FAWM: "What Will Stay"

What Will Stay

There is no demo for this song.

Liner Notes

First draft of a song from the skirmish prompt inviting us to use echoes -- I found myself drawn to the idea of writing around Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1901), about "hysteria" and the "rest cure."

Read it here (it's not long): https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Yellow_Wall_Paper/4XsEAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

This will need some revision.

Lyrics

Off the piazza’s a room filled with roses
Forbidden to me in my curious state
Here there are bars and some rings in the walls
Everything’s yellow and orange and dull
But John says the roses will wait
The roses will wait

This is the room where they keep the mad women
Who’re dreaming of wallpaper blooms
And all your concerns about all our conditions
Are bricks in the walls of our tomb

Between the echoes of our decay (the echoes of our decay)
We learn what is fleeting and what will stay

So I take phosphates or phosphites, whatever
And tonics and journeys and air
I’m forbidden to work but allowed exercise
If I wish to write then I have to be sly
But still, the garden is there
The garden is there

BRIDGE
In my hysteria
In my delirium
Who waits behind the wallpaper? (waits)
So full of humors
Object of rumors,
Who shakes behind the wallpaper? (shakes)
I have false and foolish fancies
I’m prescribed more rest, more brandy
Who will peel it off and walk by day? (and walk by day)

This is the room where they keep the mad women
Who’re dreaming of wallpaper blooms
And all your concerns about all our conditions
Are bricks in the walls of our tomb

Between the echoes of our decay (the echoes of our decay)
We learn what is fleeting and what will stay

Comments

@heather 1w

Wow this is such a cool idea, look forward to a full song!! I love that line, “all your concerns about all our conditions are bricks in the walls of our tomb.” So good.

@ragbag 1w

Beautiful lyrics - and so obviously singable - I'm sure it'll make a wonderful and evocative full song. I'd love to hear the finished version when it appears.:-)

@ohljazz 1w

A well crafted story with so many lovely colorful details in the lyric - love the recurring image of the wallpaper (and wallpaper blooms)

@pianoquest 1w

I love that the protagonist is well aware of the situation and rejecting other people's attempts to define her. I like the use of echo implied by the phrases in parentheses.

@hmstreetteam 1w

There is a literary tone, going deep into the experience of being trapped by a whimsy of the modern world. That condition of being trapped applies to nearly all of us in multiple ways, and the societal advice on how to fix the problem is often just this delusional, so this is a song that could resonate with almost anyone. Nicely spun!