Exercising

Instead of actually calling some venues or lining up some open mics or going to coffee houses with promo packs--just thinking of which make me weary as Sisyphus--I've decided to start some new songwriting habits. I've been stuck in a songwriting rut lately (lots of beginnings, very few middles and no endings) and figure that that striking off on a side road may eventually lead me back to the highway.

To that end I posed myself the following exercise:

Write down a series of random words and create 4 similes. Then write down 4 metaphors. Similes are images that typically use the words "like" or "as" in them, to wit "mad as a hatter." Metaphors in general can be thought of as images that use some version of the word "is" to create them such as "life is a bowl of cherries."

Here's my output today. Feel free to suggest your own. They may find their way into a song someday.

Similes

gentle as
gossamer
a smile
green grass
a rumor

hard as
a coin
a knot
a rasp
flint

red as
rage
rust
shame
desire

mean as
homegrown sin
a miser's purse
whipped dog
a silent grudge


Metaphors

The greedy past
The flickering hearth of memory
My hand is a stylus riding the unseen groove in the strings
Maps are dreams of lives not lived