Songs are continuing to ambush me. Two weeks ago “Necessary Evil” came to me in the guise of a riff consisting of a single half-step and a bluesy first line that i won’t ever do justice. Before that were two other ambushes… “Up & Down” with it’s rough and tumble sexual upfrontness and “This Tiny Trouble” pretending to be a song about vintage sitcoms. Somewhere inbetween exists the still-forming “Destination,” which portrays something near the opposite emotion from REM’s “Stand.” All four for unintended, unexpected, and anything but premeditated.
Tonight the fifth song in this merry ambushing band came to me without a warning… with literally only a few seconds of idle time between the first and final lines (most of which was spent looking for my poetry book). The unusual thing about this one is that i wrote it before… last week it came into my head while crossing the street and i could really hear was the melody and a pattering drum machine. Taken out of context it seemed entirely irrelevent so i filed it away under things to “sing in the shower” by the time i reached 36th street. But, tonight, i wrote two lines neatly clipped from Ani DiFranco americana songs like pictures from a newspaper, and they somehow led straight into that pattering song i found in the middle of the street. It’s not about me or anyone i know, but i can easily see the people inside of it, and it was a lot like “This Tiny Trouble” in that it seemed as though i already knew the ending, i just had to remember it. There is a kiss. There are bodies side by side in the grass. There are shoes wet with morning dew. Though it is still newborn and all-at-once incredibly wrinkly and cute and entirely awkward and unformed, it might even make it onto Dawson’s Creek…