don’t think I attended the whole of the first term at the recently de-segregated school I was enrolled at in Harare. The rules appeared not to have changed since the British colonisers arrived in Zimbabwe in the 1890s. White male supremacy on steroids, basically.

The final straw for me was when a teacher and I disagreed over whether somebody who had not been knighted by the monarch should be referred to as Sir. Even if all the other children had no objection to calling him that. He definitely had me confused with someone who was willing to comply with irrational demands.

I had made friends with a number of recently-admitted children whose parents were indigenous Zimbabweans who were new to occupying senior government positions. I was in class with Gabrielle and spent time at her home with her younger siblings, brother Michael and sister Alleluia. I think her parents were quite religious.

Gabrielle sang beautifully and was already performing in clubs when her parents were asleep. Alleluia was looking as if she was going to follow her. Michael was in class with my younger brother and they were friends with Clever and Honest. By my second term we formed the Mount Pleasant Truants and spent our days making music in Gabrielle or Michael’s room.

As end of year exams approached, the group was down to just Michael and me. Michael played reggae-style guitar and I ranted my punk-style lyrics. Through Gabrielle’s contacts, we went to a professional studio and recorded a demo tape of a couple of our songs. We even had a promise from a DJ on national radio that she would play the tape on her show.

Then the guy I was seeing got controlling and I was young enough and stupid enough not to object when he told me to quit the band. I was swayed by his arguments that if I wanted my independence, I needed to be practical about pursuing a financially stable career.

Spoiler alert: the relationship was nowhere near good enough or long enough to justify abandoning my dream.

THE REALITY: TALENTLESS

I had to find a job quickly before my mother saw my A-level results which I strongly suspected would disappoint her. In fact I was fairly confident they would put the final nail in the coffin of her ambition for me to become a neurosurgeon. I applied for a job as a trainee computer programmer and started the week after my final A-level paper.

By my mid twenties I was stuck in the Prosperity Trap – where one is too comfortable in a well-rewarded career to make a necessary change. I took a couple of breaks from coding financial systems to think of an alternative career. During the first break, I bought an electric guitar and had a couple of lessons with a private tutor.

At my first lesson, he taught me my first three chords and what he said was a standard chord progression. He said that if I practiced daily, I would hear an improvement in the horrible sounds I was producing.

At my second lesson he emphasised that I would need more than the five to ten minutes a day I had been practicing before I would hear an improvement in the horrible sounds I was producing. He taught me a lot more guitar theory and chord progressions to songs we knew in common. I made lots of notes and left determined to practice more.

I did improve slightly to the point where, a few months later, I used my three chords to write my first couple of songs. As songs. Words and music together! Inspired, I added the standard chord progression to one of my teenage lyrics. I wrongly assumed that I would need to learn some new chords before I could add music to any more of my lyrics.

THE REALITY: SEEDS

Over the next decade, I continued to write what other people would call poems but I knew they were just songs waiting for their music. I also wrote a shoebox full of fragments of songs that I called seeds. I swapped my guitar for an electronic keyboard but made even less musical progress with that.

At the turn of the millennium, I closed my IT consultancy firm, sold my flat in the city and moved back to my home town. I worked for a few non-profit organisations for a few years still keeping The Dream on the backburner, writing seeds sporadically.

THE AMBITION

In early 2005, as I lay on trolley outside an operating theatre waiting to lose consciousness, I decided to inject a little urgency into my mañana attitude if I survived. I did survive and only sixteen years later my debut album is published. In demo version.

My first step to progress came when I took singing lessons with a private tutor. I gained confidence in my vocal technique but not enough to overcome my inhibitions to sing to any form of audience. Including my tutor.

My next step was to recognise that I needed to blend into a band. The obvious place, I thought, to meet potential band members who shared my intellectual curiosity was at university. So I enrolled as a mature student on a degree course with the potential to pay the bills if the band plan failed.

In my first year I was given an electric guitar by a fellow mature student and I began to practice on it. It was not until my final year that I met a bass player but our jamming sessions were hampered by insufficient equipment. The step forward was the realisation that I could sing and play guitar as well, provided I kept both simple.

THE PROJECT

After graduation, I realised that I was now over-qualified for the kind of employment offering the best work-life balance. I had been shielded from the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash while I was studying but even three years later when I graduated, the job market was grim.

It took quite some time to find an alternative to poverty-level unemployment benefits especially when too malnourished to think clearly. Once I had an income secured, I drew up a Project Plan to publish my debut album.

