This is an idea I have been playing with a little. Mostly here, I want to give an example of my poetic skills. I have the songs running through my head, but my question is if they detract from the story (bad) add to it (good), or are sort of neutral to the story as a whole. Vote in the comments or with good story Kudos. Please only mark a Kudo if you like the song being in the story :). As regards TGL, no story today as I am working through life stuff.
The main character is Keith, who has a Glam Goth persona (Desdemona) that he uses on stage.
The lights went out in the bar, leaving a single white spotlight on my face. I looked down at that mic, not in fear of the audience, but preparing myself for the emotion of the song. I dropped my right hand to my side, holding first 1 finger up, then two and finally three.
I brought my hand quickly to the strings and started the screaming fall from near the bottom of the neck all the way till I was running an open E double. Jake and I wove the bass line back and forth for a moment or two, as if fighting for the spotlight. I screamed my guitar, and he snarled his bass, but then he took up the incessant bass line. It was a low rumble like a thunderstorm over the horizon.
I started in on the mid range melody, and began to sing, my voice forming a sort of descant above the pounding surf of the music:
Out side of my mind lives the darkness
it takes me from myself and consumes me completely
Inside of my mind all reside in loneliness
and I live within myself pushing, running, turning you away
I ran a short bridge and a key change into a more Major key from the Minor key harmonies of the main verse and launched into the chorus with a screaming tenor line almost drowning out the bass and drums. I lived the words for the moment, giving my soul into them:
I feel all that you cut me
and I know that you don't own me
but you will not live without me
and it isn't that you want me
but I sing this all about the hell that is my life with you.
I dropped back down a bit to the original melody as I sang the second verse:
I don't know if what I feel is what you want
and I know that you're here to make all of it stop
I lose myself within the voice, of your sick taunt
And I sit and say that all I want is for you to go away.
I ran a second key change, this time dropping into a different minor key, plucking out the sepulchral tones that the chorus could produce. We slowed from the pounding rhythm we had used from the start, and I sang each word as if it gave me physical pain to let it go into the world.:
I feel all that you cut me
and I know that you don't own me
but you will not live without me
and it isn't that you want me
but I sing this all about the hell that is my life with you.
Almost before I finish the end of the chorus, the drums start beating a steady rhythm. A heartbeat. Filling the words I have to sing next with life. The original melody picks up again in it's original key The music ran the same length, but each line stopped early, letting the music run alone:
You killed me went I went away
My feeling for you flew away
My life with you is gone away
The last line of this verse was spoken instead of sung. I started quietly and low, slowly speeding up and getting louder The music ended before I did, so my band went silent leaving me to finish alone:
I damn you to the hell you live and know that all my life I live and you will not rule my love of life so get your self away!
Everything fell silent for a breathless moment, even the audience seemed to wait in anticipation. We dragged the silence on for a couple more seconds, then Bobby struck the rim of his tom three times to give us the tempo, and then we picked up on the third strike with the words and music for the first chorus:
I feel all that you cut me
and I know that you don't own me
but you will not live without me
and it isn't that you want me
but I sing this all about the hell that is my life with you.
The other two dropped off leaving me for a solo on my 12 string. I played as if the rest of the song had just been a setup for this one moment. I varied all of the versions of the melody and chorus, playing my soul into the music. I shifted into the second to last line of the chorus to single bringing my solo to a close and at the right moment, the other two came in for the final line of our song:
I sing and play the hell of you away!
It no longer mattered to me if we won this contest. We had played better than we ever had in the past, and winning now almost felt like it would be anti-climax to emotion we had brought to the song. The crowd erupted into noise, but it was so loud I couldn't tell if it was positive or negative. We left the stage as we had entered it: silently with our heads held high.
Comments
Interesting
I'm not sure if the song added or distracted from the story, but only due to the fact that there was so little of the story. It almost seemed like a prolog to a longer story. I'd like to see just where it goes from here.
Does Kieth step past androgyny; does he struggle with his personality... persona; is his sense of self solid or fluid?
So many questions, so few answers.
Hugs
Patricia
([email protected])
http://members.tripod.com/~Patricia_Marie/index.html
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper ubi femininus sub ubi
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Kieth's life
I hope I am able to go beyond this little teaser more into who Kieth is and all of his life, but in explanation, Kieth sings soprano. He also does that hardest of all instrument skills, plucking a 12-sting guitar (I have done it a little bit, and have seen someone play Spanish guitar on a 12-string.).
Kieth is lead singer, and uses 12-string for melody (I know, very non standard, but the additional "chorus" sounds ad a haunting quality to the music). One friend plays bass. The last is general percussion. To quote him "rhythm is anything with a beat, and I will use whatever gives the right sound." He uses a standard drum set in the described scene above, but he has been known (in emulation of Stomp) to use gas tanks, metal barrels, and industrial piping (at the same time) instead. (he is still working on what he calls The Behemoth which is his percussion masterpiece. He has all the pieces he needs, he is still working on making it mobile).
