Oliver Payne – Song Description
“Maybe the picture was already there.” The block in this song doesn’t get solved through sheer effort, through gritting his teeth and forcing something onto the blank canvas by will alone. It gets solved when the painter decides, almost as an act of faith rather than logic, that the picture already exists somewhere and his actual job is simply to stop getting in its own way long enough to let it through. I think that’s truer of most creative work I’ve done than the more familiar story we usually tell about discipline and willpower — the version where you simply sit down and force the work out through persistence. Sometimes persistence is exactly the wrong approach, tightening the block rather than loosening it. I wrote this one as a quiet companion to the more explicitly musical songs in this section, but from a painter’s side of what I think is fundamentally the same trouble, because I wanted to show that this particular kind of stuck feeling isn’t unique to songwriting. It shows up wherever someone is trying to let something through rather than force it.
Verse 1
Oliver Payne
Unlocks the door
To his little old studio
Just like before
Blank waiting canvas
Quiet white wall
Nothing this morning
Is coming at all
Verse 2
Paint on the palette
Brush in his hand
Nothing he’s trying
Goes as he’d planned
Colour on colour
Wiped from the board
Every new picture
Leaves him unsure
Verse 3
One old painting
Hangs on the wall
He stands there looking
Remembering it all
Back when the colours
Flowed without strain
Quietly missing
The old Oliver Payne
Chorus
Looking for the light
Looking for the glow
Looking for the colours
Only painters know
Looking for the moment
When dreams come into view
Looking for the picture…
He always knew was there
Verse 4
One little colour
Caught in the light
Seemed out of place there
Somehow just right
He paused for a moment
Brush held in air
Maybe the picture…
Was already there
Verse 5
Colour on colour
Life starts to grow
Where it was leading
He didn’t know
Brush after brushstroke
Free as the air
No longer searching
The picture was there
Chorus
Looking for the light
Looking for the glow
Looking for the colours
Only painters know
Looking for the moment
When dreams come into view
Looking for the picture…
He always knew was there
Final Verse
Evening grew softer
Gold into grey
One final brushstroke
Then stepped away
He smiled at the canvas
Through sunshine and rain…
He signed in the corner…
Oliver Payne
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty