I’ve been free writing on my computer for around a decade. This makes for an interesting opportunity: scanning my own material for poetic phrases. So, I wrote a computer program that prints three random phrase from all my journal entries. I wanted to see if any combinations would conjure poetic imagery at all that I might later use as inspiration in song writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here an example…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New Years! Soon to be 2012, the end of the world\nThat isn't the priority though\nHow am I going to find inspirational art without it?<\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThis conjures images of New Year’s Day being the end of the world. For me, it’s a remnant of living through Y2K as a computer system administrator. During that time we thought there could be a world collapse of computing systems if we didn’t patch our servers with a fix. A year later 911 happened, and during that New Year’s Eve, we were worried terrorists would do something that night, being such a symbolic time. The meaning then turns around and declares the end itself is not a priority, for there will no longer be art to enjoy. A lot of imagery there, from random sentences. Interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It reminds me of Jeff Tweedy<\/a> and his wonderful book, “How to Write One Song<\/a>“. He developed many tools for his songwriting process, including skimming books for interesting and inspiring passages. I like to think what I am doing here is my twist on that technique. Except they’re my words. Also, being that my journal writing is conversational, there’s a bonus of it not being too descriptive. In other words, there won’t be too many adjectives. A problem for song writing that Jeff Tweedy points out with: An “impatient fiery orb loomed in the whiskey-blurred cottony-blue sky” is rarely going to hit me anywhere near as hard as “I was drunk in the day”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s a lot to talk about in his book. I’m looking forward to covering it more some day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n