I Really Am A Marshmallow

This song is the outcome of a father-daughter project. My 11-year old daughter Zoë and I created “cut-ups”, inspired by William S. Burroughs and other artists who have experimented with similar techniques. The process goes something like this:

1. Select two or more unrelated samples of written language.
2. Take a pair of scissors and cut them right down the middle of a column of text.
3. Splice the left side of one sample to the right side of the other.

There are many possible variations on this, but the idea is that you end up with an entirely new creation that draws randomly from the ideas expressed in each of its parts. In our case, we tried a variety of source materials, and the combination that ultimately resulted in this song was text from an adoption newsletter spliced with the transcript of an interview published in Vegetarian Times. Once we had lyrics, we set them to music.

This continues to be one of my most popular tunes on online music sites, especially – for some reason – in Australia. I can’t explain it.

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