Songwriting Without Boundaries
Page 7
BONNIE HAYES: The smooth moonlight pours like thick cream through the window.
Spilling across my floor. Silken, undulating—I want to get out of bed and go stand in it, dance in it, let it fall in folds across my skin, feel it on my hair …
BEN ROMANS: The moonlight carved into the landscape, stroking the hills as smooth as a brush.
The smooth moonlight sunk into the desert ahead. The crickets applauded the shadows’ ballet on the sand. The rest of the sky was envious of the feast below …
Hot spots: “smooth moonlight pours like thick cream” and “stroking the hills as smooth as a brush.”
Your turn.
Fevered Carburetor
BLEU: The carburetor was fevered, sputtering the car to life like a half-drowned man coughing up water.
… sputtering to a halt … grinding … sweating … oil—enough fumes to get you high … speed–demon … faster … harder … clutching, the clutch, with bare feet …
pushing the pedal so far beyond (through) the vinyl car-mat the asphalt is giving you a manicure … sick … with smoke … bad emissions …
SUSAN CATTANEO: On the off ramp, halfway between Phoenix and Flagstaff, the fevered carburetor fainted, giving a huge steam-filled sigh.
Tires sag into the blacktop and the heat shimmers on the horizon. The buzz-saw sound of cicadas and the starched feeling in my throat, smell of mesquite and the starched white sun …
Now, your turn.
Whew! Quite an introduction to this challenge. The work you’ve done today has put you on a road that will take your writing places it hasn’t likely been too regularly. These metaphor exercises will change the way you look at the world. You’ll see more on the vertical—things stacking on top of each other—rather than horizontally. Things in a line will become only what they are.
Rest now. Another day is coming.
DAY #2
FINDING NOUNS
FROM ADJECTIVES
Yesterday I gave you the combinations and asked you to explore them. Today, I’ll give you the adjectives, leaving it up to you to find nouns to crunch up against them. Don’t grab just anything; take your time and look for provocative, productive collisions.
If you need a nudge finding nouns, or any grammatical type for that matter, Roget’s International Thesaurus, the nondictionary-style thesaurus, is a good friend. It’s a great place to hunt, and it corrals nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs into their own separate pens.
As you did yesterday, write a sentence or short paragraph for each collision. Then do a ninety-second piece of object writing for each collision, using it as the object.
Angry __________
ANDREA STOLPE
Angry taxes: I drove my pencil through the tangle of unsure numbers and stale questions, trying to make some sense of my angry taxes.
Snap, another graphite stick bites the dust. Numbers blur, questions stare me down like a buffalo on the plains of North Dakota, my eyes slurring words as my nightlight pops and clicks—tiny fruit flies flitting to their death around April 15th.
KEPPIE COUTTS
Angry umbrella: My angry umbrella flails and pops its arms inside out and refuses to budge back into shape.
The brooding clouds quickly take on a violent edge, turning a nasty shade of purple and brown, a big swelling bruise in the sky. Thick hot droplets spit as I pop my umbrella, but the wind carries the rain at impossibly aggressive angles.
Of course, the trick here is to remember that metaphor is always literally false. Don’t pick something that can be literally angry, like people or bees. Those wouldn’t be metaphors. They’d just be angry people and angry bees. Both Andrea and Keppie chose nouns that don’t belong to angry’s family.
Now, you try.
Boastful ____________
SUSAN CATTANEO
Boastful flag: Buoyed by the cheering whistle of the wind, the boastful flag puffed out its chest revealing the proud white, red and blue.
Starched blue uniforms lined up like pencils, the glare of the tuba and trumpet, summer popsicles melting down children’s chins, the creak and complaining of the plaid lawn chair as its straps are stretched …
ANDREA STOLPE
Boastful hallway: Upon entering through massive doors of intimidation we were ushered down a boastful hallway.
White. Shiny and white. Sour sweet smell of disinfectant sleeked across smooth granite floors. Massive chandelier glittery and offensive, hanging like a memorial of plucked chickens strung from their bony wrinkled feet.
