May 03, 2005

Time Marches On

I got some writing done today but I kept coming back to those two tunes from yesterday. Tweaking the lyrics is an ongoing process but I think I've finally finished - or at least come close. If your main concern is whether to use the word "fantastic" or "magnificent" in the second line of your third verse, you're in pretty good shape, I think.

As noted in previous posts, I'm trying to be more disciplined and focused in my songwriting and to that end, I've tried to write almost exclusively from titles of late. But sometimes you come up with a song on the spur of the moment that doesn't fit with any of the titles on your list, so you make do. The one that was half-written already that I finally more or less finished yesterday has gone through three titles, but I think the third one will stick, and it happens to be one that's actually been on my list for some time: "Alexia."

Go ahead, look it up.

You can see that what it sounds like and what it means are two very different things, and ever since I ran across the word I've thought it would make a great title for a song about a girl, but the right girl song never materialized. A few months ago I ran across yet another sign of the apocalypse - a website that picks amazingly obtuse comments out of baby name discussion boards for the purposes of pointing and laughing at the insane names with which people burden their children, along with their deranged justifications for naming their kids things like Callahan and Skyler and Lawnmower Jr. And, naturally, a couple of the rocket scientists over there had decided that Alexia was a lovely name for their soon-to-be-ridiculed unborn daughters.

Since the new song is about confusion and abuse of power in love, I couldn't think of a better title than a name that represents confusion and abuse of power in parenting. This might be what they mean when they say "this stuff writes itself."

I figured I'd better blog about this now because I have some appointments in the a.m. tomorrow and Thursday so I might be AWOL until the weekend.

Posted by benweasel at 09:06 PM
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