Keeping in mind the whole "inversion" thing, I went to a place I should be visiting just about every day, but that I completely fail to visit more than once a month: my grandmother's house. Okay, so I didn't actually go and task in front of Grandma; I hiked down the hill towards Union Street, and for those of you who don't live in San Francisco, when I say "down the hill" I mean "this is the hilliest part of the city and driving in made me fear for my life, because I am afraid of heights." Off Union Street I spotted a tiny little alley with some gorgeous houses and made a beeline for it.

Then I pulled out my guitar.

See, I've done both the "observe everything in list form" and the "write a short, but touching essay about what you observe" variations on this task in English class, and while they're an incredible exercise I wanted to do something I'd never done before. I have never played my guitar loud enough for anyone else to hear me in public (although I did try to busk in a BART station once, it was kind of hampered by the fact that I was completely inaudible out of terror; I'm very mediocre at guitar.) I've also never tried to write a song in a constrained length of time before, and I have to say, it is HARD.

Whenever anyone came by (and I was surrounded by upper-class houses! People came by all the time) I slipped on the mask, which was a little stifling and impossible to sing through, but saved a little bit of my pride. Walking back I forgot I had it on and almost drove home in it!

The pictures have some photos of the alley and proof that I restricted myself to the time limit; they also have meandering audio files. To accompany them I wrote down the lyrics as they occurred to me. The first text file:

inside the nooks and crevices of someone else's life

and somehow without my perceiving
and somehow without my observing
and somehow without my permission
i've been misfiled
there's been a terrible mistake

somehow without my permission
some bureaucrat has taken me away

one step removed from the thoroughfare
just tucked away into a corner
i wonder who removed the girl who sat with yellow hair
did anyone try to warn her

it's very nice here
the houses clean and in a row
the children charming
but there is nobody i know.

for the final text file i just added a verse and some chords

A G
one step removed from the thoroughfare
A G
just tucked away into a corner
A G
i wonder who removed the girl who sat with yellow hair
A G
did anyone try to warn her

G
it's unalarming
bm
the houses clean and in a row
G
the children charming
D
but there is nobody i know.

a street all arrayed with these colors bright
the bus a gentle roar behind it
o where i laid, where is that city now
and will i ever find it

it's unalarming
the houses clean and in a row
the children charming
but there is nobody i know.

Now that I look at it again I'm regretting the change from "very nice" to "unalarming". Rhyme or no rhyme, that is an ignobly strange choice of words.

For the melody, there was this recurrent high note -- I assume someone's washing machine, or, you know, brain-warping vibes from the telephone wires!! that I used as the high note of my melody. You can hear me humming it in the final file.

Anyway, here is the draft I recorded in the alley:



I guess we can conclude that under pressure, I revert to A Series of Unfortunate Events/Stephin Merritt lyricism. It is a little embarrassing, but at least the birdsong sounds nice.

I thought about rerecording it -- and in fact I did, I have it all sitting in a GarageBand file on my desktop -- but nothing recaptured what I felt like in that alley as much as what I played there. Funny how that works.