The Art of Trompe L'Oeil

What is Trompe l'Oeil?

Trompe-l'œil is French for 'deceives the eye' and is an artistic term for optical illusion of three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional space. Trompe-l'œil tricks viewers into perceiving painted objects as real.

How to make a Trompe l'Oeil song

Part I: THE IDEA

First the idea/image itself must be mapped out — and a decision must be made as to what letters will be used to form the image.

Our idea in Fop’s Lament, the first step, is the image of a dick. This is appropriate because the song involves two unpleasant American stereotypes — one from the left and one from the right — and each is reprehensible in their own way. In a word (or image), they are both dicks.

To effect this image, note in the figure below how the word “dick” is used to create the shape of a dick. While the idea may seem juvenile, its execution is non-trivial. Indeed, in order for the image to be correctly rendered, the letters will have to fall in a precise position in each line of the song.

Specifically, the first line of the song will have to have the letter “D” land as the 31st character (letters + punctuation + empty spaces) in the song. In the next line, as shown below, the letter “I” will need to fall in positions 28 and 35. In the third line, the letter “C” will need to land in the 23rd and 35th position, while a letter D must land at the 29th position — as shown.

Part II: THE FIT

The second part of this process entails finding words and word phrases that will help us land our text characters in the right spot in the given line of the song.

Note in the example below that at this point we are not yet trying to land K specifically in the 21st position — yet! That is because our bigger challenge is finding text strings that have 5 character spaces between the letter K and the next letter I and then 5 character spaces also between I and the second K. If we find the right phrase, then we can work backwards.

Finding a series of phrases that have a letter K, followed 5 letters later by an I, followed 5 letters later by a K is not easy — give it a try. To expedite such a process, it is necessary to use regex searches to go through large bodies of literature (for example, Ellison’s Invisible Man or Thornton Wilder’s Our Town) as well as Twitter feeds and internet data . This is important because the hope is to use language that does not sound forced, language that exists “in nature.” Indeed, strange sentences that happen to fit the requirements are discarded.

In the example below, you will notice several text string candidates that were deemed reasonable spoken phrases, to wit:

“broke their backs”
“flask in his desk”
“back of his neck”
“like a big hick”

To belabor the point a bit, note that all have a letter “K” followed 5 spaces by an “I”, followed then 5 spaces by a “K”. Note that we are not imprisoned by these choices: these examples help us consider some derivative options that may work better — for example, “broke their necks” instead of “broke their backs”, or “flasK in hIs parKa” for “flasK in hIs desK” and so forth. “LiKe a bIg hicK” was itself actually derived from “like a big jerk.”

In the second example that follows, we will now need a text phrase that has the letter “I” now followed 4 characters later by the letter “K”, followed 4 characters later by the letter “I”. While “Is liKe a kInd of” was the winning candidate, “mIght Kill hIm” and “I do Know hIs” also could have worked if they could be worked into the flow of the song.

Part III: THE GRAFT

In the third part, we now “graft” these text strings into the song — working on flow and theme and trying to prevent the words from creating any sort of disturbance to the flow or message of the song. With work, hopefully the line will sound “natural.”

Part IV: THE RESULT — THE LYRICS

This process noted in part III is then repeated row after row, each time backfilling to make sure the text phrase lands in exactly the right spot. In this particular song, the process is repeated sixteen times creating as they say “une chanson bien bandée!”

Interview with the Author

So, in a nutshell, what is the story of the musical Trompe L’Oeil?
Trompe L’Oeil (an art form that literally means “deceives the eye”) is in many ways a modernized riff on The Wizard of Oz. This version of Dorothy - Demi, a drag queen - finds herself euphoric over the progress that has been made in America circa 2015 - a black president, legalized gay marriage and legalized marijuana! What more to want?! - only to get swept away into what is for her the Oz-like political landscape of Trump that follows in 2016, a landscape she cannot process.

How does the ultimate message then differ from the Wizard of Oz?

Demi’s ultimate lessons are not like Dorothy’s - she must realize that labeling things as dream-like or surreal only renders her and others useless - this is not an Oz she gets to wake from: the events, however bizarre, are part of her ongoing reality and she will need to accept that and fight for her truth to prevail - and in that to and fro between reality and dream - the ultimate question is Demi’s new reality the american dream?

How do the surreal and trompe l’oeil art forms play a role?

The dissonance she experiences in this process of discovery also provides an opportunity to reference both the surreal and trompe l’oeil art forms and to playfully bring Dali, Magritte, Escher and many other artists into the conversation.

How then are the songs themselves also trompe l’oeil songs?

As something of a play on Lewis Carroll’s poem in Through the Looking Glass where Carroll spells the full name “Alice Pleasance Liddell” with the first letters of each line of his opening poem (reprinted below), the songs of Trompe L’Oeil explore this idea more adventurously, placing letters strategically within the body of the song to create messages and/or images that give an underlying message. Because these texts are sung, some have suggested it is rather “trompe l’oreille” (“deceives the ear”) and in a sense - and at a certain point - that is true, but once one is looking at the text, it is very much trompe l’oeil.

Anything else for us to consider?

Well, yes - at a broader level, the songs are written in a number of ways to suggest varied approaches to writing songs - ways that go beyond rhyme, sometimes creating a space where the actual form of the song supports or provides further meaning to the idea of the song itself. The French “Is it Oui?” written in French Alexandrines, Trump’s “Magical Me” written in Seussian anapestic tetrameter are two examples. The back of the program I think illustrates this more ably.