Week #16: Writing Music

(No you didn't miss anything. I put it out here on 04/14/2014. I just decided to bring it up out of "drafts." Published With The Original "Written" Date Of 03/28/2014...I guess I'll be caught up when I publish something on the same day I wrote it...)

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The Beneficiary's been out of town for the week which means I've been left to my own devices. Working, some, slacking off, being useless mostly. Last couple of days, I've been writing, churning it out. I've discovered something. I got bored rattling around the house like a BB in a tin can, so I grabbed my laptop, opened up a new Scrivener project and stared at the blank screen. Nothing. No flash of brilliance, no insights, no words flowing out of me onto the page. The weird part is that I was near-to-bursting with the need to write something, anything. And nothing would come out. Blocked like a bitch, as I explained to someone.

I began pouring whiskey. A lot of whiskey. I'm still pouring it.

Drunk, I decided that since I wasn't going to get shit done, I'd just as well update my iPhone. While I was doing that I noticed a playlist I hadn't seen in awhile.

Now, I'm not the kind of guy who listens to a helluva lot of music in the first place, and I damned sure don't just sit around plugged in to my freakin' phone. But I had completely forgotten I had Moody Blues on there. Also, see "drunk" above. Hadn't heard them in years, so I thought I'd give 'em a listen. I found my high-end earphones and plugged in...full orchestration washed over me...

Nights in white satin,
Never reaching the end,
Letters I've written,
Never meaning to send.
 
Beauty I'd always missed
With these eyes before,
Just what the truth is
I can't say anymore.
 
'Cause I love you,
Yes, I love you,
Oh, how, I love you.
 
Gazing at people,
Some hand in hand,
Just what I'm going thru
They can't understand.
 
Some try to tell me
Thoughts they cannot defend,
Just what you want to be
You will be in the end,
 
And I love you,
Yes, I love you,
Oh, how, I love you.
Oh, how, I love you.

No interruptions - no sidetracks. No distractions. Me alone in the house, concert hall echoing in my head -- I felt like I'd forgotten music, and had just rediscovered it. I was about 1/16" from having tears rolling down my face. This track, this playlist, was the soundtrack of past and present of my life. I'd forgotten I'd even downloaded most of these. I punched up the taskbar and grabbed Scrivener, and the page started to fill.

A Little Whiskey And Music Onboard, And I'm Ready To Approach The Keyboard.

1971 rolled up -- I collected this song because I was working as a combination bodyguard/roadie for a cover band (no, not Black Sabbath -- I wish) for a few months, and this was one of their better songs.

I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal
And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late

The Scrivener counter was up over a thousand words. Slash and burn writing, commensurate with the music pouring through the earphones, the high technology saturating me in sounds more pure than when they were recorded.

All those swirling damned dammed words began leaking thorough the crack in the earthen dyke, pouring, eroding away whatever had them stoppered, collapsing it in on itself, and roared downstream. Fucking dangerous writing, writing that sweeps away everything in its path -- and still, music rumbled into me, driving memory and lust and death and and life into the dark-clotted bloody mudslide pouring from the middle of me out through the keyboard. Madness. Completely out of control. I've only written like that maybe a half-dozen times before in my life, wired high as a tweaked-out junkie on the crashing words...ah, fucking Alice -- sing it, boy...

I was gone for fourteen days
I coulda been gone for more
Held up in the intensive care ward
Lyin' on the floor

I was gone for all those days
But I was not all alone
I made friends with a lot of people
In the danger zone

See my lonely life unfold
I see it everyday
See my only mind explode
Since I've gone away 

Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Joan Jett singing early Iggy Pop (I Wanna Be Your Dog,) and the Rolling Fucking Stones...

I know I've dreamed you, a sin and a lie
I have my freedom but I don't have much time
Faith has been broken, tears must be cried
Let's do some living, after we die

Wild horses couldn't drag me away
Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day
Wild horses couldn't drag me away
Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day

[I heard this song was written on the spot after one of Jagger's women (Marianne Faithfull) overdosed -- he was next to her in ICU, holding her hand...she came slowly back around and he told her he thought he'd lost her. She squeezed his hand and whispered "I'm not going anywhere. Wild horses couldn't drag me away from you."

Complete, 100%, Grade "A" bullshit, of course, but who cares? A story that great is true even if it isn't.]

Two thousand words, the Scrivener counter spinning like a cartoon speedometer. Words banging up against each other, around each other, crawling out of their sentences to past parts of the page, and future parts that don't exist yet, squirming and careless and unshaped, bloody as a chained and leathered fistfight in the mud.

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It's going to be public someday. It is. But it needs edited, oh holy fucking God does it need edited, covered, as it is, in bloody sharp edges and flayed bits. It's the good shit, though. We'll see...