Lyrics: The Dance

I recently received a request for me to post the lyrics to the song, so here it goes:

THE DANCE
by Elaine C. Finnell
(c) 2008 Elaine C. Finnell

A summer day, the night was warm
You came to me, all smiles and charm
With liquid words of love, like Transylvanian cream
My lover pale, at night… my dream

The cedar smells of wood at night
I pined for you, my life, my light
And as quiet metal arms were shaving toothpicks to the core
You told me that you wanted more

CHORUS
“Won’t you dance with me, my darling
Can’t you throw a count a bone?
Yes, I know you’re busy working
At the factory alone
But I want to dance with you, my dear,
Until I must go home
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da… da-da.”

I stood my ground, declined, returned
You looked at me, askance, perturbed
But when quotas call my name,
I have to concentrate on work
You held my hand and whispered, hurt

“Won’t you dance with me, my darling
Can’t you throw a count a bone?
Yes, I know you’re busy working
At the factory alone
But I want to dance with you, my dear,
Until I must go home
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da… da-da.”

You drew me close; you sighed, I moaned
I smelled the death on your cologne
And the tiny toothpick stake I drove into your wicked heart
You didn’t think I was that smart

And I threw the garlic pasta sauce that I had in the fridge
Then drove you in my pickup truck to Lonely Mountain Ridge
I miss the whispered words, but I can still recall the bridge:
“Da-da-da-da-da-da-da… da-da.”

#5 - The Dance

The competition's over... and I didn't win. Actually, I'm fairly relieved I didn't win, because I was starting to get really stressed about the comments I was getting about my last entry. But all of that is (thankfully) in the past, and now I can concentrate on writing things that I really want to write about, and not what others want me to write about. In this case, it was a long list of one thing vs. another thing, with five repeated syllables in there.

And so, I present to you... a conflict between Dracula and a toothpick factory. Here were the rules, and here is my entry:

"The Dance"



Oh yes - don't expect anything from me for the next couple of weeks. I'll be back soon, I promise, but Real Life is going to take over for a little while. (This is SO not turning out to be a thing a week - but I will get to 52 if it takes me two years!)

#4 - Cubicle Gopher

All right, so I had written and recorded a song called "Miss America" (which was kind of weak, but hey... that's kind of the purpose of this whole thing) and just didn't get around to mastering it. The only excuse I have is that I made it into the SONG FU competition that Audrey posted about. So this is the competition, and the deal was to write a theme song for a show featuring me or my band.

Well, I had a great idea for a song called "Black Belt: Undercover Spy," but seriously... do you know how hard it is to get a good horn sound? And all of the 60s-80s theme songs have horns! And if they don't have horns, they have serious orchestra scores.

I didn't have time for that, because I was busy cooking up a storm this past weekend. And people liked the phrase "Cubicle Gopher" anyway, so I wrote that song in a very jazzy major 7ths kind of way - basically John Denver, sped up, and in 59 seconds and change.

Andy's reaction was that it wasn't funny (I gave up on that a couple of weeks ago right after I submitted for the contest), but it was the type of sweet song that goes with a comedy. In fact, his specific words were: "Perfect Strangers."

I guess that works for now.

#3 - Addiction

First, some shouts out. Thanks to the adoption crew for their kind responses, both on Rhonda's blog and here. I really appreciate your feedback. I hope you guys follow along here on my musical journey.

Song #3 was originally going to be called "Caffeine." Actually, it was originally going to be a song about how tired and unmotivated I was at work. It was supposed to be bluesy and one of those songs where I talked about how brainless I was feeling.

However, things didn't quite work out that way, because I perked up when I got home (got a few calories in me before I left work thanks to a leftover quesadilla) and so decided to write an ode to caffeine. The song, as was its wont, began to take on its own vague form and began to sound like a song about addictive behavior in general.

But really, it's about caffeine and the need to stay awake.

(That being said, I'm going to bed.)

#2 - Waiting

I've been working on this song, on and off, for about a week now. Soon after posting Song #1 ("49 Days"), I realized there were a lot of things I could write songs about, and the chorus to this song leapt out at me, and the rest of it I had to write and rewrite for it to scan correctly. And on a final note, I apologize for straining for the high notes and messing up some of the words, but hey, that's what you do on a single take in a darkish room, hunched over a guitar on a comfy couch. Thank goodness for post processing and the wonder that is Soundbooth CS3.

