Speaking of origins

I've been dealing with some computer issues, now resolved, and found things at a good point for one of my semi-frequent interruptions of the lyric stream. The songs enter an odd phase for a while now. The Inertia Machine, a 36 song series that commences with the next eponymous song, is something of an enigma to me. I remember writing it only vaguely, and although I can see some definite themes running through it I don't really know what the unifying element that makes it a series is supposed to be. Maybe in the end there wasn't much of one. I think it is something of a frustrated response to the last posted song, The Sound of No Walls, which I remember writing pretty well and recall distinctly started with being pretty excited about a concept that really failed to transfer to the page. Only the title remains to suggest much promise (there are bits of that song I like but I think it fails decisively as a whole).

Why my reaction to this was to write a lot of, essentially, speculative fiction, much of it looking like a prose paragraph or two chopped up into psuedo free verse, again I don't much recall. Maybe it will become clearer to me as I transcribe the rest of it. I suspect, reading it, that I am under a particular literary influence, but I'm not at all sure what... I'm pretty sure my W.S. Merwin phase came earlier, my Brian W. Aldiss phase later. Whatever the case, it comprises a not-inconsiderable chunk of the whole first project - more than three and a half percent - and I'm not very satisfied with it. Of course I'm not very satisfied with a lot of it, it's the nature of the beast. Wait till we get to the point nearer the end when I decided I needed a vacation and wrote a bunch of two-word "songs." That'll be a proud couple of weeks.

Last thing I'm going to do before I get on with the songs is clean up, consolidate and rewrite the introduction to this blog, something I've been meaning to do for a while. Keep an eye out for Monday's status summary - I'm a week behind on the current project (which should be on song number 1,363 but remains stuck on song 1,356... the first time I've let it fall this far behind in a while, and getting dangerously close to a point I promised myself I wouldn't get to again, having two separate notebooks going at once - though why this particular sign of neglect should get to me I don't know). So I'm going to try to get it caught up by the end of the weekend. Don't feel bad about taking a break if the gripping drama becomes too much for your nerves to bear.

You can read an explanation of the origin of these lyrics here