Song challenge: new life forms on Earth

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: Mysha
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 05:16 PM

This one really is a challenge. I tried to do the verses up to the cargill, as I don't know that species. The difficult part, though, is giving it the same mood. These are as close I could get them:

On whispering breezes that blows where they will
Fly leather-winged half-truths that go for the kill
And bright-feathered stories fly red waves of light
Announcing new mornings and bringing the night.

Yet rustling of leaves and murmur of brook
Hatch feelings and words that won't live in a book
With black-dotted notes born on gossamer wing
They flutter the world over to make people sing

                                                                Mysha

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: semi-submersible
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 02:25 PM

I'm wishing for your future to take the shape of long happy years of good health.

I love the tone you created in your piece, and how your imagery consistently supports it. I imagine it softly told, in a room with a slight echo, and perhaps a sound from a small harp or flute to accent a phrase now and then.

Stretching the mind around a really novel set of concepts is a lot of work; there aren't any familiar referents to invoke with a word. (I cheated by borrowing the Speckled Bird/book metaphor from the old song; I wonder if that confuses more people than it helps.)

Once concepts and imagery are already there in an audience's mind, so you can invoke them with a word, then ironies and incongruities should start to emerge. While the whole scene is unfamiliar, I can't imagine a listener having brainpower to spare to play with the ideas while putting in a constant effort to picture them. It may be possible to find recognisable features on some of the creatures later on, though, and that could turn out funny.

Semi-Sub

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: Flash Company
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 09:45 AM

I can't at present see a humourous approach, I am just coming through to the right side (I hope!) of a rather nasty illness. Maybe when all the test results are in next week I will be feeling like laughing again!

FC

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: semi-submersible
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 05:43 PM

More "etereality." Can't seem to get a humorous take on it though, so far.

A-flit through the ether at speed of a thought:
Complaints, rumours, jokes, slogans, news, true or not;
How fiercely they fight to keep humans' attention,
These bodiless swarms of a mental dimension.

Very glad to see you join in, Flash Co.

Maureen the Egmonster

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: Flash Company
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 10:36 AM

Words breed slowly on the Library shelf.
Restless and Sussurating,whispering to themselves,
Whispering of times to come and things unseen,
Tales of the past or times that have not been.

And the world turns on, and the weight of time bears down.

Men pick the words from out their breeding ground,
Some men are learned and use the words aright
Others are foolish, see what they want to see,
Mould the words to suit their cause in life

And the world turns on, and the weight of time bears down

Fools are men who use good words for evil,
Evil are men who exploit and use the fools
Death on a pale horse haunts the whispering words
Wisdom, alas, cannot be learned from books alone

And the world turns on, and the weight of time bears down!

Unfair for me to put that in a Song Challenge, as I don't think you could sing it, but once I started, it practically wrote itself. Normally I don't do serious, but Hey Ho, try something new every day!

Brian Q

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: semi-submersible
Date: 23 Jun 08 - 05:26 PM

Gatherings open like flowers each night
And to them swarm songs with their fluttering flight.
As we sing, from one mind to another songs roam;
Each time they're remembered, they've found a new home.

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: Flash Company
Date: 23 Jun 08 - 10:41 AM

I've been away for a couple of weeks 'on the sick' so have not read Slags original thread yet, but it sounds as if there should be something in there!
I'll be back!

Brian Q

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Jun 08 - 08:01 AM

refresh for contemplation.

Subject: RE: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: semi-submersible
Date: 23 Jun 08 - 03:38 AM

What ho, caitiff varlets! Doth not one Mudcat yet have stomach to take up the thrown gauntlet?

Subject: Song challenge: new life forms on Earth
From: semi-submersible
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 04:52 PM

Here's a start on an abstract landscape inspired by Slag's thread on Folk Music and Capitalism:

The speckled birds wait upon library shelves
For readers to make them a part of themselves.
Wings that only unfurl in dimensions of mind,
Will hatch nests of ideas in the heads that they find.

Primeval beasts wallow and fight over oil.
Decaying remains of old thoughts fill the soil
Where thickets of language and tall trees of dreams
Drink deep of desires that flow in the streams.

(Take it away, folk. I'm running out of rhyme. I'd have liked to describe rumours, media programs/articles, and songs fluttering about like flying insects, heavyfooted grazing agribusiness leviathans like Cargill followed by flocks of laboratories pecking and scratching through their droppings, a colony of small towns flailing and wailing as hearts are torn out by a pouncing Walmart, and small businesses scurrying through the detritus looking for crumbs. Real-world resources are food, and "liquid assets" are blood for the beasts. The "flying" kinds are so lightweight they live on attention alone. Information or ideas are genetic material. But in this world, creatures can also divide, merge, and transform. See also meme and complexity theory.)