So, my friend and fellow singer-songwriter Chris Bacon introduced me to a songwriting excercise that he’s been doing every morning. I figured I’d join the fun and see if I can stick with it.
Basically – pick an item and write for 10 minutes describing it. No more, no less – and do it first thing in the morning. Or at least, first thing when you wake up.
Because of the songwriting challenge (“tears in my pancakes”) I chose “tears”. I think
Chris had chosen a restaurant.
Tears aren’t anything but water with salt in them. I’m afraid they have very little substance, but their weight is gargantuan. Far greater than lead on rubber, pulling the universe down and around about them. With the tang of salt the taste is like ocean water, or like blood without the metal. You can’t smell your own tears – as they block air passages and nostrils, creeping into breathing orifices and cutting off access to the world. Mucous membranes swell in sympathy and you have nothing left but your gasping mouth. The smell of other people’s tears is that of wet pillows, wet feathers. I wish it was like a spring rain, but it’s closer to autumn rain near the ocean, with a smell like old leaves and salt. No ozone. Tears have impact. They clean and also make things dirty. Leaving tracks in the mud, but leaving the skin sticky. It’s a way to clear the contagion but also a way to leave trails, like snails – leave the surface both slick and tacky, seemingly oxymoronic.
Here is what you see, you see the eyes glisten as if they need to reflect everything and all around them. Deflection is what would be preferred, but reflection is that can be managed. It’s sad – and that’s the point. SO what’s the point of tears of happiness? Does the moisture seek to mire events on the face and in the eyes? Hoping to trap them forever? There’s no solution there. There’s almost no soundto the tears themselves – they gentle noises of water following it’s track to the tune of gravity is inevitably drowned (no pun intended) out by the snufflings and mewling of their creator. The taste fills the mouth and you become aware of nothing but your own secretions, wishing not only to escape from your Life, but from your very skin. The smell is still impossible, not until things have run their course.
How I hate crying.
Wet pillows are cliché, and we avoid them as we get older. I put things through dryers to avoid the feeling. I hate sleeping with my own tears, and other peoples’ are hardly any better. A sign that I’m not helping enough, not finishing the job. It’s a cleansing device, removing, at least temporarily – small annoyances and big annoyances, everything from sand and grit to depression and funerals. I well up at the thought of my Dad, dying unfinished and early. Well up? Can tears be mined?
