The Virgin writes Hemingway style

#15 Never Have I Ever: Written a song

Foreplay: I can write poetic prose. I can write piquant blog posts (I hope...). I can even write coherent text messages to my mom while 6 drinks deep into my weekend.

But you know what I can't do? Write a song that doesn't involve shouting bastardized rap into my phone to the phrase of, "Get yo' drunk jacket on!" Not that I've ever done that or anything...

I don't know how musicians do it. Do lyrics come first? Or does the melody? Does the guitarist simply wiggle his nose and a completed CD magically pops out of his ass? Well, does it?! How am I supposed to know?!

The Down and Dirty: Last week Hermosa emailed me a short guitar track and asked me to "apply those word skills of [mine]".

Oh man, I thought, how flattering is this! So I did what any lauded lady does. I left it practically untouched in my inbox for a week.

You guys, I don't think you understand my lack of creativity yet excess of performance anxiety. I don't know know what rhyme scheme I'm supposed to run with. Wait! Is it even supposed to rhyme?! This country-twanged folk song is super cute. I'd hate to mar it by adding lyrics about the social constructs of the word "slut" or urinating in alleyways or any of the other stuff I often write about.

So I took the Ernest Hemingway approach to writing: Drunk and indiscriminately. As I nursed my Fat Tire, I texted Whiskey Sour to whine about how pathetic I felt drinking alone while lacking inspiration. He rang me up for some pillow talk (on his end in Virginia), told me to go listen to "2 Atoms in a Molecule" by Noah and the Whale, and gave me 3 different writing topics. After we said our respective sleepy and buzzed farewells, I lit a candle, put on some Bright Eyes, and made intoxicated but determined love to my laptop.

Below are snippets strung together during my inebriated writing rampage based off each theme supplied by Whiskey Sour.

The morning after:
From my knees I kissed the seat, and spewed love from my lips

A crush (this topic spiraled into an aggravated rant on my part that involved the quote, "Fuck crushes; I'd rather just do it." What can I say? I'm one classy broad):
I don't need a friend, I need a warm body tonight

My first trip on uh... certain substances:
I only pray to God
Just to say that I was sorry
Just to prove I was right all along

The Afterglow: Definitely not of e.e. cummings grandeur but better than what I started with. Maybe I just needed a proper verbal ass-kick from Whiskey Sour and a stiff drink to loosen me up. To be honest, I'm still pretty buzzed. And it's not even midnight! This is either really awesome or really, really, really sad...

I'm going to go crack open another cold one before I'm forced to answer that question or text my mom back.

I think F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best: "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you." Cheers to that, old literary dude.