Wake Up Day

It occurs to me that I have done all one kind of writing on this ramblogue, even though I'm always doing multiple kinds of writing. While surely I'll never be foolish enough to post everything I write in this medium--might as well post the freaky fragments that I cull from all my manuscripts for poems and song lyrics.

[ Of course, I won't put everything on here that I think is good, either. I'm like the Beatles when they'd write songs for others--save all the stuff you know is gold for yerself.

But I will say this--you poets or songwriters or marketing advertisers: go ahead and steal freely from me. I believe copyright law has distorted our artistic life beyond measure, and I want you to take ideas phrases paragraphs or what have you from me freely as you care to, since I'll be doing the same from a few of you. What about the lawsuits, you say? Sounds like good publicity to me. Nothing like a juicy controversy about copyright law to draw in the media. ]

Perhaps this requires some meager explanation--one way I write songs, I guess you'd say the usual way I write songs is to write and rewrite ideas until I've found a proper form for the ideas and images at hand. At that point, I get out the guitar and figure out some chords to go along. But long before the guitar's brought in--I type and rewrite (by hand and onscreen) fragments such as the following, synthesizing them anew each time. Here's some samples of stuff I'm inputting into the computer today:

Whores, hip tappers, hustlers, trappers, pimps
loose sailors, cheap players and rich nymphs--
let's put together a grand get together
that drives these sterile blues clean away
and breed a whole new brand 'o blues.

This is not my land we live in now.
It's a flat graveyard that once knew the plow.
The fiery gumption must now blaze anew.

"Let's get lacivious" dull rappers drone today.
The rich man shudders, calls the licentiousness
outta line with the nation's values.
[as if 300 million and counting could ever have one set of values]

So long to your cold, hard hearted cares,
old man. We poor folks rarely were ever
allowed to make much--but still now
we can make light of how you do us in.

Let's do this in New Orleanian fashion
and get the lewd and their lush piano ticklers
roaring forth from out the bawdy doors.

# # #

I believe that if myself and five others took the lyrics above and each made 'em into a song it wouldn't be stealing, it would be glorious, and not just 'cause it's my lyrics. It would be interesting to see how who did what with which of the elements above.

What I've typed above is one half page of a whole (ever growing) stack of handwritten miscellaneous attempts at executing an idea.

I believe in clean and painless execution, but I rarely achive it.

I mean execution of ideas, not humans. I oppose the death penalty.