Free Songwriting Without Boundaries by Pat Pattison Page A

BECKER: After several days of the flu he crawls out of bed no more than a fevered handkerchief with pillow imprints wrinkled into his cheeks.
Fevered handkerchief is a grumpy rumplestiltskin rag tossed aside after cooling off a sweaty brow, the linen sponge filled with sickness and sweat, thirsty for a cool breeze to dry off its hard night’s work. It lays exhausted in its own pile of success.
IAN HENCHY: The fevered handkerchief sprinted from the man’s weathered hands to his nose, just in time to catch the volcanic sneeze and keep the bacteria-ridden lava from spewing about the room.
The virgin-white handkerchief served as his trusty sidekick throughout cold and flu season. It sat, perched like a parrot in the breast pocket of his business blazer for whenever it was needed. It still smelled factory fresh, a slightly abrasive dry-clean smell with soft undertones.
    Pretty interesting handkerchiefs, eh?
    Now write your own version.
    Five down, five to go. The words have been mixed up a bit, and you’ll do the same thing for each new adjective/noun combination., Again, write a sentence, then a ninety-second piece for each collision, using it as the prompt.
ADJECTIVES
NOUNS
Lonely
Handkerchief
Blackened
Autumn
Fallen
Funeral
Smooth
Moonlight
Fevered
Carburetor
    Lonely Handkerchief
JESS MEIDER: An angel flew from the fingers of a hand in a sin-red BMW convertible, onto the desert ashphalt. A long highway snaking from horizon to horizon, as the lonely handkerchief lies crumpled on the ground, weeping for its circumstance.
Sitting decoratively in the man’s breast pocket, the handkerchief listens to the conversations intently, waiting for some pretty eyes to press into its neatly pressed corner from laughing so hard that the tears come bubbling up, like the laughter from her sensual belly.
GREG BECKER: The gowns and tuxedos had all gone home, tossing him aside for the evening, nothing but a lonely handkerchief crumpling into himself, clutching his near empty glass.
Lonely handkerchief sits crumpled at the bottom of a tuxedo breast jacket pocket; folds of origami crisscross its Picasso face. Smooth silk speaks a different language of touch. No one spoke tonight.
    I love the “sin-red BMW,” and the way Jess personifies the handkerchief. Personification—attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things—is just one of the many ways to make a metaphor. Just another way to create collisions.
    It’s hard to tell in Greg’s sentence whether he’s talking about a person or a piece of cloth. I like when that happens: Call it “productive ambiguity,” having at least two meanings, and both work in the context. You’ll find that productive ambiguity lies at the heart of metaphor.
    Now, you try.
    Blackened Autumn
ANNE HALVORSEN: The fire left a blackened autumn, wild flames visible across the great bay.
Flames stripped the green, ate the flower and vegetable gardens one by one, leapt to gold and red leaves then sucked the trees in its mouth and skipped across the roofs gobbling houses leaving grey looming fireplaces, misshapen unrecognizable pieces of home, then, a swing frame in the sodden yard …
CHANELLE DAVIS: The children couldn’t see any of the usual bright red or orange leaves. The autumn had been blackened by bushfires that turned red and gold leaves to ash.
Charcoal trees, stumps, dusty gray ash flakes landing on my coat, floating on raindrops, dark threatening clouds, rumbling thunder …
    Of course, the fires in both pieces blacken things, not the season. So to say that the fire blackened autumn is, like all metaphor, literally false. In fact, if the combination could be true, e.g., blackened handkerchief , then it’s not a metaphor. Again, metaphors are always literally false. That’s what makes them interesting.
    Your turn.
    Fallen Funeral
IAN HENCHY: Rather than being a celebration of life, it was a fallen funeral—victim to the cause of death: a suicide.
The surprised casket remained closed, hiding the