Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
trans
pan
bi
straight
another city
another country
another –
face
none this is me
i’m all this
don’t try to touch me
don’t seal me with a kiss
touch on skin
touch on lips
touch on face
touch on spit
touch on love
touch on hate
touch on kiss
touch on grace
touch on
touch on
touch
on
touch
Oh, those dreams. After those, I was hunting for an energy jolt. After reading some Dave Grohl comments about Billie Eilish, and thought, yes, she will work.
I like her work because it’s a change, although, honestly, “Ocean Eyes” (2015) was weirdly Enya-esque, prompting thoughts about cycles.
“you should see me in a crown” (2018) doesn’t remind me of Enya. It reminds me of exploration and alienation while sourly mocking invitations, judgments, and expectations.
Count my cards watch them fall
Blood on a marble wall
I like the way they all
Scream
Tell me which one is worse
Living or dying first
Sleeping inside a hearse
I don’t dream
It’s musical art, an expression about a generational segment, in my bones. Don’t mind the spiders. She doesn’t.
I confess, I don’t often watch television commercials. I find them insipid. It’s a longtime stance. With that stance, I’ve trained my mind to mute the television, just tune the commercial out, turn the channel, or leave.
Do you hear a but coming? Good hearing. Do you use hearing aids? No? Just wondering.
But, a recent Apple iPhone commercial engaged me. One, it was different. Two, it had lots of moving colors (pretty, so pretty). Three, it had an interesting but unfamiliar song.
If you haven’t seen or hear it, here is Cosmos Sheldrake with part of his song, “Come Along”. Sing along.
Come along catch a Heffalump,
Sit with me on a muddy clump,
We’ll sing a song of days gone by.
Run along now don’t be glum,
Get you gone now have some fun,
Don’t be long for the end is nigh.
Don’t let moments pass along and waste before your eyes,
March with me and the borogoves,
Come with me and the slithy toves,
And never ask us why.
Come come come come come along now,
Run away from the hum-drum,
We’ll go to a place that is safe from
greed, anger and boredom.
We’ll dance and sing till sundown,
and feast with abandon,
We’ll sleep when the morning comes,
and we’ll rise by the sound of the birdsongs.
We’ll be here when the world slows down,
and the sunbeams fade away,
Keeping time by a pendulum as the fabric starts to fray.
It’s not really winding day, but a pause, isn’t it?
I speak for myself. Immersing myself in reading, researching, and writing, I often pay scant attention to days passing, preferring to think in terms of how much writing has progressed, and what’s left. I’m pausing for New Year’s Eve and Day, mostly because my wife wants to celebrate it, places are closed for this thing called a holiday, and stagnant air and freezing fog undermine my spirit. The net of those laborious sentences is that I’m pausing for a day.
You guys out there in blogger land give me fabulous support. Reading about your projects, ideas, lives, setbacks, hopes, frustrations, and takes on life — humorous and otherwise — is tremendously helpful for me. In our secret but public blogging world, we discover that we’re not as alone as we think, that many of us share the same despair and frustration, that dreams are sometimes achieved, that others are cheering for us, and that ordinary non-famous people are often pretty damn amazing and talented.
I always say that we live and exist on multiple spectrums. In a large sense, our spectrum of experiences helps us create our identity, explore our existence, and expand our knowledge. These blogs you all write and share help others expand their spectrums, if they choose to explore.
Thanks for opening up and sharing. Hope you all have a creative and successful year in 2019 and beyond.
Cheers
I’ve been hearing “Girls Like You” (Maroon 5, 2018) often in the coffee shop, enough that my mind has absorbed it. I’ve begun using it (with modifications) when I feed my cats in the A.M.
“Cats like you need a guy like me to feed them. Yeah, yeah.”
Other verses follow, depending on my mood. It’s a fun video.
It seems like pop-music styles are shifting.
Well, duh? How different was the music from the forties to the fifties to the sixties to the seventies until now? We went from gospel, the blues, rockabilly, and rock and roll to bubblegum, soul, R&B, folk and folk-rock, the British invasion, hard rock, psychedelic rock, acid rock, heavy metal, synth rock, techno-pop, country and western, young country, alternative country, classic country, hip-hop, rap, adult contemporary, soft rock, and every manner of hybrid of these styles.
