The World Becomes a Miracle
The sun gleams bright up in the sky,
Its beams shine on your face,
A hundred bluebirds sing up in the trees,
Fields of flowers bloom like valentines made out of lace,
Painted butterflies float on a breeze.
In the night the moon glows bright,
The crickets sing their song,
Cicadas sing along,
Every star is twinkling your name.
And I look up and think of you,
and wish that you were here,
wish that you were near,
It makes me blue that you’re so far away.
The world becomes a miracle,
when you are here with me,
but when you’re gone it’s just another place,
I dream about you every night,
of kisses warm and sweet,
And all I do is long for your embrace.
Boats and trains and aeroplanes,
they sometimes interfere,
make people disappear,
and lovers move a million miles away;
And though I know it won’t be long,
Until you’re here again,
Until you’re near again,
I sit and count each sad and lonely day.
The postman brought a telegram,
it said you’re coming soon
-Saturday at noon,
and I’ll be waiting for you at the gate,
soon the world will once again become a sunny place,
when I see your smiling, lovely face.
The world becomes a miracle,
when you are here with me,
but when you’re gone it’s just another place,
I dream about you every night,
of kisses warm and sweet,
And all I do is long for your embrace.
I’ve got so many irons in the fire I’m beginning to feel like a blacksmith on steroids. I’m working on a novel, a couple of short stories, an essay and some poems. I’ve even got a little erotica brewing, though I’ve got to diagram the various positions to see if human beings can actually bend into the shapes I’ve choreographed. WordCamp just contacted me about doing another presentation this year (despite last year’s debacle), and I’ve got to get going on that, too.
But my brain plays awful tricks on me. Each day, I crack open the laptop and begin writing or editing or researching or playing word games on Twitter, when, from out of nowhere, something completely different will start trampling through my head. It’s a horrible ADD thing, and I believe it’s brought on by a type of genetic insanity, combined with financial panic and aggravated by SHS (Spastic Hormone Syndrome). Lately, what’s trampling are songs. A tiny voice begins to whisper rhymes, and soon, a melody follows. It’s happened three times this week.
They’re like the old road kill tunes I used to write, only worse. Before long, I abandon my other projects, because once this hay ride starts, I can’t stop until the voice has had its say. It hijacks my head and makes me pick up a guitar, a tragedy for all who enter these premises.
It happened again yesterday. I was working on an essay I plan to submit to an online publication. There I sat, crinkling my brow in a serious manner, rubbing my brain cells together and trying to make sparks, when a little sing-song started. La, la, la, tee dahhh. I’d been writing about important things– beauty and society and the size of my butt, but that voice in my head was drowning it out. It was like American Idol in there. This time though, the tune was sweet and wistful, a little old-fashioned. I stopped construction on the essay and began jotting lyrics, the ones above. I became a gypsy in our living room, automatic writing for the spirit of some 1920′s flapper.
I thought it was pretty swell for an amateur, much better than “Little Dead Squirrel.” By the time my hubby got home, I’d finished. I was overjoyed, because although it had disrupted my regularly scheduled writing, I rather liked the end result. Best of all, Amadeus didn’t grimace once when I sang it for him. In fact, he liked it. We had some errands to run, and we hummed that sweet tune all around town and home again.
“Catchy, isn’t it?” I beamed, feeling kind of hopeful. Maybe I can do this songwriting thing. Maybe we should do a demo. Maybe we should move to Nashville.
He nodded. “But you know, that tune sounds a little familiar.”
“It does? Well, I wrote it to sound like an old standard. It probably sounds like a lot of songs.”
“No,” said Mr. Music. “It sounds exactly like something I’ve heard before.” He puzzled over it for a while, then it hit him. A few days earlier, we’d listened to a Jesse Winchester song someone had linked to on Facebook. We’d only heard it once, but now he played it again. As we listened, my heart began to sink like Lance Armstrong’s career. With a few differences in the pattern, my new ditty was almost identical. I’d committed otic plagiarism.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. How was it possible that a four-minute song–a song I’d heard one time–had crawled inside my head and stayed without my knowledge? How could my brain have betrayed me so? I guess the answer is that it really is a very beautiful tune, as you’ll discover if you click on the link below.
At some point, I’ll come up with a new tune for those lyrics, but in the meantime, I may need a prescription for Ritalin if I want to get any work done. And if this keeps up, Amadeus will need earplugs. And beer.
