A quick couple things before I post up the latest set of lyrics.
My laptop may be dead. It might be the power cord, or the joint inside the computer to which the power cord connects. If the former, I've got a new one coming in the mail soon; if the latter, I am a very sad panda. XD
One of the quotes from the poem by Megan below:
Her writings back again, better than ever.
For a while there is had begun to wither.
Happiness had taken hold.
But now her heart is black and cold.
--reminded me of something I was discussing with Myke in our last email volley. It is a common misconception among writers, especially poets, and especially when they are first learning their craft. Namely, the idea that one has to suffer or be depressed in order to get artistic inpiration. Myke and I had agreed that while suffering is sometimes a catalyst to inspiration, it is not exactly necessary. Last night I was talking the subject over with Dave, and his opinion was, as usual, succinct and to the point: You don't have to be suffering or depressed "right now" in order to be inspired. But you have to have had the experience, in order to contrast it with whatever you're writing, in order to have a wide enough perspective to write well.
On to the song I'm posting today. I wrote it oh, perhaps a week ago, and for the life of me I don't know why I haven't posted it up till now.
There's an episode of The Twilight Zone called "He's Alive!" which I highly recommend to anyone, anywhere, but especially people living in America right now. The story is of a disaffected and fearful young man whose only real friend is an elderly gentleman who witnessed the horrors of Hitler's Nazi regime. When the young man begins to believe he is being counseled in his quest for political power by a mysterious stranger, the elderly man warns him repeatedly that he is traveling down a road towards evil, and that he will not find happiness there. I won't spoil the whole plot, but there are some fantastic lines in it--and some eerie echoes of some of the madness that's happening in our own country today. Evil grows out of irrational fears. Or even rational ones which have been twisted by opportunistic villains into the shape of the Other, the Foreigner, the [insert person of opposing ideology].
Last night, watching BBC news, I saw a story on a European country which was about to pass a law making full-face-covering burqas illegal. They interviewed a Muslim woman who said, "There are Taliban who say that one woman without a burqa is a woman too many. These politicians are saying one woman with a burqa is a woman too many. I see them as two different kinds of dangerous extremism." Well said, ma'am, well said. Playing on people's fears to make ordinary citizens suspicious and distrustful of one another is NOT going to help any nation in the world pull itself together in this time of worldwide difficulty. Right now, though, I just hope no other states of America follow Arizona's bad example.
Poetry might not help much, but at least if it's good poetry it isn't going to hurt anything either!
Here is a song about mob rule.
[right-thinking individuals]
right-thinking individuals
they crowd around your door
the first round left them drooling, darling
now they're back for more
the war you feared is actual
but you just pour on the charm
they're right-thinking individuals
you don't care enough to arm
right-thinking individuals
they dance to your design
their wild excesses aren't yours
say you who drew no lines
it was you who turned their soggy
mediocrity to wine
they're right-thinking individuals
you don't trouble to define
past I agree with you
and you agree with me
so let's go after everyone
who sees things differently
right-thinking individuals
march out against your foes
you wave your hands and smile at them
like you're the one who knows
what they'll do when they drop those signs
and bare their vengeful souls
they're right-thinking individuals
that nobody controls
unthinking individuals
that nobody controls
this is what passes for poetry these days
Okay. This is truly one of those "more in sorrow than in anger" moments. I haven't been back to Quizilla for several years and freely admit it was silly to spend so much time there. User-generated quizzes which ask you things like "Is your favorite color red, blue, yellow or green?" and then say "You are aligned with the element of earth!" if you answer green are...yeah. They're an incredible waste of time and mostly only tell you about the assumptions of the quizmaker.
Apparently, though, this site on which I wasted far too much time while in college has now expanded into another area: user-generated poetry.
These are the most popular poems on Quizilla. Here, for um...my edification, and your, ah...amusement? is the number one top rated poem on that website right now. It is entitled "The Dark Rain of My Miasmic Sou--" oh, wait, no. That's from the Kingdom of Loathing.
Inspiration: The Words Of The Broken Heart
by alexknight629
"Nothing is more powerful than the words of a broken heart.
The best inspiration is found when you truly fall apart. "
The heart of a shattered girl written out on paper.
Written at three in the morning under the light of a single taper.
The tears she sheds as thick as ink.
As her sanity is brought to the brink.
She may not cause herself physical harm.
But for anyone who cares there is still reason for alarm.
Inside, this girl, she's so sick of trying.
Wishing that only she could be dying.
Just read her words, they're written everywhere.
Can't you see she just wants someone to show they care?
But you'll never see the pain she locks inside
All the nights she stayed up and did nothing but cried.
She'll be with you all day,
Pretending everything is okay.
But if you look deep within,
You'd see what lies underneath her grin.
The heart of cold she does not show.
No one really has to know.
Her writings back again, better than ever.
For a while there is had begun to wither.
Happiness had taken hold.
But now her heart is black and cold.
Full of inspiration, Where to start?
Her words as strong as the broken heart.
---
I've run into poetry elsewhere around the blogosphere from time to time--poetry written by adults which was nonetheless not very good. Since leaving Gaia Online, though, I've never had an example of an unpolished work by a 14-year-old with which to explain why poetry is really important. Or rather, teaching people how to write good poetry is important.
People need poetry. We freaking need it. If a human being has sufficient grasp of any language by the time that human being reaches puberty, and has spare time between work, sleep and perhaps dodging bullets to compose it, there is about (guesstimating based on my own unscientific observations) a one in three chance that said human being will generate poetry. Even if they never show it to anyone else.
Poetry is used for taking mental states--the organized structures of emotion, memory, and expectation which provide the foundation for the formulation of thoughts--and altering them. Good poetry enables the writer and reader to do this efficiently, effectively and (I aver) to some worthwhile purpose. Yes, even if that purpose is taking a horrible thought and getting it outside one's mind so as to feel less helpless in the face of it.
This poem is, as I said, not very good. It is far from excellent. It is not, however entirely bad--it uses images somewhat, attempts to make rhymes, and displays a mental state with enough clarity that one can see it to poke at it.
There are times, though, when I wonder if American people who get into poetry writing really think this is all there is. As though the really good stuff written by poets of the times of old is gone forever--or as though there isn't any difference. Dangit, I know I could be better, I know I need to keep working at it. Even though it's a tool I drag out and apply to my mind whenever I face an especially tangly emotional problem, I pay attention to keeping its edges sharp. A scalpel which leaves a jagged edge is not the best thing for delicate surgery; it's likely to promote infection and leave scars.
Is Megan going to get older, though, and just keep writing the same sorts of thing over and over, believing it's good because no one ever says "you know, that pair of rhyme words is kinda boring, maybe also think about scansion a bit"? Will she try to get better, or get bored with poetry and just stop, robbing us of a potentially rather good poet? Would we notice?
I'm pretty sure that not noticing the fact that we don't cultivate our potential good poets or notice when there aren't many says something bad about America. This could, however, just be my personal bias. Also my desire to be paid enough to live off of in exchange for teaching people how to write good poetry. I would love to live in an America, in a Chicago, where this could be the case.
Who knows. XP It's past my bedtime anyway.
Apparently, though, this site on which I wasted far too much time while in college has now expanded into another area: user-generated poetry.
These are the most popular poems on Quizilla. Here, for um...my edification, and your, ah...amusement? is the number one top rated poem on that website right now. It is entitled "The Dark Rain of My Miasmic Sou--" oh, wait, no. That's from the Kingdom of Loathing.
Inspiration: The Words Of The Broken Heart
by alexknight629
"Nothing is more powerful than the words of a broken heart.
The best inspiration is found when you truly fall apart. "
The heart of a shattered girl written out on paper.
Written at three in the morning under the light of a single taper.
The tears she sheds as thick as ink.
As her sanity is brought to the brink.
She may not cause herself physical harm.
But for anyone who cares there is still reason for alarm.
Inside, this girl, she's so sick of trying.
Wishing that only she could be dying.
Just read her words, they're written everywhere.
Can't you see she just wants someone to show they care?
But you'll never see the pain she locks inside
All the nights she stayed up and did nothing but cried.
She'll be with you all day,
Pretending everything is okay.
But if you look deep within,
You'd see what lies underneath her grin.
The heart of cold she does not show.
No one really has to know.
Her writings back again, better than ever.
For a while there is had begun to wither.
Happiness had taken hold.
But now her heart is black and cold.
Full of inspiration, Where to start?
Her words as strong as the broken heart.
---
I've run into poetry elsewhere around the blogosphere from time to time--poetry written by adults which was nonetheless not very good. Since leaving Gaia Online, though, I've never had an example of an unpolished work by a 14-year-old with which to explain why poetry is really important. Or rather, teaching people how to write good poetry is important.
People need poetry. We freaking need it. If a human being has sufficient grasp of any language by the time that human being reaches puberty, and has spare time between work, sleep and perhaps dodging bullets to compose it, there is about (guesstimating based on my own unscientific observations) a one in three chance that said human being will generate poetry. Even if they never show it to anyone else.
Poetry is used for taking mental states--the organized structures of emotion, memory, and expectation which provide the foundation for the formulation of thoughts--and altering them. Good poetry enables the writer and reader to do this efficiently, effectively and (I aver) to some worthwhile purpose. Yes, even if that purpose is taking a horrible thought and getting it outside one's mind so as to feel less helpless in the face of it.
This poem is, as I said, not very good. It is far from excellent. It is not, however entirely bad--it uses images somewhat, attempts to make rhymes, and displays a mental state with enough clarity that one can see it to poke at it.
There are times, though, when I wonder if American people who get into poetry writing really think this is all there is. As though the really good stuff written by poets of the times of old is gone forever--or as though there isn't any difference. Dangit, I know I could be better, I know I need to keep working at it. Even though it's a tool I drag out and apply to my mind whenever I face an especially tangly emotional problem, I pay attention to keeping its edges sharp. A scalpel which leaves a jagged edge is not the best thing for delicate surgery; it's likely to promote infection and leave scars.
Is Megan going to get older, though, and just keep writing the same sorts of thing over and over, believing it's good because no one ever says "you know, that pair of rhyme words is kinda boring, maybe also think about scansion a bit"? Will she try to get better, or get bored with poetry and just stop, robbing us of a potentially rather good poet? Would we notice?
I'm pretty sure that not noticing the fact that we don't cultivate our potential good poets or notice when there aren't many says something bad about America. This could, however, just be my personal bias. Also my desire to be paid enough to live off of in exchange for teaching people how to write good poetry. I would love to live in an America, in a Chicago, where this could be the case.
Who knows. XP It's past my bedtime anyway.
poetic rebuttal to a freestyler on the bus
Friday night was, unusually for me, an unpleasant day at work. Stuff that doesn't usually get to me got to me; I became flummoxed and cranky and was even emoting unpleasantly to my ladies. Very disappointed in myself. I was on my long bus ride home, trying to write a poem to work out my tension and get calm again, when a young man in the back started freestyling. This is something I've seen, or rather heard, before, and ordinarily it fills me with joy. "Poetry is not dead!" I think. "It's just here on the buses and in the streets where people can use it!" Friday, though, it mostly annoyed, because although he didn't mention me as such his words evinced a general disdain for his fellow passengers which irritated me, and was difficult not to take personally. So I wrote this rebuttal. Which I chickened out and didn't give or read to the fellow, but eh. XD At least I get to post it here. It's short as all get out, but in future if I revisit the form I'll go longer.
I have no idea what to do with line breaks, since it's freestyle style with very few pauses for breath. So don't pay too much attention to line breaks; I recommend reading aloud "for best results." ;)
so many words I heard in streets and buses
redefining who us is by the words, the verbs, they swerve
like wheels, you feel that they deserve
to flow, it takes a poet to bind the mind,
a speaker to see the weak speech
and turn it into strong, the meek gain the reach
to right the wrongs of the cold-blooded town,
old rain flooded down
into closed minds that should be open, I'm hopin'
that you find a better sound
I have no idea what to do with line breaks, since it's freestyle style with very few pauses for breath. So don't pay too much attention to line breaks; I recommend reading aloud "for best results." ;)
so many words I heard in streets and buses
redefining who us is by the words, the verbs, they swerve
like wheels, you feel that they deserve
to flow, it takes a poet to bind the mind,
a speaker to see the weak speech
and turn it into strong, the meek gain the reach
to right the wrongs of the cold-blooded town,
old rain flooded down
into closed minds that should be open, I'm hopin'
that you find a better sound
the first slice
The first slice of a meat or cheese off a deli slicer has various fates. Most often it's either thrown away as misshapen, or given to the customer as a sample. Sometimes, if they wanted a very thick chunk, it's the entire order. Other times, if I've decided to refill a tray by hand and am feeling hungry, I'll curl it up in my palm to eat later while I heap up the rest of the slices in the tray in the appealing (but difficult to unpeel) little flower-like bunches which are standard for some reason.
