VIRB

OK, so the other day I'm at work and suddenly I'm hearing this melody in my head. This isn't all that terribly unusual. I start listening to it and I realize that there are words too:

we are basement heroes
we basement mice
we are pattern builders
we have teeth of ice

I think, "hey, a new song, wonder where the rest of it goes" and I keep listening. More words come along and then it changes. The repeating melody stops and a second part kicks in, totally different, heavy, anthemic:

this is no ordinary way
this is no ordinary way
this is no ordinary way
basement heroes will win the day

And I'm sitting in this meeting at work and internally listening to this new song and really liking it and thinking "Sweet! A new Trumpet Marine tune!" and then I start to panic. Shit. I'm going to forget it aren't I? I can't write it down right now, I can't record the melody, I'm going to forget it, dammit!

So, I do the only logical thing I can do. I try to keep the song playing in my head until I can manage to sribble it down somewhere, somehow, to preserve it until I can find a guitar or piano or something. Eventually I get a chance to run out to my car and I go scribble the words down but by this point it's been a few hours and I've forgotten the music under the "this is no ordinary way" segment. I hum and sing the basic melody of what I can remember into my cell phone audio recorder but I draw a blank on the chorus.

I come home and tell Es I have a new song and she asks me how it goes and I tell her that I can't really tell her because I can only remember a part of it and I can't really explain how that part will go and.... she just laughs. She knows by now that I kinda work like this.

Anyhow, I decide I need to get the rest of the song back and I go down and grab a guitar and try to figure it out. Nope. I realize I have no choice but to just wait until I remember it again. Several days go by and I'm thinking, "I'm never going to remember this song" and then telling myself, "don't try or you never will, it'll come to you when you aren't thinking about it". Sure enough, it does, I remember the chorus, but I'm busy again. This time I hold on to the melody long enough to get a chance to record it, roughly, so that if I forget it again I can refresh my memory.

At the end of all this, what do I have? I have an idea, some post-it notes with lyrics scribbled on them, a couple of media files on my phone with me humming and singing, and a complete song in my head that won't actually exist in real life unless I can do the rest of the work to make it real. I've had plenty of other songs that have formed this way. "Controls" for example, and "The DMZ", but it's a really frustrating way to write.