FWIW

Hello loyal followers - all five or six of you!

I have been shamefully remiss and for many various reasons. Much has happened since I posted last, not least of which being I finally joined the Legions of the Eternally Damned. Or in other words, I got married.

T'was magic, t'was brilliant, t'was all a girl could have hoped such a day could be and more, so I've been very blessed but I don't plan to blog about it. There are, after all, about a hundred gazillion kajillion wedding blogs to read in the digital universe and I'm quite happy to keep my story to those that want to specifically ask about it, rather than foisting it upon those that could give less than a flying....you know what I mean.

So today I gaze back instead on the wee emotional trip I was having in the last post, some of which was perhaps caused by the realisation that marriage in and of itself is a kind of an end, as well as a beginning. I did indeed have a bit of a freak out at leaving the last wee vestiges of my single girl persona behind - those memories of life and love in my twenties when everything was still raw and bright and almost entirely without any real consequence. Or so I thought.

A big thank you to those that posted encouragement to the notion that I should share some of my poetic and lyrical meanderings.

You may regret it once read, when you feel obliged to suggest (through unseen gritted teeth, as you poke your keyboard with one reluctant finger to edge out a response) that there is any merit in the work whatsoever.

I hope not to cause you anything close to cringe worthy but as they say something or other favours the bold doesn't it? So, after another night at the keyboard pumping out commercial drivel, I feel emboldened. (It's likely the Red Bull talking....)

A selection...

Curve Player

Bring it back to the flesh where 

every whisper lived and we spread love like fire -

burned with the clumsy, ached with the holding, longed

for the letting go because the cut was just  so 

fucking beautiful, y'know?

Couldn't wait to wake, scattered thoughts across the curves you

played for me, the only one who ever gave life melody.

I am, I remain, will forever be

The silliest girl in the world....

The Speaker

Your life

My heart

These tears

For you

Strong woman

Small part

No fear

True blue

Speaks the words that others can’t

Shows the way for younger ones

You have lit a fire again

In the souls of these women

Rest now

Take peace

Lie back

And sleep

Fight for Light

That Black Crow came a’calling

With his harsh voice every morning.

He’d sit atop your bedhead

and convince you to keep falling.

My white cat came a’creeping.

(I set her loose while you were sleeping)

-sits calmly at the bedpost

to wait for that Bird appalling.

Clawed feet

scratch the space around your head

Body leaps –

feathers fly

That fucking bird is dead!

No more harsh voice every morning

to convince you to keep falling –

only a white love cat that’s purring

to help you smile in each new dawning.

Embers (lyrics, work in progress)

I was just a little wick

In the corner of your sight

Waiting for the world to pay attention to my life

Trying to keep my mind dry so that one day I’d ignite

And then

I’d take off

Take off

Take off

Grind a little fusion stick

To create some kind of spark

Act like you are bathed in light while stumbling in the dark

Nothing but a flicker there to stop me growing hard

Before

I take off

Take off

Take off

Blow my mind

Into orbit far behind

Revolving out of time

We’re all out of time

Exile (lyrics, circa 1987)

You are alone within yourself

you have a self inflicted exile from the world

and all I ever did was try and help

and all you do

is put me through another form of hell.

And you tell me I shouldn't care

but it's so damn hard when I see you there,

and I don't know what I'm doing sitting here writing this

but I don't know about that much any more.

'cause you made me feel like it could be something real

you picked me up and then you let me fall.

And just at a time, yes, just at this time

when I could have given you my all.

I have come down from my high

it came on from the look in your eye

Now all I can do is sit and cry

and all you do

is turn your head as you walk on by...

New addition - August.  As an update to this earlier post and related in part to my previous blog where I wrote about having and then losing the passion to write at all, and why I found it again (at least a little...)

Said friend has finished the album and has released it. At almost the same time, appears to have found something else new and shiny and wonderful. Again on reading this in a recent email, I picked up the pen and the words just flowed...it's not literary brilliance, it's not even good but when it comes so easily, it's one of the best feelings in the world...

My heart, he came to the end of his love

And saw that all new beginnings

Start in time and in hopes good faith

You lose before you start winning.

His love, she grew away and crossed a line

And severed all new beginning

Ended her time in such bad faith

Her lies kept stringing and singing.

Open now, embrace how the years have passed 

but the game of chance still captures and whirls you, 

dares to improve you,  

this dance of

whatever may come.

Step out and know that you’ve won.

