CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: The Song You Wanted to See

Tuesday

The Song You Wanted to See

In addition to journal writing, creative field trips, and artist retreats...another "serious play" activity you can do to keep your writing colorful and have a good time, is write story-songs and character sketches set to music.

Serious song writing is not for lightweights, and it makes great poetry-practice. There's a definite structure to a song: Verse, Chorus, Verse...maybe a bridge...Chorus. There are strategies involved. You want to say something new, line by line, a twist is good, and you need a great hook. Most songs rhyme, and not just at the ends of lines. You want to tell a story, with a strong beginning, middle, and end. There's the whole musical aspect to add to the challenge, including things like meter and rhythm, a catchy (not kitschy, unless you're being kitschy on purpose) melody, and the buildup to a dramatic ending. Arguably, because songs are traditionally "performed" more than poems, feedback is something songwriters seek more, or at least on a broader scale than poets do.

A few weeks ago, I asked readers at my Twitterfeed and here, which song they most wanted me to post, basing votes solely on the list of titles (above-right). I was surprised when two of my favorite and traditionally most-requested songs tied. Suddenly, a third emerged, and that song, also a favorite, soon tied with the other two. In due time, the three-way tie has been solidly broken (yes, that was an oxymoron). So, let me introduce you to a big girl, who's got a hard exterior with a heart of, well, you be the judge. Anyway, she knows what's real and what isn't real about her...even if the one who loves her isn't ready to face it.

FOREVER ONLY LASTS SO LONG

by

D.M. Solis

You heard what they said about me...
Well, I want to tell you the truth,
Just as soon as I figure out how.
I sure never needed a lover
The way I could start to need you...
But I'm not about to start right now.

CHORUS:
You'll be better off without me, Honey
You will see...
The hurting only lasts so long.
I could try to stay forever
But with women like me...
Forever only lasts
(The proof is in my past)
Forever only lasts so long.

Copyright 2000, DMSolis
(More song titles listed below the fishies...vote for the next one.)

Diane Solis

The poetry of Diane Solis has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in Expressive Writing: Classroom and Community, and has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals and magazines, including, America, Big Muddy, The Healing Muse, Hobo Camp Review, The Lost Country, Psychological Perspectives, Sinister Wisdom, Slink Chunk Press and elsewhere. Her chapbook ART SPIRITS, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A science writer and technical editor by trade, Solis practices contemplative and Zen forms of meditation and travels to remote places to photograph and write about the "wild" she encounters there. She resides on the Central Pacific Coast with her partner.

www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

The Latest Quotes for Contemplation:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, age after age, forever. ~ Tagore

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.... ~ Frank O'Hara

Of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one. ~Pablo Neruda

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. ~Joan Chittister

When I say be creative, I don't mean you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? ~ Mary Oliver

Without warning, as a whirlwind swoops on an oak, Love shakes my heart. ~ Sappho

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

Love many things, for therein lies your true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well... ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. ~Thomas Merton

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
~John F. Kennedy

I cannot write convincingly about anything that I am not passionate about. ~Darrell Bourque, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

In the lover's heart is a lute which plays the melody of longing. ~Rumi

But perhaps the most important thing about my father was that he taught us the simplest things -- Navajo things -- like how to just sit and be quiet, to blend in and watch, or to move so silently we'd become a part of the forest. My father taught us how to live the concepts of our culture, especially the importance of communicating with the natural world. ~Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.