Music: "Accounting for our Love"

download

This is an arrangement of Sweet Betsy from Pike created for Peter Klappert’s "80 Works" class at George Mason University.  The assignment was to set words to an existing piece of music, but I killed two birds with one stone by also covering another assignment at the same time, namely to write a poem in "Sweet Betsy Measure".  The lyrical concept is a bit hard to explain - it’s essentially being directed not to a person (although that read/subtext is present) but to an abstraction: writing.  I had fun milking the ubercheese financial & accounting metaphors for all they were worth, particularly in the chorus, which is by far the strongest aspect of the overall musical arrangement and lyrics as well. 

It’s not meant to be serious, didn’t take too awful long, and could have used a couple retakes for pitch issues on the vocal, but there are still things I ended up happy with - namely, the piano and strings counterharmony additions to the source melody, the way I fudged a chorus out of a verse, and bits and pieces of the lyrics.

Lyrics:

You deflate me each time that you walk out the door
In response to some watered-down mixed metaphor
And in spite of my efforts to woo you with rhymes
You refuse to absolve me my verse and its crimes

So take all of my worries, take all of your doubts
Figure in all the troubles we haven’t worked out
Adding up all the times that you left me for dead
Still, accounting for our love, we’re out of the red.

In the instant I saw you I knew you were mine
And you said you’d be true till you read the first line –
Our convictions might not have been written in stone,
But we’re better in friction than counting alone.

When you glued both my hands shut I thought we were lost,
but I swore I’d recoup back at least twice the cost
of the pains and the trials, the third-degree burns
from the sound of the typewriter’s carriage returns.

// Chorus

Your insistence on shredding my writing each week
I can only assume was constructive critique:
An attempt to provide helpful feedback and more –
To prescribe for the symptoms a curative war.

When you tried to persuade me to cease and desist,
by providing a razor to slit both my wrists,
I’m now certain you meant it as challenge and call
To persist in ascending our towering wall.

// Chorus