Steemit Open Mic Songwriters Challenge Week 2 - This Too Shall Pass

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Well this challenge seems to have my creativity wide open. I wouldn’t say this is the fastest I’ve ever written a song (took a little while to sort out my chord voicings), but it was faster than I’ve done in years. And I’m working on others as well. December is going to be a crazy work month for me, totally booked up with catering gigs. Not to mention starting up, promoting, and hosting an open mic at a local restaurant/bar so they can hopefully start making enough money to pay rent (their landlord is also my employer/landlord). So I’m taking advantage of this calm before the storm to write.

When I saw this week’s “Lost and Found” theme, I almost immediately started thinking about yin and yang, polar opposites, and the interconnectedness and immutability of positives and negatives.

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
- Abraham Lincoln

I think most of us are at least somewhat familiar with this story, or at least the phrase “this too shall pass". I quoted Lincoln’s telling of it, but a more detailed version of the story has the king’s men making him a ring with the phrase engraved on it. I always thought that was a genius aspect of that fable, as a ring accentuates the circular nature of life that is expressed in the phrase “this too shall pass”. I wrote another verse talking about how circles are the fabric of eternity, but there were things I didn’t like about the wording of it, so I cut it. Besides, I think the “lost and found” verse that I’ve ended the song with already covers that idea in a more subtle and artistic way. The other verse was a little too big for its britches, and redundant.

I’m envisioning the eventual recording of this song as having a New Orleans vibe, one of those creepy Southern gothic minor key ragtime kind of things you’d hear in a smoky jazz bar in the French Quarter, with a couple of horns. Part of what inspires that idea is the jazz funerals that they have in New Orleans, and how they are celebrations of life. Life is beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I can’t think of any city that personifies that more than New Orleans.

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This Too Shall Pass

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Even clouds have shadows
Even lies are just truth postponed
Mountaintops spotted with shades of grey
Contain multitudes buried in stone

Sunny days often turn rainy
A bad ending can be a good start
Rain brings us closer together
And sometimes love drives us apart

Every sad story has an ending
And good times will never last
You've got to take the good with the bad
And remember that this too shall pass

A broken bone just goes to show
The healing power of time
Pain is the means by which we measure
The good fortune to still be alive

For every life that’s lost
At least one more is found
The trumpet blast of a flower growing
Is the world’s most beautiful sound

© 2017 Paul Hallman

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My Studio Recordings on Steemit

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Dirty Games (original)

Mountains (original)

How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart?

Cecilia

To Ramona

The Bends

Like Spinning Plates