Random Musings

Lately I’ve been fascinated with the issue of multi-disciplinary artistry.

I think it’s human nature to want to label a person as a “writer”, or a “musician”, or an “artist”, or a “photographer”.

It’s human nature.

We’d all like to think that every person is very good at one thing only, if he is good at anything at all.

If we hear of a dancer who also puts out a book of poetry, we’d tend to think the poetry isn’t as good as that from people who only focus on writing poems.

If we hear of a photographer who also attempts to write songs, we’d tend to think that the songs aren’t as good as that from people who specialise in songwriting.

I think it’s natural to want to place people into categories – dancer, sculptor, playwright, composer, poet, filmmaker, etc.

In the past few years I’ve been straddling two artforms which fascinate me greatly.

Songwriting came earlier, and lately it was playwriting.

But actually they both stem from one single passion, and that is musical theatre.

I told myself many years ago that my one main aim is to write a musical, and I’m doing all I can to equip myself with the necessary skills to achieve that aim.

I tried my hand at playwriting (with no artistic background whatsoever) for the simple reason that I wanted to test myself and see if I had the ability to write libretto.

But along the way, I began to fall in love with the art of playwriting and have experienced some small form of encouragement in the meantime.

Lately I’ve been pondering over what single artform I belong to – songwriting or playwriting?

I’d like to think that I’m equally comfortable with both, but as I mentioned earlier, it’s human nature to want to believe that we can all only be good at one thing.

It’s funny, when we see musicals that have book, music and lyrics all written by the same person (which is rare, by the way), we’d immediately tend to think that the overall quality is not as good as if there were a dedicated bookwriter, lyricist and composer.

It’s just human nature, and I’m always guilty of that too.

So the natural question to ask myself is if I attempt to write an entire musical on my own (meaning book + lyrics + music), would the overall quality be inferior to a musical written by three different people?

I dunno, hopefully not.

Anyway, recently I’ve suddenly gained a whole lot of resolve to finally start writing my epic musical which has been brewing in my mind for about 18 months now.

Had always been wanting to write it, but never got down to doing it.

But some recent circumstances have made it conducive for me to finally start putting pen to paper and start seriously working on this ambitious piece.

Hope it turns out well.

Hope both the “writer” and the “songwriter” in me are equally well-represented.