Edit: Oo! I changed it around and completely re-wrote a stanza. It is much more focused now, and better I think. Yay for edits.
I prayed for knowledge many times, but wisdom once, and often
now I'll ask for wisdom, light that's clear when edges blur.
Let it bear up under me when my resolve would soften,
grasp and aim my actions, so that new new things occur.
Oh, I strive to think, emote and pray with great precision,
but precision's useless if I have no end in sight.
Every hand I shake, each door I open's a decision;
none of them are evil yet I can't say which is right.
Confident and humble--sugar water, bitter lemons,
worry and ambition barely balance with good taste.
Am I Rudyard Kipling, Leonard Cohen, Samuel Clemens,
or some upstart deli clerk who ought to know her place?
Time is razor-sharp, so best be careful how you spend it.
One main chance cut open lets ten others wilt, untouched;
each untasted fruit may cry that you did not befriend it.
What you make must answer what you did not want as much.
Do something! Find out if you're a good or bad example.
Move your weak flesh forward, even if it's a a crawl.
Push the meat across the blade, and carve yourself a sample.
Taste and see if your heart has blood in it after all.
Edit: Oo! I changed it around and completely re-wrote a stanza. It is much more focused now, and better I think. Yay for edits.
I prayed for knowledge many times, but wisdom once, and often
now I'll ask for wisdom, light that's clear when edges blur.
Let it bear up under me when my resolve would soften,
grasp and aim my actions, so that new new things occur.
Oh, I strive to think, emote and pray with great precision,
but precision's useless if I have no end in sight.
Every hand I shake, each door I open's a decision;
none of them are evil yet I can't say which is right.
Confident and humble--sugar water, bitter lemons,
worry and ambition barely balance with good taste.
Am I Rudyard Kipling, Leonard Cohen, Samuel Clemens,
or some upstart deli clerk who ought to know her place?
Time is razor-sharp, so best be careful how you spend it.
One main chance cut open lets ten others wilt, untouched;
each untasted fruit may cry that you did not befriend it.
What you make must answer what you did not want as much.
Do something! Find out if you're a good or bad example.
Move your weak flesh forward, even if it's a a crawl.
Push the meat across the blade, and carve yourself a sample.
Taste and see if your heart has blood in it after all.
this cheese procedure
What? Two posts--in one day? Something must be wrong with me. ...Or right, I supppose. You know what it was? I was feeling antsy this morning and decided to write instead of taking a book along to read on the bus. So on the morning ride I wrote this here poem, and on the way home I finished up the ballad of the RosaRing, below, the first half of which had languished unfinished in my notebook for quite some time.
Oh, quick poetry note. Rhymed quatrains fall into normal English speech patterns much, much more easily if you alternate between even and odd numbers of syllables per line. This poem goes 8-7-8-7 which is an extremely comfortable line length for your everyday poetry writing needs. Short enough that you never feel like you have to add in extra words to make it come out right, long enough that it takes only the most perfunctory vocabulary gymnastics to trim a long thought down to size.
This does not, by the way, fulfill my intention to write more poems about cheese. Certainly this poem *mentions* cheese, but it's essentially me complaining about sampling events. As such I don't think it's an especially good poem, only a couple notches above the little "buy some soup and a sandwich" songs I make up at the sample table. Hopefully, though, these are complaints with which others who've worked in retail or customer service can identify. Perhaps it will comfort or at least amuse!
Customers, bah! Who needs 'em? (Er...other than, y'know. Everyone.)
XD
train up in this cheese procedure
hold the wheel against the blade
all those corporate sponsors need your
help to feed what they have made
to each doubtful, hungry shopper
who must lay some fruits aside,
skimp on cream, or simply drop her
list to buy what you provide
train up in this cheese procedure
you'll cast orange cubes like darts
customers, pierced through by greed for
flavor, will clear out their carts
fill them up with cheese, with crackers,
all the things you're charged to sell
retail jobs were made for slackers
as some two-bit public hell
where each wedge you slice, so careful,
is inhaled by passersby
who won't stop to get an earful
of your sales pitch, or who try
hard to get your phone and address
knowing fully well you're trapped
smiling, talking, standing at this
table strewn with spit and scraps
if you once should turn your back, slip
to the fridge to slice up more
they will swoop in to attack, strip
plates or knock them on the floor
but you stick to please and thank you,
loud, bright wit and quiet tact
or else people who outrank you
will read you the riot act
train up in this cheese procedure
act as though you have a choice
maybe it's fair trade--you need your
paychecks, and they need your voice.
Oh, quick poetry note. Rhymed quatrains fall into normal English speech patterns much, much more easily if you alternate between even and odd numbers of syllables per line. This poem goes 8-7-8-7 which is an extremely comfortable line length for your everyday poetry writing needs. Short enough that you never feel like you have to add in extra words to make it come out right, long enough that it takes only the most perfunctory vocabulary gymnastics to trim a long thought down to size.
This does not, by the way, fulfill my intention to write more poems about cheese. Certainly this poem *mentions* cheese, but it's essentially me complaining about sampling events. As such I don't think it's an especially good poem, only a couple notches above the little "buy some soup and a sandwich" songs I make up at the sample table. Hopefully, though, these are complaints with which others who've worked in retail or customer service can identify. Perhaps it will comfort or at least amuse!
Customers, bah! Who needs 'em? (Er...other than, y'know. Everyone.)
XD
train up in this cheese procedure
hold the wheel against the blade
all those corporate sponsors need your
help to feed what they have made
to each doubtful, hungry shopper
who must lay some fruits aside,
skimp on cream, or simply drop her
list to buy what you provide
train up in this cheese procedure
you'll cast orange cubes like darts
customers, pierced through by greed for
flavor, will clear out their carts
fill them up with cheese, with crackers,
all the things you're charged to sell
retail jobs were made for slackers
as some two-bit public hell
where each wedge you slice, so careful,
is inhaled by passersby
who won't stop to get an earful
of your sales pitch, or who try
hard to get your phone and address
knowing fully well you're trapped
smiling, talking, standing at this
table strewn with spit and scraps
if you once should turn your back, slip
to the fridge to slice up more
they will swoop in to attack, strip
plates or knock them on the floor
but you stick to please and thank you,
loud, bright wit and quiet tact
or else people who outrank you
will read you the riot act
train up in this cheese procedure
act as though you have a choice
maybe it's fair trade--you need your
paychecks, and they need your voice.
the ballad of the RosaRing
In Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's novel Carpe Diem, there is a description of a song called "the ballad of the RosaRing". (Yes, yes, ring around the rosie. Good name for a place depopulated by a plague.) I'm pretty sure the following quote regarding the song doesn't spoil too much of the book, at least, not the really key plot points. The only lyric they write down is a couple mentions that the chorus repeats the phrase "fly on by", and we get this description of the subject:
"The audience, respectful, may have been expecting another set of rounds: what they got was the ballad, in Terran, of a pair of lovers separated forever when an experimental virus got loose on the RosaRing.
The translation they had given Hakan for the audience had the Ring a resource-rich island cursed with a strain of infectious madness--which to Miri's mind was as close as made no difference. The Ring virus had been deadly, the world it circled rich, and three rescue teams had been shot down by automatics before the fatcats had finally seen the stupid waste of it and quarantined the sector. The lover had been on the last rescue team. For Hakan--for the Winterfair--he escaped."
~Partners in necessity (3-book trade paperback) p.796
So I decided it would be fun to write the "ballad, in Terran" in its entirety. It IS pretty depressing (song spoiler alert!--everyone dies) but I'm pretty sure I stayed true to the description and kept it all Liaden-Universe-legit. :D So if Lee & Miller ever decide to do a Carpe Diem movie, this would go GREAT in the soundtrack. *bats eyelashes* Just sayin'.
the RosaRing, it circled round
a world where remedies were found
in plenty, so the Ring became
a hospital with wide acclaim
they researched every malady
from places 'cross the galaxy
so RosaRing always had need
for pilots with spare time and speed
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
there was a woman and a man
flew side by side in one tin can
they struck it rich, but had a fight
each certain they were in the right
she took off in a single ship
he partied on the landing strip
without her, nothing felt the same
he sent a message, "I'm to blame..."
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
she got his pinbeam at the port
she'd filed her flight and locked her coords
but sent back to him, all smiling
"come meet me at the RosaRing
you never know what we might find"
so he set off, three days behind
but coils all redlined, moving fast
felt each hour, slower than the last
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
at RosaRing, a lone lab tech
pain in his head, crick in his neck
let slip, let break a piece of glass
that virus hit his system fast
and scrambled up his fine young mind
he ran, and left the lab behind
rushed madly out into the hall
so many heard his footsteps' fall
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
the lady had stopped for a bite
she heard the sirens, saw the lights
that seared across the station
"viral contamination!"
she rushed to find the evac crew
but that's one thing they could not do
the plague had slid through all the vents
and would have come with if they went
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
the guns were armed--the crew's last job
the lady ducked the panicked mob
and closed her mind to the alarms
remembering her lover's arms
which he wrapped round his chest and cried
he'd landed, learned two med ships died
to Rosa's automatics
screaming out into the static
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
the stationmaster, planetside
said "we could give it one more try,
but who would go?" the pilot roared
"they lift off with me at the board!"
scraped up a fey and grim-faced crew
for each of them had loved ones too
aboard the cursed RosaRing
they signaled in an endless string
"if anyone's alive there still,
go power down the guns: we will..."
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
when their wreckage spread across
the sky, all knew the Ring was lost
they pierced the hull and stopped the wheel
since then it's just a lump of steel
fly on by
fly on by
fly on by
"The audience, respectful, may have been expecting another set of rounds: what they got was the ballad, in Terran, of a pair of lovers separated forever when an experimental virus got loose on the RosaRing.
The translation they had given Hakan for the audience had the Ring a resource-rich island cursed with a strain of infectious madness--which to Miri's mind was as close as made no difference. The Ring virus had been deadly, the world it circled rich, and three rescue teams had been shot down by automatics before the fatcats had finally seen the stupid waste of it and quarantined the sector. The lover had been on the last rescue team. For Hakan--for the Winterfair--he escaped."
~Partners in necessity (3-book trade paperback) p.796
So I decided it would be fun to write the "ballad, in Terran" in its entirety. It IS pretty depressing (song spoiler alert!--everyone dies) but I'm pretty sure I stayed true to the description and kept it all Liaden-Universe-legit. :D So if Lee & Miller ever decide to do a Carpe Diem movie, this would go GREAT in the soundtrack. *bats eyelashes* Just sayin'.
the RosaRing, it circled round
a world where remedies were found
in plenty, so the Ring became
a hospital with wide acclaim
they researched every malady
from places 'cross the galaxy
so RosaRing always had need
for pilots with spare time and speed
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
there was a woman and a man
flew side by side in one tin can
they struck it rich, but had a fight
each certain they were in the right
she took off in a single ship
he partied on the landing strip
without her, nothing felt the same
he sent a message, "I'm to blame..."
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
she got his pinbeam at the port
she'd filed her flight and locked her coords
but sent back to him, all smiling
"come meet me at the RosaRing
you never know what we might find"
so he set off, three days behind
but coils all redlined, moving fast
felt each hour, slower than the last
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
at RosaRing, a lone lab tech
pain in his head, crick in his neck
let slip, let break a piece of glass
that virus hit his system fast
and scrambled up his fine young mind
he ran, and left the lab behind
rushed madly out into the hall
so many heard his footsteps' fall
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
the lady had stopped for a bite
she heard the sirens, saw the lights
that seared across the station
"viral contamination!"
she rushed to find the evac crew
but that's one thing they could not do
the plague had slid through all the vents
and would have come with if they went
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
the guns were armed--the crew's last job
the lady ducked the panicked mob
and closed her mind to the alarms
remembering her lover's arms
which he wrapped round his chest and cried
he'd landed, learned two med ships died
to Rosa's automatics
screaming out into the static
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
the stationmaster, planetside
said "we could give it one more try,
but who would go?" the pilot roared
"they lift off with me at the board!"
scraped up a fey and grim-faced crew
for each of them had loved ones too
aboard the cursed RosaRing
they signaled in an endless string
"if anyone's alive there still,
go power down the guns: we will..."
fly on by, fly on by
fly on by
when their wreckage spread across
the sky, all knew the Ring was lost
they pierced the hull and stopped the wheel
since then it's just a lump of steel
fly on by
fly on by
fly on by
graffiti philosophy
There are lots of things I probably could or should write about instead, but despite events in the lives of people I know as well as the larger world, I think I'm'a stick with what's been working lately. In other words, using my blog as a kind of glorified poem and lyric repository, when I don't have anything else to say that I think is really worthwhile.
