Text, Not Dreams.

Last semester the finals rush moved me to songwriting; a rare thing for me that emerges in the same way as poetry. There's no intention behind it. A string of words congeals incessantly and fights its way out of mind and into text, drawing along with it a threshold of affect I can only ever hope survives the transition into words. It becomes a fixation. Though unfinished, I've sung this song to myself under my breath or out loud to the night sky innumerable times since I brought it into existence. Without further ado, here's that verse:

You make me sleep like tryptophan
and I don't need it.
I'm a free man going to bleed
and I don't care about
your weakness
or excuses
or the bruises that'll
weight down what remain
of all the days you wondered
when your train would come.

Because I'm halfway home
and I'll take my throne.

I sing it in a low register to an imagined bass beat. It signifies the flight from my natural tendency to sit back and go with the flow; an assertion of control to combat complacency with where I'm at and what I'm doing. It's not the sort of idea I usually express, and I think that's a good thing, or at least something necessary.
I think we all look for that place to rest. Some get drunk or high, seeking to forget their troubles. Some put their hopes in love, seeking that completion in another when they can't find it in themselves. I think I look for it in words. Another poetic fragment comes to mind: "The poet's dream is to escape from prison by describing it's bars/but I think I've seen enough bars to give up on dreaming." One more fragment made it into a facebook status: "What's the use of dreamtime when there's no escape from the sunrise?" These probably come across as pessimism. They're not.
A place to rest isn't out there somewhere; you carry it with you. Aesop Rock says "dream a little dream/or you can live a little dream/I'd rather live it/'cuz dreamers always chase but never get it." Dreaming and its uselessness is a new theme for me, and I'm growing to be surprised how deeply I mean it. I've got a lot of big ideas brewing, but they don't mean much until they've fought their way out of mind and into words. Imperfect though it may be, text is better currency than thought.