The spirit of this project was born of the desire to capture and catalogue the striking locution I encounter in daily life. It acts as a reservoir of lyrical inspiration for when I find myself abandoned by afflatus. Its entries started out in composition notebooks, and after a nearly decade of compiling I had a large stack of them collecting dust. Realizing that it might be more useful to have this second hand stimuli as a single document, I proceeded to copy and alphabetize all of the entries into a word document which I have titled, ‘Book of Daniel‘.

‘Book of Daniel‘ is my companion for songwriting. It doesn’t always help me find my way out of a lyrical or dead end, but it plants seeds that in the future sprout. Sometimes it offers up the perfect word or phrase right when I need it, but ultimately it’s an investment in future inspiration. The contents of the ‘Lists‘ and ‘Quotations‘ sections are supplementary to the ‘Book of Daniel’, and are mostly comprised of various media that continue to inspire me.

With this project, I’m sharing a private part of my world, though I’ve long desired it to be a public document. In some ways it’s a meandering letter the world wrote to me, which I have re-organized and now returned to sender. Whether it’s a timeless quote, an obscure artist, a strange moniker or a favorite word or turn of phrase, I hope you will consider reaching out to contribute a morsel for this ongoing project.

Daniel Lutz