Skyscraper

This song seems quite appropriate now--both on a personal and a patriotic level.

"Skies are crying, I am watching
Catching tear drops in my hands
Only silence, as it's ending
Like we never had a chance

Do you have to make me feel like
There's nothing left of me?

You can take everything I have
You can break everything I am
Like I'm made of glass
Like I'm made of paper
Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper

As the smoke clears, I awaken
and untangle you from me
Would it make you, feel better
to watch me while I bleed?

All my windows still are broken
But I'm standing on my feet

You can take everything I have
You can break everything I am
Like I'm made of glass
Like I'm made of paper
Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper

Go run, run, run
I'm gonna stay right here, watch you disappear

Go run, run, run
Yeah, it's a long way down
But I am closer to the clouds up here

You can take everything I have
You can break everything I am
Like I'm made of glass
Like I'm made of paper

Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper

(Like a skyscraper)

Like a skyscraper
Like a skyscraper"

Clearly Demi Lovato remembers the falling of the Twin Towers and, alluding to the Freedom Tower set to be finished by 2012. Though it seems a poor choice to build a skyscraper that symbolizes two others that were attacked (rather like a challenge), it is to be built with safer measures than the original World Trade Center. The song mentions being "made of glass" and how the "smoke clears" just as it was in 2001. It is a song of strength: "Go on and try to tear me down/I will be rising from the ground" to give hope for the 9/11 victims' families.*

It also envelops America on a personal level--how though we may be struggling financially ("made of paper"), we can still stand strong together to rise up from the ashes.

*song may be taken completely out of context

How DO I Write?

I see a little girl with pretty pigtails or a quiet bridge laced with vines. Sometimes I sketch it first; sometimes I feel a color and select a matching-hued notebook from my hoard. Some things are surefire inspiration each time like warm summer rain; some are flickering lightbulb ideas that pop in sudden bursts like a touching line.

Some days I can plan to write with my special writing songs' aid ("Never Stop" and "Bandoneon Acorazado" have never failed me--so helpful in November when I'm churning out sixteen hundred words a day), but some days I must pack my bags and grab my passport to start the journey at the spur of an instant.

Some days I use a clicky pencil to do deeper, more thoughtful pieces as it gives me a moment while writing to plan the next word; a Pilot pen is my rapid-fire beast for sputtered bursts on other days. Many aeons ago I used a miniature laptop to spill forth my ideas, but the poor thing was in an amnesiac accident and had to be retired. As of late I've discovered how the dusty musk--like a deliciously old book--of a typewriter keeps me punching away at the keys.

Some days I have to wrack the "guys in the sweatshop," as Stephen King so rightly wrote, yet others I find myself scrambling for the nearest notebook to pour down my whim-of-the-moment thoughts and watch it come alive like a Phoenix smouldering from the ashes.

Clouded Words

It's funny attempting to unscramble the cyphers of confusion wrapped up in some of these addresses, these vague ideas that sound so clever yet have little meaning.

Even in this mess, however, there is honest writing. Ronald Reagan clearly stated that he wanted to ease the Soviet threat by making shields to block missiles, and he adds that "It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons."

I keep hoping we will one day have an Average Joe for a president, one who would gladly announce, "Yes, I'll fail you lots of times. But this is what I wanna do." And he would then in very short words and plain steps state his plan to help America. And who knows? Maybe it'll happen.