Stage one involved sorting through all my scribblings and categorising them. Once organised, recurring topics and themes were apparent. Seeds jotted down years apart merged seamlessly to form rhyming couplets, verses, choruses and twelve (almost) complete lyrics.

Stage two was pretty easy – add chords then melody. I did learn later that the usual procedure is melody and then chords but each to their own taste. This stage was simplified by my guitar-playing limitations – nothing more complex than a simple rhythm possible.

Stage three was problematic – recording the twelve songs. Due to a number of factors, I had to record the songs played as live. If you have ever tried to play an instrument and sing at the same time, you will appreciate the challenge. Even harder than patting your head and rubbing your stomach.

Maybe you won’t understand the six years spent meeting the challenge.

Knowing there were twelve songs waiting to be heard kept me going.

THE ALBUM – SIDE A

These are the stories of how my first-born children/songs came to be.

SONG 01 TALK, TALK, TALK

I wrote this song as a bolshy adolescent in the late 1970s when the Punk Rock spirit was fresh in the air. I was a brown girl in a ring of white male supremacy where speaking my truth was to be done only when strictly necessary.

Turning my fantasies of slaughtering my teachers into a song was better than turning them into an action plan, don’t you agree? Guess what word I had just learned?

This song is difficult to relate to over four decades later but every artist has an early piece that embarrasses them – this is mine. I still think it would be a good song performed by a bolshy adolescent brown girl.

SONG 02 THE LIGHT

I wrote this as a partial lyric during the period of the Mount Pleasant Truants but we were working on other lyrics that I had completed. I don’t know what chords Michael was playing to those songs so they are archived.

This did not already have music so when I started playing my first electric guitar in the early 1990s, I added a beginner’s chord progression. The melody is pretty simple so followed soon after adding the chord progression.

It was completing this lyric that sparked Stage One of The Project Plan.

SONG 03 TEARS AND PAIN

I wrote this song when I still had some hope that my One True Love might want me. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Fortunately, it was not long after that I bought my first electric guitar and could work things out in a song. The chords – E, A and B7 - were the only three chords I had learned at that point.

SONG 04 WHAT’S LEFT

A year later, I wrote this song when I had faced up to the overwhelming evidence and no longer had any hope that my One True Love might want me.

Getting over the despair by realising that life still has so much more to offer took some time. Especially given my procrastinating superpower.

We still have moonlight and music and romance to amuse us until love comes along again.

For years, I played this song using E C#m A B7 which was a bit too high-pitched for me to sing comfortably while playing guitar. Because I could sing it easily without trying to play, I persisted in trying to nail it.

Until a few weeks ago when I transposed it to A F#m D E7 which was much easier.

I still think my stubbornness can be an asset at other times.

SONG 05 CIRCUITS AND STEEL

I wrote this partial lyric as a composite of the relationship attempts that followed. It took a while to recognise that I was in the Rebound Relationship game maybe because I was ricocheting too quickly to reflect.

This was one of the last lyrics to be completed. It took time to filter out most of the bitterness. The chord progression was one that had come to me independently while trying out a new set of three chords – A, D and my old friend E. When I eventually added the chord progression to this lyric it fitted like a glove.

SONG 06 FLOOD OF LIES

I think of this song as my Eminem song. I initially chose to boycott his products because of his cultural appropriation crimes. Everything I have seen since validates my gut instinct.

I may be mis-perceiving his vibe but it seems to me that a recurrent theme in his work is whining about how his mummy didn’t love him enough and that is why he is a knobhead as an adult.

This song was written in that spirit the first time I went No Contact. There are sequels to this song to be released at a later date.

THE ALBUM – SIDE B

The songs on this side were begun around the turn of the millennium in a flurry of scribbling. They were then left to ferment for years until Stage One of The Project Plan.

My guitar ability was and is limited. For years I transcribed songs I wanted to play into EAB7 or ADE if necessary. It took many years to realise that A suits my voice much better than E. I did try to add DGA to my skill-set but found it a struggle. I had to stick with them for Shine A Little because only G would do for “brighter”.

SONG 07 SEARCH FOR TRUTH

The chorus came first for this lyric then the verses just wrote themselves. I was in the early stages of realisation that looking for answers outside of yourself is bound to disappoint.

This song was hard to record because I love singing the chorus so much that I would forget to stop repeating at the end.

