DARK SONG – FIRST VERSE

These are lyrics from an unfinished song I began last week. It’s my First Verse entry for today.

DARK SONG

There’s a dark song in my soul right now
And I can’t shake it anyway,
Might as well just sing along,
See where it goes

Well, there’s a dark song
I hear it on the wind

There’s a dark song
Where are we going?

Can we ever make amends?

Well, I don’t know this road no more
But I know it’s me

Where are we going anyhow?
What do you want me to see?

There’s a dark song in my soul right now
I can hear it far away
I’ve known, I’ve known it all along
We’re on the same road

But to where?

Just tell me that…

To where?

DON’T DIE

I’ve had a series of serious personal problems to deal with lately (floods and storms in SC that damaged my house, my daughter was struck by a – probably drunk – hit and run driver who totaled her car, etc.) which I’ll explain in detail later on. Everyone is okay but the house is damaged and my daughter’s car was destroyed. Anyway that has prevented me working properly (I’ve been putting out fires and settling insurance claims) and has delayed me blogging.

Night before last however, for the first time in weeks I was able to work uninterrupted and I started three songs and wrote a piece of flash fiction. So here is part of a song I started two nights ago called Don’t Die. It is unfinished but I got pretty far along on it.

 

DON’T DIE

Don’t die in the leaving son
Don’t die at the dawn
Don’t die in the coming home
Don’t die while you’re gone

There’s a long, long way between here and there
There’s a short step between the night and grave
I wish I could tell you differently son
But that’s just the way the world is made

I went out when I was young, so deep into the dark
I saw things there I didn’t want, things so sharp and hard
I wish I could tell ya differently son
But believe me when I tell you now, I got the scars

Careful where you go now son
Careful when you’re coming back
Go there when there’s no one else
Go there when you can’t be tracked

Oh, the things I’d show you if you’d see
How far away from everything
How very close to me

Don’t die in the leaving son
Don’t die in the dusk
Don’t die in your wand’ring round
Just do what you must

And come back
Yeah come back,
Come back to me…

REAL READING AND REAL WRITING from MEMORABLE LITERARY LINES

Real Reading is far more than just mentally decoding terms and words, it is psychologically apprehending and comprehending the very most subtle and sublime ideas and ideals that it is possible for man to ever understand.

Real Writing is far more than just encoding and transcribing phrases, it is transmitting, mind to mind and soul to soul, the very marrow of manhood and the very embodiment of human experience through script, so that it may be read again whenever needed into the design of the future.

My personal take on the true nature of real reading and real writing

THE MAN OF BRONZE AND THE MAN OF STEEL

Today, when my wife and I went out I got a new Doc Savage novel (Phantom Lagoon) and the Doc Savage Man of Bronze film (which I had seen before, but still…)

So, BOO-YAH!!!

“A wise man once observed that trouble has walked around in skirts since the beginning of things.
This particular wise man did not proclaim such a thing in so many words, but every man knows it to be true…”

Phantom Lagoon

When a novel opens that way you know it’s going to be good.

Also, I got the soundtrack to Man of Steel. My Wife and I both agree that soundtrack is some of Hans Zimmer’s very best wok, and he has done some excellent work. If you ask me composers for film are some of the very best composers working in the world right now.

I’m not absolutely sure why that is (I mean aside from the obvious, it is an excellent and profitable music market), but I’m beginning to think that’s it because the music being composed is associated so directly with powerful visual images (in this case derived from film). That seems to me a very logical conclusion.

One normally thinks of music and the composition of music as a more or less strictly auditory (or perhaps even mental experience), but suppose modern film composers are so good because they are intentionally (or perhaps even subconsciously) directly associating powerful visual images with the musical ideas they are composing and expressing? (This technique could be both self-limiting and self-liberating depending upon how it is employed.)

That might very well alter the underlying compositional patterns and techniques these composers are employing. It is a logical chain of reasoning but I’m not sure how many are considering that it could be very well greatly altering their innate composing habits.

Anyway, thinking on these matters and having deduced a probable cause I’m going to try some experiments of my own in attempting to compose music “visually,” rather than auditorially, or to fit word and phrasing patterns (lyrical composition or song composing), or as a purely mental exercise.

See where that leads me. I’ll let you know what my experiments yield.

EVERYONE

Today after working out I decided to take a short nap. Since the wife and kids were out seeing the Transformers I lay down in the bed with Sam (my Great Dane) for a nice, peaceful, quiet nap before my daughter’s birthday party started.

I didn’t sleep long (I wanted to sleep longer but couldn’t) until I woke up with a song running through my head. I heard both the music and the lyrics in my head. My mood was very, very odd. I never get depressed, though I do have intentionally melancholy moods from time to time (which I enjoy a lot), but this song and the music and the mood surrounding it seemed both very depressing and almost foreign, as if it were coming from someone else entirely.

Occasionally I will hear music and song lyrics in my dreams and then when I wake up I will write them down, but this song didn’t really start until after I woke and then it started immediately. As if I were listening to and just becoming aware of a radio on somewhere in the house, but nothing was playing.

And like I said the music, the tone, the mood, it all seemed very depressing to me. But mostly it seemed foreign, like it wasn’t me writing it, but someone else.

Nevertheless after I completed the song I made a Google lyrics search and could find no song similar to it. So I guess I didn’t remember it from elsewhere, it was just an odd, sorta alien song playing in my own head.

Anyway after writing the whole thing down in bed when Sam and I got up I came downstairs to my office and started hammering it out and arranging it properly. And overall I’m very pleased with the lyrics. It matches the music very well, which is moderately slow, rather simple, and sad in tone.

The single lines are the chorus and instrumental sections of the song, whereas the stanzas are the body, so it has a sort of reverse chorus-stanza structure. It may not be completely finished, but as far as I know at this moment, it is.

If you wish let me know what you think of it.

Jack.

_____________________________________________________

Everyone you see is broken-hearted
Everyone you meet is sick like that
Everywhere you go the what-if’s started
Every song you sing seems like the last

Everyone, most everyone, has passed

I wish that I could dream in endless colors
Wish the sun would rise above my head
Wish that I could tell you from the others
Wish that you could hear just what I said

But being me is awful long and lonesome
Being me is hard as hell
Is there any way to beat this road home?
Is there any way for me to tell?

Everyone I meet has their own problems
Everywhere I go it’s all the same
Sinner, Saint, or child we’re all just odd-ones
Waiting for someone else to ease the pain

Seems like everyone knows everyone today

Now let me wander on to where I’m headed
There’s another day must come and go
Doesn’t mean I know, whoever said it,
“Everyone was happy long ago…”