NaBloPoMo: La La La

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I can't waffle.

When there's nothing to say, I find it extremely difficult to say anything. And when there is something to say, it's usually one sentence.

As someone who's trying to be a blogger and a songwriter, this is a problem. Here's what I have to say on the great issues of our times:

* Love: It you like it, fine - I don't have the patience.

* Sexuality: Everything human is coloured by it, but no one knows just what it is.

* Television: We only watch it because we like to confuse it with reality.

* Religion: The wishful thinking of the oppressed, usurped by the oppressors. Creationists are cretins.

* Prejudice: A need to scapegoat converging with willful ignorance.

* Obama: Bush Junior Junior (with education).

* Lady Gaga / Justin Timerlake / Michael Jackson: Not important enough to get emotional about.

If you think this post is just waffle, then I stand corrected. But I've spent the last 48 hours trying to write rap lyrics (because my singing voice isn't very good at the moment), and coming up with a dozen couplets that Eric B might write before breakfast - before throwing in the bin.

I just don't have anything I want to communicate at the moment - I just want to write a song.

But there is an alternative which has been kicking around my head for a few months now: Phonetics. In the late 70s, David Bowie experimented with abandoning words as such, instead just using vocal sound. I think I can be a little more systematic.

My background in linguistics gives me enough knowledge of phonetics and morphophonemics to put together a 'pretend language' - a series of rules about vocal sound concatenation which result in 'words' and what sounds like a human language, but with no grammar and no meaning.

Here's a verse:
Ma, 'o, zu
Ko, xo, yoku
Neku, neku, to'u
Ketu'apu!

It's a simple, Polynesian-like system where each syllable is consonant-vowel, and odd-numbered syllables are stressed - giving a trochaic metre.

I come up with the melody, then use a little program to generate the syllables, fitting them to the tune.

Hey, why force yourself to say something when you've got nothing to say, just because you need a vocal line?

The system is called Zilo (from the first two syllables it ever produced), and I'll probably talk some more about it tomorrow.

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