Again, both Susan and Andrea chose nouns that are nondiatonic to boastful. That’s why they collide.
Your turn.
Careful____________
BONNIE
Careful light: A careful ray of light slinks into the room sideways.
Not through the window but through the crack under the door. With as little fanfare as possible, it edges up my face to a similar crack in my eyelid, and very gently slips into my consciousness. I’d rather keep this reckless darkness behind my eyes.
SUSAN CATTANEO
Careful sunrise: The careful sunrise stepped gently over the mountain’s fragile shoulders.
Dipping an orange velvet slipper into the morning, the sunrise twirls her colorful skirts in the spring air, her voice is the melody of a robin’s trill, a child’s laugh on a carousel …
Interesting what these collisions can spawn. I’d never thought of a mountain as having fragile shoulders before. Nor of light slinking. Once you introduce careful’s family to sunrise’s family, or light’s family, all sorts of couplings and conversations can happen.
Your turn.
Dark ____________
SUSAN CATTANEO
Dark lie: Our love was a white sheet blowing on a summer clothesline and his dark lie was a stain that would never come clean.
Wind playing hide-and-seek in the cornfields, the distant drone of a tractor, hard rough hands, red and blotchy, plunge into the cold water, pulling the wet clothes out and dragging them across the washboard …
JESS MEIDER
Dark static: Dark static hung low and humming in the shady ancient temple.
Too far after midnight, I drive into the spotlight cast ten feet ahead, never quite arriving, eyes deliberately dart like the dot above karaoke lyrics, the words unclear, fuzzy. Fingers twist the knob, voices mixed with notes scramble in and out like some far away alter reality. Then blaring audio AM radio fuzz jolts me out of a trance—a dark static, frightening and full of voices, intimidating like large machinery, too much like a box of ghosts that I would rather not open.
Remember, dark eyes could be literally true, and thus isn’t a metaphor. They join together rather than colliding. Dark thoughts, though a cliché, is a metaphor. It’s literally false.
Your turn.
Enthusiastic ____________
CHANELLE DAVIS
Enthusiastic balloons: I chase the bunch of enthusiastic balloons as they scramble across the lawn and glide over the neatly clipped hedge, floating further and further into the summer sky …
Rainbow colours, rubber stretched tight, full of helium, white ribbons trailing after them, bouncing trying to break free, hot breeze …
SUSAN CATTANEO
Enthusiastic flip-flops: The Jersey shore boardwalk was filled with the chatter of enthusiastic flip-flops.
Cut-off jeans and a transistor radio, hair teased high like a dark tornado, eyes black and blue with mascara and eye shadow. Her accent sneers out of pink lips, tattoos like veins around her delicate wrists.
I love the picture of balloons scrambling across the lawn.
Susan’s back in “who” writing in her ninety seconds. Thinking of flip-flops chattering turns them into mouths. Neat.
Give it a try.
Good for you. You’ve taken an important step, looking for one of the elements in the collision. It makes you think up a lot of possibilities before you get one that vibrates. Looking for the noun from the quality (adjective) is
a pretty interesting search. Another wrinkle coming tomorrow.
DAY #3
FINDING ADJECTIVES
FROM NOUNS
Yesterday I gave you an adjective and asked you to look for a colliding noun. Today, the process is reversed: I’ll give you the noun, and you try to find a colliding adjective.
Again, don’t just grab anything; take your time and look for provocative, productive combinations.
As usual, write a sentence or short paragraph that makes sense of the combination. Then do a ninety-second piece of object writing for each collision, using it as the object.
____________ Furnace
KRISTIN CIFELLI
Hungry furnace: The hungry furnace ran nonstop through the dead of winter, consuming natural gas like a marathon runner devours power bars.
