Blade of Grass (10 minutes, Day 3 of 10)

Blade of Grass: (wow, I didn’t even talk about grass….)

10 minutes

I can almost smell my dad’s scallops wrapped in bacon that he used to smoke in his mini-chimney on summer afternoons. He’d slave away for hours, sweat forming on his forehead as he waited for the scent of sandalwood, cedar, and oak to rise up in tufts from the smoker. Meanwhile, the hammock he had laced around my favorite tree in the front yard was gently rocking me back and forth. Purple twisted in pinks and blues in a soft but springy fabric. I always had a song stuck in my head that summer, something from Taylor Swift’s first album, the one that felt like both the end and beginning of the world. The bottoms of my shoes would occasionally rub across the earth, pushing around the dirt like a bulldozer and then lifting back up to surrender to the push and pull of the hammock. Swinging, twirling, my fingers wrapped around the top of where I was lounged, just barely gripping enough to stay on. But eventually my balance would revert back to that of a toddler’s and I would topple onto the heavy ground, dropping like a basket from a table, surprisingly able to land upright. The sun peeled back and landed right in the rounded center of my eyes, too trusting to avoid my stare. My dad’s years of wisdom trained him to come outside fully loaded with sunglasses from an 80’s music video, grooving as loudly as a kick-boxing workout, yet leaving a silent little white strip between his eye brows where the sun was denied access. On a tiny, tin-foil coated tray, he served up his foresty flavors, little bundles of savory meat, confined by a tiny toothpick.

Window sill (10 minutes, day 2 of 10)

Window sill: GO! Your turn!!

Summer never felt as far away as it does today, sealed out by the glass pane and coated in white. How could it ever return and peek it’s way through the heaps of snow on every street corner? At the start of November, I always smell the cold creep into the air, and the wooden rims of the windows seem to hollow out, like old bones in a graveyard. Each day brings a crisper reminder that the alleys will soon be filled with slush, the boots will need to be dragged out from under the bed, and heaping piles of coats will overwhelm the city. And by February, I’ve now acknowledged my doom inside the jail of winter, sloshing through the puddles of melted flakes and salt, a festive soup of doom. Finally huffing and puffing my way through the front door, turning the heavy, frozen knob to the left and right furiously before throttling my keys to the floor and leaping out of my dripping galoshes. After spending the past 10 minutes in the jungle outside, the never ending brittle wind had snapped across my cheeks and left them pink as a pansy. But something about the glimmering window still beckons me closer, husssshhhh it whispers in its square-like way, so centered, so under-control. My breath creates a little cloud on its empty slate and I trace the initials of my love, “CB,” but watch in disappointment as the cloud floats away, like a drifter moving on to smaller, more tired things. I press my forehead onto the window sill and feel the tiny slivers of wood surround my skin, brown and textured, worn from years of lingering eyes upon it.

Object Writing: TRAIN (Day 1 of 10)

For the next 10 days, I’m going to do an object write with the object prompt listed on objectwriting.com. Wanna join in?!

TRAIN: (10 minutes)

Nothing could stop her from rubbing each finger along the tracks, smooth as a copper penny but rugged as a rope. Each finger felt a different sensation, one of tears, one of intense coldness, one of remarkable warmth, and her pinkies barely slid across the rusted old line. Her eyes planned out the destination: a crisp autumn train stop somewhere about 20 hours down the tracks where beautiful women carrying bundles of bread, apples, and smiles in their strong arms stood around to greet their loved ones who would hop off the train as quickly as a bird flew from its nest to retrieve a snack. Mothers, wives, everyone so familiar yet so secretive. What is it about a train station that pours smoke and mystery? And amongst the grinding of the wheels and coal is a chug-chug-chug that drives the rhythm of the heartbeats. She never stopped imagining long enough to see the hysterical light blasting from miles away until it was up close, the evening had suddenly turned to morning. Heaving herself from the tracks and down, tumbling like a rag doll off a loyal owner’s bed, into the weeds and summer grass below. Never once did the train consider stopping but her heart sure did. And each racketing car sped past, sending shards of metal and scraps of trash along its sides and towards her homemade dress skirt. She could smell the industry, the stink of hard labor and hands that worked day and night, colored “oil” instead of flesh. Every inch of the train like a little piece of an inchworm, working its way along a giant green leaf. Would the worm make it to the end of the leaf or wherever it was going? Would the train slither its way to a safe port? Would her father walk off the train and back into her lonely arms? She could smell the cold coming off of his work-worn coat even now, the gentle hum of his voice as it carried up through the fireplace at night into her 2nd floor bedroom. And each story he told her still rang through her memory like the whistle that bellowed from the train.

Do Songwriters Need Therapists?

Yes. I think songwriters can benefit from therapy, but with a little slant….be the THERAPIST. Hear me out! Today I went out to dinner with some friends including fellow songwriter and song seed collector Eric Leva and we started talking about Valentine’s Day. I’ve been wracking my brain for Valentine’s Day song ideas so I immediately perked up at the stories they were sharing.

    So, I tried to take full advantage of the situation and realized I felt like a therapist, asking questions like:

- What are you feeling about Valentine’s Day this year? Why?

- What exactly did he say to you about the holiday? And right before he said that what did he say? And how did you feel when he said that? What would you have done right in that moment if you could? Thrown a chair at him!?

- If you could summarize Valentine’s Day in 3 words, what would you say?

And the outcome of being a therapist for a bit? SONG SEEDS!!! I’m fully loaded to write a few different valentine’s songs now, thanks to the different perspectives and details about each that I collected.

Burning Bridges

Should we burn the bridge? Lately I’ve been hearing alot of talk about the use of bridges and how they may become obliterated. Here’s the two sides of the argument:

1) ANTI-BRIDGE: We’re outgrowing bridges as listeners and don’t have the patience for a whole new section (mostly in genres such as pop/hip hop). It’s up to the songwriter to communicate the story without the necessity of a bridge.

2) PRO-BRIDGE: Bridges are a great opportunity to tell a different angle in the story and keep the listener entertained by adding an additional and unique section to the song.

In my songwriter’s circle, here’s what’s goin on with bridges:

-My good friend and co-writer Eric Leva recently was working on a song that came together beautifully without a bridge and sent me the first draft to have a listen. I commented that it sounded complete, even without a bridge but he threw one in there anyways and it sort of distracted me as a listener. We’ve been so “trained” to write bridges, but maybe they’re not necessary?

- A friend of mine told me that Kylar England, a Berklee alumni and touring musician/songwriter told a class at Berklee this week that she’s quit writing bridges as frequently. She said she could say what she needed to without them.

What do you think? Should we burn that bridge?

Simile vs. Metaphor Tip

Here’s a quick tip we learned yesterday in Pat Pattison’s Advanced Lyric Writing Class:

- When writing a song based on a metaphor (she IS a flower) as your hook, it’s probably a good idea to lead up to the hook with a lot of language regarding the metaphor. Setting up the metaphor is important to the listener understanding the association between the two things being compared.

- When writing a song based on a simile (she is LIKE a flower), it’s less important to surround the simile with corresponding thoughts and language. You can make the surrounding lyrics un-related to your simile and still keep the listener in the loop!

Hope that helps!