Someone Left the Toast Out in the Rain

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Whoever said you should write what you know was talking out of their arse. If I made music about what's happening in my life right now, it would look like this:

Today, starting at midnight, I spent five hours getting my synthesiser to sound like early Depeche Mode, alternating between that and working on a song loosely inspired by a Pet Shop Boys number called "I'm in Love with a Married Man". Of which hopefully more later.

Then I slept for eight hours, waking around midday. After breakfast/brunch/lunch, more synthesiser noodling, followed by...

In the evening a political meeting, where ten of us sat in a room getting depressed about recent strikes which have been making the headlines. Normally we'd be quite pleased about workers standing up to bosses, but in this case when the bosses employ cheap labour from Europe, the workers blame the labour for stealing their jobs. And for being foreign. Yes, it's racism.

Back home I decide to try out the Lennox method of songwriting. Annie Lennox brainstorms around a subject for half an hour, writing down whatever occurs to her, then later shapes it into a song. It's a brilliant method, source of many brilliant Lennox songs - so I tried it.

Taking a break, I made a piece of toast. And the toaster caught fire. Melting plastic roaring merrily and singeing the shelves, thrown out onto the lawn and squirted with the hose.

It's still there, still smoking gently on the grass, covered in convenient rain. I challenge anyone to make poetry out of that lot.

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So what did my half hour of Lennoxing produce? Here's my notes, pasted without change:

i don't want to be cassanova
don juan
macho man
world's greatest lover
isn't lover just another word for slut / can't find love

never believed in one true love
now and forever more
never believed in romance no, the
kind you spend your whole life searching for

but there's
just one, just one
one more love song
just need someone to sing it to / to hear it
no more love songs

i don't believe in romance / never believed
james bond, milk tray
all because the lady loves ... chocolates
flowers, hearts, candy
valentine

i'm happy being alone
i'm not alone, just not tied to you
monogamy
the special one you spend your life searching for
meant to be

trophy wife
find love fast
how to make any woman fall in love with you instantly
why'd you think they call it falling in love

happy couples only exist in wedding photographs
life is a chore
life is a task to be done

making love / faking love
montagues and capulates
romeo and juliet died
...with another man's wife
time is a poison arrow
stupid cupid knifes you through the heart

it's four o clock in the morning
no one's waiting in my bed
i can live life like i want to
it was a marriage, like any other

superman and lois lane
pages from a comic book yarn
not an old romantic, or a new romantic

so you found that special someone
what you gonna do now?
now that we've found love what are we gonna do with it?

how many disappointment, how much pain, how many fights
how many suspicious glances?
till you can say you've found one true perfect love / worked it out

what is this thing called love, you say it makes the world go round
i thought that was money, honey
that clinking clanking sound
crazy little thing called love

will the world be a better place?
what changes?
why will this make one life worth living?
did you think it wasn't worth it before?

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