My hands have this coldness, this wrapping around pen and notebook, holding on for warmth, for dear life. I used to love the cold. This isn't cold.

What's the coldest you've ever been?

My brother read a book about how to talk to people when our dad was dying, that asked questions like that. When he asked me, I thought back to the parking lot in Juneau at my new elementary school. 1990 had this giant freeze moving through the pacific northwest that winter. We'd driven through blizzards in Washington and Idaho, having left blizzards in Central New York when we started off, and here I was, 6 years old in 40-something-below temperatures with windchill.

For a long time, I remembered how cold it was in exaggerated ways. 70-below, for sure. But maybe it was only 20-below. I'm trying to get more realistic over time with what I remember, but how memory works: it never gets truer with age. I remember the orca mascot, though, on either side of the entrance at Auke Bay Elementary. One side was in full color, or black and white, as that's an orca in full color. One side was the Inuit version, all cookie-cuttered out like a print made of bone and heartache.

​I always want to go back there. Not to that age, not anymore, but to the land of glaciers which, as cold goes, as Alaska and the Northernmost points of North America goes, is not so bitter by far. It's green. Lush. A rainforest, but not a hot one, it's like--

What's the hottest you've ever been? Do you remember?

​That question was in my brother's book, too. I read it after he did. I don't know if it helped me talk to people, though. 

Maybe it's because I live and partner with a musician, but lately music has been a big influence on my life. Song lyrics are creeping their way into my plays more than before.

For this month's Free Drop-In Writing Workshop at The Cabin, I brought that interest into the room. Using song lyrics and instrumental music as inspiration, I invited attendants to generate lyrical material from their own perspectives or one of their characters.
 
Why songs for writers? Why songs right now? 
If you celebrate holidays, original songs can be an interesting gift.
Or a different way of celebrating.
If you have trouble with holidays or winter in general,
Songwriting can be a way to cope. 
Also a way to protest, to find joy, to share love, to invoke action, to heal…
If you play an instrument, it makes sense to find your songwriting voice too.
Songwriting can help your poetry or give a fictional character a new voice.
This tool can be used investigate your memories differently.
Can be used as a true expression of emotion.
And…

The Cabin put out a call for poetry, fiction and nonfiction work in their yearly Writers in the Attic submissions with a 2018 theme: SONG. You might write something that can fit into that contest.

What are your reasons to try writing songs, song lyrics or write inspired by music?
 
Read and dissected song lyrics.
Starting with "Soothing" by Laura Marling and moving onto "Every Single Night" by Fiona Apple, on Tuesday we read lyrics that feel thick with images and also have contrasting structures.

We read each aloud twice, everyone taking a section, moving down the table.

Soothing
by Laura Marling
 
Oh, my hopeless wanderer
You can't come in
You don't live here anymore
Oh, some creepy conjurer
Who touched the rim
Whose hands are in the door
 
I need soothing
My lips aren't moving
My God is brooding
 
Drawn in chalk across the floor
You made it yours
Your private door to my room
May those who find you find remorse
A change of course, a strange discord resolved
 
I need soothing
My lips aren't moving
My God is brooding
 
I banish you with love
I banish you with love
 
You can't come in
You don't live here anymore

Every Single Night
Fiona Apple
 
Every single night
I endure the flight
Of little wings of white-flamed
Butterflies in my brain
These ideas of mine
Percolate the mind
Trickle down the spine
Swarm the belly, swellin' to a blaze

[Pre-Chorus]
That's where the pain comes in
Like a second skeleton
Tryin' to fit beneath the skin
I can't fit the feelin's in, oh

[Chorus]
Every single night's alight
With my brain, brain

[Verse 2]
I say to her, Why'd I say it to her?
What does she think of me?
That I'm not what I ought to be
That I'm what I try not to be
It's got to be somebody else's fault
I can't get caught

[Pre-Chorus]
If what I am is what I am
'Cause I does what I does
Then brother get back, 'cause my breast's gonna bust open
The rib is the shell
And a heart is the yolk
And I just made a meal for us both to choke on

[Chorus]
Every single night's a fight
With my brain, brain

[Hook]
I just wanna feel everything
I just wanna feel everything
I just wanna feel everything
[Verse 3]
So now I'm gonna try to be still now
Gonna renounce the mill a little while
And if we had a double-king-sized bed
We could move in it and I'd soon forget

[Pre-Chorus]
That what I am is what I am
'Cause I does what I does
And maybe I'd relax
Let my breast just bust open
My heart's made of parts
Of all that surround me
And that's why the devil just can't get around me

[Chorus]
Every single night's alright
Every single night's a fight
And every single fight's alright
With my brain, brain

[Hook]
I just wanna feel everything
I just wanna feel everything
I just wanna feel everything
I just wanna feel everything

After reading each, we broke down the words. 
What do you hear in these lyrics? What do you see? Feel?
What makes up these song lyrics? What are the ingredients?
What are the differences between each piece of writing? The similarities?
 
Write:
Now what could the steps be to create something like this?
Many musicians start with the music first, but some don’t.

First let’s try from words first.
Imagine whose perspective you’re writing from.  
Your own? A character’s? A person you’re researching? A place?
What are the biggest things on this person’s mind and heart?
Tap the source. What are you trying to say?
Then, what do you want to do with this song?
Is this to praise, give love, protest?
Is this to make an active statement, ask forgiveness, find hope?
What is the imagery that comes? What verbs, what nouns?
The musicality? The repetitions, the arc, the flow?
As you write, you can sound out words, how they land aloud.
 
Or don’t worry about any of that and write from that character’s perspective (you or someone else’s) about whatever you want to get out right now, and then afterward you can assemble your material into something more songlike.

Questions? Write for 10 minutes, write for an hour, whatever feels right.
 
Listen to Songs: 
Now let’s listen to the songs that go with these lyrics:
​Soothing
Every Single Night
What does the music add?
 
Listen/Write:
Next, let’s start with music.
This time, you can write in song form or it can be something totally different.
Play some instrumental tracks.
Here are some artists I played excerpted tracks from on Tuesday:

Penguin Cafe Orchestra, David Shire, John Coltrane, Philip Glass, J.S. Bach, Ludovico Einaudi, Augusta Read Thomas, Brad Mehldau, Tourmani Diabate, Vitamin String Quartet. 

You may have your own artists you prefer, or you can start with this list. 
You can play songs whole or switch them up partway.
Line up these artists on a playlist or put in your favorite instrumental CD. 

Play music for at least 15, 20 minutes. 
Write what you hear.
Maybe your words come out as lyrics.
Maybe you prefer writing the story of the music.
Or drawing what you hear, and writing what you see in that drawing.
Write the images you pull from the sounds.
Write the ideas, the hopes the dreams, anything.
 
Now, prepare your work to share with someone.
You can look through everything you've generated today.
Add some more. 
Combine phrases, delete the mess.
Use repetition, make new discoveries. 
Compact into choruses, verses. Find some melodies, harmonies.
Or let this new non-lyrical work find special musicality.
 
And reflect:
How did that go?
What was useful or interesting to you about this process?
What was difficult or challenging?
What was fun?
What would you do differently next time?

Thank you for taking time to write with me today.
Remember WITA Song Contest Challenge!

PS: I've been slow to post lately. I know it. My next tactic is to merge blogs, to try for something more regular. I'm thinking about discontinuing the 50 Shades of Kraay blog and posting here the scribbly writings I would post there (where I've been slow to post as well).

If you have strong feelings about these thoughts, feel free to let me know.