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Jacinthe Martin

I promising to pay him back. The character finds his way
was born in Montreal, Canada, where I still live to
back to his present without having honoured his word,
this day. At the age of 14, my new-found love of ani-
me got me into drawing, which remained my main
lent the money to the other many years ago, as they’ve
creative outlet for the next 10 years. so when the two meet again in the present, the one who
chatted and are about to part, tells him ‘Oh, and by the
Then, ss a young adult, I started to feel that I wasn’t way! With interest, you owe me (such and such)’.
satisfied with merely filling up notebooks with
character sheets and plot outlines anymore. I wanted And voilà, that was the inspiration for this song. Talk
my stories to come to life in a way in which I could to you in a future issue!
actually share them with people… so I started writing,
and in 2010, I self-published my first, heavily anime No, but seriously, this is how about 90% of my lyrics
inspired dark fantasy novel, in my French mother originate. I just hear something or think of a phrase or
tongue, ‘Kageboushi : La légende des Ombres’ #expression and go « Oh, that’d make a cool title for a
(‘Kageboushi : Legend of the Shadows’). song! », and the lyric itself is then more or less an
intellectual exercise of weaving words around that
During that time, I also started jotting down lyrical bits initial idea.
and pieces, but they weren’t my main focus. After
exploring different professional and creative avenues, Here, I liked how ‘interest’ can be interpreted both in
I came back to writing in 2014, when I completed my the sense of added value or as romantic attraction, and
first big batch of lyrics while also starting to work on I played on this double meaning in the chorus with the
the manuscript of my screenplay-formatted, second lines ‘I would be the wealthiest girl in the world if you
dark fantasy book, in English this time : ‘Thornstein’s returned my (romantic) interest, with (bonified)
Crew : Omen of Nightmare’, which I self-published in interest’.
2016.
So I had my chorus, which I was quite happy with…
As much as I enjoy writing books, let’s face it, they can but then the inspiration ran dry. This isn’t an
take years to complete. Songs, on the other hand, have uncommon thing for me, and experience has taught me
the advantage of being very concise. I’ve come to think that it’s best to just leave the lyric aside in that
of them as little ‘capsule stories’. And as someone who situation, than to try and force anything.
is much better at starting things than finishing them,
lyrics motivate me in that, since I’ve made them my So that’s what I did. For a year, every now and then I
main form of expression, I now get to regularily pat would open that file, read the lonely chorus and wait
myself on the back for actually finishing projects that I for inspiration to come flowing again. The first dozen
start! times were to no avail… and then eventually the first
lines of the verses started to come to me.
Another thing I love about songwriting is that it allows
for much more ‘showing off’ of one’s mastery of l I was surprised by how simple and light they were. I
angage than is realistically acheivable when penning a usually write in a very dense, structured, ‘intellectual’
whole book. If a song has 500 words, the challenge and style. But these first few lines were more like
pleasure in the exercise, for me, is to make each one independently working impressions or ‘snapshots’,
count. In that sense, In a song, the words are both the which I felt added to the ‘dreaminess’ of the story.
means and the end.
So I did my best to hold onto this ‘purity’ as I
I think I am quite different than most lyricists in that continued to lay each new line. Personnally, the final
I very seldom write about my own experiences. In result reminds me of a children’s storybook in which
a way, I remain a ‘fantasy writer’ even when I write nearly every line would narrate one colored page of
songs, in that I prefer to use lyrics to ‘project’ myself, to this story about the hopes and longing that accompany
walk in someone else’s shoes, to imagine how a person our newly awakened romantic feelings while we don’t
would feel if… which is why I especially enjoy writing yet know if they’re reciprocated…
from a man’s point of view, for instance.
Remember I am a dark fantasy author with a
...or with the voice of, let’s say, a romantic young propensity for penning more ‘word-heavy’ songs. So
woman whose every though is directed toward her this lyric isn’t representative of me or of my usual style
new love interest. ;) She isn’t me, and yet I got to be her at all… and that’s why I like it. I too have a proverbi-
as I was writing her story. To me, there’s magic in that. al hopeless romantic somewhere deep within me, it
would seem. ;)
I was watching an episode of a tv show I love in which
a character, while lost in the past, borrows money from Wishing everyone a lovely February!
a younger version of someone he knows in the present,

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