#TBT #WW Blog the 36th: The First Mystery of the Cocoverse

  Blog the 36th: The First Mystery of the Cocoverse

Today I’m thinking about love. Alright, fine, I guess I’ve been thinking about love for a few days and keeping to the writing-from-a-place-of-truth law of the Cocoverse, I guess I’d better talk about it.  

Do note however, that I am writing this blog very late on the day that it is due, using a 25 minute Pomodoro session during my lunch hour and planning on polishing and primping it immediately upon conclusion of day job obligations with at least another 3 Pomodoros.

My delay in writing is, as ever, directly related to my reluctance to write it. I don’t want to write about love, because not only will I then have to think about it (which I am doing anyway), but in the writing process, I have to face my thoughts about love. Don’t want to. Want to brush them into the corner under the pile of dirty laundry, which I don’t have to look at until next Wednesday (which is the next designated laundry day in the Cocoverse).

Sometimes being a writer sucks that way. Experience has taught me that, now that I am writing about it, that I have absolutely no idea and no control over where this self-conversation is going. It could take me to wonderful and delightful heights, or painful and uncomfortable depths.

Yah, I know, likely both, but I’m not up for a roller coaster ride today, if you don’t mind. I’ve had enough drama in my personal life this month, thank you very much. Do I really have to look at this today? Can’t I just tell you an amusing story about my co-workers new-found obsession with the TV show Glee? Or the child-like delight of another colleague at his name appearing right after that of an A-list star on a film credit list? Or my super insider sneak peek at a fine cut of the short film “Rusted Pyre” (it was awesome by-the-way; hooray to the CSSC and Year of the Skunk for making it happen!) I could even just make something up about the Cat Lady who made her first appearance in last week’s blog entry. Anything not to talk about me. Sigh. Squirmy though I am and likely will continue to be, it is time to pull off the band-aid and tell you some of the love thoughts. But first, I’m getting a nice cup of tea.

Back with the tea. Earl Grey, straight up. And a glass of water. Procrastinating? What? Who? Me? By the way, if this was a script, this is the point at which I would delete the entire preceding paragraph and start this story at the real beginning, which is right around here somewhere. Though I leave it in for your edification (your word of the week, for which you should thank me cause I was going to make the word for the week “epigenetics” but I decided to take pity on those of you for whom science is not a religion), as I thought you might want a look at how I really write these delightful missives, so carefree and conversational that, apparently, they look effortless. After a tiny and completely non-scientific poll of several readers of this blog, it appears that the prevailing thought is that I whip these confections off within a period of between 30-60 minutes. Hmmm. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, or have horrifically slow keyboarding skills, but no. Sorry to show you the little man behind the curtain, but typically a post of 1,000-1,500 words takes between 2-5 hours. You see how much I love you that I do this for you gratis every week? Well, while it is true that I do love you, we all know I love me more and that writing the blog is in its essence, a gift to myself as it is a private master class in writing taught by me for the edification (now that I made you look it up I may as well use it twice ;)), of self. See, I even tried to take a deliberate turn into writing about writing and still ended back at the L word.

Love. I have lots and lots in my life, that’s for sure. Friends and family and colleagues and even a few folks that really don’t know me well, but seem to have developed an inexplicable warmth nonetheless. I started thinking about love in new ways this week out of a conversation about character and motivation. My friend was telling me that he was hanging-out at a restaurant with a woman who I had known him to be dating not long ago. But he made a point of clarifying that it wasn’t a date, rather they were hanging-out. Totally not getting the difference from where I was sitting. Apparently it had something to do with him not having the expectation of a romantic type conclusion to the evening. I’m still not sure I get it, but my actual understanding of his POV isn’t the point. The point is, that the conversation strongly reminded me that characters in a scene, as in life, have differing expectations. I wonder if his date thought there was a difference? It started thinking that I spend a huge amount of time thinking about my feelings of love, who I have them for and who I don’t, who I wish I had them for, or should have them for, and who engenders feelings the like of which I would delight to chuck in the recycling bin as a total waste of time, and quite frankly a bit embarrassing to boot. I have spent very little time in life contemplating the love directed my way. Romantically or otherwise.

I am always shocked to find out that someone even likes me.

Anyone actually saying the words out loud to me can expect a bemused “Why?” to pop out of my mouth, particularly if a glass or two of wine have already gone in. Little time also thinking about what being loved does to people. How has the fact that this person loved me and that person didn’t, changed me? And why do some people seem to fall in and out of love faster than the seasons change, while some of us, once begun never truly stop come hell, high-water or heart-break.

