Saturday, August 8, 2009

Acceleration and Deceleration

Acceleration and Deceleration relatively shorter or longer lines to punch out the idea. Make sure the system is complete or closed – no movement required.

First two lines from Pat Pattison

Accelerated
I’ve been playing cards all night
I’ll never get it right
Eyes full of sweat
Here’s the next bet
Lost my bike.

Decelerated
I’ve been playing cards all night
I’ll never get it right
Just one more hand and I’ll be free
That’s what I keep telling myself anyway

Accelerated
The last time that I saw you
Your hair was up in curls
Never saw you lookin’ quite so nice
Let’s go for coffee
What’s new in your world?

Decelerated
The last time that I saw you
Your hair was up in curls
Never saw you lookin’ quite so nice
Remember back when we were just friends?
We’d share homework and talk on and on
Let’s go for coffee and see if we can start something new.

Accelerated
Caught you lookin’
Dead to rights
Something cookin’
It’s your eyes
It’s your smile
Stay awhile?

Decelerated
Caught you lookin’
Dead to rights
Something cookin’
What’s that look in your eyes?
What’s the question that you won’t ask?
I’m here for you like a good book end.

Accelerated
Lost your love by playing hard to get
Tried to win and gave away the set
I dropped the ball
I crossed the line
Love to one
Out of time.

Decelerated
Lost your love by playing hard to get
Tried to win and gave away the set
I thought winning was the most important part
I forgot that it was all about your heart

Exersises - Balance and Movement

Here are some efforts based on Pat Pattison's book Songwriting: Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure.

When you see "Original" it is Pat Pattison's original to work from.

Unbalancing- taking away or adding

Original
I wonder who you’re seeing in your dreams
What fantasies you follow in your sleep
I’ll watch beside you till the morning light
While you go chasing shadows through the night

My Turn
I wonder who you’re seeing in your dreams
I’ll watch beside you till the morning light
While you go chasing shadows through the night

I wonder who you’re seeing in your dreams
What fantasies you follow in your sleep
I’ll watch beside you till the morning light
Watching your back; keeping you safe
While you go chasing shadows through the night

Movement – adding a line to vs 2 to move forward (possibly to chorus)

Original
Some girls have the restless touch
Way they hold you lets you know
They’ll get you burning for a while
Start you up and let you go

My Turn
Some girls have the leaving touch
The shiver of pleasure is short
They’ll hold you once and move along
It’s hard to keep ‘em satisfied
Morning comes and soon they’re gone

Monday, February 16, 2009

Telephone Book

I feel as though I should be bending my head as the old rough wooden joists loom above. Basement ceiling feels barely clearing my head but it does. Perception is everything.

Couple of fluorescent light strips glare down and cast sharp shadows in the low narrow hall of cringy dry unpainted drywall. Can almost taste it. Well, actually I do. The left side is lined with shelves, floor to ceiling.

Vinyl record jackets, in various states of fray, lean into each other for support. They've been on their own for years. There are no bad times among these old forgotten friends.

College schoolbooks and important assignments and projects, hibernate in the remote possibility of coming back to life in a useful moment of reference. Fat chance…but one never knows…

All these patiently waiting, growing dust hair, just enough to have the slightest smell of forgotten time – close to re-awakening with a sneeze - but not quite.

The phone book, picked up annually from the front porch, is routinely relegated to this place of feebly refreshed memories. I’m looking for a list of contractors. The Internet was not as helpful this time; Back to the tangible.

Reaching for it I have forgotten how heavy it was, or am I getting weaker as the years go by? My other hand shoots out to help.

The sound of the flipping pages focuses my memory on school days – pouring over research on organizational development – forming, storming, norming, and performing. Thoughts leapfrog.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Casino Royal, Rama, Whatever...the dice is right

Reds and oranges and greens and blues and some purple all combine to make the garish flashing marquee type of lighting, not so much attract in it’s intensity and pervasiveness, but, to distract the brain. If that were not enough, the air conditioning whir is rounded off by the ping-ping, clang-clang, ching-ching, bling-bling of the myriads of gaming machines. Second hand smoke looks over shoulders and clings to arms both bare and jacketed. Bitter taste of third or fourth complimentary glass of booze, competes with the overhanging anti-bouquet of all those people.

It’s an interesting contrast of concentration and competition for attention from the machines. It’s a tie. You’ve heard the stories of certain level of gamblers wearing diapers so they would not have to abandon their post. Rather play craps than take one.....Wonder what the Queen’s Guards do in their stoic position. Small children crawling about their legs, teenagers pulling their mouths into grotesque shapes with sweaty fingers and multi-coloured parents swirling around viewing the scene through a camera lens. Bump. “Oh! (chuckle) Sorry didn’t see you”.

Zoom into a gambling table. Thin, well dressed young couple stand shoulder to shoulder. Perhaps holding each other up. New to gambling, they’ve taken in the adds and come “for the show”. Next is a rumpled jacket holding up a middle aged man. Tie is a loose noose near the middle of his chest. You would not think there would be enough material to keep it so long. Can you guess the condition of his shoes? A little space and next is a gaggle of elderly oriental women with a lone male companion. They’re silently chatting with their agitated body language. And so on around the half moon of the table.

Clicky-clickity-clackety like short hail burst on a car roof. The clear sound of the thrown dice prepares for the declaration. Some leaning forward or rolling shoulders; some breath held and mostly sweaty palms; all eyes fixed on the two white and black spinning cubes. A silent collective will summons up “Yes” from the universe. That cosmic energy bounces back out into a far away galaxy as fodder for the next new star. So the excitement in suspended animation goes. House wins.

Thin couple, still holding each other up at their shoulders, grins sheepishly. She fingers the strap on her pale bare shoulders. He fingers the wallet deep in his front pocket, visualizing a second mortgage.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Angelic Pierre

Always cool; a remotely angelic Pierre.
No one stares while he dances with chairs.
He then picked a woman, neither tall nor too short,
Through the rest of the night, they were bottle and cork.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Falling Leaf

Blow your hat off wind. Leaves bang into each other like a shaman’s rattle. Many break off. They’re pushed to the ground like diving pigeons after breadcrumbs and swept up again in little tornadoes. Nose alert! It’s the threat of sneezing time as the Nature’s broom releases the molds.

Sidewalk is glistening from a fresh polish of a recent shower. Dark red-orange fragile remnants under foot, veins in surrender. Watch your step; a slippery mat.

The trees have nowhere to hide, unlike bears and gophers. Both awakened again by the incessant buzzing of the spring sun’s alarm. Awakening from the Rip Van Wrinkle winter. What? Where am I? Who am I? What Am I doing here? I am so hungry. I’m so stiff….