Those are just a few that streamed through my coffee-less brain (just having the first sip…now…ah.) Today, music seems to be more about sounds, focusing on vocals, with catchy rhymes and repetition, while telling a story For example, my song today is “Jackie Chan” (2018) by Tiësto and Dzeko. Preme and Post Malone provide the vocals.
What intrigues me about it are lyrics such as these:
She said she too young, don’t want no man
So she gon’ call her friends, now that’s a plan
I just ordered sushi from Japan
Know your bitch wanna kick it, Jackie Chan
h/t to lyricsmode.
Not knowing what’s being sung, I sang alternative lyrics.
She said she too young, don’t want no man
So she gon’ call her friends, now that’s a plan
I got to go and use the can
I stand up to take a pee like Jackie Chan
Sometimes, encouraged by the delivery, I just go stream-of-thought freestyle on the whole thing, rhyming on man/plan/can/sand/band/land/hand, etc.
Yes, it’s different, catchy, interesting, intriguing. That’s what’s not new about popular music, and how pop-music in all its forms finds and keeps audiences. A hook is found, and a form is born.
I heard this song on Sirius XM this morning. It didn’t suit my mood so I switched to FM. For a moment, I thought the radio wasn’t working because the same song was playing, in almost the same point of the song. I switched to another FM station.
Guess what song was playing?
I thought, that song must be destined to be today’s theme music. Not sure why. It’s all about relationships. Of course, it might be heard on three stations at the same time because it’s a popular song, and we end up being saturated with its playing.
Listen to some Post Malone and “Better Now” (2018).
Redlegagenda posted this song this morning, so I credit them with reminding me of this Weezer classic. I enjoy Weezer, catching their remake of the Toto classic, “Africa”, and I’ve posted several of their songs as my choice of theme music before. This is a first for “Hash Pipe”.
But since Weezer covered “Africa”, I went with Toto’s live cover of “Hash Pipe”. Got to admit, I like Weezer’s “Hash Pipe” better (because of the more rocking guitars and Cuomo’s high-voiced singing), but this is still fun.
Hey, all you hep writers out there in writing land. Hope this post finds you in the writing groove on this first day of the eighth month of the eighteenth year of this new century.
When does this stop being the new century? It’s still a young century as the age of centuries go, just in its teens, which could be why it’s rebelling against everything and challenging every word. Just old enough to vote in some places, old enough to marry, depending upon where you live, and not old enough to drink in some areas, the century brings to mind Alice Cooper’s song, “I’m Eighteen.”
I got a Baby’s brain and an old man’s heart
Took eighteen years to get this far
Don’t always know what I’m talkin’ about
Feels like I’m livin in the middle of doubt
Cause I’m Eighteen
I get confused every day
Eighteen
I just don’t know what to say
Eighteen
I gotta get away
h/t to Genius.com
Sure sounds like this year and century, doesn’t it?
I sometimes feel that I’m eighteen as I go through my writing processes. Each writing session offers its own challenges and rewards. When I measure it all, I hope the results are worth it, but there are times, man, there are times when confused, disparaging whispers echo in the chasms of my mind.
I prevail, in the same fashion as most writers, by venting, raging, sulking, drinking, reading, shrugging, and writing, and then writing more. I often wonder what I’d be like had I not heard the writing call, but then, I wonder about that with every area of my life. What if I’d not married the woman that I did, or what if I hadn’t joined the military, and so on, as billions upon billions of people have done.
In the end, August of 2018 feels a lot like January of 2018, a hopeful period that also looks daunting.
Time to write like it’s 1999.
Today’s music is “In My Blood” by Shawn Mendes. It was released this year, 2018.
I’d been thinking about the work left in my series, Incomplete States, just to finish the beta edition, and then the revisions and editing left to take it to publication. I was also thinking that it has a strong chance of being read by few to no people. With all that to do, and other writing projects and life opportunities in limbo while I’m working on it, I thought, why not give up? Give up writing this series, and write something simpler and smaller. Why, in fact, write at all, with the odds so heavy against me?
Then the lyrics from “In My Blood” streamed in.
Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in
Sometimes I feel like giving up
No medicine is strong enough
Someone help me
I’m crawling in my skin
Sometimes I feel like giving up
But I just can’t
It isn’t in my blood
It isn’t in my blood
h/t to genius.com
Researching the song, I discovered that Mendes had written it in response to his struggles with anxiety disorder. Once again, as often happens, I became revitalized by reading of others who struggled and succeeded. If they made it, so can I.
So, thank you, Shawn Mendes.
Michael Seidel, writer 