I can think of only one time in my life that I truly fell completely and forever out of love with someone. It was the strangest thing. It happened in an instant, in the time it takes to snap your fingers. One moment I loved him. The next moment I discovered the latest betrayal, the latest link I was supposed to over look in a long, long, long chain of things that had to be over looked. And snap. Something broke. Not my heart, but the chain around it.

I realized that my love for him was killing every single thing inside me that was good and bright. So I stopped loving him.

I’m still surprised at how easy it was, and from time to time, I’ll look inside at the place where the love once lived and marvel at the empty room with the clean fresh breeze still blowing through. Sometimes I wonder if it makes me a bad person, that after carrying a torch for the guy for nearly fifteen years it was such a simple and painless act to snuff it out. I know that it hurt him very deeply when I withdrew so absolutely from his life, and I think that some part of me should be sorry for inflicting that pain, but I have no idea where that part of me is.

And…there it is, the truth that all this disconnected rattling around about love was meant to reveal. I’m not sure that I know a thing about it. Love. Hmmm. Earlier today a colleague gave me a couple pieces of writing with the hope that I could “add my special touch”.

She knew they weren’t good, but couldn’t tell me why.  No problem. I read them. I could see exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. I could have taught a class on it then and there. About writing I know. About love… I just don’t know. Love is a mystery to me.

I can hear the TV in the background now shouting out “Boxes from Krypton are not toys!” A rather delightful statement, don’t you think? Maybe romantic love is my Kryptonite? Maybe the reason I can’t seem to work up the Mojo to finish the long labour of my feature Rom Com script is that the closer I get to the subject, the faster my super powers get sucked away. Or, I could just be looking for excuses. I do find that is another weird side effect of writing this blog, I’m rapidly losing my ability to find a good excuse and really sell it.

I feel now like I should sum up and tie this all together for you by pointing out what I hope this post is meant to teach you and I about writing for the screen. But I don’t think I will. This week instead of going out with my usual bang and cymbal crash and statement of the bleeding obvious, I will just lay it down. Gently lay it down. I love my family. I love my job. I love my friends. I love potato chips. I love baseball and martinis. I love the colour purple and the smell of vanilla. I love my guitar teacher and my book club peeps. I love the Canadian Tenors and Oban whiskey. I love books and I love stories. I love films old and new. I love when people laugh at something I’ve written. I love the feel of cool rain on my face. I love the long deep blue of twilight. I love the warm strong arms of my love reaching round me to pull me close and the soft happy sigh of his breath on my neck.

In the Cocoverse, while there are any number of Laws, there are also a few Mysteries, the first of which is Love.

Sinjin Chronicles 2

At night I can hear the wind talking to the hills. At least that is the sound that looms largest in my mind’s eye. I don’t know why the howl and the hiss and the faint undulation that sounds so very much like someone speaking should swell with darkfall, the wind gauges and tech installations report no significant change in wind speed and direction after dark, and yet I’d swear to you that the sound increases. It thickens, intensifies, forming a great dark mass that churns and undulates somewhere deep in my limbic brain. Layers and layers of sounds and shifting rhythms that fool the brain into thinking that it hears voices imbedded within the maelstrom. But it doesn’t, not really. As much as your brain tries to pull some sense of language it can’t so you are left with the aching and pervasive and unsettling feeling that something of cosmic importance is being said just outside your ability to comprehend.

Sinjin Chronicles - Day 1

It is only natural that they should have forgotten me by now. I mean come on, it has been nearly ten years earth solar time that I’ve been out-bound, and seven years, five months and twelve e-solar days since I landed in this hell-hole. The time passage alone  is enough to forget, and on top of that, why would you want to remember the daughter/sister/aunt that besmirched the fine old family name by landing herself on the United Systems most notorious prison planet? That the charges are treason and murder must make it all that more excruciating. One wonders how they can possibly carry on. And yet by all reports they do, and well if the latest gossip of the Sur-ply Ships carries any shred of truth.


Now, all that being said, the name is the thing and I still have one, Sinjin is still me and I am still she. Not that I much resemble myself these days with hair bleached white as bone and skin burnt the deep red-brown of a Nicoben nut. Gone is the fresh-faced, by the numbers, star recruit, plucked from the ranks and onto the Republican Star Guard by virtue of a fine family name and a pretty face - though I like to think being top of my class in hand to hand combat and adaptive intelligence had something to do with it. But that’s probably just pride speaking. Ever my downfall.