Many people come to my store for many reasons. Several days ago, I had a conversation with a fellow who described himself as a graffiti artist, and though our conversation on the subject was brief I was oddly moved by it. We all struggle to communicate with each other--sometimes even people who are very close have trouble getting a particular message across. Even though some graffiti has a social element, people indicating that a certain area is within their gang's "territory", the vast, vast majority of it is just people writing their own names. Stealing the use of other people's walls, windows, vehicles, in the attempt to get across a single message; I exist. It matters to me that you know this.
Who knows why I wrote a poem about this, rather than many other things I could just have easily written a poem about. XD I've half promised Amber I'd do one about cheese--it's harder than I thought to write a poem about cheese, but I'll get there! I guess I've been thinking about communication, messages, and social roles a lot lately. There's a reference in the ninth line to--oh, i forget who the famous dead poet was, but I'll google the quote: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."
XD Oh yeah. Re-reading that poem makes me acutely aware that I need to brush up my own skills.
As if the wall I wrote across looked back,
as if the stone and plaster said, "right on,"
as if storm winds could never peel or crack
this message, and you saw me. But I'm gone
to ground. I wear a bland, familiar mask.
You smile at me and do not ask my name,
our lives walled in by each familiar task.
Yet here before these stones, we are the same.
Look on my words. You might--but don't!--despair,
though yours, like mine, are scrubbed away too soon.
We still possess the hands to scrawl them there,
and eyes to read, by streetlight, sun or moon.
Go, walk your quiet halls. But when you see
a bland face smiling, wonder--is that me?
Many people come to my store for many reasons. Several days ago, I had a conversation with a fellow who described himself as a graffiti artist, and though our conversation on the subject was brief I was oddly moved by it. We all struggle to communicate with each other--sometimes even people who are very close have trouble getting a particular message across. Even though some graffiti has a social element, people indicating that a certain area is within their gang's "territory", the vast, vast majority of it is just people writing their own names. Stealing the use of other people's walls, windows, vehicles, in the attempt to get across a single message; I exist. It matters to me that you know this.
Who knows why I wrote a poem about this, rather than many other things I could just have easily written a poem about. XD I've half promised Amber I'd do one about cheese--it's harder than I thought to write a poem about cheese, but I'll get there! I guess I've been thinking about communication, messages, and social roles a lot lately. There's a reference in the ninth line to--oh, i forget who the famous dead poet was, but I'll google the quote: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."
XD Oh yeah. Re-reading that poem makes me acutely aware that I need to brush up my own skills.
As if the wall I wrote across looked back,
as if the stone and plaster said, "right on,"
as if storm winds could never peel or crack
this message, and you saw me. But I'm gone
to ground. I wear a bland, familiar mask.
You smile at me and do not ask my name,
our lives walled in by each familiar task.
Yet here before these stones, we are the same.
Look on my words. You might--but don't!--despair,
though yours, like mine, are scrubbed away too soon.
We still possess the hands to scrawl them there,
and eyes to read, by streetlight, sun or moon.
Go, walk your quiet halls. But when you see
a bland face smiling, wonder--is that me?
hey, "the unheard poet"? I heard ya. brush up your skills.
So yesterday, I was backreading a couple of the blogs in my sidebar--it'd been awhile since I logged in--and I came across this post over at Pleiotropy. Evolution is a touchy subject--"the unheard poet" (I believe that's his MySpace) and the career evolutionary biologist certainly disagreed--but what stuck in my craw was the actual, er, 'poetry.'
Yes, due to the fact that as Dad often said, art is what you like, this young man's typed-up wordpile does technically count as poetry. I could not help feeling, however, that if it had been me sitting at a farmer's market with a typewriter and a sign which read "Free poems!" (and don't think I haven't fantasized about it! because I totally have!) I would have written something better. Something which takes the trouble to describe evolution, or at least, the poetic idea contained within the scientific ones. Namely, this!
evolve, to lift your neck above the grass,
to glimpse fresh fields that wave a brighter green.
the herd you sprang from alters as they pass;
stems gnawed to earth, trees scratched on till they lean.
to glimpse fresh fields that wave a brighter green,
your ancestors grew strong and wise, when thick
stems gnawed to earth, trees scratched on till they leaned
struck bedrock. then they learned another trick.
your ancestors grew strong and wise, when, thick
upon the ground, their cousins froze, expired.
struck bedrock, then, they learned another trick--
that beast which tames itself can conquer fire.
upon the ground their cousins froze, expired;
the herd you sprang from alters as they pass.
that beast which tames itself can conquer fire.
evolve, to lift your head above the grass.
Yes, due to the fact that as Dad often said, art is what you like, this young man's typed-up wordpile does technically count as poetry. I could not help feeling, however, that if it had been me sitting at a farmer's market with a typewriter and a sign which read "Free poems!" (and don't think I haven't fantasized about it! because I totally have!) I would have written something better. Something which takes the trouble to describe evolution, or at least, the poetic idea contained within the scientific ones. Namely, this!
evolve, to lift your neck above the grass,
to glimpse fresh fields that wave a brighter green.
the herd you sprang from alters as they pass;
stems gnawed to earth, trees scratched on till they lean.
to glimpse fresh fields that wave a brighter green,
your ancestors grew strong and wise, when thick
stems gnawed to earth, trees scratched on till they leaned
struck bedrock. then they learned another trick.
your ancestors grew strong and wise, when, thick
upon the ground, their cousins froze, expired.
struck bedrock, then, they learned another trick--
that beast which tames itself can conquer fire.
upon the ground their cousins froze, expired;
the herd you sprang from alters as they pass.
that beast which tames itself can conquer fire.
evolve, to lift your head above the grass.
planter, would you sow new seeds?
This is my 100th "poetry and lyrics" post! I saw that and I was like "really? only 100?" Then I remembered my tags don't go all the way back to the beginning, so maybe that accounts for it.
So this came from a couple things. My recent thoughts about wanting, and how desire makes it more apparent that the inside of me is as messily disorganized as the outside. The idea of "can you nurture the children of your actions?" and how intentions, acted out, "bear fruit" in sometimes unexpected ways. My cousin Kris's recent post. Real life, and people living it and doing stuff, makes a house messy, and pretending otherwise is an illusion! The only people you've got to try to maintain illusions with are the ones who expect you to be something other than real, who want you to live up to their ideas of what other people's houses and selves should look like. Know what? Those people are being lazy! XD Still, sometimes I suppose it's nice to "keep up appearances", even if only to be polite to people who can't, or don't have the spare energy to, handle the fact that real life is messy. It's a choice, though, not a necessity. Living life and making messes, though--that is a necessity.
Oh, and guerre-de-noms is a kinda play on words. A 'nom-de-guerre' or war-name is a code name someone takes on during war. So guerre-de-noms would be a name war, a war about names. Cause as we learned from Socrates, when it comes to philosophy, definition of terms frequently IS the whole argument.
then live up to these promises
to whomsoever made
your little guerre-des-noms, this is
your garden in the shade
how does your garden grow, Contraire?
in tangled webs, of course
if, in the weeds, are flowers there
it's through no art of yours
you pay attention to the ants
the birds, the rain, the sun
but never shout or raise your hands
to stop a single one
from nibbling berries off the vine
and peaches where they fell
you write "more sweet are fruits of mine
than water from a well"
above the gate, which, leaning wide
reveals a thicket, swarmed
with hungry starlings, beady-eyed
and branches densely thorned
because you find it beautiful
what eats what eats should live
a place to stuff their bellies full
then fall asleep, you give
but where now are the ordered rows
the pathways paved with stones
stone benches carved with stags and does
for guests to rest their bones?
there's here and there a patch of moss
beside a gnarled old trunk
a chuckling stream to wade across
where some great beast has drunk
this wild explorer's art is yours
love what you don't yet know
a garden not for gardeners,
but for the things that grow.
So this came from a couple things. My recent thoughts about wanting, and how desire makes it more apparent that the inside of me is as messily disorganized as the outside. The idea of "can you nurture the children of your actions?" and how intentions, acted out, "bear fruit" in sometimes unexpected ways. My cousin Kris's recent post. Real life, and people living it and doing stuff, makes a house messy, and pretending otherwise is an illusion! The only people you've got to try to maintain illusions with are the ones who expect you to be something other than real, who want you to live up to their ideas of what other people's houses and selves should look like. Know what? Those people are being lazy! XD Still, sometimes I suppose it's nice to "keep up appearances", even if only to be polite to people who can't, or don't have the spare energy to, handle the fact that real life is messy. It's a choice, though, not a necessity. Living life and making messes, though--that is a necessity.
Oh, and guerre-de-noms is a kinda play on words. A 'nom-de-guerre' or war-name is a code name someone takes on during war. So guerre-de-noms would be a name war, a war about names. Cause as we learned from Socrates, when it comes to philosophy, definition of terms frequently IS the whole argument.
then live up to these promises
to whomsoever made
your little guerre-des-noms, this is
your garden in the shade
how does your garden grow, Contraire?
in tangled webs, of course
if, in the weeds, are flowers there
it's through no art of yours
you pay attention to the ants
the birds, the rain, the sun
but never shout or raise your hands
to stop a single one
from nibbling berries off the vine
and peaches where they fell
you write "more sweet are fruits of mine
than water from a well"
above the gate, which, leaning wide
reveals a thicket, swarmed
with hungry starlings, beady-eyed
and branches densely thorned
because you find it beautiful
what eats what eats should live
a place to stuff their bellies full
then fall asleep, you give
but where now are the ordered rows
the pathways paved with stones
stone benches carved with stags and does
for guests to rest their bones?
there's here and there a patch of moss
beside a gnarled old trunk
a chuckling stream to wade across
where some great beast has drunk
this wild explorer's art is yours
love what you don't yet know
a garden not for gardeners,
but for the things that grow.
a moratorium on musical moratoriums
I'm backdating this so it will be a proper Musical Monday, but in reality this is Tuesday, a little after noon. I'm at the local library near work, reveling in how nice it is to have a keyboard with a functioning letter "n" and "b"! This morning I had an appointment at my local Department of Human Services to apply for food stamps--successfully, this time. Last year when I was on unemployment I'd also applied, only to be rejected because my benefit amount was too large. Odd, really, since it wasn't all that much more than my current weekly paycheck, and at the old apartment the rent was much higher and I had all the utilities.
Ah, well.
I want to say a few things about music. This is, in part, inspired by Gin & Tacos' recent post, and the comments that flowed after it. By the by, I adored the OK Go video, and also Pachelbel's Canon in D transposed into the key of J was really delightfully creepy.
People do get attached to the music we liked as teenagers. For all that I've been out of my teens just less than a decade, this much I've found to be true of people who are in their 90s as much as those in their 40s. Anton LaVey called it "erotic crystallization inertia", which seems to me one too many adjectives. Though the phrase does conjure up the image of the personality as a kind of Freudian chemical experiment, which reaches a state of dynamic equilibrium and hovers around it thereafter. I prefer either mechanical or biological images for the personality myself, though metaphors, like music, are largely a matter of taste. I digress! One way or another, even though fond (or dismal) associations mean that time alone can never rob one's adolescent favorites of their appeal, over time one does develop a discerning ear.
'This band, this singer, this song that I enjoyed back in my day,' we'll say to ourselves, 'they were really just a re-hashing of the great so-and-so from a previous decade!' There's a certain exasperation that often comes with that thought, a feeling of having been cheated. 'How dare someone trick me into liking them, when all they were doing is something somebody else already did better?' To say nothing of the upstarts who have the temerity to continue composing, or at least performing, new material, long after one's own musical preferences are set. And as often as not, doing what seems to the educated ear to be a half-baked imitation of other musicians, perhaps from one's own preferred time period--who were themselves imitations. "A copy, of a copy, of a copy," as the fellow said in Fight Club.
The general consensus seems to be that all the really good songs have already been written. Not once, not twice, but many times, the most moving melodies revisited and scrubbed smooth and frictionless like a stone staircase made treacherously slick by the passage of many thousands of climbers. Various persons pointed out a couple of extremely cogent facts. There are, for example, a finite number of notes in the scale. And the scale we use, as evidenced by the weirdness of the "Canon in J", seems to be the one human ears are able to appreciate, through some emergent quirk in the mystical relationship between mathematics and biology. There are, furthermore, among the finite but enormous possible combinations, a still-large but much more limited number of melodies which are pleasing to the human ear and capable therefore of carrying the emotional weight of a song.
All of these melodies have been used many times, will be used many more times, and all of them are what patent lawyers call "known in the art" though they are not yet codified as such. Before the era of recorded music it would have been impossible ever to become acquainted with this fact as an individual, however obvious it is to the deductive mind. People before recorded music had to make do with whatever music-makers presented themselves, live and in person. Our enrichment in this respect is also our impoverishment. We now have the luxury to demand that every performer and composer present to us, not just the best that can be had in a given region, but the best there ever was in all the world.
