Friends With Benefits

I wrote a draft of lyrics for my friend Klaim, for his song project Friends With Benefits – you can listen to the demo on Soundcloud:

***

A: We danced and we sang and we swam and we drank most nights
We couldn’t stay still at your parties, our bodies were so fit
Aroused by the earthquakes and the prickly pear bites
Did we really enjoy all these calibrated radio hits?

I just remember the benefits, can’t remember being friends
Did you know my name or did you just pretend?
As I was shedding my outfit under your burning hands
You thought it was a game a funny little trend

B: I was hypnotized, I was staring at you, swaying in the moonlight
Your clinking dress that I took, water over your bare thighs
With you in my pool on my floor in my room I always forgot I was high
But were we cool or just fools dying in the night

Can you remember we were friends, friends with benefits,
Or was I deluded, my head in the sand, lost in my own fame?
I think about us, about the band, ever since we have split,
We were living in wonderland were we to blame?

***

I went for a wistful, Californian-ish mood but it might change later, as well as the pacing.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the demo!

 

Textes inversés ou anti-chansons

Pourquoi diable un robinet se promène-t-il en lieu et place de mon Zeppelin potentiel habituel ? Car il s’agit de l’inverse d’un zeppelin !

Dans le procédé évoqué ici, il s’agit de s’amuser à prendre un texte et à inverser ses mots, en prendre les antonymes. Certains mots, ne représentant pas une action ou le résultat d’une action, ou une qualité, ne sont pas directement inversables.
Qu’est-ce alors que le contraire d’une guitare ? D’un zeppelin ?

Peut-être peut-on remplacer ces mots par des locutions, des définitions, et tenter d’inverser ses composantes, par récursion ?
Ainsi un zeppelin est un véhicule aérien, donc un conteneur mobile de personnes dans un fluide autour de la terre, donc un conteneur mobile de solides vivants dans un fluide autour de la terre.
On peut inverser ça globalement en un verseur immobile de liquide inanimé sur un solide dans l’air, ce qui pourrait correspondre à un robinet !

D’autres décisions devront aussi être prises : inversons-nous tous les mots ou laissons-nous les petits mots de liaisons tels quels…
Et on dit bien inverser, et non pas opposer…
Un opposé de quelque chose en mathématiques, c’est “moins cette chose” mais son inverse est  “une chosième” : l’opposé de 10 est – 10, alors que l’inverse de 10 est 1/10 (un dixième).
De même, l’opposé de 0 est 0, l’inverse de 0 étant l’infini, mais l’opposé de + l’infini est – l’infini… Sachant que l’antonyme de tout est rien, on parle bien d’inverse. Cela servira au moment d’inverser des nombres dans les textes.

Ce processus sera intéressant à automatiser, notamment grâce aux dictionnaires en ligne.
En attendant, j’ai inversé deux chansons. On dirait des poèmes obscurs et un peu post-modernes.

Une chanson en anglais ici.

Et une chanson en français (comme c’est plus drôle d’essayer de deviner, la chanson de départ sera indiquée à la fin):

Reciprocal texts: anti-songs

Why on Earth is a tap flying here instead of my usual airship? Because it’s the reverse of an airship !

It’s fun to try to revert a text’s words, to take their antonyms. Some words do not represent an action, its result or a quality, and thus cannot be reversed directly.
So what is the reverse of a guitar? Of an airship?

Maybe we can try to recursively replace those words by their definitions, until we can reverse it?
An airship is an air vehicle, so a mobile container of people, inside a fluid around the earth, so a mobile container of living solids in a fluid around earth.
We can try to reverse it as a still lifeless liquid pouring thing, over a solid, in the air, which might be a tap!

