Songwriting Without Boundaries (30 page)

Slippery roads

Low visibility

I’ll call these qualities of
snowstorm
the
linking qualities
. They’ll provide the link from
snowstorm
to a new idea, which I’ll call the
target idea
—the idea that
snowstorm
can be a metaphor
for.

Start with
cold.

A snowstorm is cold. You can now look for what
snowstorm
can be a metaphor for by asking: What else is
cold?

You’re searching for your
target idea
.

How about
your sneer?
It’s pretty cold
.

Snowstorm
→
Linking quality:
Cold
→ Target idea:
Your sneer

And now, after linking the quality
cold
to the target idea,
your sneer,
you’ll take ten minutes to explore
your sneer
through the lens of
snowstorm,
describing the sneer in snowy qualities
.
Like this:

Your sneer is a snowstorm.

I stiffen up, muscles tensing as I watch your face contort into a cold sneer. Frigid blast, pushing me back on my heels, your words pelting me, my eyes tearing against the chill. I feel your contempt piling up around me, a shiver running down my back in goose bumps, while you lean in, immobilizing me in your icy landscape; I’m frozen, unable to move my legs. My heart, racing, begins to slow, blood thickening, dimming into silence.

So I’ve moved from
snowstorm
to
cold
to
your sneer,
which led to a description of our fight and its effect on me. You weren’t very nice …

Now try the second linking quality,
covering the ground:

Snowstorm
→ Linking quality:
Covering the ground
→ Target idea:
Wildflowers

And now, after linking the quality
covering the ground
to the target idea,
wildflowers,
you’ll take ten minutes to explore
wildflowers
through the lens of
snowstorm,
describing the wildflowers in snowy qualities
.
Like this:

A storm of wildflowers

A meadow of reds, purples, golds, and yellows, blanketing the earth, a storm of perfumed color, making you blink and breathe deep. Pollen swirling, like snowflakes dancing in the air, melting into petals that will soon float onto the thick grass, nourishing the hungry soil. A riot of chirping and crickets, snow white clouds sailing overhead …

So I’ve moved from
snowstorm
to
covering the ground
to
wildflowers
, leading to a description of a meadow covered by flowers. Pretty. A positive look at the snowstorm for a change.

How about
hot cider by the fireplace?

Snowstorm
→ Linking quality:
Hot cider by the fireplace
→ Target idea:
Seeking comfort

A snowstorm seeking comfort

Take ten minutes to explore
seeking comfort
through the lens of
snowstorm.
Like this:

Surge forward in your dress of white, loose and flowing, moan and push on, muscles coiled, straining. Breathe deep, great gulps opening your throat, feeling the howl rise from your toes, screaming up through your chest and through your cracked lips. Taste the doors clamped tight against you, fearing you—cold, bitter. Push hard in your dress of white until your pulse hammers and you sag, melting finally to the ground.

So I’ve moved from
snowstorm
to
hot cider by the fireplace
to
seeking comfort
, which led to the description, perhaps, of a pretty scary woman rampaging through a town. Or not. You could be talking right to the storm as though it were a woman crying out for comfort. Either way works great! Fun, eh?

Try this out. Following the examples above, supply the target idea for each of the linking qualities below:

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Slippery roads
→ Target idea: _____________

What else has slippery roads? A high school? A relationship? Take ten minutes to explore your own target idea through the lens of
snowstorm.
Remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can. First, here are a couple of examples.

ROB GILES

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Slippery roads
→ Target idea:
Argument

An argument is a snowstorm.

