Ode to Good Songwriting

I’m no poet. But I am a songwriter. And like a lot of poets, I sort of write musical odes to things that get me off. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and Pablo Neruda wrote odes to a lot of other ordinary things like dogs, cats, violins, guitars, and dictionaries— things that he thought were “way cool” and way under appreciated. That’s pretty much what I do (except, of course, when I’m processing some inner turmoil or commenting on the human condition, etc., through composition).
Odes always have the underlying message that if people could just get more enjoyment out of things that didn’t cost so much, the not-so-necessary things that people send their children to war for (i.e. extra petrol, for the Hummer knock-off), the world would be a better place.
That’s why I think a song about surfing promotes world peace a lot better than a song about drag racing (Brian Wilson take note). Who’d have thought “Catch a wave and you’re sittn’ on top of the world” would have political implications? (As opposed to “Control the oil fields of the Middle East so you can blow as much of the Persian Gulf out your tail pipe as you damn well please… and you’re sittin’ on top of the world).
Buckminster Fuller dubbed the preferred direction of technical innovation, the one in which we strive to get more and more from less and less, “ephemeralization.” The idea is to pursue this path until we can eventually get “everything from nothing” as the Bucky wrote. The poet promotes the same principle in the field of enjoyment. We need to eventually learn to be supremely happy with things that cost next to nothing to obtain. Appreciation practice is key to this dharma.
So what kind of subjects do I think worthy of a song? Myriad stuff. How ‘bout:

Great parking places and deft inline skaters,
Excellent cooking that won’t kill me later,
Passionate lovers that don’t require bling,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Or just amusing ditties people like to sing.
I say create world peace by nurturing a deeper enjoyment of the little things, the real things in life. One of my songs goes “Be no need for feeding greed when the moon and stars are ours.” Who needs blood diamonds when you’ve got heavenly bodies, right? Not me.