Steel Skeletons of the Past
Feb. 7th, 2022 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wyld_dandelyonSteel Skeletons of the Past
So, as I may have noted, I'm doing FAWM, which stands for February Album Writing Month. The stated goal is to write 14 songs (or more) in the month of February. But what it really is is a fun, welcoming place where people share challenges, prompts, games, and other inspiration for writing songs/tunes/music/lyrics/etc. If you share your song (and on the site, all musical efforts are titled songs, whether they have lyrics, recorded music, or both) people will listen and comment on them. It's pretty cool.
And because there's so much happening, you're bound to find inspiration if you show up and put a little effort into it. At least I find that to be true. It might be inspiration only for a practice song, one that I won't want to polish and learn to perform well, but there is value in practice too.
So, one of the types of challenge that they do on FAWM they call a "skirmish" In this challenge, someone states ahead of time that they are going to give a prompt at a certain time, and once they do, you have an hour (though it's OK to take longer) to write a song. You can do just lyrics or just music, but I've learned that you get better comments if you get a rough-finished piece done and recorded in that time, or not too much later, so it's there for people to comment on in the hour after the skirmish.
The topic for this skirmish was a zombie or other apocalypse, and I did get the recording done within that first hour. As with all first scratch recordings of very new things, it's imperfect. But if you want to listen, it's here: https://fawm.org/songs/127560/ The instrument I'm playing is a singing bowl, carefully played badly.
(If you have trouble seeing it on the FAWM site, it's also here: https://soundcloud.com/deirdre-moira-murphy/steel-skeletons-of-the-past-1 )
The image is from one of those AI art aps, which I edited to make "album art" for this track for FAWM.
Steel Skeletons of the Past
By Deirdre M. Murphy
Wild wet wind whistles through steel skeletons
Buildings that silently scraped the skies, now creaking
No longer quite covered by their flesh of concrete and glass
The glories of the past now lost in endless squeaking
A twisted wreck of rail, fallen, drowned by sleet and hail
Boxy shapes fallen and cracked open like oblong monster eggs
Once our ancestors sped smoothly, sometimes sleeping inside them
Now their rusty resting relics like gravestones block our path
Gulls, cats, rats, and pigeons flock, swooping and skittering
And pooping, always pooping, with none to clear the mess
Weeds grow in that abundance, tangled flowers and grasses
But food to feed the masses, no, that’s all in the past
We quest to find the temple, the hallowed halls of quiet
Where books on all topics shelter from snow and sun
We’re trying to start over, our small family of rovers
But we shall surely fail if we don’t know how this begun
The tangled, teeming wreckage, the wild canyons of the past
Are vast and there’s no telling where the temple may be found
The maps are long gone to bedding for the city’s new commanders
And we, poor feral humans, are lost in our species’ burial ground
Copyright 2022 Deirdre M Murphy (2/5/2022)
So, as I may have noted, I'm doing FAWM, which stands for February Album Writing Month. The stated goal is to write 14 songs (or more) in the month of February. But what it really is is a fun, welcoming place where people share challenges, prompts, games, and other inspiration for writing songs/tunes/music/lyrics/etc. If you share your song (and on the site, all musical efforts are titled songs, whether they have lyrics, recorded music, or both) people will listen and comment on them. It's pretty cool.
And because there's so much happening, you're bound to find inspiration if you show up and put a little effort into it. At least I find that to be true. It might be inspiration only for a practice song, one that I won't want to polish and learn to perform well, but there is value in practice too.
So, one of the types of challenge that they do on FAWM they call a "skirmish" In this challenge, someone states ahead of time that they are going to give a prompt at a certain time, and once they do, you have an hour (though it's OK to take longer) to write a song. You can do just lyrics or just music, but I've learned that you get better comments if you get a rough-finished piece done and recorded in that time, or not too much later, so it's there for people to comment on in the hour after the skirmish.
The topic for this skirmish was a zombie or other apocalypse, and I did get the recording done within that first hour. As with all first scratch recordings of very new things, it's imperfect. But if you want to listen, it's here: https://fawm.org/songs/127560/ The instrument I'm playing is a singing bowl, carefully played badly.
(If you have trouble seeing it on the FAWM site, it's also here: https://soundcloud.com/deirdre-moira-murphy/steel-skeletons-of-the-past-1 )
The image is from one of those AI art aps, which I edited to make "album art" for this track for FAWM.
Steel Skeletons of the Past
By Deirdre M. Murphy
Wild wet wind whistles through steel skeletons
Buildings that silently scraped the skies, now creaking
No longer quite covered by their flesh of concrete and glass
The glories of the past now lost in endless squeaking
A twisted wreck of rail, fallen, drowned by sleet and hail
Boxy shapes fallen and cracked open like oblong monster eggs
Once our ancestors sped smoothly, sometimes sleeping inside them
Now their rusty resting relics like gravestones block our path
Gulls, cats, rats, and pigeons flock, swooping and skittering
And pooping, always pooping, with none to clear the mess
Weeds grow in that abundance, tangled flowers and grasses
But food to feed the masses, no, that’s all in the past
We quest to find the temple, the hallowed halls of quiet
Where books on all topics shelter from snow and sun
We’re trying to start over, our small family of rovers
But we shall surely fail if we don’t know how this begun
The tangled, teeming wreckage, the wild canyons of the past
Are vast and there’s no telling where the temple may be found
The maps are long gone to bedding for the city’s new commanders
And we, poor feral humans, are lost in our species’ burial ground
Copyright 2022 Deirdre M Murphy (2/5/2022)
