Beauty and the fright - song lyrics...

All the mad men and women
sing like the children of angels
and pierce the clear winter night like stars
picking and breaking on their guitars
they have our hearts
bundled in their arms

Will you go swim with me?
In the wilderness free
Free of our clothes
with dirty hands and bloody knees
Will you go swim with me?

All the mad angels
who gave birth to the children
that sing like theyre on the run from the devil
now begin to dance in the winter sky
shooting stars all night
all beauty comes with a fright

Will you go mad with me?
Beat the drum and scratch the metal string like we're free
Free of our hearts
Cos Daniel has gathered them up in his arms
Oh will you go mad with me?

Will you be madly in love with me?
Will you be madly in love with me?
Will you be madly in love with me?

~~Beauty and the fright
by Michael O'Dwyer
23/9/08

I’m ready to write. I’m ready to cast time aside and let friends beg for my company. Though I don’t cast time aside really. I count time when I write - how many pages in how many hours? How many pages today? A new record? And also, I long to be with my friends. For all my pining and whining that I want someone to love, it’s friends who will always plonk their beautiful fat asses on the other end of the see-saw and lift me into the sky. Whether I keep my friends after that statement remains to be seen.

Writing involves cleaving your heart open, not on the page but in yourself. Wanting to talk about everything. Believing everything you have to say is also everything someone else has to say. It’s an act of companionship, non-aloneness. I was reading some pages from books I randomly took from the book shelf - On the Road, the Butcher Boy, Brighton Rock, Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl. But it was High Fidelity that made me write this. The first few pages were about his first love - a lot of it monologued word for word by John Cusack in the film - which I’ve always loved more than the book.

It made me think of the first time I fell in love, and realised there was such a thing. I was 10, possibly 9, and it was with a girl in my class. Tracey, she was a year older than me - like everyone else in my class because I started school when I was 3. That wasn’t because I was unnaturally clever - though I was publicly named and shamed as the best pupil and best behaved in the class when I was 8. I’ve been trying to wobble myself off the rails in protest since then.

Anyway, the girl. I must have been crazy about her for 10 years after falling for her. Unrequited things last longer because you never get the opportunity to shatter your illusions about the person. (Lesson to girls getting nagged by guys - Have sex with them so they can forget you exist!).

I was thinking about 10 years where she was the girl I pined for from my cold windowsill to the stars [excuse the miserably bad poeticism creaking in the door], and I only remember tiny things about her - 4 or 5 things really.

The first.. Just after I had been held up to mocking ridicule and jeers for being “the best in the class”, she shouted out that her friend Deirdre liked me for my brain. This was the year before I fell in love with Tracey - 4th class - I won chess trophies that year (my first year playing!).

The second.. The day I discovered your heart could close in on itself and stop you breathing for 2 minutes without you even noticing. Not a heart attack, just my first day in love. I was sitting behind her in class and found myself gazing at her every movement - getting things from her pencil case, every disgruntled bored-of-school sigh she sent out. She used to send many. And I’ve cast her hair with sun streams dancing through it from a golden sunset in my memory, but hey, maybe it was an early midday sunset. After 2 minutes I snapped out of the dream I was in and saw Brendan beside me laughing his head off because he’d been watching me the whole time.

I try to forget the boyfriends she had. She always had someone getting in fights over her even at that age. I still haven’t had anyone fight over me!

The third.. When we went to secondary school, I got into the top class as I had yet to succeed in my grand plan not to be a geek. She got put into a different class. Maybe that’s why I hated school so much from then on. The only time I really saw her was first thing in the morning. I had to pass her class to get to mine, and she seemed to be always in the doorway talking to her friends when I did. That 20 yard walk from when I turned the corner, saw her in the doorway, and had to walk past her is the toughest challenge I’ve yet faced.

People can die on you, and arms can randomly break off, but putting one foot in front of the other and keeping yourself walking even though your heart has sent concrete

PERFORMANCE PERSONA

5, telling tales, dancing the childhood jig with cardboard whales,
A spotlight moon looking down with cutesy smiles
on the unfettered stage of the child.

10, innocence fails-
I’ve been in love with the golden strands of the girl in front of me,
The sunlight blazes through her hair and I freeze,
I can’t dance anymore.

15, in my diary it says I haunt everywhere I go-
like I’m Nosferatu,
or the wild beast in your deep forest nightmare-
Love and fear has made my heart shred it’s protective shell,
A performance is being able to put one foot in front of the other,
and say hello when you say hello.

20, I dance on words-
Every phrase a springboard to a dream,
or a swan dive into the deepest pool-
My copybooks fill up without comprehension or persuasion,
and my performance heart floats on the warm sweet air of morning.

25, I don’t remember mornings, or sunsets,
I don’t remember days embracing or nights in love-
And maybe I am a performance of warning for you,
A bare stage - me in a chair - a spotlight on my cracked feet,
An audience enthralled in my black stare.

30, I started timid and broke my spine over the first line-
Jess, you said “Your heart is your persona”
The fierce gap between what you are and what you can show-
So I painted my face and wound barbed wire tight to my ribs,
I danced freer than I ever had,
tripping without care over every word I set on fire,
and the SCREAM I looked for was right there.

~michael o’dwyer 10/7/08

all fresh today. hope u like it x x