Tangents

August Moon Day 10 prompt: I love the power of music to lift the spirits. I head to the stereo and put on...



...Candi Staton singing "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," a forty-six-year-old song when I first heard it in The Jam Coffeehouse back in 2012. It may have been Madeline Bell's take on it, or Renee Geyer's -- or, this being Nashville, who knows, someone here in town with a good set of pipes. None of the versions I've listened to since quite match what I remember, but I wasn't paying close attention to the cafe stereo in the first place, which made it all the more annoying several weeks later when I realized the chorus was still in my head.

I find the lyrics of the entire song pretty creepy, truth be told, and most of the melody doesn't grab me either. But that first/third line of the chorus: Just four notes. Maybe three measures? Sometimes that's all it takes. Sometimes I sing along with the mp3 on my computer, and sometimes that line leaps out of my lungs at random -- a bolt of attitude between deadlines or destinations. (And sometimes I get super-silly and sing "dog dog-dog dog-dog-dog dog doggggg /dog dog dog / dog dog dog" at Miss Abby.)

"Lift the spirits" isn't quite the right phrase for me. I have been known to turn up Alkan's piano concerto when I'm upset, but I don't associate "comfort" with "lift." Left to my own devices, I'm likely to turn to myself music [hello, Freudian typo!] not for uplift or lightening up, but to provide whatever I'm in the throes of -- anger, ambition, gratitude, grief, nerdiness, nostalgia -- with company and fuel.



This gingerbread jukebox was on display in Asheville a few years ago. Speaking of intense... :-)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/114268.html.

August Moon Day 7 prompt: I pull back the curtain and I see...



...a game between strangers
who see each other often
but not away
from the courts
or the parties

just as I blink
stumbling into someone
out of their Sunday best
as I exit a shower

-- yes, a fig leaf
would fool me.
My garden is thick
with saplings
so green
they would smother
an angel's sword
with all
of their wayward
veinglory.

~pld

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/113448.html.

August Moon Day 4 prompt: So I had a conversation with my shadow...



... where she asked me what kind of net
I would want to knot
cast
cradle
mend

were time no object
and money no limit



I said to her, I
am both oil and water
whip and trench
slipper and shard
caper and crutch



I'll meet you at the corner
where the wind
has been whisking
shreds of tealeaves
past the lost screws
of stray sunglasses.

~pld

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/113130.html.