Songwriting Without Boundaries (35 page)

Susan personifies the glass, especially effective in “Each splinter of glass is crazy sharp, reflecting a thousand distorted images of the same blue sky, a reality only seen in tiny pieces.” If the linking quality is essential enough to the original idea, the target idea will be more likely to turn around easily, since they’ll share many family members. The fewer qualities they share, the more likely simile becomes.

Your turn. Using
unable to be repaired
as your linking quality, find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of
broken glass.

Now reverse it and explore
sleeping late
through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

How about
glittering and dangerous
as a linking quality?

JESS MEIDER

Broken glass → Linking quality:
Glittering and dangerous
→ Target idea:
Las Vegas

Las Vegas as broken glass

Night flight over darkness, heavy feeling in body resounding as plane descends, the disco ball oasis sitting up ahead he spies it … glittering city of lights like a wondrous song of glass and metal tinkles in the quiet of his mind. Sharpened desires, cold diamond like yen sparkle, each flashing light a hardened prayer of someone eyes glassed over, greedy, hope transformed into the heavy wishes for change, the money fairy, god, angel, lady luck, all looming above like grey ghouls smiling over the lit city. Birdseye, ominous, regal, palatial city. Landed, he is just another speck gathering to worship cash, like a delusional disciple. The glitterlike ice he snorts up his nose; it embodies and possesses him shards and shrapnel, solidifying into one big crystal ball, fortune and fame visually stunning, he rolls his bets all his money on 7, BAH, nope, rolling crystal ball tips over the edge of fancy skyscraper, soaring towards the gravity below, past the neon flashing lights towards the shattering future.

Seeing a city as broken glass is pretty interesting. Possible, of course, only through the action of a strong linking quality like
glittering and dangerous.
I like how Jess turns the narrator into a piece of broken glass, “landed, he is just another speck gathering to worship cash.”

Broken glass is a Las Vegas of light.

Three million glittering eyes, each heart a sliver of a whole, the belief that there is better beyond the next bet. Shards lined like hotels and gambling houses, flat, round, ridged on the edges, the trip that is glassy, fragile and extremely brittle, dry like a desert that heats up and cools down every day, fantastic dazzle, a beautiful show musical big booming orchestras overtones of Frank Sinatra echoing thru the night, the midnight players pounding and smashing hearts every night, all these fabricated lights glitter like shards of people’s hopes, a disco ball, inviting the next gullible sucker.

Look at all the family members lining up for the buffet. I love that both the inhabitants and the buildings become shards of broken glass. Great turnaround.

CHARLIE WORSHAM

Broken glass → Linking quality:
Glittering and dangerous
→
Target idea:
Beautiful stranger

A beautiful stranger is broken glass.

There she is, a shining mess of broken heart pieces wrapped in a lace dress and diamonds, poised at the bar with a crystal glass to her lips. Every eye in the room is pulled to her like sailors to a siren song. It’s a sexy kind of pain. To break the skin and feel the thrill as the blood draws to the surface. Her breath frosts the window, her voice could shatter a pyramid of wineglasses. She catches the light and catches the attention of a particularly dreamy-eyed fellow. She keeps the edges hidden behind red lipstick and sweet perfume, a painted predator. He’s helpless as a kid who busts out the window and has to test the jagged edge of the cracked pane with his finger.

Wow, how do you get from
broken glass
to
beautiful stranger?
You know the answer: “What else has that quality?” Charlie paints a fresh, interesting picture.

Broken glass is a beautiful stranger.

I knew I was losing my grip about halfway down the stairs. It was one of those slow-motion moments when you know you could stop the disaster but you know you’re gonna miss your shot. There it goes, the mirror I stood in front of every morning for the past three years, flying down the stairwell so gracefully and silent, only to explode on the concrete like a grenade slamming shrapnel in every direction. I held my breath and watched a million-piece orchestra strike its every note at once. A fireworks display of crystal reflecting the fluorescent lights, metal rails, my red T-shirt, my white skin and mouth open wide in wonder. And as soon as it began it was over. The ghost of an elusive stranger, one I stood before every morning for three years but never spoke to. Except to tell it about me—my problems, my joys, my practice sessions for what I might say to a pretty girl or a disappointed teacher. I never thought about how much I trusted that old thing. It held my darkest secrets, my most private moments. It knew my weaknesses more than my parents or best friend. And I trusted it not to tell. How dangerous—if that mirror could talk, what it could say!