I've known Rhonda for near on eight years now, and have been privileged enough to be one of her first readers when she opened up her story of her adoption process. Through her blog, I have managed to read and "get to know" some of her blogging friends. Though not all of them are adopting in the same country, there is one thing that is similar in all of them: the wait.

I am constantly amazed at this community's patience in spite of the (in many cases) years-long wait for their children. No, I'm not kidding. We're looking at a total wait time of three to four years for many of these families, a time which just causes my jaw to drop and my heart to ache for these people.

So, here is my take on their stories. Rhonda, I'm thinking of you! For all those in the adoption community that are still waiting for their referrals - keep up the hope. We're rooting for you. (Okay, I'm rooting for you.)

Oh yeah, and I know that there are more words that rhyme with "life" than... well, "life," but I was trying to work things out and it just so happened that it worked out best for me to just repeat the word. Darn that rhyming thing.

#1 - 49 Days

This originally started as a song about nothing. I was driving home from work on Friday evening, wondering what I was going to write about, and I realized about half way home that I really had nothing to write about. So, in a fit of pique, I decided to write a song about nothing. After all, writing a lot of junk basically means writing a lot about nothing until you find something to write about.

So I began humming in the car, and words started coming... something about forty-nine days-

Suddenly, I knew what I was singing, and why. My father had requested that Andy and I head down to go visit the next day to pay respect to my grandmother. He mentioned something about how the 49th day was special - it was, after all, seven weeks of seven days. I got home, madly scribbled in a notebook and trying to figure out the chord progressions I'd had in my head, and this is what I came up with.

Please note that this is all in rough draft format. I'm ambivalent about the tiny herds of horses, but I think this is probably a 3/5.

Title of This Song

This is a tribute to the four men of Da Vinci's Notebook. Actually, it isn't, but I thought it would be interesting to at least mention them once during the course of this blog. I find it interesting, however, that two of their members, Paul and Storm, have been touring with Jonathan Coulton - but I get ahead of myself.

I first heard of Coulton sometime last year when this YouTube video made its viral way into my inbox. Of course I laughed, admired his clever lyrics, and looked him up on the Internet. What impressed me most about this particular song was not necessarily the cheerful singability of the song, but instead was the fact that it was a part of a project he entitled "Thing A Week." This feed was incredibly simple; it was a song or something every week for a year.

No, seriously.

I contemplated this for a brief moment, and then laughed it off. After all, I had greater fish to fry - in 2007, I finished my masters, trained for my second degree black belt, and got married. (And then went to Tahiti, but that's a different story.)

But it really bothered me. Until I began teaching in 2003, I was a veritable fount of songs. I sat in front of a piano, a guitar, whatever, and just made music. I wrote two full musicals two years in a row. The third year, I wrote probably the strongest play in my repertoire.

And then... nothing.

I'm not absolutely sure, but I think "Surviving Cain" released in summer 2002, which, coincidentally, was the summer I got laid off. After a number of depressing months trying to find tech work, I was suddenly surprised by a position teaching at a local Christian school. Sure, I thought to myself. I should have the time to write.

What I didn't know at the time was that teaching, particularly at this school, was an all-consuming job. I spent all my time with my students or thinking about my students. I was so busy that summers were spent working summer school and basically recovering from my exhaustion. It didn't help that I was teaching four or five courses (no, I'm not kidding you - not just 4-5 classes, 4-5 courses) every year.

Then I left the position, got another position back in high tech, promptly met a man who two years later became my husband, and spent two years doing stuff that had nothing to do with writing.

This brings us to a couple of weeks ago. We just shipped our software a few weeks before, and I had spent a lot of time since then cleaning house and being exhausted just in general. The husband got a new laptop and handed the old one off to me. I took it with me to begin my Next New Novel (or at least a short story).

I spent about fifteen minutes staring at a blank document before I realized I was dry. No ideas. Nothing. Blank. I panicked. Before, I was just too tired to write. And now that I wasn't too tired, I had nothing to say.

That's when I came to my big epiphany: if I wanted to write and make a practice at it, I had to write, period. I had to write about things large and small, and I had to be willing to write crap to be able to find something that was good.

This brings us back to Jonathan Coulton. This idea of committing to write once a week is somewhat daunting, but it would force my creative juices to flow. I wanted to share that with some people, and that brings us here to this project. I really do hope I can follow through with it.

And because I've named the blog after one of their songs, here is a link to the genius that is Da Vinci's Notebook:

Title of This Song