Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

Too much guesswork involved when the project is described as being "based on" and it's unclear whether the underlying work is art or music. Also, I can't "picture" how you would base a painting on a musician's lyrics. Are you making a visual representation of what the lyrics suggest, or are you painting a page of music with treble clef and quarter notes? Generally, a new work of creative arts that is inspired or influenced by a previous work does not infringe, but "inspired by" is different from "copied from" and in the latter cases there may be an illegal infringement unless there is a defense such as fair use.