Hey, I still have all my teeth and most of my fingers, which is more than most of my fellow prisoners can say. And believe you me, the end of my right pinkie finger chewed off by the Red Beast in a quad fight three months into my 15 to 20 stint was a very small price to pay for the rep that came from pounding his well-larded ass into the salt pan of the yard.

I'm finding pieces of...

I’m finding pieces of my broken heart strewn all over the place this week, sometimes in the most unlikely of places. Today I found one amongst some random gravel under the postbox when I mailed a sympathy card to a friend who has just lost her Dad. Even though it was dirty and mostly covered with a rime of frost, it threw a glint of light up to my eye and I stooped down to pry it from the bit of frozen dirt and dead dandelion in which it was lodged. The deep ruby red of it even shimmered a bit in the gloom of the January day. Likely a trick of the light. A chance capturing of the beam of a headlight of a passing car, maybe. But I like to think it’s more than that. That maybe, just maybe there is still some fiery spark deep within. Someday, when I’ve gathered together all the shards I’m ever likely to find maybe this one will spark its fellows into a conflagration and my heart will throb with love and purpose once again. 

6-minute writing prompt from Deb Norton at www.partwild.com 

Before we were here...

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Before we were here we must have been somewhere else. No one knows for sure, or I should say, some think they know for sure- - but they have belief not data. Unless you wish to quantify the preponderance of myth and religious belief that describes such a place and call that “data”. In some traditions it is called purgatory, in some a piece of heaven known as “the guff” where souls wait to be born, or, in yet other traditions, re-born. Many insist the data shows that we are simply evolved primates, but though part of our bodies certainly does seem to indicate we are first cousin to the chimpanzee, so many other things are vastly different. Personally I think there is some truth hidden within religious tradition and myth. I like to think we are human alien hybrids of some sort, set here to supplant the great lizards of eons gone by. Sometimes I even wonder if the disappearance of the dinosaurs was, as science currently hypothesizes, the result of a cosmic catastrophe or a planned and well executed genocide clearing our ideally terraformed plant for new experimentation in lifeform genetic engineering.

6-minute writing prompt courtesy of Deb Norton at www.partwild.com 

The Tenors TFFs CBC Radio Play Challenge: Part One: Put Your Mouth Where Your Heart Is!

The Tenors TFFs CBC Radio Play Challenge: Part One: Put Your Mouth Where Your Heart Is!

Okay my fellow crazy-for-the-tenors-fans here is my challenge to you all to show our guys how much we really love them by getting their new album, Lead With Your Heart some serious time on the radio. This is totally a volunteer deal, sharing the Tenor love and leading with our hearts. We’ll start with Canada, then the US, then, break it wide open internationally!

·       To get us started what follows is some national contact info for CBC Radio shows and hosts. I’ll follow-up with a list of commercial Canadian FM contact info by regions in a few days!

·       TFFs in US border markets like Detroit can join in this first push if you get CBC on your FM dial!

·       All you US fans should also be able to get CBC radio via the internet www.cbc.ca/radio CBC Radio 2 is what you are looking for please check it out and let me know if I’m right,

·       US fans feel free to help me compile regional US info by messaging me or commenting and we’ll time a push for the US launch

·       Do we have a Francophone TFF who can tackle that market? My French is way too crummy!

Remember, the bigger market penetration in your local area the more often the guys will be able to come to town in person!

Guidelines

·       The Tenors prefer their genre described as “pop meets classical” or “contemporary classical” over the term “popera”

·       Keep the request simple and polite

·       Focus on the suggested songs for now, we’ll talk Juno/Grammy nomination for the whole disc later ;)

·       “Like” or “follow” the radio station accounts, they’ll take our requests more seriously

·       Find other Facebook page and/or Twitter account of your local area FM adult contemporary, classical and Christian radio stations, message me the info and I’ll compile it

·       Post/tweet requests to the station(s) to play either “Forever Young” “World Stand Still” , “Lead With Your Heart” or “Nessun Dorma”(classical) or “Amazing Grace” (Christian stations) or “Journee d’innocence” (francophone stations)

·       If you are suggesting “Forever Young” include a link to the You Tube studio video http://youtu.be/9E6-AYce-_M

·       View Tenors videos on YouTube as often as you can get away with it! Media outlets pay attention to # of views

·       Repeat your requests once a week until we achieve radio wave domination!

