Accompany me, if you will, on a creative journey…
Down the road, by the river, where I just took a walk, and the beginning of some new lyrics came to me, as follows:
I Can't Help Smiling.
Before they killed her, the kids nextdoor
Put out her eyes with a white-hot poker
Because they were bored
And recorded it all on camera.
The ignorant pigs!
I'd like to break every one of their ribs!
Still, I can't help smiling
Every time I remember
Because there'll never be anyone else like her.
And that's as far as I've got so far. What do you think? I suppose you want to know where I get my ideas from. Well, the germ of this one came to me from watching the film Lars and the Real Girl last night. At one point – I don't want to spoil the plot, but – someone dies, and someone else says of her, "There'll never be anyone else like her." The phrase started to go around in my head, especially as the Lars character began to smile when he heard this.
I just really liked the idea of someone smiling in the face of adversity or tragedy for reasons that were not necessarily immediately obvious. (I'm really demystifying the lyrics here, aren't I?) Anyway, as I was walking along, the other words I've written down sort of came to me. They really fell into place when I realised the first words had to be, "Before they killed her".
I'm not sure where I'll take the lyrics from here, though. I've a notion that I might start the second 'verse' (as I conceive it), with the line, "He was a builder", but this might prove an unproductive route. Or maybe I'll just leave the whole thing as it is. Anyway, I'm hoping to include these lyrics in the project that I'm currently pursuing with Kodagain and Saša Zorić Čombe. I'm also working on a number of other lyrics for this project, which is now perhaps half way through, creatively speaking.
In terms of influences, for me, there's the obvious one, which I suppose I shouldn't mention. But there are others, too, including, well, me. And my life. But I also really like just early pop which had charming lyrics that actually rhymed, and were sort of quaint, and told a story. I'd love to write something like this. (Fantastic voice.) Or like this. I mean this. (I'm still mourning the loss of so much Annette Funicello material online; I've been getting used to non-ownership of music and films, which means not needing to find space for CDs, DVDs and so on, but the Internet is an unreliable archive. Oh, there's a case in point; that video clip no longer works. Try this, instead. Fantastic voice!)
I also like Noel Coward kind of witty lyrics, like this. I'm afraid that my wit and skill at rhyming don't quite match up to this, though.
I don't know why I'm writing this, really, except that, I've been looking through my favourite Youtube clips and thinking wistfully of all the people, living and dead, that I would love to meet, but probably never will.
Still, I can't help smiling.
Hmmm, there's a bit on an internal rhyme thing there. Maybe I could use that in the lyric.