No, they don't win the contest shown above, but the title of the first chapter (whenever I write it and post it ;)) will be called "Losing was only the Beginning" would have given that away.
Or, to quote a review of their performance: "On the other hand, 'Up in Flames' should have stuck with what was probably their first band name 'Down in Flames' and then never humiliated themselves here in the first place. From the strange harmonies of a 12-string guitar as lead, to the whiny sound of lead singer Desdemona's voice, this band could only be worse if stories about the drummers Leviathan instrument are true, and he chose to bring it. The words to the song were typical of the new age depressed goth scene, and brought nothing new to the genre. The only thing about this band that is truly memorable were the costumes that they wore, and I'm sure that many in the audience, like myself, wanted Desdemona's phone number. She makes a truly striking figure in her black corset to with burgundy flashes, black taffeta skirt, burgundy leggings and white and burgundy harlequin makeup. She could have worn something in a stiletto heel to complete the ensemble, but the pink combat boot, matching her pink hair, completed it well enough."
Ok, sorry, I like writing ;)
There is a reason why losing this contest started the issues that Kieth will have with his life, and with Desdemona: The audience thought they were the best band there. Several camera videos (and one professional news crew video) made their way to youTube within hours of the performance. That was on Friday night. The news footage actually became the most watched of any of them, but between all of the videos Up in Flames received almost a million hits before Monday.
Kieth and his friends were outcasts.
Desdemona and Up in Flames were instant celebrities.
The story revolves around the difficulty of an Industrial Experimental Goth band to break into the music scene, back dropped by Kieth's very real desire to remain himself amidst Desdemona's rising popularity and acceptance.
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
Oh...
So the lyrics were just general angst, and not Desdemona telling the world that she hated her Keith side?
Eric
(...not that my too-literal mind does all that well with poetry anyway...)
Lyrics
They lyrics are. . .more complex than that.
Kieth is writing about someone else's life though. That's all I will say about that at the moment :)
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
Bah...stupid dyslexia
There are certain things in my mind that get hopelessly confused (p and q, b and d). I have pretty bad dyslexia.
For some reason, I get Toule and Taffeta confused (Satin and Velvet get a bit confused in my mind as well). I know the difference in the fabrics, but the names wont stick with their proper versions.
The critique above should have said Toule skirt, not Taffeta
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
I liked it. All of it seemed
I liked it. All of it seemed to work together just fine. Each part looked to continue, or
compliment the previous part of the message delivered in the story. It was easy to follow
even though I have no music knowlege. The buildup near the end was good.
12-String: My life with you is hell.
Keith is a gifted young man who has a bright future ahead, from the way the audience reacted. .
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
The Lyric
Your lyric seems to be a story onto itself, while adding to the main theme. It is a positive.
If you would like to see how a master blends lyric into narrative you might read No Half Measures by Jenny Walker. As I recall, reading her lyric was a good portion of the fun of that novel.
I'm too old to appreciate angst as I once did -- but it seems to me Beat poetry kicks the crap out of Goth.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Goth vs Beat
There is some Goth out there that is not about angst, while I admit most of it is. There are some beat poems that get pretty angsty. It really depends on the author of the piece.
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
Howl
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan-
sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt
of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and
endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind
leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunk-
enness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring
winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of
mind,
and on an on and on.
Was Ginsberg obscene, or merely obtusely entertaining?
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Half the time
Half the time I think Ginsberg was brilliant. The other half it seems as though he was just the first Shock Jock, in love with his own press.
Personally, while I enjoy free-form poetry to a certain degree, I enjoy complex rhyme schemes with loose meter methodologies.
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
New blog entry.
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/22493/faeriemages-blog-5
Love
-me
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
Story and music
I like them together. It works. (especially since I read the prequel first).
In general I like to have
In general I like to have the lyrics of a song mentioned in the story at hand so I can figure out what the characters are going on about. In this case however the formatting made it difficult to read the story because the bolded and bright color font of the song attracts the eye more than the story. If the song was in the same font as the story, or if it was the story that was in the more eye catching font I think it would have added to the story. as it is it significantly detracted from it.
Thanks
I hadn't even considered that. I was playing around with formatting when I wrote this. I'd originally thought to just have it italicized, and will likely do that again when I actually connect the current action of the main 12-String story with this snippet.
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
He entered the hall to get warm. She left it two hundred years later.
Faeriemage
Reminiscent
Reminds me of Bother by Stone Sour. Just to give you an idea, someone had a character sitting on a rooftop performing that song in a scene somewhere in the Dark Realms universe…