Your cold shoulder and my heated anger smashed together in midair over the kitchen table. Like ice cracking beneath our feet, we heard too late to escape what was coming. We’d rather die than escape it seemed, so we stomped our feet against our fate, desperate to be heard, as each pressing point piled up, silently, but in a wall of cold hard snow around our hearts. We could not see each other in the flurry of our insistence. We would never find our way back to where we came from—back into the warmth of our hearth, the comfort of our home where we used to see eye to eye, hear each other’s perspectives, love each other even when we disagreed. And the pressure built, thicker clouds rolled in, and before we knew it we were self-abandoned in the darkening woods, losing feeling in our fingers and toes, our cheeks and noses; we had too little on and were too far from safety, and worse of all we were not helping each other to stay safe. No bread crumbs were to be found under these drifts, no echo to give us bearings, our screams were swallowed up by the slow white blanket that dangerously drifted in to bury us. Together or apart, we were lost, both helplessly holding pieces of a map that lead in different directions. The sun setting on us and the temperature dropping, we were doomed by our pride as our argument buried us alive.

Rob holds open house for
snowstorm
’s family members, seeing his target idea,
argument
through the lens of
snowstorm
. In doing so, he extends the metaphor, digging deep into
snowstorm’
s family tree. Take a little time and underline as many as you can.

MICHAEL SHORR

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Slippery roads
→ Target idea:
Marriage

Marriage is a snowstorm.

I can see the blizzard coming. The clouds of growing anger begin to darken your lovely face. My stomach fills with icy dread. You speak and in your trying-to-stay-calm voice I hear the building storm, a distant howling, frozen flakes of love begin to fall in the air between us. The wide-open, clear blue sky of our happiness grows pale, then gray, then the storm unleashes and explodes, warm love disintegrates into stabbing horizontal sheets of stinging curses and hurled accusations, like a frozen sandstorm, pelting my skin, freezing my tenderness. I wince and bend and curl my body into a ball—backing away—like I’m huddling into a thick, warm coat trying to protect myself from the frozen assault, the machine gun of icy attack.

Michael uses the second version of expressed identity here with “clear blue sky of our happiness grows pale.” Note also his use of verbal metaphor and adjective/noun in “warm love disintegrates” and his final simile, “curl my body into a ball—backing away—like I’m huddling into a thick, warm coat trying to protect myself.”

Your turn. What else has slippery roads? Take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of
snowstorm
. Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Slippery roads
→ Target idea:_____________

Okay, here’s your next linking quality to work with:

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Low visibility
→ Target idea: ______________

What else has low visibility? Take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of
snowstorm.
Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

TAMI NEILSEN

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Low visibility
→ Target idea:
Prejudice

Prejudice is a snowstorm.

You’ve already made up your mind about who I am and nothing I say or do can make you see me. Your flurry of cold opinions swirl furiously, blinding your eyes and snowing me under with white, oppressive silence. There’s an episode of
Little House on the Prairie
, the one with the big snowstorm, where Pa Ingalls ties a rope to the barn to try and feel his way back home, but the blizzard is so dense, he can’t find his bearings—those things he knows are true and real. I always wondered how he could have gotten so terribly lost in such a short distance. With teeth chattering, chilled to the bone by your ignorance, now I know.

A wonderful, fresh look at the abstract concept,
prejudice.
This process of using a linking quality to find a target idea yields almost instant dividends. Note how the Pa Ingalls passage sets up “I always wondered how he could have gotten so terribly lost in such a short distance.” Note also the verbal metaphor “ignorance chills me to the bone
.”

SYLVIE LEWIS

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Low visibility
→ Target idea:
The past

The past is a snowstorm.

Countless crystal white days float upwards, backwards and every which way, muddling my mind with how similar they all become. Stiff, cold fingers of memory reach backwards trying to catch those snowflake days which promptly melt leaving that damp feeling that there was once something more there. Jutting up through the swirling of things past, shadowy fuzzy forms of branches, people, houses I’ve known and touched and held onto in warmer days. Traveling deeper into the storm, the cumbersome boots known as “How I Wish It had Been” squeak and slush, occasionally I stumble on something frozen solid. Brushing aside the gathering whiteness, there it is: a moment held firm by the ice, fossil of a feeling, colours caught, voices suspended in the circular chorus of what we said: Love’s not red, it’s amber and it melts all the other stuff away.