This and upcoming info will also be posted on my personal blog http://carolynneciceri.blogspot.ca

Songs to suggest

 “Lead With Your Heart” (album title track), “Forever Young” (cover of a Neil Young song) “World Stand Still” (original Tenors composition) or “Nessun Dorma” (new arrangement of an iconic tenor aria) or “Amazing Grace” (Christian stations)

CBC Radio One

–       Twitter @cbcradio

CBC Radio Two The Signal – Host Laurie Brown

–       Twitter @CBCthesignal

–       FB www.facebook.com/groups/8110659709/

CBC Radio Two

CBC Radio Two Morning – Host Tom Power (contemporary)

–       FB www.facebook.com/cbcr2morning

–       Twitter @CBCR2Morning

“Lead With Your Heart” “Forever Young” or “World Stand Still”

CBC Radio Two Tempo – Host Julie Nesrallah (classical)

–       Twitter @CBCtempo

–       FB www.facebook.com/CBCRadio2Tempo

“Nessun Dorma”

CBC Radio Two Shift – Host Tom Allen

–       Twitter @cbcr2shift

–       FB www.facebook.com/CBCr2shift

All songs – Tom’s show is very genre defying so any suggestion is good!

“Lead With Your Heart” (album title track), “Forever Young” (cover of a Neil Young song) “World Stand Still” (original Tenors composition) or “Nessun Dorma” (new arrangement of an iconic tenor aria)

CBC Radio Two The Signal – Host Laurie Brown

–       Twitter @CBCthesignal

FB www.facebook.com/groups/8110659709/

All songs – another cross  genre show!

“Lead With Your Heart” (album title track), “Forever Young” (cover of a Neil Young song) “World Stand Still” (original Tenors composition) or “Nessun Dorma” (new arrangement of an iconic tenor aria)

CBC Radio Two In Tune – Host Katherine Duncan (classical)

Twitter @CBCInTune

No FB page

All songs – here I suggest using the “contemporary classical” or “neo-classical” terms!

“Lead With Your Heart” (album title track), “Forever Young” (cover of a Neil Young song) “World Stand Still” (original Tenors composition) or “Nessun Dorma” (new arrangement of an iconic tenor aria)

The Point.

"What's the point…?" It is really too easy just to finish that question with "...of it all?” The cowards way out perhaps to choose something so cliche. I always read that phrase with a Gallic shrug in mind. One of those full body shrugs that involves shoulders and eyebrows and lips and cheeks and a bend of the head and a finishing flick of the hands, palms skyward with a soft grunting“meh to finish it all off. A complete 3-course meal of a shrug if you will. 

When I was younger I used to the think the point of things was the finishing of things for the sale of them or the showing off of them or the pay cheque of them. Now I'm not so sure.

More and more I think of the point of the thing as being the process behind achieving the thing or making the thing or acquiring the thing. Maybe that is the wisdom of age or the long and lonely journeyman years of being a writer or the new and unpredictable apprenticeship of the guitar, or even the quite reflection of spending time with an aging parent, listening to their stories one more time, fixing the TV one more time, sharing yet another of thousands upon thousands of good meals and good bye hugs.  

Yes, there is my answer anyway. The point of the thing is the doing of the thing.



 

The One Night Stand of Screenwriting

Hi Kids!
As this was one of my earliest posts as CSSC Writer Laureate -  I figure about 5 people read it, so here it is again with a promise of fresh material later this week!

First off I want to know how it happens to be Wednesday again? Time is truly a fascinating thing, isn’t it? Especially since in some real science way it doesn’t exist. Those of you not inclined to think esoteric thoughts about space time, or question whether or not stars have souls, are likely skipping ahead right now wondering how far I’m going to wander down this time tangent. You tuned in after all to get the answer to that big icky question left outstanding last week – How do you know your idea is a movie? Of course the short answer, and the cheap pop psych answer is, that if you truly see it and believe in it as a movie, then of course it is!

But that’s not the way it works in my head aka the Cocoverse, so leaving that with you as an answer is likely the coward’s way out. Not that I’m against that completely, sometimes the coward’s way is best, but it’s only Blog the 4th so I want to put off any overt displays of creative cowardice on my part for at least a few more weeks.
I’ll try and give you a bit more to work with. Then back to my time ruminations (that’s your word for the week).
First off, when the character chatter gets going in my head and I have to decide whether the story idea is best expressed as a novel, short story, song, poem, play, short film, feature, TV series, webisode, game, etc. It’s kinda like a Broadway audition. Except that instead of yelling “Singers who can Dance stage left and Dancers who can Sing stage right!” I yell “Doers who can Talk in the green room and Talkers who can Do wait out in the house.” Hmmm, that last is going to be pretty cryptic to those of you who know nothing about theatre. If that is you, your homework for the week is to see a play, doesn’t matter what it is, or even if it’s any good. If you want to want to write for the screen you have to know not only what that is, but what it is not.

