Here In This Place

Liz Fohl

Here In This Place, music, 2:54

Interview by L. Valena
April 18, 2023

Can you please describe the prompt that you responded to?

I received a poem which was in a stream of consciousness structure. It was about a paragraph. And then accompanying that was a four-paneled visual piece which I thought may have been generated by AI.

What were your first thoughts and feelings about it?

I looked at the photos, and started writing down my process. Usually it just gets done, so it was kind of interesting to record my steps. The first part of my process was to procrastinate. Then I looked at the photos, but I didn't really take them in. I found a sunny spot, and took the poem and rewrote it in my own handwriting. I didn't change anything about the writing, but I changed the structure. Like as if I was writing it from my own stream of consciousness, and I was going to write a song. Then I looked at each of the photos individually, and made a word salad of everything I was thinking of. Then I started thinking about how these prompts combine, how they speak to each other. From there I wrote a ton of my own stream of consciousness about my own thoughts and feelings. After that, I wrote what I call a 'dump page', which is maybe not the most elegant expression. But that's where I dump things in a pile, and go in and circle and highlight things. I revisited the photos and shaped an idea.

I came up with a cyclical idea. The written prompt starts with this bright image. It says "we are the light blazing on the horizon. The early morning lifts the sun." So mornings, beginnings, it seems hopeful. Then there's some struggle and grit. Tumbling of time. Farmland that's not producing, and fishermen can't catch fish. Crops burnt by the sun. There's a lot of struggle. But then it ends with this idea that we're all part of. It felt very cyclical. Very much about life, and climate change. When I looked at the photos, the first one looked like a deep breath at sunrise. In the second one, everyone seems to be walking away. The third one was darker, with a smokestack in the background, and I felt that worry and struggle. And then in the fourth picture, some people were walking away and some were walking towards. Some people were jogging and having a nice time. It felt more like acceptance. I found the cycle of the poem very much matched the cycle of the photos. So that's how I wanted to write the song.

The verses go: the morning verse, the “walking towards” verse, the bridge is the struggle section. It feels like “Where are we going, what are we doing?” And then the third verse is about being present, and accepting where we are. Change what we can, but we are the beginning and the end.

It sounds like you’re wrestling with holding both truths at once: we're here and can enjoy the present moment, and we're also part of this larger horrifying climate change situation which we don't entirely understand. Is that something you think about often?

Oh, every day! One one hand, look at that pretty flower! And then you check the news, and everything is terrible. And then it's time to make lunch. And you made a great lunch! But the world is on fire. Holding space for those, and being informed, making changes that you can make and standing up for the things you can, while also finding the balance. Not letting that doom and struggle totally overwhelm your existence, so you can be present enough to notice that cool flower over there. I think I'm very intentionally adjusting that balance day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute.

I also loved that you said that the first part of your process was procrastination. I do think that's a really important part of the creative process that people don't talk about enough. What do you think is happening when you procrastinate? What is your sensory experience of procrastination?

This is something I've been trying to be more self-aware about. I think I’ve historically used procrastination to create harder deadlines for myself. When something is due in two weeks, of course there's time if I start it now, but other things feel more urgent, and look at that bright and shiny thing over there! I want to go to the bright and shiny things. I do a lot of voiceover and singing for commercials and stuff, and someone called me last night and told me they needed something by noon today. I woke up early, and got it done by 10 am. I didn't have an opportunity to procrastinate.

I think sometimes there's a lot of guilt associated with procrastination -- a lot of shoulds. I call it the ‘should cloud’. But also it's a useful tool. With this project, the execution was the part that I procrastinated. But it ended up being really cool, because this prompt, the cycle that I got from it, felt so human. To be fully transparent, I suddenly realized the song was due tomorrow, so I needed to execute. It put me in a position where I couldn't go back and redo everything until it was perfect.

Usually when I'm singing for a client, I sing it until it's perfect, and then I comp together the perfect takes, and tune it. I don't make it inhuman, but it's certainly perfect. For this one, I limited myself to ten takes of each line. Usually I do twenty, thirty, or seventy. Limiting it to ten takes put me in a more present mind when I was actually singing and recording, in a way that I found I didn't need more than ten takes. It was nice to have that limiting factor, which kept it really human, which related back to the prompt, which I felt was also about being human. The procrastination led me to an interesting discovery in this project. In some projects it just leads to all-nighters.