Eating up coal, and keeping us warm … running, running, running—tired and running making its own heat in the cold, damp basement, surrounded by cobwebs and empty boxes … sparks flying, creaking stairs down to the basement, winter’s best friend …
SUSAN CATTANEO
Wheezing furnace: The silence in my grandfather’s basement was interrupted by the coughs and sputters of the wheezing furnace, lungs full of stale hot air …
Train tracks like scars on the surface of the ping-pong table, dust motes floating through the weak light coming in from the basement transom window, spiders lying in wait in webbed corners, rusty tools and the dented wooden surface, smell of mothballs and old socks …
What does a furnace do? Okay, it consumes energy, it blows hot air. What else consumes energy? People? People consume energy when they’re hungry. Aha! Hungry furnace. What else blows hot air—exhales? Human beings do. When humans are old and worn, their lungs may not be that great. Aha! Wheezing furnace.
Your turn.
____________ Midnight
JESS MEIDER
Angular midnight: Angular midnight interjecting, never protesting; time pours itself into this metallic night, reflections from every surface …
Beijing midnight is angular, edges and sides multiplied as in a dark diamond. Food-stands with miniature stools around flip-up tables, meat on sticks fry over red and black coals, by a Uighur man in a white boxy fitted hat. Disco kids with zany silver and gold flash! Tiny giggles wearing tiny skirts, eyes dilated in techno beats, just dipping out and then dipping back in. A work horse hitched to a cart babbles along past it all, unnoticed, back to his peasant village in a wrinkled mountain.
ANNE HALVORSEN
Sable midnight: Sable midnight, a velour pullover for the hills.
Dreams of the rusted steel mills and factories once running night and day. Memories of the lake’s miles-long twinkling lights, all steam and smoke at daylight, leaving the sky forever tinted. Men walk with their high-top lunchboxes to welcome work, not privy to black waves hitting sand …
Hot spots: “his peasant village in a wrinkled mountain,” “velour pullover for the hills.”
Your turn.
____________ Cottage
ANDREA STOLPE
Trembling cottage: The overgrowth of the forest twined its needy vines around the trembling cottage, squeezing rafter from roof and distorting every right angle.
We arrived with the last few rays of an October afternoon. The cabin looked less like a romantic getaway than a case for backwoods welfare. I imagined that if I exhaled too intensely the whole structure might collapse. But then, perhaps I was the wolf and you the pig, and this was just our way …
SUSAN CATTANEO
Uptight cottage: A perfectly manicured lawn, perky white fence and a prim red mailbox separated the uptight cottage from the slovenly condo complex that squatted next door …
Music blares out of car stereo speakers, the old man hikes up his trousers and leans down to prune the roses that line his driveway, he scowls at the children running like sprites through the open fire hydrant …
Andrea draws her adjective, trembling, from the verb, to tremble. Adjectives created in this sort of way, by adding ing or ed to the verb, are called participles. Since verbs are the strongest element in language, using them to create adjectives makes for a more potent modifier.
“The slovenly condo complex that squatted next door ….” Yum.
Now, you try.
____________ Hope
ANDREA STOLPE
Fragile hope: Her stance emanates a fragile hope, shoulders sloping and an anxious trembling in her fingers as she petitions the school board for more money.
I feel that surge of anxiety as I stand here in my navy heels and black hose. I know I should have dressed in the natural light of the bedroom rather than fumbling through my top dresser drawer in the dim light of the bedside reading lamp.
SUSAN CATTANEO
Sharp hope: Waiting for him to call, she felt the sharp hope pierce her heart every time the phone rang.
A number scrawled on a beer-soaked napkin, regret burns like a cigarette, tousled sheets on the empty bed, high-heeled shoes tossed on the couch, morning breath and mascara running down …
Hope is one of those abstract nouns. Trust, love, etc., all need something specific to ground them. Both Andrea and Susan give us adjectives with enough spunk to crunch up against an ocean liner like hope.
Your turn.
____________ Ghost
SUSAN CATTANEO
Lazy ghost: The loose shutter on the house swung back and forth halfheartedly, pushed by the languid hand of a lazy ghost.