SONG 08 OPEN YOUR HEART

Recording this song had a similar issue of finding it hard to stop playing.

The lyric came together quite quickly. I hope the Usenet alt.conspiracy veterans appreciate the winks in verse one.

This song was my revised solution after I recognised that my plan to crop-dust the planet with MDMA raised a number of safe-guarding concerns specifically the very important issue of consent.

SONG 09 BALL OF LIGHT

There is a gap in this song between vision and result and it troubles me.

The lyric is fine but the music needs a lot more voices and instruments to work. I wasn’t exactly thinking the Triumphal March from Aida but something in that ballpark.

Don’t get me started on how much is missing without the video I imagined.

Anyway, I recommend humming or singing the chorus when you are feeling worthless.

SONG 10 THE MESSAGE

This is another song where I am okay with the lyric but musically, the result falls far short of the vision. I was not aiming for the tragedy of Manon Lescaut’s final aria because she had far more issues to face than romantic disappointment alone. It is hard to innovate in the field of melancholic love songs.

SONG 11 SHINE A LITTLE

Another song that I had trouble recording because I didn’t know when to stop.

Also another song where I recommend humming or singing the chorus when you are above feeling worthless but still need a pep talk.

SONG 12 PLATITUDES FOR MORONS

I came up with this title long before I knew what it would be about.

During a tea-break at work nearly thirty years ago, I was boring a colleague with my wish to record an album, become A Worldwide Rock Superstar and leave the boring job we were doing.

He asked what my album was called (incorrectly assuming I had done anything concrete at that time) so the name just popped into my head and out of my mouth before any filters stopped it.

We all know what it is like when you know what you said is nonsense but they are undeniably your words that left your mouth so you instinctively defend them. Then the person who did actually hear your words will – hopefully – challenge your denial of reality and it can easily be an ugly downward spiral from there.

In this particular case, after hearing my answer, my colleague kindly pointed out that nobody would want to ask for a record of that title. It is true, that at the time of our conversation, one needed to go to a physical shop and ask a human being for a physical album.

The years have passed. Now anybody with a suitable device can click on a link without anybody but Big Brother and bored hackers knowing anything about it.

Even at the time, my target demographic would actually have enjoyed the joke and so too would the type of person who tended to work in record shops.

Now that the phrase is at home in a song, it has a positive dimension. Paired with the following idea it explains why we fall for implausible lines.

This song uses the same chord progression as What’s Left but with a different strumming pattern and tempo. As with What’s Left, I played this song using E C#m A B7 for years until a few weeks ago when I transposed it to A F#m D E7.

The only reason I refused to budge for so long was because I can still only play a handful of chords comfortably. In descending order of comfort: E, A, B7, C#m, E7, A7, Em, F#m, D and on special occasions only, G.

I only recently re-discovered a simple version of F#m which allowed me to transpose the chord progression used in What’s Left and this song.

I never felt the urge to do more than play varied rhythms while I swayed and meditated and anything more complicated than four chords in a pattern unbalances the meditative energy.

GRANDIOSE VISION

During a busy procrastinating session, I was struck by a remark made during a podcast where musicians discuss their creative process. One person spoke of having overcome the inhibiting embarrassment of having a grandiose vision of their creative potential. Their grandiose vision was almost identical to mine!

They explained that without a grandiose vision, most creative people would lack the drive to produce their work. Let alone share it. Apparently, Album Leads To Planetary Healing is a common vision. No big deal. Phew!

Part of me then was inhibited by shame at having such a common vision. I quickly dealt with it.

Now twelve songs are recorded in an album where the title song is Platitudes For Morons. Dave Smith, if you are not one of the many colleagues from that era who died early, you owe me a keg of brandy.

EPILOGUE

This album is not complete until it is recorded and produced how I imagine. Until then, this is the best version I have recorded to date of each of the twelve songs.

Writing the story of the making of the album has taken a couple of weeks in between interruptions to work on building my own website to host my songs and stories.

My project expanded and this album is the first of a five album series before I retire to my rockstar ranch to concentrate on writing stories.

I still have the remainder of the seeds that I mentioned previously were organised into themes. When lockdown began last summer, I organised them further into a lot of draft lyrics. I also have a pile of new seeds to integrate into the project which will be enough lyrics altogether to fill the remaining four albums.

Here’s the cliff-hanger ending.

Will I finish the albums before my life savings run out?

Spoiler: God willing.