You said that you had thought the prompt was AI-generated. Can you say why that came up for you?

I didn't feel that way for the writing, just for the image. Maybe it's just because my husband is super into Midjourney and generated AI art right now. He's a filmmaker, and he's researching how that can be used in filmmaking, so I think I'm really tuned to that. The prompt was presented as four similar photos, and the program he uses always pops them out in packs of four. But also, in one of the panels, if you zoom in, one of the people has a leg that's kind of wonky. So either it's AI or he only works out one of his legs.

Can you say more about your musical process?

According to my notes, I "went into music mode; created a general vibe". Both the images and the prompt felt kind of dark. I generally gravitate toward midtempo, vibey, generally skewing positive, so I decided to write from the heart instead of forcing it to be different. Creating a vibe is the first step. I started with a droney, loopy sound, with a chuggy acoustic guitar with the goal of making that guitar sound so weird, you can't tell it's an acoustic guitar. I found this bass sound that has a pulse. Then I looked through my big word salad document, with that thing playing on a loop, and the melody just showed up. Sometimes it takes a while, but this one came very quickly. Once I've got the melody, I have the length of the line. And then I know the second line, and my brain starts filling in things. I started thinking about the rhyme scheme.

The first thing I wrote down when I first saw the photos was, “I can hear this place.” I thought that was kind of cool, so that became my refrain line. I built the general melody structure. Then I thought about the four panels, so I thought I'd do four sections, and the third one feels kind of dark, so that will be the bridge, where I can put tension. Then the fourth one feels resolved, so I can come back home.

Other than my voice, everything is programmed instruments. I'm on the road right now, so I don't have a guitar or piano. Everything I did was either some weird sound I created with my voice or played on a midi keyboard and taken through a program to make it sound like something different. I recorded the vocals in a closet in my mom's basement, at three o'clock in the morning. I plan on revisiting this song and reimagining it with a fuller production sometime in the coming month.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

There were a couple of moments where I worried I was skewing too far from what I was sent. When I started, I approached it as if the person who created the prompt had hired me to write a score for their short film. But then I remembered that the whole purpose of this project is to play telephone. The fun part about that game is that, by the end of the line, you end up with something completely different. What's so interesting about Bait/Switch is the idea that it shouldn't simply bounce off of me, it should go through me to the next person. I could have saved some self-doubt if I hadn't worried so much about nailing the previous person's vision.

My advice would be to not be perfectionist about the production of the piece. Just do it and put it out there. It was a fantastic experience. I need more stuff like this in my life. I'm great at hitting deadlines when it's for a client, but when it's about purely being creative or getting experimental, it always gets kicked to the back burner. I have songs of my own that I've been sitting on for six, seven, eight years. This made me feel like I should just put those out, and not be so perfectionist about it. It's good, and even if it's not good, it's genuine to me, so just do it.

Here In This Place (lyrics)

there’s a blazing light that glows on the horizon

the sun lifts the night with its fire

in a misty haze the mountains are hiding

I can hear this place

I course across the sands everyday

careful not to slow the steady pace

don’t know where I’m headed but I know I’m racing

To get to this place

oh I worry ‘bout the winds and waves and darkness in the clouds

i feel this hurry to be further but the path keeps stretching out

i know every day’s another chance to stop and turn around

turn around…

the tide will breath and churn and keep replacing

all the footsteps I have left and the ones i will be making

things I’ve left behind and the things/ones I’m still chasing

here in this place

here in this place

I’m here in this place

here in this place

here in this place…

Call Number: Y102VA | Y103MU.foHe

Liz Fohl is an LA-based songwriter, producer, and vocalist. In addition to her original songs, she creates music for multiple television shows, commercials, podcasts, and recently a lot of children’s programming! Liz enjoys combining organic and inorganic sound elements to create unique musical textures. You can find her work online (spotify etc) and at www.lizfohl.com