Have You Squandered Your Right to Exist?

Look… fear, anger, death, violence, lack of ambition and frustration are all great subjects for songs. So if you have them inside you, why not use them constructively. Me? I’ve just been hanging about playing computer games waiting for inspiration. And inspiration is a crock, a lie told by the corporate slave masters that life is supposed to be happy, easy and perfect. Life ain’t good, folks. Writing means sitting at the keyboards for hours and growing that much more atrophied and fat. I sat down and wrote some lyrics, came up with some sort of melody. That’s what life is about, not drinking soda pop and slaying computer dragons, but pushing your way through the pain and coming out the other end and feeling like you’ve achieved something. You either waste your life doing pointless stuff or you make something. Sometimes you can do a bit of both. I thought I would share the process with you

I actually lied about inspiration not being important in the whole process of creation. The lie is one of the greatest tools of the writer. We even have a word for it and call it “artistic license". I had a dream last night. I dreamed I was putting the music together for a huge dance party concert. There were going to be important people and hors d’oeuvres. It was a huge room with balconies and two stages. One of the performers was a crotchety unshaven old jazz artist. The other was a young overconfident upstart like Ricky Martin.  Ricky Martin is no longer a young upstart but this just goes to show how much closer I am to the old unshaven jazz musician. Well, they both came in early for sound check and they weren’t happy with each other. So I started up the music and manufactured a rap off between them. But, before I could find out who won, somebody woke me. But that is what inspired me in the morning to start writing. But my back is still breaking, and I am neglecting my dungeons and dragons.

You have to begin, whether you feel like it or not, and one thing will lead to the next. I have been feeling dried out and sorry for myself since high school. (Not really. More artistic license.) And, ever since my hormones have stopped flowing so profusely, I have been waiting for that overwhelming rush of emotion and it just doesn’t come that often anymore.

Well, I have news for me and you, most of the stuff we did in high school was hormone driven naive crap. It just felt better. Sorry about that. Now we have to assume we learned something and push forward through the pain and, yes, boredom and build something. Waiting for that cheat of inspiration is a mistake, because if it does come it will leave you floundering at the last minute with a late article. That isn’t inspiration, that’s just desperation. And desperation is just a sad attempt to grab at that emotion we felt like we had lost from our adolescence.

Strangely - and maybe sadly, too - this all ties in with the lyrics to my new song “When the Ferryman Comes.” The song is about wasting your life, about not taking that potential you have to create because you are afraid. Afraid of what I am unsure, but fear is something which stops us, and then it can scare us into action and keep us moving. It is about lack of achievement and approaching death. But who defines that achievement? Us? Our corporate masters? It all has to do with a mid-life crisis I think started when I was 10 and won’t go away. The whole concept seems a bit derivative of something right now but I am not sure what. However, I shall call it a working title for now and keep moving.

When The Ferryman Comes

I went to the dock just yesterday
Six sixty five souls waited at the bay
But I hid because I was scared for my life
And I watched. And it happened this way.

The ferryman caught the dock with a dead man’s noose
And with a grunt he pulled it tight
And he made a half hitch so it couldn’t get loose
And he hollered with all his might

The names of the living and names of the dead
and the secret names of the Lord
and he put out his hand and hauled them on board
and the rest he pushed back instead

The deadly waters they boil with life
and away the ferryboat speeds
the ferryman struggling at the wheel
the left behind beg at their knees

They scream and they cry and they beg for all that they missed
“Take me away from here, please.”
They said, “I didn’t do wrong” He laughed “But you didn’t do right.
You’ve squandered your right to exist.”

I have a life sentence, but I wasted my time
And the Devil don’t want me cause I’ve committed no crime
And God he don’t love me cause I’ve hidden away
So the ferryman’s passed me by

I will tell you another secret to writing, to working in general. I had put that song aside for one week and I had forgotten it. So when I looked at it again it came to me fresh and I had some new ideas. So be involved in a lot of things and lay some things aside sometimes, so you can come back to them fresh with some new ideas. I don’t know if you would call that inspiration, or just forgetting and remembering stuff in a different way so you have new ideas, but it can lead to interesting things. And stop expecting to be Bob Dylan. We can’t all be Bob… thankfully.

You know, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I often feel like I am wasting my time. I am wasting my potential. And whether my ability is God Given or whether it is genetic or whether I have had to drag myself out of the mud and the blood just to survive I have something to say. And if I don’t say it then what right do I have to be here? So, until next week, I will be playing computer games. Peace and love.