All that to say that if my characters are exploring ideas and the expression of those ideas through language, I start to frame the story as a play. On stage the play of language takes the place of a sweeping landscape shot or a close up of a cherry blossom falling. So the chatty Cathy’s who want to wallow in hyperbole get the stage.
If the conflict plays out in a place, or places, I start thinking film or TV. If the place is big enough and complex and important enough to the play of the story that it becomes a character in and of itself then I’m thinking feature. Whenever big sky or weather or rocky shoreline or acres of cracked concrete are key to making the story work, it’s a feature. But also to be a feature it has to meet a couple other criteria. Is the plot all of a piece? There needs to be a certain unity of story to make me believe in it, in that I have to at least sense the shape of the beginning, middle and end. As well, it had better be wildly interesting to me if I’m going to invest myself for months and months in the story landscape. For me too, a feature has to have a complexity of plot and action that exceeds the budget of a TV show. Features have scope, even low budget ones.

TV for me is more about complexity of character. Characters that tangle and untangle and re-tangle themselves around each other. As well, TV ideas for me don’t have crisp endings, being so character driven, a good ending of one TV episode is just a good beginning for the next. Feature endings need to come down more, to a place of greater quiet and rest. Maybe because the up part has to be of such scope and intensity that the great exhale at the ending needs to be longer and deeper. And in terms of investment? For a writer a TV series is a marriage while a feature is a fling, so if you don’t want to be married, careful about heading down the TV development road.

Do I really think about all this stuff before I start writing? Yah, sorta. Sometimes I’ll sketch out a few scenes and just ask myself what it feels like. If I produce an inciting incident and a lot of internal dialogue, I start thinking short story, if a new world or a series of events jumps in, I’ll start thinking novel.

Short films come to me quickly, within a space of hours I have a beginning, middle and end sorted out. Writing one is like planning a big party. I know the time commitment won’t be that great but it still needs to be one hell of a good time, so I try to make sure that I give it a tight container to fit in. I like my shorts to have a unity of time, place and/or action. I find setting limits or story parameters keeps it from spinning out of control. Whether it is limiting character number or location or theme, I limit something about the structure in order to stay focused. In the Cocoverse the short film is the one night stand of screenwriting, so I try and have fun and not take it too seriously.

Honestly though, here we are at the end and in truth, back at the beginning because I’m going to leave you with the thought that your story idea is a play, song, painting, graphic novel, short script, feature film, TV series – indeed all of the above. Your idea is all of these things and none of them until you choose. I think the only way you can choose is to actually have some knowledge about the different storytelling techniques that come into play with each format. That means read. Read short scripts, plays, novels, features, teleplays, novels and cereal boxes, and oh, yah, blogs. If you are a screenwriter writer you read every day. Sorry, but it is a non-negotiable. Watching short films on the web, your favorite TV show or a movie marathon, is negotiable. Reading is not. Best of all is to get a hold of the screenplay and a DVD of the film, read, watch, repeat, read, watch, repeat.

Time for me to go do all that right now. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, always has a slot in my space-time continuum.
-Carolynne

Someday I'll Stop Writing These Dreadful Songs

The Canadian Tenors Moose Wearing My Writing Hat

But evidently that day isn't today.

Sorry my friends it seems to be an itch that I have to scratch. I will grow out of it. Really I will. It's just some weird delayed adolescence thing where I must write out my feelings. Even if I was feeling them twenty years ago. Please hang in here with me, we will get through this and I will start writing like an adult again sometime soon.

Someday by Carolynne Ciceri

Because I knew your favourite kind of chocolate
Because I knew the right thing to say
Because I knew when to hold you tight
Because I knew when to walk away

You love me more than you know
You love me more than you can say
This lifetime, or maybe the next, we’ll be together, someday

Everyone is happy to give an opinion
Everyone is happy to have their say
Everyone can be wrong you know
Everyone doesn’t get to choose our way

You love me more than you know
You love me more than you can say
This lifetime, or maybe the next, we’ll be together, someday

For now it is our secret
For now on different roads we walk
For now all we can do together
Is steal a few moments of sweet talk

And what if it’s all untrue
What if it’s all in my head
That doesn’t make it any less real
It just makes it my beautiful dream instead



Jeepers. Okay. That whole different roads, sweet talk thing - yikes. Maybe a jealous fellow writer put a curse on me? Could happen. Fine. I will keep working on it. Because that's what we writers do. We re-write.