Emotional Trip

The other night an old friend made contact. We caught up and I learned their partner of over eight years had just cleared out, which was sad and a shock because there was a lot of love there.  It's obviously been on the cards a while as a number of tracks from an impending debut album were sent to me that evening. I listened, was deeply touched at the raw emotionality and moved by the lyrics, which were superlative and have been a consistent hallmark for this songwriter in the entire time I've known them.  I cried for a lot of reasons that night. And then I wrote.

We've not been in touch much in the last eight years but we were once very close. Close in that way that you are when you're emerging into so called adult relationships, where the years under your belt are supposed to assign you with some level of maturity but the reality often is you're still very much caught up in the heat and raw emotionality of being a teenager.

It's a raw time and it's a good time for that reason.  These are the years when we are often passionate enough to really want to confront our feelings, when our values are forming beyond that of our parents. We haven't yet put on all the layers and masks that we will later use to defend our emotional territory as adults. Often it's the last opportunity young women have to meet men at their most honest and the best time young men have to express themselves creatively before their interest in certain forms of communication becomes bogged down in restrictive ideals of 'adult' masculinity.

All through high school I dabbled in poetry and writing lyrics. Terrible stuff. Exactly the kind of self involved, shmalzty, broken hearted nonsense that you might expect from a teenage girl.  I wasn't a fan of poetry per say, I didn't consume it, study the greats or even understand it as a discipline. All I knew was that sometimes feelings were too big to hold in and too hard to talk about. So I wrote.

I tried keeping a journal but it never took because somehow when I tried to write factually about the things that were burning me up or keeping me awake or playing on my mind, they always sounded really trivial. That, of course, is because they were and I was at least self aware enough to recognise this but, when one is burning up over some boy or heartbroken because of the actions of a friend or confused as hell by the behaviour of adults - you don't necessarily want to acknowledge that it's silly and let it go immediately. Part of the great aspect of those years between 16-24 was the ability to really throw yourself into the emotional wash and go with it. So, poetry and song lyrics were a great outlet because I could present ideas in a new way. I could play with meanings and present my feelings like a pass-the-parcel, all wrapped in layers to be peeled away only by those that really understood me best.

Beyond the lyrics of popular music, (and lyrics always defined whether I liked a song or not), there was a singular poetic influence in Rod McKuen. My parents had several of his published collections and I was always struck by how he expressed feeling.  It should not have come as a surprise to me when decades later I discovered he is also an award winning song lyricist.

Looking back now, it seems odd that I did not pursue my personal affinity for poetry through to an academic study of it.  I used to blitz poetry units at school and more than once got almost perfect marks for my analysis of various works through the first three years of English lit at university. Where the perfect right and wrong of math always escaped me, poetry to me was like painting with words. I loved being able to unravel the mystery in a poets work - to try and decipher the message and the emotion being expressed.

There was a pretty strong scene on campus as well, but I didn't explore it. Once, I walked into one of the atrium areas on campus and there was a woman standing on a podium doing a reading. I can't recall the whole poem but I have always remembered this line..."I plucked a hair for every time you never called. Now look at me, I'm fucking bald..." Why is it my brain latched on this this image and can still recall the line and the woman and the look on her face when she spoke it? It is this of poetry and song lyrics I love - the ability to capture a single emotional moment in a few words.

I guess back then I didn't contemplate life as a writer, which is ironic, but it was also a deeply personal thing and I wasn't all that keen on having my deepest thoughts raked over by others. I recall another friend who was accepted into a very small and elite class for writers at University. She used to get physically sick when it was time to submit her work and the tutor and other class members were extremely harsh in their 'constructive' criticisms. Not for me and to this day there are only a handful of people that I have ever shown my personal collection of musings to.  Some I look back on and think "heyyyyy - ok" and the others are just cringe city but that's to be expected.

As years passed I wrote less and less of matters personal. I matured emotionally as well and found myself tormented less often, which is when I used to write what I viewed as my best stuff.  I think it was Pink who said she feels the stuff she writes when she is happy is crap. Ditto.

The last deeply personal piece I wrote was for a man a decade ago. And he misunderstood it so profoundly and completely that I should have heard the warning bells sounding on the relationship then and there. I've been blocked on expressing my own feelings in a poetic or lyrical form ever since.

To have been so touched and so moved by the work of someone else the other night that I actually upped pen and expressed was important. Something unlocked, more has come since then as well. So I am extremely grateful to my dear friend, who always knew how to tap into a part of me that others could rarely reach.

I'm still too chicken to put it out there even for my five loyal followers but maybe...one day...I'll get up the nerve. Until then, it's nice to be reminded that I can write about something other than boxes with blinky lights and cables and stuff...

When was the last time you wrote creatively?