I don't know how to not do this stuff.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I wasn't actually asking how *you* compose. I was expressing awe that anyone can, and does do this thing that seems like magic to me. Moreso than other art forms.

I think visually, and I can comprehend how to draw, and paint, and sculpt, even if I can't do those things myself. I have written, and I understand what that process feels like. I studied piano for eight years with a bad, incompetent teacher, so that works out to more like, maybe, two years, total, and I've always sung, solo, in duets, trios, sextets, or chorus. I've sung soprano, alto, tenor parts, and I read enough music to know whether to go up or down on the line (see above, bad teacher). I can follow a melody line having heard it once, and I'm fairly good at finding or inventing a harmony or descant line.

But I can't make original music. I can't hear it in my head, I can't make it up, no matter how I try. And I'm in awe of people who can and do.

And I suck at interpretation, so it evens out. If I love a song, I can play it and do it my way and filter it. But I can't sit down and "play it the way Chopin wrote it", or whatever. The technical part of me turns itself off and locks itself up into a box.

In the days when I had full use of my fingers, I played quite a few instruments (most of them patchily), but I was a damned good banjo player. I used to warm up with "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" because it's complex and tricksy and moves around. But it would never have been something I tried to interpret. Listening to it, it soars and dances in my spirit - playing it, it just became notes.

Creativity is weird stuff.

I've got a decent singing voice, but that is my only musical contribution...and even that, I waste trying to imitate Aretha and Janis(wisely in front of the dog)

Heh. But erika, do you knock back Southern Comfort?

No...good thing too.Although to get those sounds, I might take it up.

I wouldn't (take it up, that is), if I were you. My old friend Pigpen (Rod McKernan) taught Janis how to drink that crap, and in the end, it killed him by destroying his liver and helped kill her.

Yeah, it's the sweet liquor that will kill you.

You know how you know when you've written the right music to a set of lyrics?

When you're earwormed with it.

Happy Deb now.

"Learn your cliches. Study them. Know them. They're your friends." -- Crash Davis, Bull Durham

Monday means welcome to my capricious whims in picking the new drabble topic!

Challenge #54 (discovery) is now closed.

Challenge #55 is, as the quote above suggests, cliches. Go to this Web site, pick a cliche (if you go to the bottom of the page, they're even broken down into handy-dandy categories), and....drabble it. In whatever way you choose. If you don't actually use the cliche -- the actual words themselves, like "that's the way the ball bounces" -- in the drabble, maybe add it at the end in parens or something, so we know what cliche you picked.

As always, take on the topic however you like. Feel free to be a smart-ass and drabble a cliche in literal terms -- a basketball falling off the shelf and bouncing through the aisles at Wal-Mart. (That IS the way the ball bounces, dontcha know....) Whatever you like.

[Note: you don't *have* to use the cliche Web site; feel free to use whatever cliche you like. I just thought I'd give a link to a site that lists cliches for people who are like me and suddenly get brain-lock when they *must* recall something. I could rattle off dozens of cliches if I wasn't in a situation where I was required to do so, but as soon as someone asks me for one, I stare at them blankly, like they just asked me for a Swahili translation of Umberto Eco.]

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions or tell me if you think I'm a total crackhead.

And along those lines, don't forget that if you have a topic you'd like to see us do, please suggest it! Because I *am* a crackhead and come up with some weird-ass topics sometimes.

Proudflesh

I know it hurts now, but it will get easier.

1976: Really? Interesting idea. I know you're saying that to keep me from taking the high old Roman way out, the bathtub, some morphine and a razor blade, but I'm curious: are you really stupid enough to believe it?

Time heals all wounds.

1994: On what planet? I'm still waiting for that emotional proudflesh to show up. Eighteen years, might as well have been yesterday.

God doesn't give us anything we can't handle.

2005: Go fuck yourself. I'm fifty, and bleeding.

It would appear that, in fact? Time heals nothing.