Wednesday December 5th, 2012

The exercise:

Direct your browsers over this way. See that? That's a list of all the albums that have won the Grammy for Album of the Year. Pick one album title to use as the inspiration for today's writing.

Went up to Penticton today for our second-to-last appointment with the midwives. We get one more at six weeks and then we're back in the care of our local doctor. Will be sad to see the last of them, as they have been totally amazing.

In other related news: Max is, as Kat likes to put it, a milk monster. He's up 24 ounces in the last two weeks, which means he's up to 9 pounds now.

Mine:

2005 - Ray Charles and Various Artists - Genius Loves Company

They gather in secret places,
Disguises on their faces,
To speak of intellectual things
And, after enough drinking, sing.

They sing only the oldest songs,
Often getting the lyrics wrong;
But no one's there to set them right,
So they keep on going all night.

Soon whispers take over from shouts
As each one of them passes out.
Genius usually loves company,
Just not mornings after whiskey.

3 comments:

morganna said...

Frank Sinatra: Come Dance with Me

Dancing in the Woods
Come dance with me
She sees no one, the woods are quiet
A sibilance on the wind
Turning round and round
Searching for the sound
Come dance with me
Come be my queen,
Come away with me.

A sibilance on the wind
She holds out her hands,
Turning slowly in the rising wind
Come dance with me

Still she sees no one
A pressure on her hands
A sibilance on the wind
Whirling faster and faster
She rises into the air and disappears
Come dance with me
A sibilance on the wind.

Greg said...

@Morganna: The repetition of lines works to support the images of the dancing that you're creating very nicely.

@Marc: Max sounds like he's doing well! I hope Kat's not finding it too tough :) I hope your local doctor is as good as the midwives then, you've clearly been very impressed by them all the way through.
That's a cute little punchline you have at the end, and the image you conjure up of all these drunken intellectuals is delightful!

Raising Sand
Master Licko picked up the vibrato sticks in three of his eight hands and closed four of the six membranes that could cover his eyes. This reduced the light coming through to dull blues and limpid greens, with the soft glow of ultraviolet hazing his vision very slightly. Behind him, carrying a personal bazooka and a panga, was his lawyer-at-arms. The lawyer-at-arms looked around him, slowly and casually, watching to make sure that no-one interrupted Master Licko's sculpting.
The vibrato sticks hummed as Master Licko engaged them, and the sand beneath his feet seemed to flex slightly, and then shiver in harmony. As Master Licko moved the sticks apart, the sand slithered around. Like a conductor at the start of a symphony Master Licko raised the sticks, and the sand obediently raised up in concert. The lawyer-at-arms checked for cameras, hefting the panga with legal intent.
As Master Licko swept the sticks back and forth, carving out lissajous in the air and tilting his head back, tasting the harmonics in the air with two of his tongues, the sand danced into place, clashing, colliding, exploding until it froze. When, some twenty minutes later, he'd finished, the raised sand continued to hang there, immoblised into sculpture and breathtakingly beautiful.
"I shall call it, 'Divorce'", said Master Licko. "I was watching an Earth Soap Opera last night, and I think this captures the essence of that strange hobby of theirs."
The lawyer-at-arms, who had killed two people and removed seven arms from a third, nodded, and carefully notarised the name for the sculpture.

Marc said...

Morganna - absolutely lovely. Also? Sibilance is a beautiful word.

Greg - fantastic imagery, and a master lesson in word choice.

I wouldn't mind having a lawyer-at-arms myself...