ARE YOU ALIVE? (with a soul down deep inside)
Our mini-van's CD/DVD player burned out one day when my wife was driving back and forth to work. She said it actually started smoking and she was afraid the car would catch on fire. She somehow got the DVD that had been playing to eject, and she left the windows open for a long time to let the smoky odor clear. Likely the DVD motor burned out. We haven't really tried to fix it. As a side effect, the radio also stopped working. UPDATE: One of the students in my wife's art class replaced our radio with one he pulled from the junk yard. He found 4 pennies in the burnt out DVD player, which likely shorted it out. But now it's working again thanks to her student. It's my car now.
Months later, my wife and I were on our way to a family event when the phrase, "You say my calculations are off by a million or two" popped into my head.
Luckily I had my trusty ukulele with me. On that day I was being the entertainment, playing the songs I'd written on ukulele. I started playing with a chord progression that's very common but never seems to get old: C/Am/F/G. It's been used by the Beatles's "Happiness is a Warm Gun," Santo and Johnny's (in a different key) "Sleepwalk" and more.
As far as the lyrics go, let me start in the middle and explain later.
Off by a million or two
Won't you hold me like you did
By the lake on the moon of Naboo
I can't take this indecision
I just need to know
Are you alive, are you alive?
I liked the first two of the first three Star Wars movies. I didn't mind Jar-Jar Binks in the first movie released in the prequel trilogy. I watched the second prequel episode two times (with different groups of people), and swore to myself in the middle of the second viewing that I would never watch that movie again. I won't even say the name. I don't even know the name. Twice was enough for a lifetime.
But I loved one line from that movie. "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo." I added "on the moon of" because I that's the way I remembered the line, and I like my version better than the actual line. The moon gives it a little extra oomph. I think they actually filmed the scene by the lake, not on another planet or the moon of another planet, but next to a drainage pond in some swank gated community.
We're moving toward a future of human-like robots, or androids. Boston Robotics is basically already there. Eventually the resemblance will be so close that it will fool the eye.
My narrator is coming from the point of view that he's fallen hard for a woman who may or may not be purely mechanical.
The metallic taste of your kisses
The way you hold my hand
With your vice like grip
Your eyes can change color at will
When you smile I get a chill
Are you alive, are you alive? (with a soul down deep inside)
I saw the original animated movie Ghost in the Shell a few years after it came out. I'm pretty sure it was on VHS. I could have seen it in the theatre at the art house cinema with my old roommate, but for some reason I passed.
Cyborg (human with mechanical enhancements) cops. Guns. Secret governmental agencies. For some reason the description didn't draw me in.
But when I finally watched it, there were so many images that stuck with me. The title sequence showing the assembly of Major Motoko Kusanagi is one of them.
Some say they grew you from a culture
In a laboratory
Inserted your skeleton made of titanium
In a factory
To me you're just the girl next door
Who can lift a thousand pounds or more
Before you become my wife
At the altar won't you ease my mind?
I'm hoping my song comes across as comical: reaching this far into a relationship, recognizing certain characteristics of his fiancée seem a little suspicious but waiting until the very last moment to ask for reassurance that he's not marrying a very good looking major appliance.
Hope this never happens to you.
