Friday, July 23, 2010

Reality Check

Well, "Music to My Heart" isn’t finished. Not even close. I got the lyric smoothed into iambic pentameter. Only, one line is tetrameter. And it feels complete – the thought is complete - only it’s missing a foot. And, it doesn’t rhyme. None of it rhymes. That’s fine for a poem, but a song needs a good, solid rhyme scheme.

The idea is sound – I’m still sure and enthusiastic about it – and I’ve said everything I want to say... Just need now to say it better, or at least more conventionally. Just! Yeah. *sigh* I know it’s good, and I know it will work if I can only kick my brain out of the rut it’s stuck in and find the right words. Break out of the box in order to be more conventional. An oxymoron, right? But that’s exactly what I need to do. And trying to do it makes me so tired! Guess I’m really out of practice.

And, of course, I really can’t do much with the melody till the lyric’s set or at least semi stable.

The thing is, Bert Bacherach and Nigel Lewis’ "Nothing in this World" keeps running through my mind, which would be fine – it’s a gorgeous song – except I really need to be able to hear the song I’m currently working on, need to be able to concentrate on it to the exclusion of all other songs. That’ clearly not going to happen for a while.

So, though I hoped to zip right through, this project clearly is going to take some time. I need to move it to the back burner and let it stew and brew a while, much as doing so irks me. On the other hand, it’s not like I have a shortage of stuff to work on. But I’m enthusiastic about this project. I want to work on this project. *sigh* Realistically, though, continuing to flog it will do more harm than good and I know it. So, it’s move on to other things for now.

1 comment:

Catreona said...

The lyric to "Music to my Heart" is finally coming together. It's not finished, but it's better. I donno. I just don't have what it takes.

I was listening to "Nothing In This World" again, the studio recording on It's All In The Game. And, I mean, it's just beautiful. Don't think Bacherach has ever written a dud in, what, forty-five years? How can anyone write so many beautiful, wonderful songs? Well, massive talent. I guess that's obvious.

The lyric is by Nigel Lewis; the man's a genius. The words are simple. The sentence structure is simple. The ideas are simple. Yet, the whole comes together to something so lovely and touching.It says so much.All the poems and songs I've ever written, with all the big words and complicated sentences and stanzas and rhyme schemes, don't say what this one song says.

Is it any wonder I'm discouraged?