How the concept of feel is used to write songs
Description
Through his album Hold Me Down: Toward a Rhetoric of Feel and the liner notes that accompany it, Ben Lauren argues that rhetorical theory can help both formally and informally trained musicians compose songs. This rhetorical theory helps him to anchor his own composing strategy of relying on feel. Feel, as Lauren explains it, is where an artist reflects on their reaction to a song’s melody, lyrics, and dynamics. Relying on feel as a creative-critical method of composing requires songwriters to develop habits that allow them to attend to its emergence in their writing process.
To illustrate these ideas, Lauren shares his album Hold Me Down, which he wrote to process a traumatic experience from when he was a child. The album consists of 10 music tracks, 8 recorded conversations with the artists he collaborated with, and extensive liner notes that depict the collision of identities that make up personal and professional lives. By drawing on his experience as a singer and songwriter and his scholarly training, Lauren develops a rhetorical language for thinking about music that puts the abstract concept of feel in concrete form.
Ben Lauren is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing Studies and Director of the Co-Major in Innovation and Society at the University of Miami. His scholarly work focuses on the intersection of writing and design; rhetorical theory; and organizational, institutional, and community change. He is also a songwriter, best known for his work as singer/songwriter with the band No Address.
Reviews
"I experienced—read, heard, felt—Hold Me Down with tears in my eyes at times, with a smile on my face at times, and across the whole book, the whole album, the whole experience with that whole-body buzz when I encounter beautiful, powerful writing or—and in this case, and—beautiful, powerful songwriting and sound making. Hold Me Down is a significant contribution to scholarship in rhetoric and writing. It is rhetorically anchored and centered, yet it supersedes rhetorical categories and brackets. Lauren offers poignant extensions to how we can think about inquiry and invention, thinking and feeling, performance and delivery."
- Dánielle Nicole DeVoss, Michigan State University
"Hold Me Down by Ben Lauren is an exceptional work of creative-critical scholarship, one offering a reader-listener an intense engagement with content and-as-form. Though the liner notes are offered to explain the songs, I kept thinking about the ways that the written text reflects a songwriter's sensibility, skillfully layering a blend of personal narrative, cultural critique, and rhetorical theory. Lauren's concept of the rhetoric of feel is not only a powerful analytical tool that attends to the emotional, sensorial, and atmospheric dimensions of communication, but it seems to offer a possible alternative to and better understanding of the commonly used phrase 'creative flow.' I think that's part of the whole point of offering new kinds of scholarship: the opening of possibility for more and different ways of knowing, for moving through and with the body as much as the mind. I am so grateful that Ben has shared this work with the world. Whether we know it or not, all of us are impacted by the narratives of trauma and I would recommend this album-book to anyone who might need to be reminded that healing is as possible as it is purposeful, that creative and critical work is as powerful as it is prescient—and that all of it takes a lot of time."
- Ames Hawkins, Columbia College
"As I listened to Ben Lauren’s songs and read his words, I kept thinking about how special and unusual it is to be invited into an artist’s creative process in this way. Sure, I’ve read interviews with musicians, and I’ve talked to rhetorical scholars about how they produced their work—but Hold Me Down is something different. This project elevates personal songwriting processes to a new level, helping reader-listeners understand how a rhetoric of feel is a central part of creative and scholarly communication—how feeling itself is, in his words, 'a manner of knowing and. . . an approach to composing' that deserves study. And lucky for us, Lauren doesn’t just study feeling but also invites us to listen along, toes tapping to the beat, as he pulls his ideas out of the shadows and feeds them through his amps."
- Kyle Stedman, Rockford University
"A concept album, in the best sense of the word, recruits all the elements of the gatefold-enclosed vinyl record—printed lyrics, liner notes, artwork, and the musical tracks themselves—to explore a unified theme or story. In Hold Me Down, Ben Lauren demonstrates the aesthetic, rhetorical, and scholarly potential of the form. This is simultaneously an album that music lovers will enjoy, a work of rhetorical theory, and a case in point (the embodiment of that theory). The unifying concept is the process of confronting childhood trauma—a process which involves the willingness both to immerse oneself in painful memories and to work through those memories in a complex, nonlinear journey of healing. If it sounds like there are a lot of moving parts here, it’s because there are a lot of moving parts here. But everything comes together somehow—though not with any pretension of Euclidian elegance. This is an eco-system of compositions by turns struggling with and balancing each other."
- David Sheridan, Michigan State University
"Hold Me Down: Toward a Rhetoric of Feel is a powerful album that moves listeners through experiences of survival. And it's also so much more. The songs, extended liner notes, and sound artifacts work together by performing a scholarly idea: that feeling is an approach to composing. In doing so, Hold Me Down makes its most important contribution not only to the academic field of writing and rhetoric but also to emerging forms of scholarship that use sound, aurality, and music. Hold Me Down expands what counts as a rigorous scholarly object. It will be of interest to artists and scholars working in sound studies, writing and rhetoric, and affect studies—and to anyone who feels the pull to express themselves through music and sound."
- Emery Petchauer, Columbia University
"A perfect mix of heart and heartache, art and scholarship, music and memoir. It's a testament to the capaciousness of our field and to Lauren's empathy, brilliance, and talent. Hold Me Down invites you listen, read, weep, grow. Tall order. Brilliant work."
- Alexandra Hidalgo, University of Pittsburgh