ww.facebook.com/guy.bouchard.980/posts/10152414299581424
I saw this terrible and sad video on Facebook this morning. Another eery slow disaster showing us again that this beleaguered and much put upon earth is still, at all times, much stronger than we are.
It is my prompt, my triggering impression that inspires this lyric seed, almost immediately rhymed with a rhyme that completes the seed, creates a trajectory for a theme:
I’ve seen a bridge pushed down by ice
I’ve heard of lightning striking twice
I’m reminded of using the same rhyme pair in “Crazy Faith.” This feels different yet related in a way, creating a thread between that old song and this new one waking up. In fact, this is lightning striking twice! Just like the song says:
The two facing mirrors
of song and circumstance
the hall of mirrors
down which my doubles dance
That might have been it. But me being me and Facebook being Facebook, I keep scrolling down the news. And find this, from my friend Kevin Carr: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.carr.3114/posts/10203533506527175
and the b part sticks in my mind, with that slow 6/8 and that plaintive Mixo flat 7 and that cool phrasal extension (oy, guess I do teach at Berklee!)…
And here’s my epiphanette for the day: You practice catching seeds in isolation. That strengthens your ear and your artistic focus. But when the universe sends you two consecutive surprises, sometimes it feels like a portent, an angelic code of warning or hinted suggestion, a drumbeat cascade of “just coincidences?”
Then maybe your job is to find the link, not because it’s inevitable but because it’s the morning challenge the universe has sent you.
The music I would have put to my couplet: a slow 2/4:
m r r d d rm m
m r r d d r l
But now I hear whistles and drums and seeds (or are they beans? magic beans?) shaking in a tambourine:
I’ve seen a bridge pushed down by ice
I’ve heard of lightning striking twice
in a slow portentous 6/8:
s te la! s f me d r m
s f me d s f me d
d m f f m d
I’ve seen a bridge pushed down by ice
I’ve heard of lightning striking twice
of lightning striking twice
I’ve danced to the whistle and the drum
and tossed up in a tambourine
the magic beans where dreams come from
and the seeds of dreams to come
s te la! s f me d r m
s te d s f f me d r
s f me d s f me f
s s te d D te la….
Challenge: The next three seeds the universe sends you, in succession – put them in a tambourine and shake them till they make a song.
The Songwriter's Compass 