y5week45 watching trees sway

:? I don't understand what you're saying here.

What does burying a heart in a flower pot mean? Plant a seed and watch it grow? A flower will return more love per money spent on it than a woman does? Take up gardening to realise your potential? :)

Wow.

There are many styles of songwriting, not to mention writing in general. Some tell stories, some string together phrases and let the listener put the story together. This seems to be a little of both, kind of like Tom Petty's songwriting after he hung out with the Travelling Wilburys for a while.

I don't know why, but the choices of images just strikes a chord with me. You have the more general and mundane ("...this is the autumn sun...") and you have surprising specific ones that are charming and thought-provoking ("...this is a pile of pancakes / made to cheer you up...").

I'm with Ray in that I'm not sure what it all means, but that really doesn't bother me because I find myself wrapped up with all the little details. I don't know what the "low spark of high heeled boys" is either... :wink:

So why is it called "Watching Trees Sway?"

Looking forward to more.

Peace

Hi,

This does sound like it could be made into a Leonard Cohenish kind of song. :)

Do you ever make your lyrics into real songs by adding music, or do you basically just set out to write poetry?

The flower pot/heart imagery immediately reminded me of 19th century poet John Keats' melodramatic poem Isabella. For those who don't know it, it's a long grisly, gothic sort of poem about a young girl who retrieves the head from the body of her slain lover, grooms it up a bit and then puts it in a flower pot and plants some basil over it. She then waters the potted herbs/head combo by sobbing over it. Naturally the villains eventually pinch the pot as well and she withers away and dies of grief.

It's the ultimate young girl angst fantasy poem and was hugely popular in its day. Was it a conscious influence for these lyrics, or just coincidence?

Isabella or the Pot of basil

I remember reading it as a teenager and being quite taken by the theme!!

Cheers,

Chris

Hi,

This does sound like it could be made into a Leonard Cohenish kind of song. :)

Defiantly Leonarnd !

Especially the part:This is a mug of tea
On a table in Berlin

I can hear him singing those lines.

Simple imagery but very real.

John

Hi,

........a young girl who retrieves the head from the body of her slain lover, grooms it up a bit and then puts it in a flower pot and plants some basil over it. She then waters the potted herbs/head combo ...
Chris

Uncanny - this was on Gardener's World last night :P Depends if you've got alkaline or acid soil though and also a South facing aspect is ideal (or North in your case mate) :lol:

wow.. the things you guys come up with..
basically.. to me anyways.. it's just about having to deal with a broken heart.. and sometimes it's better to put it someplace safe(flower pot) where it can't be hurt further and doesn't make you such a weeping zombie. it's just saying: look you still got all these simple things and they're beautiful. put that heart away for now, it will mend, it will be okay(when the flower blooms).

as for the title.. i found a website where people wrote about what for them are simple pleasures.. and one wrote "watching trees sway".. i thought it was beautiful and fitted, thus i took it for a title.

i looked up the song and the poem;-) thanks. (and no, i didn't know the poem)

chris, i'm glad you and john thought of leonard cohen. huge compliment for me:D
Do you ever make your lyrics into real songs by adding music, or do you basically just set out to write poetry?
um..er.. most of the time i know beforehand this will never make it into a song, so i guess, yes, often i set out to write poetry. but i turned some of them into songs.. and i was havig a go at the chorus of this one here.. nothing great in sight though;-)

thanks everyone for your comments.
cheers,
straycat.

Hi Straycat

I think this is one of the best songs you've put up here. It contains your usual rich imagery but combines it with a kind of situation easily understood.

I really like it

Bob :wink:

Hi :D

I have to say - I really enjoyed this one.

On the first read thru, I got to the lines - Bury your heart in a flower pot if it keeps strangling you....
And realized that it had somehow rhymed with something previous.
It actually threw me for a bit of a loop, because It wasn't obvious to me exactly what it had rhymed with.
I read backwards from there, and it took me all the way back to the first line!
And I was immediately pleased at this finding.

The reason being - that I had been so absorbed in the imagery of it all, I had 'overlooked' any technical aspects of it.
Good Job!!!!

"This is the thirty-second day" - I was thinking... What does that mean? A short day? A day that just flew by? Or numerically
a month later???? Hmmmmm

"This is autumn sun stroking your face" - Something I find pleasurable. An instant image in my minds eye and a smile on my face. But whose face????

"This is a book you wanted to read" - Again, something I can relate to, as there are many books that I want yet to read.
Though I also tend to GIVE books as gifts. So I saw both images.

"This is a wall and here is a brush" - Wow. Where did that come from? Though I could totally see it... and vividly bright with
color. Even though no color is mentioned.
It also reminded me of a girl that I love that is really into painting walls - LOL
I saw it also as a "diversion" of sorts... Something to take your mind off of something eating away at you.

Then I got to that "strangling you" part and realized that I had been momentarily transported to another world. :shock:

Better things were yet to come....

"This is a pile of pancakes made to cheer you up" - Made me think instantly of when I was married (A good thing).
Totally something I would've done to cheer up my wife. And I saw the whole sceen take place :D
A short story in itself.

"This is a mug of tea on a table in Berlin" - I had to stop and think about that one.
I saw it for just what it described... somebody elses "Home". And I saw it more personally.... My last girlfriend was a tea
drinker, and I saw her alone in a quiet, though sunny upstairs city apartment in Paris (She spoke French fluidly).
And the word Mug made me change it to a mug of coffee - something my ex-wife and I still share together often.

I bounced back over the words trying to find a point of view.... Were you talking to yourself/about yourself....
Were you talking about other people????
Well, in the end... none of that mattered because of the intimate visions I had conjured that mattered to me personally BECAUSE of YOUR words. 8) 8) 8) 8)

Truly a gift, because we don't know eachother and you certainly didn't write the song about me or events in my life.
And yet I could relate so well with it all.

This is my kind of song.
I've said it before and I'll say it again....
I do not like songs that hand everything over to me.
If I want to read a story - I'll read a story.
This - This is poetry!
And it should be universal, allowing us to use our imagination.

I was a bit dismayed that you explained yourself later.
As I see poetry as a very feminine thing.
That is to say.... It has mystery.
As Bob Dylan said of the Female Heart - Your heart is like an ocean... Mysterious and dark.
I can understand bits and pieces of it, it fuels my fantasies, though I know I'll never truly solve the mystery of the whole of it....And that's what keeps us coming back :wink:

THANK YOU!

Ken

I like this song. To make it even better i think it needs a part to it, (bridge perhaps) that's different from the rest of it.

thank YOU, ken. you have me beaming with happiness. (very rare these days) sorry, that i explained the general idea behind it. but you still got the small mysteries;-)

and thanks to you, too, pearl.

cheers,
straycat.