Songwriting Without Boundaries Read online

  CHARLIE WORSHAM

  Sleeping late → Linking quality: Conserving energy →

  Target idea: Taking the bus instead of walking

  Taking the bus instead of walking is like sleeping late.

  Exhausted, spent, I yawn my way onto the rumbling bus, warm and blanketed from the cold outside. I curl into the first open seat, tangled in my many layers of clothing. I shield the daylight from my eyes with my arm and squeeze in a few more minutes of drooling, dozing half-consciousness. Anything to avoid the moment that my legs will get a mind of their own, leading the charge into alertness and wide awake at the end of the route. In my mind, I’m punching the snooze button every time the bell rings to signal another stop along the way. My brain rattles on a few times. False starts like an old engine too cranky to keep its gears moving just yet. Five more minutes till I have to pull my face from the cool glass pillow I’m leaning against, crawl out of this cozy hard plastic bed, and step onto the sidewalk. The outside world buzzes and bounces around me, too much light and color and sound to take in at once. I squint and rub my eyes and stretch my back and arms and stumble into the day.

  “Warm and blanketed” sets up this bus ride, bringing in important members of sleeping late’s family. “Yawn” helps out, too. Then other family members ring the buzzer to get in. Nice.

  Now reverse it and explore sleeping late through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

  Sleeping late is like taking the bus instead of walking.

  The alarm clock screeches— like the squeal of rusty brakes in my ears pulling me against my will out of the dark cave of deep sleep. My thoughts, smiles, to-dos, are all lining up just outside the door of my brain, waiting for the morning commute inbound. They stand sleepily, or sit in a daze on sidewalk benches, mindless daydreamers reading the paper, playing games on their phones. A bus comes hurtling towards the stop, brakes hissing loudly jolting some awake as they march onto the platform. In my half-wake, half-dream, I feel these thoughts begin to stir. My leg slides over to a fresh, cool spot on the mattress, I become aware of the glow behind the curtain. The bus runs without me, but I can rest my eyes in a backseat while someone else drives. I can skate through the journey to awake effortlessly, rocking to the drone of the wheels and the heavy air vent and the windshield wipers and the periodic bells marking our arrival at each stop along the way. I don’t have to grab the wheel. I don’t burn the gas. I save it for when I really need it. The last minute. It’s actually a complex ritual—alarm one, alarm two, I throw the covers off for a minute, I halfway sit up with eyes closed. I stand in the shower under hot running water. I lift the heaviness of sleep off my shoulders and eyes one brick at a time. Why burn that energy if it can just roll off my back of its own accord?

  I like how Charlie turns his thoughts into commuters: “My thoughts, smiles, to-dos, are all lining up just outside the door of my brain, waiting for the morning commute inbound.” Marvelous!

  Your turn. Using conserving energy as your linking quality, find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of sleeping late.

  Then reverse it and explore sleeping late through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

  Now try wasting time as your linking quality. As usual, when you find your target idea, take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of sleeping late. Then reverse it and explore sleeping late through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

  SUSAN CATTANEO

  Sleeping late → Linking quality: Wasting time → Target idea: Surfing the Web

  Sleeping late as surfing the Web

  Eyes glazed over with sleep, the late morning sun powering up, sheets wrapped like cords around my body, keyboard pattern of sunlight through the squares of the window, the hum of the traffic outside the window, the soft whir of the alarm clock, dreams run on the flat screen of my mind, fingers of memory scrolling through images, there I am at six, standing up my knees in a mud puddle behind our house, a grin as wide as a pumpkin’s on my face, my curls are a tangled mess of bits and bytes, brain clicks “like” …

  Surfing the Web as sleeping late

  Hands lie over the keyboard, curled on the couch, dazed and catatonic in the blue light of the screen, my slumbering mind moves from page to page, the hours pass like a dream, lazy thoughts come and go, “I should get to bed” surfaces for a moment, but the pull of the Web drags me back down, the laptop rests on the tops of my thighs, heat emanating from its metal skin like a lover’s touch, like an electric blanket …

  The two families intermingle, each making visits to the other’s house. Surfing the Web’s family brings powering up, cords, keyboard pattern, hum, whir, flat screen, scrolling, bits and bytes, and clicks and like to the party. Quite a roomful.

