Wet Snotty Bawling

i feel-it-in-my BODy
and i know-you feel-it-TOO
and THAT’s when-i start-to-get exCITEd
now all-i-have-to-do is feel-the-beat
and all-i-have-to-do is feel-the-beat

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like all blues songs
like all blues songs

like all blues songs
this song’s about
how much it hurts

like all blues songs

like all blues songs
this songs about
how much it hurts
to play this song

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let-ting i DARE not (wait)
u-PON i would…

i think our COUNtry-sinks
beNEATH-the yoke…

i should-cut off-the NObles
FROM-their land…

This last bit being my typographical rendering of my jamming of some lyrics from S’peare’s, um, Scottish Play into the scansion of Michel Legrand’s immortally catchy “I Will Wait For You” (whose actual English lyrics are pretty insipid; don’t blame the great Sheldon Harnick). Turns out if you wander around singing this hook for very long, ten-syllable lines just flow into your head and you can sing your own dialog just like in the movies:

all-you-DO-is sit-at-a piANo
and-keep BANGing un-til some-thing HAPpens…

…it’s so SIMple anyone can DO it
but-it-hurts when, ever we go THROUGH-it.

and when you write it down
it’s all gone somehow
& when you write it down
it’s all over now

it’s all over now
you had to be there
it’s all behind us
nothing to see here

it’s dissipated
into the internet
and the beat’s been
completely destroyed.

Once I’d noticed how easy this was, I wondered if, “to-be-or NOT to-be, that is the QUEST-ion” would fit… ah-ha. There it is. How to count to ten without counting. Go down into your crybaby core with some heartrending sentimentality: a beautiful young woman’s first love is a good image here; echoes of one’s own childhood poured on liberally can’t hurt… find a beat (add violins). Keep thinking about how it feels and the words will just come.

Sure, there’ll be some editing going on as you near the end of a line; substitutions will have to be made in the last fraction-of-a-second sometimes. Being a good improviser of lyrics is making almost all of this “editing” unconscious. It doesn’t have to be pentameters of course and it doesn’t have to be sentiment. In fact, the only time I ever consciously worked on improvising-to-a-beat, other than as a singer, I used limerick form and nastiness instead. Lift up your voice and sing.