Someone in G&T's comment thread mentioned a bit of trivia of which I had not been aware. Apparently at one point Bob Dylan (jokingly or not, I've no idea) proposed a moratorium on new songs. Seems a bit mean-spirited to me; "I've already withdrawn my money, so let the bank close now--screw everyone else." I didn't comment over there, partly because the conversation had wandered into television, where I'm not really fit to contribute, and partly because this is an issue I take very personally.
A moratorium on new songs might be a perfectly fine thing for a listener, who knows they have all the recorded musics of the world to explore. In that vast library of sound one could explore for several lifetimes and still find new things to appreciate. Such a moratorium would just about kill me, though. If that well ran dry, if I went looking for music in that secret place where all else falls away and could never find it again, knew that it was gone, it would be worse than losing a limb, my eyes, my ears. If I lost my ears I could still make music--likely not as well as Beethoven did when he went deaf, and not anymore with my own pipes. If I lost my eyes I would do almost nothing else. Eyes and ears and hands and feet and all, though, are means to an end. As Leonard Cohen put it, "magic is no instrument; magic is the end." Music is far from the only part of life which is magical, which is an end in itself to those who love it. Any one small life has room for only a few such. A person is fortunate who can lean on more than one, though one alone is just enough to sustain self and sanity in perilous times.
Melodically I know my limits; I catch myself echoing my own stuff now and then even after only fifteen years of working at it. Lyrically I'm on a more solid footing. Even though writers of lyrics have essentially the same kinds of things to say in every place and time, the evolution of language and culture ensure that those same human experiences will need to be described anew, those same truths must be evoked from slightly different angles of view. (I'm grateful to Amber, by the way, for quoting Kipling at me at great length and assuring me that even though it's not fashionable here and now, the world is not going to stop needing good poetry.) But even if I'd reached the limits of my competence and discovered my skill as a maker of songs to be barely mediocre, I would not stop. I would not consider it for a moment. I might, on the advice of trusted allies and my own conscience, decide to take my dim, flickering little work and "hide it under a bushel". By choice, I mean, and not by this stupid lack of the ready means to do otherwise.
But I would not be bullied out of making music by the mere weight of musical history. That sentiment is, frankly, more stupid and tawdry and designed to lead astray the innocent than the lyrics to A Simple Plan's Welcome To My Life. Music is not like chemistry, or math, where once a thing is discovered it may (must!) be done just the same way every time to achieve the desired result. Music is like cooking, like storytelling; we need at least a little of it to get through every day of our lives, whether we're aware of it or not, whether we participate in it actively or passively.
There are a finite number of tunes, of course. There are a finite number of edible foods, too. And certainly every possible combination of foodstuffs has been tried, whether by a world-famous chef or a curious and enterprising three-year-old. I despise the way the word "artist" gets overused these days, slathered liberally over everything that touches music. In much the same way, come to think of it, that bad lyricists harp on the word "love" when the four-letter word they really mean to use would get their silly song taken off the radio. But every really good creator of anything is an artist, any really good sandwich-maker or porch-builder or room-arranger, even if, like a janitor, all you create is order and cleanliness where once was refuse and filth. Love, skill and attention make the difference.
One's art is one's passion is one's life, the love that binds us to reality and to the world and everything and everyone with whom we share it. The finished product itself might not be of very much to use to anyone but the maker. But whether it's "therapy poetry" or a spotless room needlessly re-cleaned to calm its inhabitant's nerves, it's worth the doing. It may be the act that prevents another act, one of needless destruction rather than needless creation. Or it may be practice, a taste of things to come, the first stumbling steps down a road that leads somewhere, anywhere, so long as it is a place better than here.
To be angry at someone for despoiling something you love is natural and, within limits, just. To be willing to destroy something you love because it has been despoiled is an act of cowardice. So let the people who are bad at making music keep trying, I say. And if they are not really trying but are merely content to be bad, then perhaps one day I will get ahold of them, and shake them by their lapels and roar at them until they think twice about casually misusing what gifts they may possess.
At work, they've got a computer upstairs with a lengthy playlist, a mixture of songs new and old. Some in each category, the new and the old (but especially the new!), annoy me to the point of baring my teeth at the speakers in the ceiling, and complaining of the songwriters' faults to any and all who will listen. (Welcome To My Life is naturally at the top of the list in the teeth-gnashingly awful category. Though I admit, to my shame, to having seen Simple Plan in person, I got almost no pleasure out of it and was glad I had a place to sit down.) I've thought very often of reinstating Musical Mondays as a place to voice my complaints in text. Apart from the lack of free time, one of the things that has stopped me is the thought that somewhere out there, there's a kid who doesn't know any better, for whom this song I consider third-rate and exasperating helped them in some way. Teased a kernel of truth out from between the floorboards in their mind, and helped them lift it up and carry it off to where it could usefully be planted.
Having an excuse to think it over in a different way, though, has been good for me. This is the internet, for dog's sake. If perfectly intelligent and forthright people can go around saying music's dead and we should shut off the rat faucet already, then by great Marilyn's bra strap I ought to have the gumption to scold the songwriters of today for being lazy, and for not upholding what I consider to be a sacred trust.
Ah, well.
I want to say a few things about music. This is, in part, inspired by Gin & Tacos' recent post, and the comments that flowed after it. By the by, I adored the OK Go video, and also Pachelbel's Canon in D transposed into the key of J was really delightfully creepy.
People do get attached to the music we liked as teenagers. For all that I've been out of my teens just less than a decade, this much I've found to be true of people who are in their 90s as much as those in their 40s. Anton LaVey called it "erotic crystallization inertia", which seems to me one too many adjectives. Though the phrase does conjure up the image of the personality as a kind of Freudian chemical experiment, which reaches a state of dynamic equilibrium and hovers around it thereafter. I prefer either mechanical or biological images for the personality myself, though metaphors, like music, are largely a matter of taste. I digress! One way or another, even though fond (or dismal) associations mean that time alone can never rob one's adolescent favorites of their appeal, over time one does develop a discerning ear.
'This band, this singer, this song that I enjoyed back in my day,' we'll say to ourselves, 'they were really just a re-hashing of the great so-and-so from a previous decade!' There's a certain exasperation that often comes with that thought, a feeling of having been cheated. 'How dare someone trick me into liking them, when all they were doing is something somebody else already did better?' To say nothing of the upstarts who have the temerity to continue composing, or at least performing, new material, long after one's own musical preferences are set. And as often as not, doing what seems to the educated ear to be a half-baked imitation of other musicians, perhaps from one's own preferred time period--who were themselves imitations. "A copy, of a copy, of a copy," as the fellow said in Fight Club.
The general consensus seems to be that all the really good songs have already been written. Not once, not twice, but many times, the most moving melodies revisited and scrubbed smooth and frictionless like a stone staircase made treacherously slick by the passage of many thousands of climbers. Various persons pointed out a couple of extremely cogent facts. There are, for example, a finite number of notes in the scale. And the scale we use, as evidenced by the weirdness of the "Canon in J", seems to be the one human ears are able to appreciate, through some emergent quirk in the mystical relationship between mathematics and biology. There are, furthermore, among the finite but enormous possible combinations, a still-large but much more limited number of melodies which are pleasing to the human ear and capable therefore of carrying the emotional weight of a song.
All of these melodies have been used many times, will be used many more times, and all of them are what patent lawyers call "known in the art" though they are not yet codified as such. Before the era of recorded music it would have been impossible ever to become acquainted with this fact as an individual, however obvious it is to the deductive mind. People before recorded music had to make do with whatever music-makers presented themselves, live and in person. Our enrichment in this respect is also our impoverishment. We now have the luxury to demand that every performer and composer present to us, not just the best that can be had in a given region, but the best there ever was in all the world.
Someone in G&T's comment thread mentioned a bit of trivia of which I had not been aware. Apparently at one point Bob Dylan (jokingly or not, I've no idea) proposed a moratorium on new songs. Seems a bit mean-spirited to me; "I've already withdrawn my money, so let the bank close now--screw everyone else." I didn't comment over there, partly because the conversation had wandered into television, where I'm not really fit to contribute, and partly because this is an issue I take very personally.
A moratorium on new songs might be a perfectly fine thing for a listener, who knows they have all the recorded musics of the world to explore. In that vast library of sound one could explore for several lifetimes and still find new things to appreciate. Such a moratorium would just about kill me, though. If that well ran dry, if I went looking for music in that secret place where all else falls away and could never find it again, knew that it was gone, it would be worse than losing a limb, my eyes, my ears. If I lost my ears I could still make music--likely not as well as Beethoven did when he went deaf, and not anymore with my own pipes. If I lost my eyes I would do almost nothing else. Eyes and ears and hands and feet and all, though, are means to an end. As Leonard Cohen put it, "magic is no instrument; magic is the end." Music is far from the only part of life which is magical, which is an end in itself to those who love it. Any one small life has room for only a few such. A person is fortunate who can lean on more than one, though one alone is just enough to sustain self and sanity in perilous times.
Melodically I know my limits; I catch myself echoing my own stuff now and then even after only fifteen years of working at it. Lyrically I'm on a more solid footing. Even though writers of lyrics have essentially the same kinds of things to say in every place and time, the evolution of language and culture ensure that those same human experiences will need to be described anew, those same truths must be evoked from slightly different angles of view. (I'm grateful to Amber, by the way, for quoting Kipling at me at great length and assuring me that even though it's not fashionable here and now, the world is not going to stop needing good poetry.) But even if I'd reached the limits of my competence and discovered my skill as a maker of songs to be barely mediocre, I would not stop. I would not consider it for a moment. I might, on the advice of trusted allies and my own conscience, decide to take my dim, flickering little work and "hide it under a bushel". By choice, I mean, and not by this stupid lack of the ready means to do otherwise.
But I would not be bullied out of making music by the mere weight of musical history. That sentiment is, frankly, more stupid and tawdry and designed to lead astray the innocent than the lyrics to A Simple Plan's Welcome To My Life. Music is not like chemistry, or math, where once a thing is discovered it may (must!) be done just the same way every time to achieve the desired result. Music is like cooking, like storytelling; we need at least a little of it to get through every day of our lives, whether we're aware of it or not, whether we participate in it actively or passively.
There are a finite number of tunes, of course. There are a finite number of edible foods, too. And certainly every possible combination of foodstuffs has been tried, whether by a world-famous chef or a curious and enterprising three-year-old. I despise the way the word "artist" gets overused these days, slathered liberally over everything that touches music. In much the same way, come to think of it, that bad lyricists harp on the word "love" when the four-letter word they really mean to use would get their silly song taken off the radio. But every really good creator of anything is an artist, any really good sandwich-maker or porch-builder or room-arranger, even if, like a janitor, all you create is order and cleanliness where once was refuse and filth. Love, skill and attention make the difference.
One's art is one's passion is one's life, the love that binds us to reality and to the world and everything and everyone with whom we share it. The finished product itself might not be of very much to use to anyone but the maker. But whether it's "therapy poetry" or a spotless room needlessly re-cleaned to calm its inhabitant's nerves, it's worth the doing. It may be the act that prevents another act, one of needless destruction rather than needless creation. Or it may be practice, a taste of things to come, the first stumbling steps down a road that leads somewhere, anywhere, so long as it is a place better than here.
To be angry at someone for despoiling something you love is natural and, within limits, just. To be willing to destroy something you love because it has been despoiled is an act of cowardice. So let the people who are bad at making music keep trying, I say. And if they are not really trying but are merely content to be bad, then perhaps one day I will get ahold of them, and shake them by their lapels and roar at them until they think twice about casually misusing what gifts they may possess.
At work, they've got a computer upstairs with a lengthy playlist, a mixture of songs new and old. Some in each category, the new and the old (but especially the new!), annoy me to the point of baring my teeth at the speakers in the ceiling, and complaining of the songwriters' faults to any and all who will listen. (Welcome To My Life is naturally at the top of the list in the teeth-gnashingly awful category. Though I admit, to my shame, to having seen Simple Plan in person, I got almost no pleasure out of it and was glad I had a place to sit down.) I've thought very often of reinstating Musical Mondays as a place to voice my complaints in text. Apart from the lack of free time, one of the things that has stopped me is the thought that somewhere out there, there's a kid who doesn't know any better, for whom this song I consider third-rate and exasperating helped them in some way. Teased a kernel of truth out from between the floorboards in their mind, and helped them lift it up and carry it off to where it could usefully be planted.
Having an excuse to think it over in a different way, though, has been good for me. This is the internet, for dog's sake. If perfectly intelligent and forthright people can go around saying music's dead and we should shut off the rat faucet already, then by great Marilyn's bra strap I ought to have the gumption to scold the songwriters of today for being lazy, and for not upholding what I consider to be a sacred trust.
want. not wish, not lack. want.
For a few minutes there I regarded this feeling with suspicion. Crazy, rising up from the depths of my mind to drag my attention away from real life and down unpleasant bunny trails, has felt similar. I'm writing from a place which combines powerful emotion with a great tightness of the intellect, mind like a long-tensed muscle. So please excuse the flowery, rather than correct, grammar et cetera.