  Sleeping late’s family returns the favor, bringing BBQ and beer, as well as an electric blanket. Nice, folks.

  KEPPIE COUTTS

  Sleeping late → Linking quality: Wasting time →

  Target idea: A dead-end relationship

  A dead-end relationship as sleeping late

  I know that I should wake up from this fog, wipe the crust and crumbs from my eyes, and see this for what is really is. But there is a weight, like the warm blanket of blood-red darkness in sleep that keeps me in this myopia, hoping for some revelation like daylight to break through the curtains of dysfunction, and even when I know that your eyes stray, there is the same paralysis of late morning mangled-up dreams, where the mind knows one thing to be true, but the body simply refuses to move.

  Reverse it and explore sleeping late through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

  Sleeping late as a dead-end relationship

  Warm throbs of sleep like waves on the movie screens of my eyelids; waves that seem to touch my face, cajole me into staying where I am, like a lover’s hands touching my shoulders and rounding to the back of my neck just as I’m about to walk out the door. Things to do, groceries to buy, money to be made, life to be lived, and yet I stay in a shallow seduction. Every extra minute under the bedsheets, head buried in the chest of a pillow, starts to gather the dust of guilt, which compounds the problem, adds extra weight, keeps you there longer … Guilt sprouts tentacles that tangle and wrap, entwine and twist like vines, until you find yourself enmeshed in the very thing that is dragging you down …

  Simile is very useful here: “like the warm blanket,” “like a lover’s hands,” and “twist like vines.” As usual, it lets you mention something without committing to it. Plenty of family visiting here.

  Your turn. Using wasting time as your linking quality, find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of sleeping late.

  Then reverse it and explore sleeping late through the lens of your target idea for minutes.

  DAY #5

  WORKING BOTH DIRECTIONS

  Prompt: Broken Glass

  Being able to reverse directions—to move in either direction through the linking quality—requires a linking quality that is an essential feature of your first idea. You’ll see more of this process today.

  First, list two interesting qualities of broken glass:

  Unable to be repaired

  Glittering and dangerous

  Link each to a target idea—the ideas that broken glass can be a metaphor for:

  What else has that quality? What else is unable to be repaired?

  Now, try this. Supply the target idea for each of the linking qualities. Like yesterday, after you finish your first ten minutes writing about your target idea through the lens of broken glass, you’ll change directions and look at broken glass through the lens of your target idea.

  First, work with unable to be repaired.

  CHARLIE WORSHAM

  Broken glass → Linking quality: Unable to be repaired →

  Target idea: Broken trust

  Broken trust is broken glass.

  I watch her words crash through me. Everything I believe in cracks and
shatters and lies around me in a pool of silvery shards. I can’t begin to try to pick up the pieces and put them back together. Every time I reach out to her and try to trust again, I feel sharp edges tear into the fingers of my heart. My mind tells me to get a broom and dustpan and just sweep up what’s left of our relationship and dump it into the trash. Trust forms in the heat of a great fire, and the complex melted elements that make up its fragile and beautiful structure are one of a kind every time. Once trust shatters, it destroys all fingerprints. And no tunesmith in the world can mend a break like that.

  A very effective expressed identity, “trust is glass,” both in forming and breaking it. It works well, seeing broken trust as broken glass. I love, “Once trust shatters, it destroys all fingerprints.” Read on to see how Charlie turns it around.

  Reverse it and explore broken glass through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

  Broken glass is like broken trust.

