Writing songs: "Over" and "Angela Dawn" (from sadness to reflection to hope to joy)

"Over" by Soul Ba-Doom Ba-Doom Written by Cecil Disharoon, Jr.
I've mentioned how writing a song can be a way of empowering yourself regarding a situation, much like listening to the same music sometimes makes you feel better. It's a great way to tell stories that affect you. You can also take a journey---whether through personal acceptance of your understanding of a situation, or empathetically guiding your characters through their situation as the lyrics progress from beginning to end. (I can't say for sure at what point I heard the melody, but lately it's been coming along with the words from the first.)

If you yourself are the character in the song, writing gives you a perspective to witness the journey...and maybe understand it better.

So upon waking from dreams---I was reading a sports page, and earlier heard "Rocket Man" playing as well, in the dreams---I decided to cope with a feeling of loss by telling the story of "Over." We move from the story between two people to a wider perspective, a philosophical reflection in simple words. The feeling of hope and vision that informs the third verse completes the journey of knowledge into acceptance...and wraps up nicely with the song, and the words, being "over." It seems to have taken me about fifteen minutes to get it all down, and the music came alongside it with little trouble. The gentle guitar riff is exactly the sort of touch that stays with me most often when I'm in a very emotional mood.


These reflections gave my best friend pause, as I've been writing about this sort of thing (loss) a lot this year. "I'll be glad when you write something that's not about a break-up or death again...you need a happy song," she said. Well, like "Evolution" and many other times, the first words of my song once more came from her words straight out of her mouth, which lends them a conversational tone naturally. I decided the silly rhymes that came to me were no reason to stop, because the melody compelled me. Why let anything stop me from writing for sheer pleasure? The results have continued to cheer me since...and that's a nice quality in a song. I hope you find it lots of fun! I wrote it in about forty five minutes, chorus last. I took some time working out the chord progression, but once I was sure of the key I just experimented.

Musically, it's pretty straight forward. I had a real front lawn in mind: her parents' house. I imagine our bike path when I'm thinking of "run beneath the skies of blue"...a bit of heaven on Earth! The real Angela Dawn gave the song its inspirational smile...so who better to whom to dedicate what could fairly be called a "ditty" ?

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Vado Bujinka discovers Semeicardia

Deep within the Caves of the Living Land, Vado's mind reaches out to the crawling caterpillars, to explore what lies behind the crystal wall...its amethyst glare leaves little hint, and so, she begins to slowly trace the unseeable portion beyond the closest stalagtite, until she hits upon an open area. With her gradual probing, she begins to sense a vacuum...and so, she does a bit of excavating. "I wonder how my grandmother's doing?" she thinks, wiping the sweat from her brow. When she clears an opening, she slithers within.

Suddenly, the air itself omniously draws her off her feet. A telepathic call from the Living Land itself warns her, beckons her, in its 5th dimensional hyper language: this pocket is of otherworldly origin. But where does it lead? She sits and meditates: nothing living seems to go beyond that strange null zone.
Outside the caves, she draws her steed Aya-Anda to her side. She walks the creature cautiously to the amethyst opening...and casts a pebble into the void. The rock seems to spin without regard to natural laws, but is otherwise unharmed.

A call for help! Is this real? A flaming arrow point floats before her, wavering in the non-void. Is this an audible call...or simply part of her thoughts? Yet, its urgency whispers to her. She sets up her communication device within Aya-Anda's cybernetic circuitry, to send relays back to the Dome Tribe, the quasi-technological nomads for whom she has ranged so far afield.

She takes a reading of the bizarre environment...and hears the call again. The language is an ancient Danish dialect...some of the words, she does not recognize, but its intention is clear...and now, she faces a choice. How can she simply walk into a trap without regard for her life, or those who love her? She tries again to reach some kind of animal life, with which to establish rapport. Nothing.
Her own mortality, and its place in the web of her soul group, shines brightly in her mind before the void of non-existence.

From deep within, her own spirit guides offer her the strength, to leap empty-handed into what lies ahead.
Vado Bujinka closes her eyes, a thread of silver seeming to connect her belly to the path of fate. Her own destiny awaits, as the air itself shimmers around her...and symbols, ancient runes, light the darkness of her mind. She stands atop one of three pillars...and about her, a green light to the north...and a red light, to the south...and a woman, haunting her from the blue light of the west...

A blast of wind, chill as the North Sea, makes every light about her dance...and suddenly a body of black water seems to rise all about her...she counts each breath, recognizing her own body, recognizing the essence of her own life.
She identifies symbols, tries to connect them to her memory, some rational activity to center her as she and her horse seem to sink...deep within the unconscious mind...
...and when her eyes open, beneath a dark purple sky, she smells a flower unlike any she's ever known...and hears a mighty bird, whose strange call fills her body with animal fear...

"Where..AM I?" she questions, as she counts her breaths...slowly assimilating to the byzantine geography that emerges in the twilight.

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writing a song: Evolution (Bananas)

The singing's flawed more than what I usually put up, but it's expressive, so hey. "Evolution (Bananas)", written by me as Lue Lyron for Soul Ba-Doom Ba-doom and displayed above,

is my demo...I really must take it over to Ed's and do something with it, and at least a dozen others...I just lost touch with my original music for a little while, with a couple of exceptions, but last week I started pulling out more of it again.

Now here's the thing: when I wrote "Just an Illusion" for example, sometimes you don't want the situation to exist, and you're miserable (this was three years ago?) and then you hit upon something to say, and it writes itself...and you feel empowered, right? But then you have to accept that things are as they are...and so, songs are a way of dealing with reality, emotional realities that are complex for feeling people. (ooh, I'm getting a blog here! Ha! It's been a while since I updated.) So you have the song...and over time, you heal...and you have the song, and it gives you back the power you lost. So actually, if your heart's breaking, the song's a pretty good way of dealing with things, for that reason: it's a coming to terms. Probably "easier" if it's someone else's situation and you pour your empathy into it.

This one started with a desire to write The Marc Kane something with great, more personal and fitting lyrics, while listening to her play "Still The Same" by Bob Seger. Glorifying the cold-hearted gambler in the song just didn't feel right for her fresh, sweet voice, so I took some of her words (talking about her struggle years ago with anorexia, and what she learned from it about moving on) and paired it with some of the chords in "Same." As the song wrote itself, I rhymed "ape" with "escape" uncertainly; it had some logic to it, a song about mimicking love or actually living up to it. Then my friend DJE3, over at Underground Masters, had said something about "involution" preceding "evolution" and while I've been through these strange processes in my life, I was shaking off the hangover from a deeply disappointing situation that really took me off my game. So "Evolution" was triggered by "ape" and now the song had a lyrical theme to carry itself all the way through! The apes and bananas thing leaped out of my subconscious and made me laugh: "go bananas, throw bananas...slip on a peel" ! But I kept it, because it gave the song an originality and humanity with which I couldn't part.

Now here's the next step, two weeks later..before the study recording.

I hope it's a lot of fun for you to hear, and maybe you'll feel some inspiration, at least, the creative feeling will manifest itself in your life and whatever you do, however you live it.

Peace! Be Chill, Cease ill

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