This feels like impatience, anger, resolve. Angry, not crazy. I want whatever happens next to happen now, now, now now!
I want to mosh.
I want to get respectably educated about a loud angry band and go mosh.
I want to see Local H again.
Oh, this wanting, it is dangerous stuff.
Sometimes my brain calls up the memory of gun oil and for a moment, I smell it. It is a comfort; reminds me of Dad.
I want to start an organization, a congregation. I want disciples awesome enough to supplant me and leave me in place behind the scenes in an advisory role. Disciples only in the sense of people who are trying to figure out the same sorts of things I am trying to figure out. They may or may not start out by listening to me. At some point, though, I want them to have enough of their own opinions, informed by experiment and thought, that we can generate a common terminology and have debates about things which are otherwise almost impossible to speak of.
It is as if, by giving myself leave to actively desire, I have opened a skylight on a room full of long-dormant lush leafy vined things that, of a sudden, all began to sprout and grow. Violently. Which desires to prune back, and which to let climb, bud, flower. I wonder. Which flowers would bear nourishing fruits.
Reminds me of a dream I had recently. Of which I won't say anything except that it reminded me strongly of a Miller and Lee quote, a commonplace in the Liaden Universe: Can you nurture the children of your actions?
Another dream, last night, ended with me looking at myself in a mirror. Always a good thing, mental-health-wise, when you dream your face in a mirror and it is your own face.
I want a place I can go to play my music where people recognize me, expect me, know me by name, are familiar with my catalog, give me sass when I'm off my A game. I know, now, how to earn such a role. If the place were of the right character and the scene spacious enough or nascent enough for me to be that person there without supplanting someone else, which I would dislike.
I want people to walk away from me and say to each other, "you mean she's like this all the time?!" In a good way, though.
Life cycles through seasons, or rather, we in our dance with life throw ourselves into different things with different amounts and aspects of ourselves. It seems to me these changes are guided by what we are becoming, and how we go about it. I've gone through a long season of not writing out my changes as I go, not attempting to draw out a map behind me in words as I travel through time. I have been acting, doing, and when I've stepped back analyze I have kept it to myself. I want this season to end. And that will require a time of a different shape.
The burden and danger of desire is that what we desire, we do. What we do, we become. What we become, we stamp on the world around us, in the imprint of our presence on the people with whom we interact and the tasks we perform.
There are two ways in which you can believe you are unworthy to desire, and so shut off that place within yourself. You can believe, as I did for a time, that desire itself is a power you are inherently unfit to wield. That everything which grows from you must wither or spring up poisonous and thorned. Or you can believe, as I did for a time, that desire is too great a danger and a responsibility. That by taking it up you place in your hands a terrible weapon, which you dare not wield for fear of doing some great harm.
I do not think so much of myself, now, that I feel my mere desires to be a danger.
Fear--that formless, irrational terror that drives self away from self and out of reality--does not drive me anymore. Nor the smaller, more reasoned caution that served in its place, the extreme vigilance that kept fear itself in the background while I altered those parts of myself which generated it. Now it is not only acceptable to me to desire; it is necessary. Otherwise I would not have had the courage to attempt so risky a transformation!
I want to find out exactly how dangerous I am. The power that may be used to destroy may also be used to create, and a thing well-created serves and enriches far more than it consumes. I want to make things, and not only things which may be called art, works of the mind that each person must encounter in the quiet of his or her own awareness.
I want to turn locations into places. As in, "if you're looking for X, that is the place." I want to turn processes, interactions, people participating in groupthinks, into times. As in, "oh, those were the times when we were really getting X done."
I want to take some of this stuff I've learned how to do and use it.
This feels like impatience, anger, resolve. Angry, not crazy. I want whatever happens next to happen now, now, now now!
I want to mosh.
I want to get respectably educated about a loud angry band and go mosh.
I want to see Local H again.
Oh, this wanting, it is dangerous stuff.
Sometimes my brain calls up the memory of gun oil and for a moment, I smell it. It is a comfort; reminds me of Dad.
I want to start an organization, a congregation. I want disciples awesome enough to supplant me and leave me in place behind the scenes in an advisory role. Disciples only in the sense of people who are trying to figure out the same sorts of things I am trying to figure out. They may or may not start out by listening to me. At some point, though, I want them to have enough of their own opinions, informed by experiment and thought, that we can generate a common terminology and have debates about things which are otherwise almost impossible to speak of.
It is as if, by giving myself leave to actively desire, I have opened a skylight on a room full of long-dormant lush leafy vined things that, of a sudden, all began to sprout and grow. Violently. Which desires to prune back, and which to let climb, bud, flower. I wonder. Which flowers would bear nourishing fruits.
Reminds me of a dream I had recently. Of which I won't say anything except that it reminded me strongly of a Miller and Lee quote, a commonplace in the Liaden Universe: Can you nurture the children of your actions?
Another dream, last night, ended with me looking at myself in a mirror. Always a good thing, mental-health-wise, when you dream your face in a mirror and it is your own face.
I want a place I can go to play my music where people recognize me, expect me, know me by name, are familiar with my catalog, give me sass when I'm off my A game. I know, now, how to earn such a role. If the place were of the right character and the scene spacious enough or nascent enough for me to be that person there without supplanting someone else, which I would dislike.
I want people to walk away from me and say to each other, "you mean she's like this all the time?!" In a good way, though.
Life cycles through seasons, or rather, we in our dance with life throw ourselves into different things with different amounts and aspects of ourselves. It seems to me these changes are guided by what we are becoming, and how we go about it. I've gone through a long season of not writing out my changes as I go, not attempting to draw out a map behind me in words as I travel through time. I have been acting, doing, and when I've stepped back analyze I have kept it to myself. I want this season to end. And that will require a time of a different shape.
The burden and danger of desire is that what we desire, we do. What we do, we become. What we become, we stamp on the world around us, in the imprint of our presence on the people with whom we interact and the tasks we perform.
There are two ways in which you can believe you are unworthy to desire, and so shut off that place within yourself. You can believe, as I did for a time, that desire itself is a power you are inherently unfit to wield. That everything which grows from you must wither or spring up poisonous and thorned. Or you can believe, as I did for a time, that desire is too great a danger and a responsibility. That by taking it up you place in your hands a terrible weapon, which you dare not wield for fear of doing some great harm.
I do not think so much of myself, now, that I feel my mere desires to be a danger.
Fear--that formless, irrational terror that drives self away from self and out of reality--does not drive me anymore. Nor the smaller, more reasoned caution that served in its place, the extreme vigilance that kept fear itself in the background while I altered those parts of myself which generated it. Now it is not only acceptable to me to desire; it is necessary. Otherwise I would not have had the courage to attempt so risky a transformation!
I want to find out exactly how dangerous I am. The power that may be used to destroy may also be used to create, and a thing well-created serves and enriches far more than it consumes. I want to make things, and not only things which may be called art, works of the mind that each person must encounter in the quiet of his or her own awareness.
I want to turn locations into places. As in, "if you're looking for X, that is the place." I want to turn processes, interactions, people participating in groupthinks, into times. As in, "oh, those were the times when we were really getting X done."
I want to take some of this stuff I've learned how to do and use it.
the placebo effect
So I was noodling around on Mom's electric guitar last weekend when I went up to Elgin to visit, and came up with the line "I believe in the placebo effect", over a series of E-form chords that sounded bluesy. The line struck me as super cool, and I became determined to write this song and actually finish it. Over the past month or so I've gotten a boatload of first-verse-and-a-chorus fragments that I couldn't figure out how to complete. Maybe the idea's not strong enough to carry a song, maybe I'm not mentally in the right place to finish them--maybe I've just been spending more of my creative energy on other stuff. Who knows. This one, though, turned out pretty well.
I realized, practicing this the day after I wrote it, that it contains not one but two shout-outs to Radiohead songs: where I end and you begin, and I might be wrong. I've changed the tune in those spots accordingly, and it actually fits!:)
If you want an invisible friend
you've got to grow yourself a phone
and listen carefully inside your head
for any voice that's not your own
I say "operator, operator!"
but there's only music on the line
when I start singing on it later
cause it's stuck inside my head, it sounds divine
operator, player to be named later
I'll take whatever, whatever I can get
cause I believe in the placebo effect
I believe in the placebo effect
and it's working for me
working for me
working for me
ain't done yet
when the fear inside me rose up to my neck
I was relieved to be alone
there were just two things I was sure I could expect
to be rejected or be owned
now I know better; I've stopped trying to draw the line
down where I end and you begin
I try to sit back and appreciate
the miracle--we let each other in
come my friend, believe we'll never reach the end
of peace and harmony, love and respect
cause I believe in the placebo effect
I believe in the placebo effect
and it's working for me
working for me
working for me
ain't done yet
fake it till you make it is
a strategy that doesn't get much props
but taking on the world's only pretentious
if you haven't got the chops
no shame in just believing something good
just don't forget, you might be wrong
still every now and then and every now and then
reality will play along
change yourself
grow yourself
no one else
knows yourself
till you rise up, make them lift their eyes up
like the first raindrop that leaves your forehead wet
I believe in the placebo effect
I believe in the placebo effect
cause it's working for me
working for me
working for me
ain't done yet.
I realized, practicing this the day after I wrote it, that it contains not one but two shout-outs to Radiohead songs: where I end and you begin, and I might be wrong. I've changed the tune in those spots accordingly, and it actually fits!:)
If you want an invisible friend
you've got to grow yourself a phone
and listen carefully inside your head
for any voice that's not your own
I say "operator, operator!"
but there's only music on the line
when I start singing on it later
cause it's stuck inside my head, it sounds divine
operator, player to be named later
I'll take whatever, whatever I can get
cause I believe in the placebo effect
I believe in the placebo effect
and it's working for me
working for me
working for me
ain't done yet
when the fear inside me rose up to my neck
I was relieved to be alone
there were just two things I was sure I could expect
to be rejected or be owned
now I know better; I've stopped trying to draw the line
down where I end and you begin
I try to sit back and appreciate
the miracle--we let each other in
come my friend, believe we'll never reach the end
of peace and harmony, love and respect
cause I believe in the placebo effect
I believe in the placebo effect
and it's working for me
working for me
working for me
ain't done yet
fake it till you make it is
a strategy that doesn't get much props
but taking on the world's only pretentious
if you haven't got the chops
no shame in just believing something good
just don't forget, you might be wrong
still every now and then and every now and then
reality will play along
change yourself
grow yourself
no one else
knows yourself
till you rise up, make them lift their eyes up
like the first raindrop that leaves your forehead wet
I believe in the placebo effect
I believe in the placebo effect
cause it's working for me
working for me
working for me
ain't done yet.
Can you nurture the children of your actions?
~Miller & Lee, in Plan B
In this dream there is a great party in my honor. It is my baby shower; I feel my swollen belly, warm with new life as I look through the heavy curtains of the sound booth over the packed auditorium. The stage is brightly lit, empty, its forward curtains open. I seize a microphone, the techs around me showing faces concerned that I might flub a line with nervousness. In a hearty, full voice, I welcome one and all and thank them for coming.
What I remember next is tossing and turning in a bed in the dream, tired, so very tired, in desperate need of more sleep. But I know that outside this room all my assembled guests have been waiting, expecting. They came for a party, and there was nothing prepared for them. No music, no games, no entertainers, no food or drink. They have been expecting me, but I am so tired. Groaning with the effort and filled with shame at my weakness, that let me disappoint them so, I haul myself out of bed and dash into the dining room. I know that the throng of celebrants were to have been seated there, but it has been a long time--hours?--since I vanished.
When I arrive in the dining room, I see long tables covered with white cloth, long rows of empty chairs. Not a candle or a piece of silverware or anything else is on the tables, and where earlier there had been a packed house, I see at the near end of the table a mere handful of stubborn, tough older women. I sit myself among them, my heart heavy, and place my head in my hands. I apologize.
There is conversation I don't recall clearly, but it seems important. Someone comforts, perhaps; someone offers advice. I make some kind of effort, and food at least, at last, arrives. It's too little, and stale. Each is item wrapped in foiled paper that's been wrapped around it too long and has either stuck to the food inside or broken open. I pick one up and unwrap it. Some kind of messy, spicy sandwich, lukewarm from its long journey. I taste one experimentally--too spicy, too much bread.
One of the ladies says something then which offends me. Command, derisive comment on the food, obvious observation about events already transpired? Something insulting. I lose my temper and make an impassioned little speech which I don't recall, but which ends, "now you owe me one!"
End of dream.
So I know that right now I biologically cannot be pregnant. At a certain time of the month, which propitiously arrived a couple days after Dave's visit, makes me very sure of this. Which means this dream is about a spiritual pregnancy, not a literal one--about the children of my actions and my intent, not the children of my body.
