The brain is a weird thing isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned to respect mine.\u00a0 Oh sure I\u2019ve battered it about with massive quantities of social and recreational stimulants.\u00a0 It can handle a fair amount of abuse and still recover, but for long synapse life, careful treatment is recommended. Quite a few Sixties celebrants are now suffering early onset of the dreaded mist.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s weird for me is the transition from sleep.\u00a0 Frequently I wake up with an idea.\u00a0 That is to say while I am still \u201casleep\u201d I have an idea and then I wake up and write it down or start writing.\u00a0\u00a0 Very often it\u2019s a line.\u00a0\u00a0 A thought.\u00a0 Occasionally it\u2019s a joke.\u00a0 Very infrequently it\u2019s a song.\u00a0 Today it was\u00a0 a song.<\/p>\n
I was dreaming that Mick Jagger was downstairs in a dream version of our French home.\u00a0 It was not at all like it but\u00a0 I recognized it as our French house.\u00a0 (He has never been there by the way.) \u00a0\u00a0We had had dinner and I went upstairs to fetch a couple of guitars.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t easy as a large autobus was just leaving my bedroom, trying to get through the narrow exit.\u00a0\u00a0 I ran around collecting the things you need, two guitars, capos, picks, tuners, and a notepad and pencil.\u00a0 My wife was there.\u00a0\u00a0 She was making going to bed noises.\u00a0 I said honey I am going to play.\u00a0 If I write a song with Mick you\u2019ll certainly be happy I did.\u00a0 She concurred.\u00a0\u00a0 I might have been tuning the guitar but a very simple riff came into my head.\u00a0 \u00a0It was very catchy.\u00a0 I woke up.\u00a0\u00a0 I should write that down I thought.\u00a0\u00a0 I fetched my little digital recorder, picked up a Taylor guitar and figured out the riff.\u00a0 Oddly it was in B flat.\u00a0 That was the key in my dream.\u00a0 (I never <\/i>write in B flat.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It started with F, went to E flat and ended in the dominant key B flat.\u00a0\u00a0 I got that down.\u00a0 Then I realized that was the hook, the chorus, and my brain supplied the obvious opening starting verse in E flat to B flat.\u00a0\u00a0 Four of those and then bring in the hook.\u00a0 I recorded that.\u00a0 So I played that for a while and recorded a verse chorus verse chorus chorus.\u00a0 Then I wondered about words.\u00a0 Playing it back I jotted down a few things.\u00a0 It\u2019s very African.<\/p>\n
Still and all\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One and all.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For You.<\/p>\n
But I wasn\u2019t happy with the \u201cFor You\u201d bit because it didn\u2019t fit the insistent rhythm of the pattern that was inside my head.\u00a0 Just then another part of my brain warned me to write down what I was intending to do this morning before I forgot, \u00a0since I was now side-tracked into writing a song.\u00a0 So I wrote a little post-it note for myself:\u00a0 \u201ctry importing facsimile into your blog.\u201d\u00a0 Then my brain went Ding!<\/i><\/b> \u201cfacsimile<\/i>\u201d that\u2019s the perfect rhythm of the word pattern that the riff ends with.\u00a0 The perfect verbal match for the sound pattern.<\/p>\n
Still and all.\u00a0\u00a0 Reasonable.\u00a0 Facsimile.<\/p>\n
Also it fits as an African chant underneath the verse \u2013 facsimile, facsimile, facsimile, facsimile. <\/i><\/p>\n
So there we are.\u00a0 I have a dummy lyric.\u00a0 The words fit the rhythm.\u00a0 I have the hook recorded. \u00a0I have no idea what the song is about.\u00a0 I can leave this for now.\u00a0 The inspirational part of the brain now awaits the Protestant work ethic part of the brain to come along and fit words to the pattern. \u00a0\u00a0That might be a day\u2019s work.\u00a0 Composers always take just a few minutes while the poor lyricist slogs away all day.\u00a0 That\u2019s the nature of the beast. \u00a0\u00a0There are far more words than notes.\u00a0 \u00a0So far more possibilities to consider.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking that the left side of the brain supplied the dream part and the right side will now come along and tidy it up. \u00a0Or perhaps it\u2019s vice versa.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll keep you posted if it becomes anything.<\/p>\n
March 4, 2013 6.30<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The brain is a weird thing isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned to respect mine.\u00a0 Oh sure I\u2019ve battered it about with massive quantities of social and recreational stimulants.\u00a0 It can handle a fair amount of abuse and still recover, but for long synapse life, careful treatment is recommended. Quite a few Sixties celebrants are now suffering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}