Break's End

[snoozefestaudio]

32F and sunny once more, this morning.

Today is finally the last day of damn winter break at the school... a break which Lillian did not survive.

After sleeping on it, I'm thinking Chantele deserves some blame for losing her, because before the break, Lillian said she'd like to clock in at 7AM.

But Chantele insisted she must not start until 1:30PM... before vanishing for a two week trip overseas.

Now she's gonna return to the same old headache, of no four-hour person at Cloud.

Bernice, I think, was also a little too gung-ho about things... as spurred on by the girls in the office, who wanted to take advantage of her eagerness to proove herself as the new head custodian.

They set the bar too high.

Those demands, coupled with the Chantele's pointless ban on clocking in early, triggered Lillian to call off... which immediately caused Bernice and I to start falling behind.

We ended up getting done... about what would be normal, for seven business days around the holidays... but we lost Lillian for good.

It's ridiculous to try and make, what is a relaxing break for everybody else, into a high-stress, labor intensive race for the few who have to come in.

We won't find another Lillian this school year.

It's gonna be another Rosa, and another Darnise, with the usual cast of guest janitors rushing over to fill in the gaps and pick up the slack.

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Okay, well... in other news, last night I finally cracked the lyrics to, Miss Fortune.

This is a song I wrote back in like... 1994... that had working lyrics back in the day, which established a certain structure and motif that I wanted to keep.

But I could never quite find the right words to plug into the different spots.

For a long time, I was using the word, "ne'er," which is the olden time poetical version of, "never," pronounced, "nare."

And I was rhyming it with words like, bear, care, share, etc.

And the motif went like, "And she says, ne'er as the talk i could bear as I walk..."

Later I replaced, ne'er, with, never... but kept the, ne're-rhyming words.

So... "And she says, never as the talk I could bear as I walk..."

So... certain rules had been established.

She always had to say, "never as the (X), I could (_are), (two syllables) (rymes with X)..."

And that turns out to be pretty hard to do, multiple times!

And a different formula ruled the alternating verses, that wasn't as rigid, but still tricky.

--<>--

It's one of those songs that doesn't need to make perfect sense.

It's supposed to be a bit poetic, and more to create a mood, than tell a story... which is why the sound of the words takes precedence over their meaning.

Like, instead of repeating, "ne'er as," I could've simply gone with, "where is."

"Where is the talk I could bear as I walk under the tall trees."

But, "where is," feels too pedestrian for this song.

"Ne'er as," is a little too far the other way.

But, "Never as," is just about right.

And there were similar issues with those alternating verses... can't be too purple, or too pedestrian... have to have certain sounds... and have to connect to the rest of the verses in some non-jarring way.

--<>--

Suffice it to say... thirty years later, I finally ironed it out!

Well... there's still one verse giving me trouble.

But it's only the one, now!

And this is gonna be the big ending number, so once the verses are done, it'll go into a long instrumental outro that says, thanks for coming to the show, we'll see you next album... and there shouldn't be a dry eye in the house.

Or at least that's what I like to imagine.

But this is why I like songwriting and recording... because of all the puzzle solving to be done, with both the lyrics and the music.

Give a man a jigsaw, and he'll be entertained for a week.

Give him an album to make, and he'll be entertained for a year.

°¦}


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