Lots of earth and air, not enough water and fire. I mean by this, a grand place in which allies may assemble, and a great name to bring them there, but nothing to sustain the flow of interaction, and no purpose to move them towards a commonly held goal. Magic in the right amounts but the wrong proportions.
And in trying to fill the lack from myself, I exhaust myself.
It's a puzzle, though, how to fix it.
Lacks in air and earth, I understand these. I think of them as vertical-draw elements. Your relationship with the physical, material world is earth, down. You draw more power through conscientiousness, reliability, steadfastness. Your relationship with the intellectual world, the perception and understanding of what's around you, and your understanding of how your perceptions are framed, how your judgments are made, as well.
Lacks in water and fire are harder for me. Horizontal draw.
Fire, what burns in the spiritual space "behind" you and drives you forward, is your motivation, your passion, the power of your will. Willpower, too, though, comes from somewhere. Even though it's central to the self, it, too, rises from relationships. Your fire rises, I think, out of your religion in the special sense. What is sacred to you, where your innocence and wonder come home to roost. The strength of your commitment to these things, and how much of yourself you pour into their service, is the measure of how strong your fire is.
Water, what draws you onward and discovers, by its movement, the shape of the space and time within which you move.
I still have a lot to learn in that department. I'm starting to get the hang of the basics, but it's slow going.
~Miller & Lee, in Plan B
In this dream there is a great party in my honor. It is my baby shower; I feel my swollen belly, warm with new life as I look through the heavy curtains of the sound booth over the packed auditorium. The stage is brightly lit, empty, its forward curtains open. I seize a microphone, the techs around me showing faces concerned that I might flub a line with nervousness. In a hearty, full voice, I welcome one and all and thank them for coming.
What I remember next is tossing and turning in a bed in the dream, tired, so very tired, in desperate need of more sleep. But I know that outside this room all my assembled guests have been waiting, expecting. They came for a party, and there was nothing prepared for them. No music, no games, no entertainers, no food or drink. They have been expecting me, but I am so tired. Groaning with the effort and filled with shame at my weakness, that let me disappoint them so, I haul myself out of bed and dash into the dining room. I know that the throng of celebrants were to have been seated there, but it has been a long time--hours?--since I vanished.
When I arrive in the dining room, I see long tables covered with white cloth, long rows of empty chairs. Not a candle or a piece of silverware or anything else is on the tables, and where earlier there had been a packed house, I see at the near end of the table a mere handful of stubborn, tough older women. I sit myself among them, my heart heavy, and place my head in my hands. I apologize.
There is conversation I don't recall clearly, but it seems important. Someone comforts, perhaps; someone offers advice. I make some kind of effort, and food at least, at last, arrives. It's too little, and stale. Each is item wrapped in foiled paper that's been wrapped around it too long and has either stuck to the food inside or broken open. I pick one up and unwrap it. Some kind of messy, spicy sandwich, lukewarm from its long journey. I taste one experimentally--too spicy, too much bread.
One of the ladies says something then which offends me. Command, derisive comment on the food, obvious observation about events already transpired? Something insulting. I lose my temper and make an impassioned little speech which I don't recall, but which ends, "now you owe me one!"
End of dream.
So I know that right now I biologically cannot be pregnant. At a certain time of the month, which propitiously arrived a couple days after Dave's visit, makes me very sure of this. Which means this dream is about a spiritual pregnancy, not a literal one--about the children of my actions and my intent, not the children of my body.
Lots of earth and air, not enough water and fire. I mean by this, a grand place in which allies may assemble, and a great name to bring them there, but nothing to sustain the flow of interaction, and no purpose to move them towards a commonly held goal. Magic in the right amounts but the wrong proportions.
And in trying to fill the lack from myself, I exhaust myself.
It's a puzzle, though, how to fix it.
Lacks in air and earth, I understand these. I think of them as vertical-draw elements. Your relationship with the physical, material world is earth, down. You draw more power through conscientiousness, reliability, steadfastness. Your relationship with the intellectual world, the perception and understanding of what's around you, and your understanding of how your perceptions are framed, how your judgments are made, as well.
Lacks in water and fire are harder for me. Horizontal draw.
Fire, what burns in the spiritual space "behind" you and drives you forward, is your motivation, your passion, the power of your will. Willpower, too, though, comes from somewhere. Even though it's central to the self, it, too, rises from relationships. Your fire rises, I think, out of your religion in the special sense. What is sacred to you, where your innocence and wonder come home to roost. The strength of your commitment to these things, and how much of yourself you pour into their service, is the measure of how strong your fire is.
Water, what draws you onward and discovers, by its movement, the shape of the space and time within which you move.
I still have a lot to learn in that department. I'm starting to get the hang of the basics, but it's slow going.
the peace of hidden places
I have started and not finished a couple blog posts recently. There is much, so much to tell, but my internet time is ridiculously limited. And I spend it on KoL and keeping in touch with Dave, and am content. Maybe when I've successfully *left* the deli counter I can finally find a way to post things in my upcoming series "tales from the deli counter."
It's been almost six months, and I have finally reached the point where I am emotionally ready to leave.
Upstairs, behind the breakroom, there is a room where all the temperature control machinery flows. I've hung out there before, even played my guitar there once, but lately I have been sitting in there for a minute or so at the end of each shift. My heart knows it is time to begin the deep appreciation that comes before goodbye. Even though I have yet to actually find or get interviewed for another job, it's a fact that the decision to desire something makes one more effective at pursuing that thing. The magic of the decision rests in choosing the right moment.
The other day I was applying for a job online. It's a tedious process, since just about every company has their own website, and every website has a different application form into which a candidate must type his or her entire employment history. Typing it all in again brings back memories, of people I have known and buildings I have loved. Oh, granted, I love the people too. A building, though, you love in a different way.
People know they're interacting with you. They form opinions, make guesses, react to you, change their behavior based on how they perceive their relationship with you. This is a wonderful thing; from the process of getting to know people and be known by them, the whole rich symphony and dance of human life, sprung from passion and forged in necessity, emerges. It is exhausting, though. Some interactions fill you up emotionally, others wear you down. There's no predicting in advance which will be which, though you can hedge your bets a little by being bright and charming and easy to get along with. A building filled with machines, though, keeps right on being what it is, like a tree or a stone. Unlike a tree, though, it was built by humans for a purpose. And as long as people who understand that purpose expend their will and effort--even their love!--to keep it running, it will do what it is, be what it is, act out the essence of itself in every moment.
I like to sit in the machine room to listen. To feel in my bones the thrum of motors as the many strong pipes blast out cool, spread the chill that keeps food safe to eat, all through the departments of my store. I've looked at the pipes and I know some go to the deli, others to meat, some to produce, others to the frozen aisle, and I picture this river of cool branching out from that room, just as the electricity that keeps the lights on flows through different channels to keep all the lights burning. I listen to the song of the motors and it calms me, helps me think of the store as an organism in which moment-to-moment human uncertainties play a large role, a starring role, but cannot give life to the living thing that is a store all on our own.
To me a holy place is a place where things happen--specifically, things which change people's lives for the better. It's additive, cumulative, so a thousand little good things weigh in one sense, a few amazing good things weigh in another. Holy places which are unremarked, which don't attract attention, though, these I love for the peace I find in them. These are powerful metaphors for me for the parts of life, the parts of ourselves, which keep on working because they must, not because they are loudly praised. It brings me peace to love such places, to have had the opportunity to do so, even if I know that sooner or later I must leave them.
It's been almost six months, and I have finally reached the point where I am emotionally ready to leave.
Upstairs, behind the breakroom, there is a room where all the temperature control machinery flows. I've hung out there before, even played my guitar there once, but lately I have been sitting in there for a minute or so at the end of each shift. My heart knows it is time to begin the deep appreciation that comes before goodbye. Even though I have yet to actually find or get interviewed for another job, it's a fact that the decision to desire something makes one more effective at pursuing that thing. The magic of the decision rests in choosing the right moment.
The other day I was applying for a job online. It's a tedious process, since just about every company has their own website, and every website has a different application form into which a candidate must type his or her entire employment history. Typing it all in again brings back memories, of people I have known and buildings I have loved. Oh, granted, I love the people too. A building, though, you love in a different way.
People know they're interacting with you. They form opinions, make guesses, react to you, change their behavior based on how they perceive their relationship with you. This is a wonderful thing; from the process of getting to know people and be known by them, the whole rich symphony and dance of human life, sprung from passion and forged in necessity, emerges. It is exhausting, though. Some interactions fill you up emotionally, others wear you down. There's no predicting in advance which will be which, though you can hedge your bets a little by being bright and charming and easy to get along with. A building filled with machines, though, keeps right on being what it is, like a tree or a stone. Unlike a tree, though, it was built by humans for a purpose. And as long as people who understand that purpose expend their will and effort--even their love!--to keep it running, it will do what it is, be what it is, act out the essence of itself in every moment.
I like to sit in the machine room to listen. To feel in my bones the thrum of motors as the many strong pipes blast out cool, spread the chill that keeps food safe to eat, all through the departments of my store. I've looked at the pipes and I know some go to the deli, others to meat, some to produce, others to the frozen aisle, and I picture this river of cool branching out from that room, just as the electricity that keeps the lights on flows through different channels to keep all the lights burning. I listen to the song of the motors and it calms me, helps me think of the store as an organism in which moment-to-moment human uncertainties play a large role, a starring role, but cannot give life to the living thing that is a store all on our own.
To me a holy place is a place where things happen--specifically, things which change people's lives for the better. It's additive, cumulative, so a thousand little good things weigh in one sense, a few amazing good things weigh in another. Holy places which are unremarked, which don't attract attention, though, these I love for the peace I find in them. These are powerful metaphors for me for the parts of life, the parts of ourselves, which keep on working because they must, not because they are loudly praised. It brings me peace to love such places, to have had the opportunity to do so, even if I know that sooner or later I must leave them.
a bit of cta gossip
Amber, you are way, way right about the wry fondness.
Like being loyal to the office of king/queen without having to like a particular monarch, I love the CTA's spiritual and practical role in the organism that is my city without necessarily approving of the way it is run.
Starting on Sunday, the CTA enacted massive cutbacks, eliminating 9 express buses and reducing frequency of service on 119 bus and rail lines. Prompted by this, today I had a conversation with a bus driver today which underlined that. Some of his (paraphrased and condensed) opinions and observations about the CTA follow.
It would not have been necessary to reduce service so drastically if the CTA did not manage their money so poorly. Every bus garage serves approximately 20 bus lines, yet each garage also boasts about 20 managers, who pull in manager salaries without actually driving buses themselves.
(I was aghast at this, since I work at a deli with around 20 employees which is run effectvely--albeit with a great deal of stress and hard work--by one manager and two assistant managers.)
In addition to possibly excessive amounts of managers, each garge also has a complement of supervisors, who drive around in official CTA vehicles to oversee buses and ensure they are on time.
Furthermore, even though the CTA has no official connection to the utility providers of gas, electricity, and water, all of them are run by the city. This means that when a CTA employee is late on his or her utility bills, the employee's name gets written up on a board in a public place in the garage, and they are required to go and talk to their manager about the status of the utility bills for their home. If the employee does not promptly get caught up on said utility bill, they are threatened with no longer being scheduled to drive buses.
(I was outraged by this, and said that was some freaky medieval crap that had to be illegal. Why couldn't they get their union to file a class action?)
The union itself is useless, and the so-called leaders of the union are themselves Daley cronies who won't say boo to actually support the workers.
In addition, the now-deposed head of the CTA, who is responsible for the current mess, has been moved to a position of authority in the Chicago Public Schools. The replacement person isn't helping the CTA much, but the idea of someone who created the mess the driver himself had lived through in charge of kids' education was worrisome to him.
(I agreed with this. Alas, at this point I'd reached my stop.)
So there's some stuff there that I really ought to fact check. Other stuff is more difficult to check. Still, it's a sweet but of gossip that wrinkles my lobes and makes me feel more informed. Even if I'm not.
Like being loyal to the office of king/queen without having to like a particular monarch, I love the CTA's spiritual and practical role in the organism that is my city without necessarily approving of the way it is run.
Starting on Sunday, the CTA enacted massive cutbacks, eliminating 9 express buses and reducing frequency of service on 119 bus and rail lines. Prompted by this, today I had a conversation with a bus driver today which underlined that. Some of his (paraphrased and condensed) opinions and observations about the CTA follow.
It would not have been necessary to reduce service so drastically if the CTA did not manage their money so poorly. Every bus garage serves approximately 20 bus lines, yet each garage also boasts about 20 managers, who pull in manager salaries without actually driving buses themselves.
(I was aghast at this, since I work at a deli with around 20 employees which is run effectvely--albeit with a great deal of stress and hard work--by one manager and two assistant managers.)