  The screeching tires, the horns screaming wildly, the quick vacuum of air before the thundering impact. The explosion of metal and plastic and rubber and glass thrown into the air and raining down like so many tinkling notes on a toy piano. There lies the bed of clear blue shards on gooey summer pavement. Each dagger of light-catching glass crunches under foot. The driver emerges from the dented, bent-in door, staggers his way to the curb. He might as well have cried tragic confetti instead of the watery tears. That broken glass is the picture of his next four years. Sixteen, a new license, a handshake and a knowing look from father. The pieces of windshield that stick to his shoe and carpet the road will stick with him for who knows how long. He won’t be allowed the chance to avoid this again. The new car will go away, totaled. Any new vehicle will be a shadow of this one. Keys will be like rations of daylight handed to a solitarily confined prisoner for good behavior. What’s broken is broken and lies irreparable, reflecting in jagged fractions of a portrait the sad face of one who has lost his freedom.

  The shattering of glass leads to the boy’s losing his father’s trust after a car accident. Charlie puts them together nicely in “The pieces of windshield that stick to his shoe and carpet the road will stick with him for who knows how long.”

  SUSAN CATTANEO

  Broken glass → Linking quality: Unable to be repaired →

  Target idea: Mental illness

  Mental illness as broken glass

  You lie on the metal bed, wrists and ankles bound in leather straps that cut into your skin, eyes listless and infocused, the doctor stands above you, speaking in soft tones but you only hear shards of his conversation, your thoughts shatter at every word, reflecting a thousand ideas all at once, sharp memories jab you, demanding attention. Your sanity is a cracked window, and you need to see beyond it. This time will be different. This time, there is something to see once you get past the glass. So, you raise a hard boot and feel the delightful sound of your heel on the smooth surface, the swift kick and the tiny fairy wing sound of all those pieces, but there’s only darkness beyond and you.

  Look at all the members of broken glass’s family are introduced to mental illness. Nice motion in this direction. Now Susan turns it around:

  Broken glass as mental illness

  The window’s shards lie in a catatonic state on the floor, dazed from the feeling of being whole one moment and then shattered the next. Each splinter of glass is crazy sharp, reflecting a thousand distorted images of the same blue sky, a reality only seen in tiny pieces, the cracked wooden frame holds desperately onto a few brittle triangles, a straightjacket of peeling white paint clinging onto these last fragile scraps, but the wood is rotten and the aged white hands slowly surrender the final pieces, they tumble, falling head over heel onto the dark cold pavement.

  Susan personifies the glass, especially effective in “Each splinter of glass is crazy sharp, reflecting a thousand distorted images of the same blue sky, a reality only seen in tiny pieces.” If the linking quality is essential enough to the original idea, the target idea will be more likely to turn around easily, since they’ll share many family members. The fewer qualities they share, the more likely simile becomes.

  Your turn. Using unable to be repaired as your linking quality, find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of broken glass.

  Now reverse it and explore sleeping late through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

  How about glittering and dangerous as a linking quality?

  JESS MEIDER

  Broken glass → Linking quality: Glittering and dangerous → Target idea: Las Vegas

  Las Vegas as broken glass

  Night flight over darkness, heavy feeling in body resounding as plane descends, the disco ball oasis sitting up ahead he spies it … glittering city of lights like a wondrous song of glass and metal tinkles in the quiet of his mind. Sharpened desires, cold diamond like yen sparkle, each flashing light a hardened prayer of someone eyes glassed over, greedy, hope transformed into the heavy wishes for change, the money fairy, god, angel, lady luck, all looming above like grey ghouls smiling over the lit city. Birdseye, ominous, regal, palatial city. Landed, he is just another speck gathering to worship cash, like a delusional disciple. The glitterlike ice he snorts up his nose; it embodies and possesses him shards and shrapnel, solidifying into one big crystal ball, fortune and fame visually stunning, he rolls his bets all his money on 7, BAH, nope, rolling crystal ball tips over the edge of fancy skyscraper, soaring towards the gravity below, past the neon flashing lights towards the shattering future.

  Seeing a city as broken glass is pretty interesting. Possible, of course, only through the action of a strong linking quality like glittering and dangerous. I like how Jess turns the narrator into a piece of broken glass, “landed, he is just another speck gathering to worship cash.”

  Broken glass is a Las Vegas of light.

