Originality

The second blog, it struck me I should possibly write another but had nothing to write about till just now.

I'm a fan of the idea that if you have nothing to say then verbal diarrhea is utterly pointless. I would extend this to art and music too lyrics, how many technically great artist's degree shows have you seen which are let down by the fact that the artist has nothing to say. Or maybe nothing interesting- the same rehashes of ideas and themes played out in the previous 20 years of contemporary art history (up to the point their tutors started tutoring in many cases) without any originality.
It's accepted as acceptable art as it can be understood in the frame work and history of art critique.
There's a lot further I could develop this train of thought, but I want to switch to something else, christian worship songs, or christian music.
I play bass and have played quite a lot in church worship bands, in fact I really honed my skills on the bass on sunday mornings. But so many songs are the same Cmaj, Dmaj and Gmaj chords in slightly different orders - if you are feeling contemporary then you can throw in the daring Emin, but so much of worship music seems based on those chords with the crutch of the capo thrown in to make it sound different.
No not all christian worship songs, and no actually I don't think it's a bad thing totally. But as an Artist there seems to be a weird gap between a supremely creative God and a formulaic style of worship music.

But while I can understand that actually if you are wanting to write songs to be played by christians accross the world simple chords and structure in a 4/4 structure may be easier, it's kinda the lowest common denominator approach- my small group lacks to ability to perform Handel's Messiah but we can do that Matt Redman song; but I don't quite understand the utter adherence to the same lyrical content.

The free church of Scotland don't allow instruments in their worship, the songs sung a cappella are the psalms in meter. No instruments as it would destract and no other words than that of David et al.
I've been to a few free church services and something about the beauty of the music and the sparse protestant logic of their position I like and can understand, and is a thousand times preferable to dreary slow badly played organ music.
But if we don't follow this school of thought and have instruments song writers also seem to keep themselves stuck in the bible and the psalms. This is by no means a bad thing, it keeps everything on the sam page, and maybe in the absence of liturgy helps define things in a safe way.
Songs full of bible verses and trying to communicate something of that are also infinitely more appealing than the current crop of (mostly american) Jesus is my boyfriend type songs,
"I love you yeah,
and your presence I love,
you're with me right here and now,
and I really love it. "
or something like that, which although I don't have a problem with using in worship lack any kind of subject or description. I know who I think the 'you' is in the song, the person next to me may have a different idea and the person who has never been to church before has no clue.
And then you get other types of 'christian' song. One of the best I've heard in the last few years was written as a guy struggled with his response to the death of a friend. (8 years later or so it becomes better known and they make a fancy video)

Now we sung this a few years ago at our student weekend away, it was great- this whole complex of our relationship with God, and someone grasping, to the extent our language can, to describe that. Then we took it back to sunday mornings- and  the similarly of  "love like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of his..." was too much for people. It's a similarly- you are not actually singing that you have leaves and branches, but some people couldn't come with it.
Why? I don't know. Thirsty deers are ok but trees not on a sunday morning. Even 'the wind in my sails' is acceptable.  I mean visually I look more like a tree than a bit of canvas.
But thats not the point, I guess the songs we sing help form the collective theology we have as a group, our understanding of things and I don't think we should be afraid of new ways of trying to say that using the full breath of language we have, and creatively describing our life, including our religion, is a good things for christians who opperate in the arts.