Inexhaustible - the song

Robin Frederick has a site with pages on how to write a song.

She recommends a few steps, but I only focused on the first two:

1) Title the song
2) Find a ghost song and rewrite the lyrics

After that, there are other steps to picking chord progressions and changing the melody so that in the end, you have a completely new song.

I promised a song in yesterday's post about the Iris Murdoch book that I am reading.

The song title is Inexhaustible. If you think that was easy to work into a song, you are mistaken. There is nothing inherently romantic about that word. It is an intellectual word, cleverly used by one of Murdoch's characters to define love.

The ghost song that I selected is a secret, but it shouldn't be too tough to figure out. Because I haven't written any music for the song, you'll have to make up your own melody. Use the ghost song, if you can figure it out. Feel free to guess in the comments.

Here it is. Like it or not. Take it or leave it. Laugh or cry. I spent a grand total of two hours on it and I think it shows. Please note that I was waffling between "baby" and "lady" in the lyrics. I went with "baby" because that matches my speech better.

Inexhaustible
for Jocelyn (who never reads my blog)

Walk by my side, baby
I’ll never tire of saying your name
We stroll along and I feel the sun
Even in the rain.
My heart races at the touch of your hand
Finding you, I could not have planned
When you look into my eyes
When you kiss me and say
“Oh, my love, I hate goodbyes,”

I think you’re inexhaustible to me, baby
You’re inexhaustible to me

Wrap your arms around me, baby,
Touching you stops all time.
Until forever passes
I’ll just stay in this love sublime.
You have me trapped; I don’t want to leave,
Life without you I can’t conceive.
We’re actors in a love story
Don’t know the ending and the script remains a mystery.

I feel you’re inexhaustible to me, baby
Inexhaustible to me

You think that someday I’ll lose my affection
This infatuation will die.
You think that maybe I’ll find perfection in another’s eyes.
But in your eyes I see something more
And it’s your love that I want to explore.
There are no limits that I can see
If I start now, I can discover you for eternity

I know you’re inexhaustible to me, baby
Inexhaustible to me
You’re so inexhaustible to me, baby

Whew! Does inexhaustible work in this kind of lyric?

A hint of citrus

I'm getting three meals a day here at the old Aberdeen Woods Conference Center (now renamed to the Dolce Atlanta Peachtree...just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?)

Now, you can stuff yourself at one of these things with every entree they serve and starches and deserts--they have snacks available for grazing all day long--or you can try to eat healthy.

I've been selecting healthy foods for breakfast and lunch and letting myself splurge a bit at dinner.

This morning, I had oatmeal, some roasted potato, a small piece of sausage, and some fresh fruit. One of the pieces of fruit was a beautiful orange.

I sliced into it and peeled away the skin in small sections. Each tear and squeeze sent a cloud of zest into the air. I was surrounded, doused even, in the aroma of fresh orange citrus. Even the waitstaff commented on how good it smelled.

That's when I started thinking about how simple pleasures can just pop up out of the least consequential things. Sure, peeling an orange can be a chore, but the balance tips to favorable when the zest shoots into the air and tickles your olfactory nerves.

I think we should eat an orange every morning just so that we can take in a snootful of zest. That's real aromatherapy.

There must be some scent that you enjoy. Remember Pine-Sol and Pledge? What about the smell of frying bacon? Baking bread? Come on, there must be something. Let us know in the comments.

A couple of lines from a book I'm reading

I've been traveling the last couple of days for work. A day in Charlotte, NC and the rest of the week I'll be down here in Georgia in a little town outside of Atlanta called Peachtree City.

Over the weekend, we headed somewhere, shopping, I think, and I had to hurry and pick out a book to read. This is what I do when there are long stretches of familiar road or I am waiting in the car while Jocelyn and Monica are in a store like Bath & Body Works. Funnily enough, Gabe has been bitten by the reading bug, too. He is reading for fun! When he isn't on the Wii. We've got to talk about this Wii thing in another post.

Anyway, I couldn't grab my current non-fiction books because they are just too heavy. So is the Calvin & Hobbes collection. I'm between novels, so I grabbed an old paperback that I bought years ago and have never read. (I buy books at used book stores. This book is an old mass market paperback that cost me less than a dollar.)

It has been superb. The book, and you might have already read it, is by Iris Murdoch. It is her first novel, published in 1954, titled Under the Net. The novel is about a writer, well, a would be writer, he mostly does translations because he can't focus on his own ideas, who doesn't want to do "real" work and would prefer to live a leisurely life of instrospection and artistic endeavor. He and I have a bit in common (but we're not exactly alike.)

Anyway, I'll let you read the book when you're good and ready to do so.

In the meantime, I have two quotes that I want to share with you. The book is full of quotable passages. I'm in love with this novel...yet if any novel is pretty and challenging, I'll fall for it. I'm easy that way.

Here are the quotes--they take place in the same chapter, only a couple of pages apart:

1) "...to find a person inexhaustible is simply the definition of love..."

I like that. The other person always seems fresh and new, he or she always has at least one element of mystery, and you never cease in your wonder and curiosity. Isn't that the opposite of familiarity and indifference? I'm going to write a love song that uses the word inexhaustible.

2) "The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction."

This is my fundamental issue with blogging. I feel like I desparately need to write. And to write well, I believe that one has to be authentic. And to be authentic, even in imaginative work, one has to pull truths out of themselves. That is the tough part of writing.

That is the tough part of intimacy.

I think it is the tough part of being fully human.

On that deep thought, I'm turning in. Class starts early tomorrow.