We are going to take some lines from our last exercise and start putting them together. You can fill in gaps as you see fit. Feel free to add to the Mind Mapping exercises (you don’t have to share it here if you don’t want to). For instance, on mine, all of a sudden I realized that I had not associated “Bat” with “Vampire”. That lead to some new circles. There is no real structure to what this will look like, it may be a verse or a chorus or both. It may be a full song or just a part. The goal is just to pull from the lines you created, fill in some blanks and start something that could be incorporated into a song. Good luck!
Lurking in the shadow of hypnosis
Trace your ballet across the dusky sky (<- this came from “bat”)
Coveting a cocktail in the spatter of a spiral
Memories circulate and petrify
Smother the contagion with betrayal
Bloodlines conceal the devil in the stream
Emptying syringes in the current of myth
Debris drips down through the progeny
Tumbling dice create unholy life
Slit this desire, suggest a design
Pressure punctuates the pulse of the present
The fountain flushes flame down the pipe
NOTE: I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t great. But it took very little effort to just pull some lines, modify them, and fill in blanks. In less that 5 minutes, I have three four-line stanzas. Maybe one is a chorus. I don’t know. But I see a story line starting to pop up. This is called “apophenia” - the human brain likes to find patterns. So a jumble of random words wound up creating random lines that wound up in an order that just sounded right to me. The story line I see is something along the lines of someone having recently been turned into a vampire, starting to lose their old self, kind of coming to a realization that the one who turned him/her is not trustworthy and is perhaps selfish or in someway “trash”, and is trying to figure out what to do with the bit of lore that if he/she takes down the original vampire it may well end the protagonist’s life as well.
That is `not super apparent, but with that outline, I can grow the song or modify it to better fit that idea.
plastic keys play fake tunes
playing god
plucking my toy piano
the family portrait shatters
trigger happy cigarette smoking
rolling
the boulder on my chest
not sisyphus
im hiding in my chrysalis
i tell myself
by the waterfall
im slowly drenched
in indiana
alive and well
ballroom dancing with a girl in red
my teary eyes will slowly blind me
i awake
petrified by existential angst
in a sweat
in indiana
alive and well
note this was so fun. i <3 these exercises. my ocd chokes me when i write, this feels like breaking the dam
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That is what these exercises are meant to do! They kind of quiet the “judge” that we have in all of us. Since it is not really supposed to make something coherent, we allow our brains to roam freely over the language. Hopefully, this helped show you the answer to your earlier question about it only taking a short time. All of that helps us to get away from the judge. I believe you asked something about “Should we take longer to get better words”. That word “better” shows that you were already judging your brain’s freedom of association. The judging self is a much better editor than creator. So allow that instinctual self to roam freely over the words and lines and the judge can have his say later.
The first three lines are really neat. The “Playing god” sandwiched between fake things. It kind of reminds me of the Metallica song “The Memory Remains”. The tin goddess in that song seeing herself as something more than she is. Here, a person playing god but without the proper equipment. That is neat.
The image of Sisyphus rolling a boulder up your ribcage to rest on your chest is also really strong. Your last stanza brings some nice images of fearful dreams (especially since it seems like your were dreaming of dancing with a lovely lady) and realizing that you are ok, though shaken.
Great job!
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