And Then We Ate Cake

Best Staff Meeting ever today.

7 of us gave 3 minute presentations on what we (and our unit) do. I put up a picture of the Star Trek bridge crew and got to label Lt. Uhura with my name. It worked out that there was a Trek character analogous to each team member and their job.  So much fun.

We were only permitted one slide á la 3MinuteThesis competition format, but I missed the memo saying we were permitted to use notes on paper so instead I rehearsed my spiel with jazz hands interpretive dance moves to help jog my memory. It worked except that for the big finale I ran out of thumbs. I guess you had to be there.

And the Student Academic Services team pointed out that each clerk on their team has 2000 students. Can you imagine if even 1% of them decided to email a question on the same day? Yikes!

Then the PDFO (Postdoctoral Fellows Office) presenter was especially cute a) because he ran out of time and gave JFK’s most words in a minute record a run for the money and b) he grew a Movember ‘stash and struggled the whole time to keep from playing with it – but he managed to arrest the hand moving toward the ‘stash. Bravo!

Doc Exams was a hoot in a dark and lovely way as they bordered their slide with images of Prozac pills and read out an astonishing record of transactions accomplished during one month - 75 Doctoral Examinations in the month of July! Can you imagine? 75 stressed out PhD students plus supervisors plus external examiners? Jeepers. Well done Ladies!

One of the coolest things was that some of the units let the newbies give the presentations so The Girl With Two Hats and the longest job title in the office won the Best Use of Puns award as she illuminated all present about her quest to eradicate Curriculamaphobia from across our 250 degree programs. While the Thesis duo pointed out that they were undoubtedly the smartest of us all as they read, and reread, about 1000 Master’s and Doctoral Theses a year. Ouch.

Then my favourite of all  - an Awards Veteran who didn’t need a slide but only a wicked sense of humour to share with us the trials and triumphs of a short-handed team who fought through a labyrinthine mountain range of process and paper to emerge on the far side of their silly season with their sense of humour intact, an appreciation for each other and millions and millions of dollars awarded to thousands of graduate students who depend upon it to pursue their dreams of making the world a better place for all of us.

Yes, one an all of us ordinary heroes for sure, but still it was nice to be reminded of how smart and creative and funny and caring this strange and motely group of folk who spend the labour of their days trying to make the world a better place for UBC graduate students because UBC graduate students make the world a better place for all of us.

And

Then one of us declaimed Scottish poetry while the Dean played the bagpipes

And then we ate cake

Now that was an awesome day at the office.

A Rather Distressing Compulsion

I think I have a virus. Or a brain fever. How about a virus that is causing a brain fever? I can’t stop writing songs. It is becoming a rather distressing compulsion. Like that great musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where everyone sang their feelings because they were compelled by a demon of song. Urkk. I can’t stop with the song ideas. Maybe they are actually poems but I don’t think so cause I just spent the last hour working out the chord progression for Dragon Young Dragon, a blues lament in E major. Jeepers.

I’d share many more feelings on the subject but I want to go work on another song idea – this one inspired by the line “Every day is an ordinary day, until suddenly it isn’t.”  So I guess is going to be song about love at first sight since after the lament of Dragon Young Dragon I am determined to write something peppy. Yes you heard me, peppy.

Dystopian Malaise - a Bookclub Rap

Dystopian Malaise
by Carolynne “CoCo” Ciceri and Aynsley “Zombie Mom” Friesen

Aynsley "Zombie Mom" Friesen

You ask if I can talk and I answer okay
But I really have no interest in what you have to say
I put smile number 5 up onto my face
And I let my brain start wandering all over the place

I’m suffering from Dystopian Malaise today
How can I tell? ‘Cause I hear myself say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.

There’s so much post-apocalyptic drama in the lives of my friends
It’s a tragic soapy opera that has no end
I’m so sick to death of hearing all about it
So crazy bored that I could just spit-it-it

I’m suffering from Dystopian Malaise today
How can I tell? ‘Cause I hear myself say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.

I nod, I smile but if you could  look in my head
I’d really be watching Robert DeNiro movies instead
I’m thinking of puppies and bunnies and cool mountain streams
Sorry but your sad sack reality just gives me bad dreams

I’m suffering from Dystopian Malaise today
How can I tell? ‘Cause I hear myself say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.

When you talk at me I say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.
When you talk I say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.
I say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.