I’ve been interested in doing a book of lyrics for some time. And somehow, completing my autobiography, The World Got Away, put a fire under me. And in many ways, I Might Never Give Up can be seen as a companion piece to the memoir. The World Got Away dives deep into some of the creation process that produced this odd collection of songs. That freed me to just focus on the selection of lyrics from hundreds of songs. I decided to follow a fairly regimented chronological order and was pleasantly surprised that even the earliest lyrics pass scrutiny (though I suppose there’s a reason this collection starts at 1980, and not 1970). I also decided to exclude some of the larger more complex librettos that represent the larger media pieces, though I have included excerpts from the talk show opera Dennis Cleveland and the live 3D film The End Of Cinematics.
In reviewing the progression of these lyrics, I’m struck by the gradual complexity of lines. I’m a dedicated student of craft in lyric writing and the merging of music and words. Starting with Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin, I started to get a sense of the importance of a clear, simple conveyance of thought. Moving into pop and rock of the 60s, I sensed this idea being tested in abstract ways that thrilled me. Arriving in NYC in the late 70s coincided with the bourgeoning Hip Hop scene and this had a subliminal affect on my counterpoetry technique, which utilized spoken, un-pitched voices in counterpoint. Steven Sondheim and Slick Rick now exist side by side. By the mid 90s, this technique would unfold into spoken text songs that covered a wide range of topics, often merging love songs and political songs. Many of the songs appearing on the Living Inside Design album (1993-94) illustrate this approach.
Moving into the early 2000s, the density of the lyrics threaten to overwhelm, and there’s a quiet retrenchment from this approach in favor of shorter, more succinct songs (2004-2008). But then the financial crash happens and that’s reflected in both the content and the arrangement of the words. From the song cycle Gravity Radio (2009) to the humanist blues of Corner Loading (Volume 1) (2010), the lyrics explore the human convergence of lost love and lost promise, culminating with the hedge fund inspired lyrics from the techno album Boost. We end up where we started, with topics from the 1980s Tirez Tirez songs mirroring the broken social promises in Swingers Castle (2018). To drive the point home, footnotes are added to these lyrics to humorously emphasize the societal breakdown. And later lyrics include the 2021 album ~/Library/Mouth/Congress/, written and recorded during the pandemic. Sitting outside on the desolate streets of NYC, taking it all in. Wondering what’s to come.
The illustrations for the book are taken from Passport: 30 Years Drawn on the Road, a collection of books and prints selected from over 200 sketch and manuscript books. This exhibit was presented at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in 2010, commemorating the acquisition of the Mikel Rouse Archive at LPA. The exhibit coincided with a retrospective of my films (also at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center); an exhibit of videos, drawings and manuscripts at the Margarete Roeder Gallery; and performances of the song cycle Gravity Radio at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival.
These books span a career of touring and performing and have been indispensable in my process of creating works for the stage and capturing my impressions of cities and locales. From music manuscripts to cartoon diaries to collage and sketch books, these bound impressions have been my constant companion. I always preferred capturing scenes with pencil and paper and never took a photograph until photography became available on a phone.
I started drawing and making music at an early age. I fell in love with bookmaking (both sketch books and music books) while at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Conservatory of Music at UMKC in the 1970’s. Homemade bookbinding made the journals more personal and was a lot cheaper than buying pre-made sketchbooks. I was a fan of Kurt Schwitters and my collage travel books (especially the “Fan Books”) became a way of documenting my travels as well as keeping a visual journal (though with the Fan Books, there are almost indecipherable journal entries on the reverse side of the index cards that make up the books).
As the collage books started to get unwieldy and impractical (especially while carrying musical instruments), I gravitated to the transfer techniques pioneered by Robert Rauschenberg. But as years of turpentine smelling clothes started to take their toll, I began doing muted transfers without the aid of loosening solvents. This created a much more pastel effect and lent itself to watercolor and graphite sketches. This also inspired a “chance operations” approach to working and re-working multiple pages of a book out of sequence: I was documenting and sketching but I was also consciously creating individual works.
It’s been an interesting obsession for 30 to 40 years: to pursue this visual work as consistently as I have music, recording and directing, but not show the work. I suppose one can only do so much and each “scene” has its own set of rules. Society demands specialization, and while I’ve viewed this approach as flawed, I suppose I’ve also been happy to keep some work to myself. Public versus private art? Or maybe one set of critics is enough for any one lifetime.
– Mikel Rouse 2026