In addition to possibly excessive amounts of managers, each garge also has a complement of supervisors, who drive around in official CTA vehicles to oversee buses and ensure they are on time.
Furthermore, even though the CTA has no official connection to the utility providers of gas, electricity, and water, all of them are run by the city. This means that when a CTA employee is late on his or her utility bills, the employee's name gets written up on a board in a public place in the garage, and they are required to go and talk to their manager about the status of the utility bills for their home. If the employee does not promptly get caught up on said utility bill, they are threatened with no longer being scheduled to drive buses.
(I was outraged by this, and said that was some freaky medieval crap that had to be illegal. Why couldn't they get their union to file a class action?)
The union itself is useless, and the so-called leaders of the union are themselves Daley cronies who won't say boo to actually support the workers.
In addition, the now-deposed head of the CTA, who is responsible for the current mess, has been moved to a position of authority in the Chicago Public Schools. The replacement person isn't helping the CTA much, but the idea of someone who created the mess the driver himself had lived through in charge of kids' education was worrisome to him.
(I agreed with this. Alas, at this point I'd reached my stop.)
So there's some stuff there that I really ought to fact check. Other stuff is more difficult to check. Still, it's a sweet but of gossip that wrinkles my lobes and makes me feel more informed. Even if I'm not.
another love poem to the CTA
I'd been trying to write a poem about work, a dense little thing in sapphics, but it didn't fly. So I said to myself, Self, you haven't done anything in freeverse in just months and months. It came out pretty well. There's a couple swears, so be warned if you don't like swears.
Lullabye wheels scrape tracks, and I watch sparks
ricochet off the concrete. I love them.
A man sits to my left, rocks; he sneezes
at demons. I wish I could tell him,
"you tell 'em, man. fuck 'em."
I'm in love with the train and the tunnels
it travels, the spiderwebs of rusted iron
that keep it off the street.
Run my fingers across and the metal flakes off.
Park my ass on the floor of the platform;
it sucks up my heat.
I don't care if it makes me a sweet fool,
a naive fool. I'm that nice crazy lady
that buskers and beggars look on with fond pity,
don't know what to say to me.
In my dreams I recreate them, impersonate them--
whistle and tapdance while playing the banjo;
dance the robot, my silver hands just so.
And there through the dim space behind me
the cold city's blood flows.
Yes, we kick the bums out of the stations at night,
and the subway performers' first act
is red tape acrobatics, streetwise mathematics.
Yes, all that we're trying to do
is come out in the black
at the bottom of some balance sheet.
So deep beneath the city streets, steel wheels
still carry us, sing to us, flow with us
into the darkness that only swallows.
We are blood, heat sucked out by stone,
bone borne forward in steel. All we feel
is the moan of cold metal on metal. It rocks us
to sleep, then jerks us back awake
as it bleats, "doors. closing."
But under the bleats and the sneezes
the rhythm resolves, as the passengers trudge to the top.
Sway, shiver, whatever--you are the cold blood
of my city. You're moving. Keep moving. Don't stop.
Lullabye wheels scrape tracks, and I watch sparks
ricochet off the concrete. I love them.
A man sits to my left, rocks; he sneezes
at demons. I wish I could tell him,
"you tell 'em, man. fuck 'em."
I'm in love with the train and the tunnels
it travels, the spiderwebs of rusted iron
that keep it off the street.
Run my fingers across and the metal flakes off.
Park my ass on the floor of the platform;
it sucks up my heat.
I don't care if it makes me a sweet fool,
a naive fool. I'm that nice crazy lady
that buskers and beggars look on with fond pity,
don't know what to say to me.
In my dreams I recreate them, impersonate them--
whistle and tapdance while playing the banjo;
dance the robot, my silver hands just so.
And there through the dim space behind me
the cold city's blood flows.
Yes, we kick the bums out of the stations at night,
and the subway performers' first act
is red tape acrobatics, streetwise mathematics.
Yes, all that we're trying to do
is come out in the black
at the bottom of some balance sheet.
So deep beneath the city streets, steel wheels
still carry us, sing to us, flow with us
into the darkness that only swallows.
We are blood, heat sucked out by stone,
bone borne forward in steel. All we feel
is the moan of cold metal on metal. It rocks us
to sleep, then jerks us back awake
as it bleats, "doors. closing."
But under the bleats and the sneezes
the rhythm resolves, as the passengers trudge to the top.
Sway, shiver, whatever--you are the cold blood
of my city. You're moving. Keep moving. Don't stop.
i wrote a poem!
It has been just ages since I wrote a poem. Months and months. Lots of songs--even a very recent one called "fun with orifices" which, though it is free of swears, is too hot for this blog--but no poems. This one seems mostly like a shaking-the-rust-out sort of poem. And I still haven't thought of a title. Still, it's good enough to post. Even if the end seems kind of blech. I mean, c'mon, who writes out the word "befriended"?
(Edit: end is much better now.)
Let there be surfaces:
dew-slick, cool, wider than
arm's reach, stone's throw, sight.
Light pours, pools over them,
bends them. Only touch tells
where the edges lie.
Dry senses, memories
swept from corners, shaken
from folds--let them sink,
ink, blended. Let there be
surfaces, blank till you
befriend them. Thank them.
(Edit: end is much better now.)
Let there be surfaces:
dew-slick, cool, wider than
arm's reach, stone's throw, sight.
Light pours, pools over them,
bends them. Only touch tells
where the edges lie.
Dry senses, memories
swept from corners, shaken
from folds--let them sink,
ink, blended. Let there be
surfaces, blank till you
befriend them. Thank them.
diplomatic victory
Today is my one day off this week, and I chose to spend most of it playing Civilization III. I finally managed to finish a game, instead of quitting in the middle of the industrial era and starting over. Rather than play through to an inevitable defeat, I'll quit when I realize that a) I don't have enough cities to remain financially solvent and ahead in the culture race, or b) a nearby, militaristic civilization is about to conquer me and there is nothing I can do about it.
My first win was a diplomatic victory, which is achieved by being elected leader of the virtual United Nations. I'd traded with everyone, never been at war with anyone, and none of my spies had been detected in other civs' cities, so no one had reason to distrust me, and the vote was 3-1 in my favor. Yay winning.
The possibility of non-violent victory in Civ III appeals to me even more than the brain-stimulating complexity of the gameplay. Every other game with this kind of depth has one and only one path to victory: kill everybody who isn't on your team. I go along with it, since it's essential to the interface, but it's a thing to be tolerated rather than enjoyed. That's not how I approach anything in my life, and that's not a path of action I especially want to wallow in, even in an imaginary world.
That grizzled old axiom, "as above, so below" applies to the personality in a very direct way. Your deepest beliefs about the nature of reality, your operating assumptions, provide the perceptual framework through which you perceive your experiences and come to understand the world and your relation to it. The shape of your desires--the happiness for which you strive, the qualities of the world you wish to create around yourself--can only come together within the limits of the framework created by your operating assumptions. You can't strive to create a reality that contradicts your fundamental assumptions, anymore than Kratos in the game God of War can win by diplomacy. The interface simply doesn't support it.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. But I got to thinking on the subject of filters of perception after reading this article on the "quarter-life crisis" to which Gin And Tacos recently linked. (He also has a neat idea about how the US can help Haiti, and others, using awesome things we already have.)
Quarter-life crisis happens to many people my age, though the article focuses on those with educations and skills similar to mine who have also managed to hold on to reasonably decent jobs in the midst of the Second Great Depression (which is what this is!). Yet they are dissatisfied and hopeless, either because they lack the clearly defined ambitions which would give their lives direction, or they recognize that the courses of action they need to take in order to achieve their dreams are mutually exclusive. Have a family, or work hard to gain entry into a career which would enable you to support a family. Spend your income to maintain contact and enjoy leisure time with a network of friends, or spend it paying down your debt so that you can afford to maintain the same standard of living as those friends. I'm looking at some mutually contradictory paths as well, but still, I wouldn't characterize myself as going through a crisis.
To me, personal growth is all about watching the fruits of your assumptions play out in practical experience. "By their fruits you shall know them", though it was something Christ said about people, applies really, really well to ideas, and to the beliefs we form when ideas hit the cold waters of reality. At any given time in the process of constructing your personality, there's a portion of your identity based on new ideas and newly formed beliefs, struggling to find its best fit with the real-life circumstances those ideas were developed to describe. There's another portion composed of the beliefs which turned out to be valuable in the last set of life circumstances you encountered, which must re-form and stretch itself out to meet the demands of the new. And of course there's the core of your identity, the assumptions, passions and purposes which have stood the test of time and form your basic sense of self, the part of you which says "I" and is not contradicted.
All of these facets of your personality are organic things, living structures which grow and change as you employ them to form and develop relationships with the world around you and the people in it. As you express your personality through action, you change the world around you in accordance with what you believe, desire, and intend. You make the world of your experience a little more like the interior of yourself. The 'games' you play in life depend on the interface you've created in the structures of your personality. What you assume, that is, what you know and are certain is true, determines not only your paths to victory, but also your definition of what victory is.
A crisis of any kind describes a situation where you become conscious of the fact that the assumptions you have, your personality as it currently stands, the games you know how to play, can't turn what you have into what you want. It's actually worse, harder to resolve, when you don't know what you want. Not knowing what you want means that you have not found ways to express your desires and beliefs in reality to the extent that you can recognize the outward, tangible situations and qualities which match up with the living ideas which comprise your identity. You need to field-test your beliefs, in other words, to give shape to your desires. On the other hand, for a crisis in which you do know what you want but can't see any way to achieve or obtain it, I see exactly two solutions:
1. Change the games you know how to play.
2. Change your desires.
Right now I'm in the midst of option 1. There are personality parts I've brought online while working at the grocery store that I frankly doubted I'd ever be able to develop. I am part of a community here--and it doesn't frighten or unnerve me. I work hard, enjoy my work, am proud of doing it well, and have accepted the identity structures necessary to make those things happen--something I was never able to manage at any previous job.
Yes, there is a substantial opportunity cost involved in staying here. In my own bizarre way, I'm being compensated, though not in a currency that will (hopefully) ever be exchanged by banks or tracked in financial newspapers. It would of course be nice to have a job that paid me enough that I could afford to do debt service, save towards future goals, and go out and develop more complex relationships with my city and the people in it.
But unlike the folks in the quarter-life crisis article, I know what my priorities are and to some extent what I'm working to build out of the materials of my life. (I may not know what this contraption will do once it's put together, but I know darn well that tab A goes into slot B.) Personality construction comes first for me, resource accumulation, at most, third--because if the personality is shakily built and poorly designed, the resources will slip away in any case. As above, so below. And it's true that right now I have no idea whether I'll be able to have a family with Dave, record several albums, get some books of poetry published, write a few novels, and make a meaningful contribution to the theory of psychology in the course of my lifetime. Two victories out of five ambitions would be great.
However, I know (viz., it is among my primary operating assumptions) that while what I do now changes which victories I'll be able to pursue and how, I can't know the results of my current choices in advance. I weigh the opportunity costs which are visible to me now, and choose which advances, which experiences, which resources I'm going to spend this time in my life to get.
Every time in a person's life is like that. Every moment of our lives, we choose which ambitions we will value above all others, as Paris in the Greek myth had to choose which goddess was the prettiest one, to be blessed and cursed thereafter by her favor. We wrestle with the shape of our lives and the world we live in, as Jacob wrestled all night with the angel. In choosing to stay, to strive, to become, we echo Jacob's vow: "I will not let you go until you bless me."
My first win was a diplomatic victory, which is achieved by being elected leader of the virtual United Nations. I'd traded with everyone, never been at war with anyone, and none of my spies had been detected in other civs' cities, so no one had reason to distrust me, and the vote was 3-1 in my favor. Yay winning.
The possibility of non-violent victory in Civ III appeals to me even more than the brain-stimulating complexity of the gameplay. Every other game with this kind of depth has one and only one path to victory: kill everybody who isn't on your team. I go along with it, since it's essential to the interface, but it's a thing to be tolerated rather than enjoyed. That's not how I approach anything in my life, and that's not a path of action I especially want to wallow in, even in an imaginary world.
That grizzled old axiom, "as above, so below" applies to the personality in a very direct way. Your deepest beliefs about the nature of reality, your operating assumptions, provide the perceptual framework through which you perceive your experiences and come to understand the world and your relation to it. The shape of your desires--the happiness for which you strive, the qualities of the world you wish to create around yourself--can only come together within the limits of the framework created by your operating assumptions. You can't strive to create a reality that contradicts your fundamental assumptions, anymore than Kratos in the game God of War can win by diplomacy. The interface simply doesn't support it.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. But I got to thinking on the subject of filters of perception after reading this article on the "quarter-life crisis" to which Gin And Tacos recently linked. (He also has a neat idea about how the US can help Haiti, and others, using awesome things we already have.)