Very cool, using the mirror to reflect back onto himself as the stranger. It may be a bit of a stretch but still a fresh and interesting place to look.

Your turn. Using
glittering and dangerous
as your linking quality, find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of
broken glass.

Now reverse it and explore
broken glass
through the lens of your target idea for ten minutes.

DAY #6

WORKING BOTH DIRECTIONS

Prompt: Falling in Love

Finding ideas that can easily turn around is a great tool, and like any tool, all it takes is practice. So keep practicing.

First list two interesting qualities of
falling in love:

Swept away

Glittering and dangerous

Now link each to a target idea—the ideas that
falling in love
can be a metaphor for, by asking:

What else has that quality? What else is
swept away?

Try this. Supply the target idea for each of the linking qualities. As you did yesterday, after you finish your first ten minutes, you’ll spend another ten minutes reversing directions.

It starts with
swept away:

SUSAN

Falling in love → Linking quality:
Swept away
→ Target idea:
Hurricane

A hurricane as falling in love

Clouds hug the darkening summer night, branches dance and sway, lightning pulses, a heartbeat in the chest of the open sky, nature closes its eyes, welcoming the rush of power, tingling in the fingertips of trees and the dark hair of thunderclouds, dark earth opens its parched lips to the kissing rain, raindrops coat and dance in the darkness, streetlights blink demurely, giddy trees tilt and bend in the wind, a roof peels up off a house, shedding its tiles with abandon, river water swells its banks, sensuously caressing the stone bridge, cars come to a standstill, their headlights are a pearl necklace glittering …

I’ve never been this attracted to a hurricane. What an interesting look Susan provides here. Notice the stacking of metaphors in “branches dance and sway, lightning pulses, a heartbeat in the chest of the open sky.” Wow.

Falling in love is a hurricane.

Wrapped in a cloud of sheets, desire pours like rain from my body, a lightning flash pulling me into the eye of the storm, your gentle words tumble and sway in front of me, my heart zaps with electric charge when I feel you near, passion blows through me, tearing at my senses, your clothes, the delicate hush of your kiss is the eye, then being drenched in pounding thunder …

Again, lots of shared family members here, a tribute to the power of a strong linking quality.

SCARLET KEYS

Falling in love → Linking quality:
Swept away
→ Target idea:
Flash flood

Flash flood as falling in love

It comes out of nowhere, the silent emptiness and then the downpour. Thunder like fireworks, lightning laughter, surrender to the force of it; fear submerges and you float, legs and arms out, on the top of unexpected whirl. You, there on the yellow plastic raft, drink in hand with your little paper umbrella taking in the sun, then water holds you like midnight arms you move with the random flow, until you are spinning, tornado. Tears funnel and swell, you are circling the drain you are holding your breath fetal and stunned. You wished for rain, something to revive and soften your thirsty heart and it stormed and it stole from you, but you can die from too much rain. Your wish didn’t have a boundary or a shape, you smelled the empty dust and then you choked from the raging force that found you a sad autumn leaf and left you washed away stuck on the side of the road too drenched to dance and blow down the sidewalk …

Of course, the other direction seems easier. Scarlet does an effective job in this direction, wishing for rain and getting swept away. I’d never seen a flash flood from this perspective, and it was only possible through the linking quality.

Falling in love is a flash flood.

You flashed your lightning smile and that was it, I was the hostage of your every move, the thrill of suddenness, breathless and drenched in the overwhelming feeling of the swell. Floating and shivering wide awake in the awe of it. Kissing kissing like little knives of rain up and down my body, buckling under the force of you, skin wet and warm, it’s a heart with no life jacket, it’s running in the dark, it’s a rush when it happens out of nowhere like it does rising up around me I am saturated and exhausted, it’s all I think about pulse rushing and scrambling like it’s blindfolded in a labyrinth, in the breathless spin, the feeling as if all the air was being sucked out of the room at once and you are alive with the moment standing on a cliff, your head in grey heavy clouds, the taste of metal, the taste of bliss and fear like holding a gun encased in cashmere, your eyes closed, your heart hoping that when it all settles and quiets and the s …