We’ll also need to define if we want to reverse everything or not the small linking words…
By the way, I’m talking about reciprocal texts in the title, and not opposite texts.
Indeed, mathematically speaking, the opposite of a thing is “minus this thing” while its reciprocal is “one thingth” : the opposote of 10 is -10, while the reciprocal of 10 is 1/10 (one tenth).
Likewise, the opposite of 0 is 0, its reciprocal being the infinity, but the opposite of + infinity is – infinity… As “everything”‘s antonym is “nothing”, we’re talking about reciprocals here (multiplicative inverses). It might be useful when we try to reverse numbers in the texts.

This process will be very interesting to automatise, thanks to online dictionaries for instance.
In the meantime, I manually reversed two songs. It really makes them sound like post-modern, obscure poems.

A French one can be found here.

And an English-language song (whose original title can be found below – no spoilers!):

Archives – Vieux poèmes de l’école primaire

Quand j’étais à l’école primaire, j’aimais beaucoup écrire des poèmes, parfois en utilisant des techniques d’écriture automatique. C’est assez drôle à retrouver !

CE1/CE2

L’ÂME DES MOTS

La beauté de la nature
rend pur,
pour tout dire

Quand l’âme des mots s’en mêle
les poèmes sont frêles

Mais quand le bleuet se dévoile
L’avenir n’est plus que voile

Ne restent alors que des mots de prose.

A warning – poem

Sweet, oh how sweet he is, him who dwells in darkness,
Reaching out for your pain, tearing your memories,
Until you feel safer, no burdens or worries.
“Please touch me”, you’ll tell him, for his gift’s emptiness
And you’ll crave ecstasy, gasping as soft fingers
Will stroke your life away. You were mistaken, dear.
He needs to eat joy too, not only grief and fear.
If you want to stay whole, choose nice human lovers.

Zen / Un-Zen

Kyoto is bursting with gardens, some of them being Zen rock gardens. I was quite thrilled to go to Ryoan-ji (picture on the right), but unfortunately the meditation mood was dampened by giggling schoolchildren taking selfies in front of the garden and noisy tourists berating themselves: “Don’t look at your feet, look at the rocks!”

However, 40 minutes away from Ryoan-ji, the Daisen-In (drawing on the left) is everything a rock garden should be. Quite derserted, thus much less stressful, some explanations were provided to fully enjoy the garden and temple buildings. As pictures and drawings are not allowed during the visit, I drew the Ocean of Eternity on the plane. It is also a significant place for Japanese tea ceremony development. While visiting the Daitoku-ji, to which Daisen-In belongs, I strongly recommend eating Shojin Ryori at Izusen restaurant!

Fushimi Inari Shrine

Japanese Shinto shrines are often breathtakingly beautiful. I will never forget visiting Fushimi Inari Taisha, 10 minutes away from Kyoto, at dusk then under moonlight… There sure are more cats than foxes – even if Inari is the Shinto fox kami – but Kitsune and this visit inspired a Haiku (French one here):

Between red torii,
A white fox is slipping in.
Lanterns are glowing!

Sanctuaire Fushimi Inari

Les sanctuaires Shinto japonais sont souvent des endroits magnifiques. Visiter Fushimi Inari Taisha, à dix minutes en train au Sud de Kyoto, à la tombée du jour, est une expérience inoubliable. Il y a certes plus de chats que de renards – même si Inari est le kami renard Shinto – mais cette visite et les Kitsune ont inspiré un Haïku (en anglais ici):

Sous les torii rouges,
Un renard blanc se faufile.
Les lanternes luisent !

Red Eye Police

A poem I wrote nearly a month ago:

Red Eye Police

Hey you, little robot,

You look like a rabbit

With myxomatosis,

Like a terminator,

So not user-friendly.

If you don’t fix your looks,

We will pluck your LEDs out,

Leaving only green and blue.

We’re the red eye police,

And we’re here to love you.

Le cauchemar du naufrageur

C’est une nuit sans lune.
Une longue complainte endormie
S’est levée, mélopée silencieuse,
Sur le miroir froid de l’écume.
Qui sont ces fantômes, ces esprits errants,
Qui chaque nuit reviennent plus longtemps
Hanter le sommeil coupable
De l’immonde naufrageur ?