Quarter-life crisis happens to many people my age, though the article focuses on those with educations and skills similar to mine who have also managed to hold on to reasonably decent jobs in the midst of the Second Great Depression (which is what this is!). Yet they are dissatisfied and hopeless, either because they lack the clearly defined ambitions which would give their lives direction, or they recognize that the courses of action they need to take in order to achieve their dreams are mutually exclusive. Have a family, or work hard to gain entry into a career which would enable you to support a family. Spend your income to maintain contact and enjoy leisure time with a network of friends, or spend it paying down your debt so that you can afford to maintain the same standard of living as those friends. I'm looking at some mutually contradictory paths as well, but still, I wouldn't characterize myself as going through a crisis.
To me, personal growth is all about watching the fruits of your assumptions play out in practical experience. "By their fruits you shall know them", though it was something Christ said about people, applies really, really well to ideas, and to the beliefs we form when ideas hit the cold waters of reality. At any given time in the process of constructing your personality, there's a portion of your identity based on new ideas and newly formed beliefs, struggling to find its best fit with the real-life circumstances those ideas were developed to describe. There's another portion composed of the beliefs which turned out to be valuable in the last set of life circumstances you encountered, which must re-form and stretch itself out to meet the demands of the new. And of course there's the core of your identity, the assumptions, passions and purposes which have stood the test of time and form your basic sense of self, the part of you which says "I" and is not contradicted.
All of these facets of your personality are organic things, living structures which grow and change as you employ them to form and develop relationships with the world around you and the people in it. As you express your personality through action, you change the world around you in accordance with what you believe, desire, and intend. You make the world of your experience a little more like the interior of yourself. The 'games' you play in life depend on the interface you've created in the structures of your personality. What you assume, that is, what you know and are certain is true, determines not only your paths to victory, but also your definition of what victory is.
A crisis of any kind describes a situation where you become conscious of the fact that the assumptions you have, your personality as it currently stands, the games you know how to play, can't turn what you have into what you want. It's actually worse, harder to resolve, when you don't know what you want. Not knowing what you want means that you have not found ways to express your desires and beliefs in reality to the extent that you can recognize the outward, tangible situations and qualities which match up with the living ideas which comprise your identity. You need to field-test your beliefs, in other words, to give shape to your desires. On the other hand, for a crisis in which you do know what you want but can't see any way to achieve or obtain it, I see exactly two solutions:
1. Change the games you know how to play.
2. Change your desires.
Right now I'm in the midst of option 1. There are personality parts I've brought online while working at the grocery store that I frankly doubted I'd ever be able to develop. I am part of a community here--and it doesn't frighten or unnerve me. I work hard, enjoy my work, am proud of doing it well, and have accepted the identity structures necessary to make those things happen--something I was never able to manage at any previous job.
Yes, there is a substantial opportunity cost involved in staying here. In my own bizarre way, I'm being compensated, though not in a currency that will (hopefully) ever be exchanged by banks or tracked in financial newspapers. It would of course be nice to have a job that paid me enough that I could afford to do debt service, save towards future goals, and go out and develop more complex relationships with my city and the people in it.
But unlike the folks in the quarter-life crisis article, I know what my priorities are and to some extent what I'm working to build out of the materials of my life. (I may not know what this contraption will do once it's put together, but I know darn well that tab A goes into slot B.) Personality construction comes first for me, resource accumulation, at most, third--because if the personality is shakily built and poorly designed, the resources will slip away in any case. As above, so below. And it's true that right now I have no idea whether I'll be able to have a family with Dave, record several albums, get some books of poetry published, write a few novels, and make a meaningful contribution to the theory of psychology in the course of my lifetime. Two victories out of five ambitions would be great.
However, I know (viz., it is among my primary operating assumptions) that while what I do now changes which victories I'll be able to pursue and how, I can't know the results of my current choices in advance. I weigh the opportunity costs which are visible to me now, and choose which advances, which experiences, which resources I'm going to spend this time in my life to get.
Every time in a person's life is like that. Every moment of our lives, we choose which ambitions we will value above all others, as Paris in the Greek myth had to choose which goddess was the prettiest one, to be blessed and cursed thereafter by her favor. We wrestle with the shape of our lives and the world we live in, as Jacob wrestled all night with the angel. In choosing to stay, to strive, to become, we echo Jacob's vow: "I will not let you go until you bless me."
January storm
Aw yeah, I got here in time to use the library's internet.
This is one of those grown-from-a-seed songs. Like [teeth of the storm], it started with a single line I carried around for a long time before I could get the rest of the song to come together around it. Unlike teeth, though, this one only took a couple of weeks instead of more than a year.
For me a song, in the personal development sense, is both an acid test of where I'm at right now and a road sign of where I'm headed in the immediate future. This has more to do with the mechanics of songwriting than anything mysterious: to create a song, you have to open up a space inside your personality where the spark of something living can grow. Any personality only has so much "living space", that is, suitable places for aliveness to flourish. So how potent a thing you can create depends on what areas of yourself are available for use, whether because you're able to pull yourself back temporarily or because a part of yourself has been cleared out by disaster or the urgent need for change.
I think this one was a case of intentionally pulling back from a space I've used for the purpose pretty often. It's good, but a part of me always goes "you can make a bigger space! you can do better! next time there will be even more shiny!" Oof da. XD I feel like I've been writing more confident things lately, "I will", "I am" et cetera. Which makes me eye myself suspiciously to make sure I'm not growing into bad egotistical attitudes. Still, I figure where I'm at right now must have some good in it, when it means I can write a love song to my city. :D
[January storm]
it's afternoon, all right
come on, fill my cup with morning light
I need something to pour
over this frozen vehicle's front door
if love is
letting in
your beloved to yourself
then the winter wind loves me
stretch out my morning legs
did not leave myself time to fry an egg
conversing with the pets
cause I ain't fit to walk that cold mile yet
if love is
waiting in
patient silence by the door
then the winter wind loves me
oh hello, icy neighborhood
hey graveyard, hope your night was good
sweet light beyond the grey, grey clouds
who's singing louder than me now
if love comes
crashing in
like a January storm
then the winter wind loves me
the subway walls all echo back my voice
they sing their names to me
oh let me make Chicago home by choice
not just necessity
bonsai me till I've grown to love
the blood and sweat the stone's made of
like the winter wind loves me
let me love you
like the winter wind loves me
let me love you
like a January storm
let me love you
the only difference would be
I would keep you warm
This is one of those grown-from-a-seed songs. Like [teeth of the storm], it started with a single line I carried around for a long time before I could get the rest of the song to come together around it. Unlike teeth, though, this one only took a couple of weeks instead of more than a year.
For me a song, in the personal development sense, is both an acid test of where I'm at right now and a road sign of where I'm headed in the immediate future. This has more to do with the mechanics of songwriting than anything mysterious: to create a song, you have to open up a space inside your personality where the spark of something living can grow. Any personality only has so much "living space", that is, suitable places for aliveness to flourish. So how potent a thing you can create depends on what areas of yourself are available for use, whether because you're able to pull yourself back temporarily or because a part of yourself has been cleared out by disaster or the urgent need for change.
I think this one was a case of intentionally pulling back from a space I've used for the purpose pretty often. It's good, but a part of me always goes "you can make a bigger space! you can do better! next time there will be even more shiny!" Oof da. XD I feel like I've been writing more confident things lately, "I will", "I am" et cetera. Which makes me eye myself suspiciously to make sure I'm not growing into bad egotistical attitudes. Still, I figure where I'm at right now must have some good in it, when it means I can write a love song to my city. :D
[January storm]
it's afternoon, all right
come on, fill my cup with morning light
I need something to pour
over this frozen vehicle's front door
if love is
letting in
your beloved to yourself
then the winter wind loves me
stretch out my morning legs
did not leave myself time to fry an egg
conversing with the pets
cause I ain't fit to walk that cold mile yet
if love is
waiting in
patient silence by the door
then the winter wind loves me
oh hello, icy neighborhood
hey graveyard, hope your night was good
sweet light beyond the grey, grey clouds
who's singing louder than me now
if love comes
crashing in
like a January storm
then the winter wind loves me
the subway walls all echo back my voice
they sing their names to me
oh let me make Chicago home by choice
not just necessity
bonsai me till I've grown to love
the blood and sweat the stone's made of
like the winter wind loves me
let me love you
like the winter wind loves me
let me love you
like a January storm
let me love you
the only difference would be
I would keep you warm
first song of 2010!
Strangely the first one was a song by request. *wagwagwag* I love when that happens. My coworker Stephanie and her for-many-years best friend decided recently that they had to kick out their third roommate. Steph agonized about the decision, not wanting to be needlessly mean. But when the prospect of life without the obnoxious roommate really hit home, it made her giddy with relief. And after hearing about the situation I reassured her that she and her friend really seemed to be making the right decision. She told me not too long afterwards how the girl reacted to the news. It was so predictable and the girl's catchphrase so, well, catchy I said, "dude, I should so write a song about this." She said, "do it, do it! Oh, you should do a rap, that would be awesome!"
I'd done a rap once before, when we were sampling prepackaged refrigerated side dishes, which Steph had really gotten a kick out of. So I said okay, wrote this on the bus on the way home, and left it in her voicemail. (She liked it.) The chorus is sung, the rest is rap. You have to squish words here and there to make 'em fit the meter for the first two verses especially. I think this stress pattern is called a trochaic line: da DA, da DA, da-DA da-DA. XD
[help me change my ways]
it isn't fair it isn't fair
sometimes I washed my underwear
it's like you don't care how I feel
didn't know it was that big a deal
clean up my doggie's defecations
keep my voice down when I have relations
I got your voicemails and your texts
but this I just did not expect
help me, help me, help me change my ways
if you help, if you help, if you help me I can stay
I don't know no way, know no way
know no way to change
I really feel like staying here
bet I'll finish college in a year
while you girls stay behind like slobs
with a full class load and two crap jobs
my parents pay my room and board
which they're unemployed and can't afford
they give up so much to help me out
so what are you all so uptight about
help me, help me, help me change my ways
if you help, if you help, if you help me I can stay
I don't know no way, know no way
know no way to change
I really meant to do the dishes
why are you both being such bitches
say the mess I leave is giving you the creeps
and why not babysit my pets
I didn't ask, so you're upset
when I take off to spend a few days with my peeps
going to classes is for suckers
I spend all night with my lover
stop complaining that you need to get some rest
how's I supposed to know you meant
those stupid little notes you sent
you can't be serious, this has to be a test
don't give me thirty days
to find another place
learn what I've never known
how to make it on my own
help me help me change my ways
I know no way, say no no way
help me help me change my ways
slow it down to meet my pace
help me help me help me help
I won't lift a finger myself
so help me
change my ways
Ach, I have to leave for work now. Either this afternoon if I have time to hit up my local library, or tonight when I get home, I'll post up the song I wrote day before yesterday. Which is a more typical-for-me melodic urban nature poetry type thing. :)
I'd done a rap once before, when we were sampling prepackaged refrigerated side dishes, which Steph had really gotten a kick out of. So I said okay, wrote this on the bus on the way home, and left it in her voicemail. (She liked it.) The chorus is sung, the rest is rap. You have to squish words here and there to make 'em fit the meter for the first two verses especially. I think this stress pattern is called a trochaic line: da DA, da DA, da-DA da-DA. XD
[help me change my ways]
it isn't fair it isn't fair
sometimes I washed my underwear
it's like you don't care how I feel
didn't know it was that big a deal
clean up my doggie's defecations
keep my voice down when I have relations
I got your voicemails and your texts
but this I just did not expect
help me, help me, help me change my ways
if you help, if you help, if you help me I can stay
I don't know no way, know no way
know no way to change
I really feel like staying here
bet I'll finish college in a year
while you girls stay behind like slobs
with a full class load and two crap jobs
my parents pay my room and board
which they're unemployed and can't afford
they give up so much to help me out
so what are you all so uptight about
help me, help me, help me change my ways
if you help, if you help, if you help me I can stay
I don't know no way, know no way
know no way to change
I really meant to do the dishes
why are you both being such bitches
say the mess I leave is giving you the creeps
and why not babysit my pets
I didn't ask, so you're upset
when I take off to spend a few days with my peeps
going to classes is for suckers
I spend all night with my lover
stop complaining that you need to get some rest
how's I supposed to know you meant
those stupid little notes you sent
you can't be serious, this has to be a test
don't give me thirty days
to find another place
learn what I've never known
how to make it on my own
help me help me change my ways
I know no way, say no no way
help me help me change my ways
slow it down to meet my pace
help me help me help me help
I won't lift a finger myself
so help me
change my ways
Ach, I have to leave for work now. Either this afternoon if I have time to hit up my local library, or tonight when I get home, I'll post up the song I wrote day before yesterday. Which is a more typical-for-me melodic urban nature poetry type thing. :)
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