My Heart is Split
Here’s my newest attempt. I took out the list cuz it makes Brian nervous and I respect and understand this and I tried in earnest to get from verse to chorus w/o pre-chorus. I think it works if you do extend the last line an extra syllable or two and cut into the chorus - thereby sort of eliding the hook. Changes in italics:
It happens every now and then.
I hear the words I need to hear
Coming from the tiny speakers
That I’ve shoved into my ears.
The crickets setting the tempo,
The wind dancing across my skin,
Reminding me of conversations,
Summer nights when I stayed in.
Back home, before I moved.
Back home, before I got here.
Back home with the people who loved me
my eighteen years.
My heart is split
between home and here.
I’m cut in half
Two beds, two lives, and I live in between
My porch back at home and this strange new world I knit.
My heart is split.
As sudden as the onset of winter,
As nat’ral as the trail mix they all eat
This somewhat impermanent place I live
swept me off my size-five feet.
I read non-stop to quell the absence.
I drink too much. I fall in love too fast.
Obsessively collecting the details
Of my present life now passing… I’m split
between home and here.
I’m cut in half
Two beds, two lives, and I live in between
My porch back at home and this strange new world I knit.
My heart is split.
Now, since I think we probably need a double chorus at the end (is that true, B?) and probably an extension, I think we might be able to use the idea of a list somewhere in there if we’re interested.
The thing I thought of doing was splitting up “my porch back at home” and “the strange new world I knit” - to include a sort of list in the middle bookended by what had previously been in the chorus. Example with semi-dummy lyrics:
my porch back at home with my neice on the stair and the dark chilly air in the strange new world i knit.
1. I envisioned this as more of a list of things than 2 things described in more detail but perhaps this is more realistic in the sentence construction?
2. I can’t really figure out the rhythm and scansion of this… so I’m thinking that it would need to - in part - come from you, B.
What do you think?