Coda

So, you know what songs I have recently discovered, and love?  One is "Royals," by Lorde.  And another is "Dust to Dust," by The Civil Wars (who are this great duo on whom I've apparently been completely missing out).  Also, "Lips of An Angel," by Hinder (this made me cry, even though it's an uptempo Nickelback-type rock song), and "Try," by P!nk (good to listen to while working out - "just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die").  Lots of fun.

Oh, and I can't forget "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin')."  It's from the film High Noon, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1953 - and it's such a good song.  With or without the movie (even though the movie is pretty fantastic as well - Grace Kelly!).

I also recently discovered that the woman who sings "Colours of the Wind," from, yes, Pocahontas is actually the same woman (Judy Kuhn), who voiced Florence in the disastrous 1988 Broadway version of Chess!  My favourite musical!  (Even if not at all my favourite version!)  It was a "fan-girling" moment for me.

So, yeah.  Good times.

And we're moving on.

You know what a coda is, right?  It's mostly used in symphonic performances and classical music, when a piece seems to end and then the music swells once more and replays a few bars of the dominant melody, an echo to an earlier moment in the piece, and then ends after that.  (And yes, that is the technical definition.)  (Not really.)

So that's the image I was going for in the song - likening the relationship to a musical piece that had a little bit more left in it, a coda as the extra to their relationship.  As such, I wanted to excite as much musical imagery as I could, without seeming too over-the-top; I also occasionally balanced it out with natural imagery (there's a fire motif, for example).

This song all began with a single phrase: "blaze of fury."  A play on "blaze of glory," I think.  A line about cymbals followed, and I loved that for the way it really seems to capture the way things went down.  But aside from that.  I think I started this song in February or so, but it took a long while to fully form.  The chorus was the most difficult part, to formulate and to finalise.  Oh, I also like the bridge - it may be a bit wordy, but it also says a lot about the coda itself.  I think if you're in something that you know will be short-lived, you want to make it as pleasant as possible, so I let my protagonists not be weighed down by any concerns (or arguments, hence the "trying not to say," trying not to lay blame) other than the music around them - and when it's hard to say something, you let something else, anything else (a song, a Hallmark card) say it for you.  And it all tied nicely together with my musical theme, so I used it and I like it.

And then I also love "we were a chord that turned minor, somewhere along the way" - it's just such a succinct, imagery-laden way to express that things were good until they went bad and discordant.  Of course, the best word to use would have been "dyad," because there were only two people in the relationship*, but that's a little more of an obscure musical term and I wanted this to be approachable.

*Otherwise it would have been a bit crowded.  Ha.

The rest I will let you discover for yourself.

Coda

we went out in a blaze of fury
with the drama of a symphony, but with none of the thrill
like cymbals crashing wildly and then, suddenly, are still
and so it felt kind of bittersweet
when we were both here tonight, and between us passed a moment
that reignited all the things we must have been

CHORUS:
I thought this was over, our song played out
a beat of silence took too long, and built up a little rust
but like a melody that comes back around
we took a breath and realised we had one more week left in us
and this is our coda, our coda

somehow it was easy to break the pause,
going back to our old harmonies, and trying not to say,
we were a chord that turned minor, somewhere along the way
now our heartbeat's as loud as it ever was
and the notes stay the same, even if we don't follow the rules
because unlike before, we have nothing to lose

CHORUS:
I thought this was over, our song played out
a beat of silence took too long, and built up a little rust
but like a melody that comes back around
we took a breath and realised we had one more week left in us
and this is our coda, our coda

BRIDGE:
so we let the songs playing in the background say all the things we were feeling
and we let the songs playing all around fill up the time that we were stealing
we took advantage of the chance to rekindle what we had,
but all the same we always knew it still wouldn't last
so we played along the best we could until the echo faded,
until we went out in a blaze of fury all over again

CHORUS:
I thought this was over, our song played out
a beat of silence took too long, and built up a little rust
but like a melody that comes back around
we took a breath and realised we had one more week left in us
and that was our coda, our coda

I'm grateful that despite the dust,
we had one more week left in us
thank you for our coda, our coda...

Of course, I realise, now, that there is some kind of shifting of tenses going on there.  It felt natural to me as I was writing it, but if it's distracting (which it may or may not be) I should go and try to change it.  Let me know.

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another Ordinary Girl

I see clearer in the rearview mirror than I ever did looking out over the hood.

I guess we never really moved on.