  Three million glittering eyes, each heart a sliver of a whole, the belief that there is better beyond the next bet. Shards lined like hotels and gambling houses, flat, round, ridged on the edges, the trip that is glassy, fragile and extremely brittle, dry like a desert that heats up and cools down every day, fantastic dazzle, a beautiful show musical big booming orchestras overtones of Frank Sinatra echoing thru the night, the midnight players pounding and smashing hearts every night, all these fabricated lights glitter like shards of people’s hopes, a disco ball, inviting the next gullible sucker.

  Look at all the family members lining up for the buffet. I love that both the inhabitants and the buildings become shards of broken glass. Great turnaround.

  CHARLIE WORSHAM

  Broken glass → Linking quality: Glittering and dangerous →

  Target idea: Beautiful stranger

  A beautiful stranger is broken glass.

  There she is, a shining mess of broken heart pieces wrapped in a lace dress and diamonds, poised at the bar with a crystal glass to her lips. Every eye in the room is pulled to her like sailors to a siren song. It’s a sexy kind of pain. To break the skin and feel the thrill as the blood draws to the surface. Her breath frosts the window, her voice could shatter a pyramid of wineglasses. She catches the light and catches the attention of a particularly dreamy-eyed fellow. She keeps the edges hidden behind red lipstick and sweet perfume, a painted predator. He’s helpless as a kid who busts out the window and has to test the jagged edge of the cracked pane with his finger.

  Wow, how do you get from broken glass to beautiful stranger? You know the answer: “What else has that quality?” Charlie paints a fresh, interesting picture.

  Broken glass is a beautiful stranger.

  I knew I was losing my grip about halfway down the stairs. It was one of those slow-motion moments when you know you could stop the disaster but you know you’re gonna miss your shot. There it goes, the mirror I stood in front of every morning for the past three years, flying down the stairwell so gracefully and silent, only to explode on the concrete like a grenade slamming shrapnel in every direction. I
held my breath and watched a million-piece orchestra strike its every note at once. A fireworks display of crystal reflecting the fluorescent lights, metal rails, my red T-shirt, my white skin and mouth open wide in wonder. And as soon as it began it was over. The ghost of an elusive stranger, one I stood before every morning for three years but never spoke to. Except to tell it about me—my problems, my joys, my practice sessions for what I might say to a pretty girl or a disappointed teacher. I never thought about how much I trusted that old thing. It held my darkest secrets, my most private moments. It knew my weaknesses more than my parents or best friend. And I trusted it not to tell. How dangerous—if that mirror could talk, what it could say!

  Very cool, using the mirror to reflect back onto himself as the stranger. It may be a bit of a stretch but still a fresh and interesting place to look.

  Your turn. Using glittering and dangerous as your linking quality, find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of broken glass.

  Now reverse it and explore broken glass through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

  DAY #6

  WORKING BOTH DIRECTIONS

  Prompt: Falling in Love

  Finding ideas that can easily turn around is a great tool, and like any tool, all it takes is practice. So keep practicing.

  First list two interesting qualities of falling in love:

  Swept away

  Glittering and dangerous

  Now link each to a target idea—the ideas that falling in love can be a metaphor for, by asking:

  What else has that quality? What else is swept away?

  Try this. Supply the target idea for each of the linking qualities. As you did yesterday, after you finish your first ten minutes, you’ll spend another ten minutes reversing directions.

  It starts with swept away:

  SUSAN

  Falling in love → Linking quality: Swept away → Target idea: Hurricane

  A hurricane as falling in love

  Clouds hug the darkening summer night, branches dance and sway, lightning pulses, a heartbeat in the chest of the open sky, nature closes its eyes, welcoming the rush of power, tingling in the fingertips of trees and the dark hair of thunderclouds, dark earth opens its parched lips to the kissing rain, raindrops coat and dance in the darkness, streetlights blink demurely, giddy trees tilt and bend in the wind, a roof peels up off a house, shedding its tiles with abandon, river water swells its banks, sensuously caressing the stone bridge, cars come to a standstill, their headlights are a pearl necklace glittering …