Ready or Not - Week 23

This song is a true product of the weekly song project. I mean a few things by that. First, this song simply would not have been written if not for the creative imperative of this project. Second, it was created entirely in this week. I wrote the bulk of it in the middle of the night between Thursday and Friday, reasoning that songwriting would be a better use of my time than the weird ticker-tape of anxiety that usually plagues me when I'm up in the middle of the night. I worked out the kinks and details on Friday and recorded it on Saturday. So it's brand spanking new. That said, I like it quite a bit. It doesn't feel like a song I slapped together because I had to, and I can already tell I'm going to enjoy playing it live. 

Also, this week I found myself reveling in the sheer creative license of being a songwriter. Sometimes I take for granted how just plain cool it is that I get to come up with these songs out of thin air. I love songs as a medium, mostly because they are tiny and need not be anything too special on their own (I have no talent for works of great length). But sometimes it just whacks me over the head how free the whole process is. Anything goes. I think writing the phrase "cosmic whack-a-mole arcade" really impressed that point on me this week. 
​
Songwriting is fun. End of story.

Executive Patrons (You Rock!)
Karen Schantz
Alan Bargar
Jonathan Hochberg


Lyrics
At the edge of town, boys running through the woods
jumping through the burdock snare, hiding behind sycamores
and then they count to ten, dizzy in the summer heat
deer trails and poison oak, and olly olly oxen frees

and they say ready or not
ready or not
ready or not, we're gonna find you either way

A woman rubs her eyes, playing back the night before
when the ten thousand tiny thoughts queued up by the bedroom door
in the early morning hours, desperate for a still reprieve
with the ferris wheel of house payments, oil changes, kids daycare toying with the dream of sleep

And they say ready or not
yeah babe, ready or not
ready or not we're gonna find you either way

Somebody slow this thing down
Somebody turn this car around
How did I get up here, can't even see the ground

Well it's a shotgun start, yeah and it's a hit parade,
a rose ride full of bumper cars, a cosmic whack-a-mole arcade
a splatter of light and noise, both chaotic and synchronized
to choreography you never learned, makes you wanna run and hide

Yeah but ready or not
ready or not
ready or not, they're gonna find you either way