Porch sagging like an old woman’s stockings, grass brown and yellow in patches, the old light blue Monte Carlo, tires as flat as deflated old balloons, swallows pitch and yaw like tiny black kites in and out of the eaves …
ANDREA STOLPE
Porcelain ghost: Her mother’s support was only a porcelain ghost, kept out of reach on a pedestal and debated whether to exist at all.
My grandmother’s dresser was a sacred place. Old photographs beaten by changing seasons stood in a matronly fashion atop a varnished oak surface. Mothballs and century-old perfume leached into every pore of the wood, every unmentionable underclothing hidden within those drawers. I wondered what people of that generation tucked under their pile of socks …
These both work, but note that a ghost might be realistically deemed lazy as opposed to active. Not quite a collision. Of course, that ghosts don’t exist helps. They don’t, right?
Rather than a collision of the two terms, porcelain ghost seems to refer to a bust or picture of a dead grandfather. Nice overtones, though it feels somewhere between metaphor and euphemism.
Since ghost can have human qualities, try unhuman qualities like brittle or wrinkled. C’mon, you can do it.
DAY #4
NOUN-VERB COLLISIONS
Verbs. You’ve already learned something about them. They’re the most potent force in language. Nouns are inert. They sit there. Adjectives pile on top of them and sit there. Verbs electrify them, propel them, launch them into action. The difference between average and great writing: verbs.
Today you’ll create collisions between verbs and nouns. As on day 1, I’ll give you two lists: a list of nouns and a list of verbs. It’ll be up to you to make something of the collision.
NOUNS VERBS
Moonlight Tumble
Funeral Exhale
Carburetor Sing
Autumn Remembers
Handkerchief Plead
For each noun/verb combination, write a sentence or short paragraph expanding on the association. Of course, adjust the verb’s number and tense to suit the noun and the context.
Then do a ninety-second piece of object writing for each combination, using it as the prompt.
Moonlight Tumbles
LEORA SALO: Moonlight tumbles through the lace curtains weaving webs on your skin, my fingers as spiders. I like the way your skin crawls under my touch.
Where we once wove the sheetsin tapestry of our life together, the moonlight now is just a stubborn child that tumbles into my bed and wil
l not leave me alone.
JAMES MERENDA: Moonlight tumbles into the more hidden nooks of the city.
Rolling under the traffic of the clouds, doggedly making its way, twice-reflected, onto the street, weary from its work, it is either romantic, or dying. Perhaps both.
You can feel the collision between nouns and verbs. A verb like tumble belongs to a pretty active family, which suggests Lia’s “stubborn child.” Note James’s additional metaphor “the traffic of the clouds.” Nice.
Now, you try.
Funeral Exhales
CHANELLE DAVIS: The tsunami exhaled a funeral onto the white beach, finally withdrawing to the deep ocean it was born from.
Bodies laying still, twisted like pretzels, some look like they’re sleeping, piles of broken buildings like matchsticks, beached ships, roads ripped apart, black wave overtaking the land …
Andrea Stolpe: The funeral exhaled the stench of greedy family members waiting to collect on the will.
I couldn’t look at the priest so I studied the bare dirt with sprigs of destitute grass lurching around our shined shoes and morose suit pants. I could feel the eyes digging into my back, my brother’s wife releasing her resentment like an IV drip over twenty years of knowing and hating me …
Note in Chanelle’s response that the noun funeral comes after the verb as a direct object, with another noun, tsunami, providing the subject. That’s the beauty of noun/verb collisions: The noun can serve either as subject or direct object.
“Stench” belongs to exhale’s tone center, while “greedy family members” is in a different key, creating the collision. Nice.
Your turn.
Carburetor Sings
CHANELLE DAVIS: The carburetor sings as they flee down the open desert highway …
High-pitched drone, revving engine, quickly changing the clutch, high speed, see the needle pass 100, leather seat burning hot on my thigh, arm tanning on the window and hair streaming behind me, open my mouth and let the rushing air dry out my saliva …
JESS MEIDER: the mechanic “whisperer” turns the motor, it raps and bumps in a strange ghetto rhythm while the fans squeal in delight and the carburetor sings a wavering, sweet sick melody …