Songwriting Without Boundaries (26 page)

Moves quick, swerving, taking tight corners, leaning on his bike, stopping to peer over fences and scan trees, dark camouflaged jacket and pants, silent and …

KRISTIN CIFELLI:
The policeman is
electricity for the city
, keeping it lit up, making it run, and speeding through the streets to save the day.

Policeman—strong, there for you quickly, rescuing you from darkness. sparking goodness and electrocuting danger. Flying through the streets with a charge …

Chanelle sees the policeman hunting. What else hunts? Kristin sees the policeman keeping the city running. What else makes the city run? Easy, eh?

Your turn.

DAY #10

PLAYING IN KEYS:
USING LINKING QUALITIES

Today, you’ll go beyond what you’ve just done and explore the process of finding metaphors in deeper detail. You’ll be working with three prompts and will be asked to create two responses for each one—six explorations in all. Take your time.

First, the following lesson, from the second edition of my book,
Writing Better Lyrics
. It takes a closer look at the concept that words belong to
families
or
keys.

PLAYING IN KEYS

Like musical notes that belong to the same key, words can group together in family relationships. Call this a “diatonic relationship.” For example, here are some random words that are diatonic to (in the same key as)
tide:
ocean, moon, recede, power, beach.

This is “playing in the key of tide,” where tide is the fundamental tone. This is a way of creating collisions between elements that have at least some things in common—a fertile ground for metaphor. There are many other keys
tide
can belong to when something else is a fundamental tone, for example,
power
. Let’s play in its key: Muhammad Ali; avalanche; army; Wheaties; socket; tide.

All of these words are related to each other by virtue of their relationship to “power.” If you combine them into little collisions, you can often discover metaphors:

Muhammad Ali avalanched over his opponents.

An avalanche is an army of snow.

This army is the Wheaties of our revolution.

Wheaties plug your morning into a socket.

A socket holds back tides of electricity.

Try playing in the key of
moon
: stars, harvest, lovers, crescent, astronauts, calendar, tide.

The New Mexico sky is a rich harvest of stars.

Evening brings a harvest of lovers to the beach.

The lovers’ feelings waned to a mere crescent.

The crescent of human knowledge grows with each astronaut’s mission.

Astronauts’ flights are a calendar of human courage.

A new calendar washes in a tide of opportunities.

Essentially, metaphor works by revealing some third thing that two ideas share in common. One good way of finding metaphors is by asking these two questions:

1. What characteristics does my idea (
tide
) have?

2. What else has those characteristics?

Answering the second question usually releases a flood of possible metaphors.

Often the relationship between two ideas is not clear.
Muhammad Ali
is hardly the first idea that comes to mind with
avalanche
, unless you recognize their linking term,
power
. In most contexts,
Muhammad Ali
and
avalanche
are nondiatonic, or unrelated to each other. Only when you look for a link do you come up with
power
, or
deadly
, or “
try to keep quiet when you’re in their territories
.” Asking the two questions:

1. What quality does my object have?

2. What else has that quality?

Okay, start by listing policeman qualities. Here’s one:

He protects.

What else protects?

Now find two other things that
protect.
Then find related nouns, verbs, and adjectives for each member of the list and try to apply them to
policeman.
Write a sentence or a short paragraph for the good ones.

CHANELLE DAVIS

1. Flu Vaccine

2. Lifeguard

Flu Vaccine:
needle, injections, nurse, doctor, veins, immunize, blood, cure, medicine, prick, hospital, cough, sickness, mucus, winter

The police immunize the public and help fight the symptoms of gangs in New York.

Lifeguard
: drowning, waves, rip, sea, beach, swimming, uniform, swift, strong, muscly, watchful, on duty

The police were watchful after the earthquake and rescued many stores from the waves of looters that flooded the city.

Your turn. List two of your own things that
protect.
Then find related nouns, verbs, and adjectives for each one and try to apply them to
policeman.
Write a sentence or a short paragraph for the ones you like.

What else does a policeman do?

He
investigates
.

What else investigates?

KRISTIN CIFELLI:
X-ray

X-ray:
black and white, broken bones, revealing, diagnose

The police are an x-ray, investigating the broken bones of the neighborhood, revealing every fracture in black and white.

What else investigates?

CHARLIE WORSHAM:
mechanic

Mechanic
: engine, oil, sweat, heat, grease, dirty, smudged, pistons, wrench, fans, belts, whirring, motor, crank, hood

Policemen are the mechanics of mystery. They roll up their sleeves, wipe their brow, and pop open the hood of a criminal case, hoping to unlock the mystery. Every piston that misfires, every loose fan belt, every drop of oil is a fingerprint, a smoking gun, a clue as to what went wrong and who’s to blame. In the workshop of a downtown office building or crime lab, they take apart and rebuild every piece of the machine. Whatever it takes, they don’t stop till they can prosecute the bad guy. And like years of sweat equity beneath the workings of vehicles, years of experience with all makes and models of crimes, train a professional policeman to spot likely suspects quickly and efficiently.

Your turn. List two other things that
investigate
, then find related nouns, verbs, and adjectives for each member of the list. Try to apply them to
policeman.
Write a sentence or a short paragraph for the good ones.

What else does a policeman do?

He arrests.

What else arrests?

CHANELLE DAVIS:
Heart

Heart
: stop beating, death, hospital, electric shock, blood, circulation, ambulance, dying

More police were pumped into the undercover operation, aiming to stop the circulation of pornography.

CAROLINE HARVEY:
The loudest sound you can imagine

The loudest sound you can imagine
: makes everything else disappear, stops time, terrifies, echoes, makes your ears numb and ringing, makes everything after feel silent and small, makes you flinch

When I saw him stand up, the rest of the courtroom disappeared. I couldn’t feel my legs, my hands were dangling at my side like a shaky mess of Parkinson’s. He thundered to the witness chair, his feet thumping loudly with every gait. I cannot remember anything else from that day, but I can recall exactly the way he adjusted first his left shirt sleeve and then his right. How his hair was parted just a few degrees of center and shone under the fluorescent lights like Superman’s pompadour. The sound of his voice, as he answered my attorney’s questions, echoed the way I imagine a blow horn might sound in the Grand Canyon. All living creatures living miles within distance of the courthouse were silenced when he spoke. When he finished and was excused, I looked down at my hands. I was gripping the fabric of my flowered dress and my left knee, jittery as a mosquito, was helpless.