Skipped a season...
Oct. 1st, 2009 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taabeHey guys, long time no see. Summer is receding; my magazine will settle into winter quarters in another week, and I'm sitting here, not at my office, with music playing and the heat lightly on, about to step into chapter one of draft five of the novel. This revision is more of a massage than a hatchet job, I think: filling out the new plot, slowing the pacing in a few places, letting people, here and there, bask.
In the last week, I've taken some time to get out of the house too. On a sunny Thursday, I drove over the mountains listening to The Scarlet Pimpernel and grinning at the first turning sugar maples. It feels so good to be outside — as good as it feels to spend two hours pulling up late season beets and piling them into feed bags with three apprentices at a local farm, while they talk about song books and typewriters whose turn to make dinner.
So a week ago I got to listen to Jonathan Coulton in concert with a pride of friends, and it was magnificent. Listening to a performer live makes me feel awake, a lot like talking comfortably in a field of arugula, but more immediately human. Music opens people, gets past self-consciousness to the place where you can walk straight up to someone and ask how they are and mean it.
On the night, my friends sang the choruses around me and stamped their feet and programmed flames on their iphones — I laughed and I was moved. And I thought afterward, it's funny how many of his songs talk about not reaching people, about something as close as the front door or the next floor up that is out of reach because the singer won't grasp it.
So, because I like arguing with Jonathan Coulton long-distance, I wrote a song in my head as I drove home and filled in the rest in a coffee shop later, before I pulled out my writing notebook. Thank God it's fall.
Navigation
When no one else needs rescuing,
I like to fly at night.
From here, the hills fit in my hands
and all the city lights.
I'll hit the streets faster than rain
when I hear someone scream,
but when they chose the X-men
I didn't make the team
Chorus:
because I still ache when I land in the dirt
and I remember my name without reading my shirt:
I'll never be a sidekick — obviously —
but on a warm summer evening will you fly with me?
When lightening rods are humming,
I feel alive and whole,
and I want a living body
to expand my soul.
My walls may be stone
but the windows open wide —
why stay in a lab
when you can chase a storm outside?
Chorus:
When I give my heart, it'll come with my head,
and I can make a man without a needle and thread:
I'll never be an Igor — rapturously —
so on a warm summer evening will you fly with me?
When I don't know anyone in the room
I'll offer you a drink.
We'll hang out in the kitchen
blowing bubbles at the sink.
I'll put my feet up on the table
and my wine glass on the floor,
and if you pull the cork
maybe I won't spill when I pour.
Chorus:
So toast our bare feet and let's dance with the band.
I won't take your order, but I'll take your hand:
I'll never be a waiter — gloriously.
On a warm summer evening, will you fly with me?
In the last week, I've taken some time to get out of the house too. On a sunny Thursday, I drove over the mountains listening to The Scarlet Pimpernel and grinning at the first turning sugar maples. It feels so good to be outside — as good as it feels to spend two hours pulling up late season beets and piling them into feed bags with three apprentices at a local farm, while they talk about song books and typewriters whose turn to make dinner.
So a week ago I got to listen to Jonathan Coulton in concert with a pride of friends, and it was magnificent. Listening to a performer live makes me feel awake, a lot like talking comfortably in a field of arugula, but more immediately human. Music opens people, gets past self-consciousness to the place where you can walk straight up to someone and ask how they are and mean it.
On the night, my friends sang the choruses around me and stamped their feet and programmed flames on their iphones — I laughed and I was moved. And I thought afterward, it's funny how many of his songs talk about not reaching people, about something as close as the front door or the next floor up that is out of reach because the singer won't grasp it.
So, because I like arguing with Jonathan Coulton long-distance, I wrote a song in my head as I drove home and filled in the rest in a coffee shop later, before I pulled out my writing notebook. Thank God it's fall.
Navigation
When no one else needs rescuing,
I like to fly at night.
From here, the hills fit in my hands
and all the city lights.
I'll hit the streets faster than rain
when I hear someone scream,
but when they chose the X-men
I didn't make the team
Chorus:
because I still ache when I land in the dirt
and I remember my name without reading my shirt:
I'll never be a sidekick — obviously —
but on a warm summer evening will you fly with me?
When lightening rods are humming,
I feel alive and whole,
and I want a living body
to expand my soul.
My walls may be stone
but the windows open wide —
why stay in a lab
when you can chase a storm outside?
Chorus:
When I give my heart, it'll come with my head,
and I can make a man without a needle and thread:
I'll never be an Igor — rapturously —
so on a warm summer evening will you fly with me?
When I don't know anyone in the room
I'll offer you a drink.
We'll hang out in the kitchen
blowing bubbles at the sink.
I'll put my feet up on the table
and my wine glass on the floor,
and if you pull the cork
maybe I won't spill when I pour.
Chorus:
So toast our bare feet and let's dance with the band.
I won't take your order, but I'll take your hand:
I'll never be a waiter — gloriously.
On a warm summer evening, will you fly with me?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-02 01:00 am (UTC)What a wonderful line.
And I like your song, very much.