Ring Any Bells

In our song-a-week group there are no rules about what we can submit each week other than it cannot be a previously completed song. Otherwise anything goes – an instrumental, a set of lyrics, a one minute acapella sketch or a fully fleshed out five minute production. The point is simply to write and submit something new. But in week four of the fall 2024 group, Tim brought a surprise. That Monday he sent this:

“Here’s something I’ve always wanted to try — this week, we’re all going to write a song with the same title. I opened one of the internet’s finest random phrase generators, clicked ‘generate’ and it gave me, ‘Ring Any Bells?’ as in ‘recalling a memory; causing a person to remember something or someone.’ At the end of this week, we’ll have 14 different versions of a song called ‘Ring Any Bells?’ I vowed not to spend too much time searching for the perfect song title. This is what the void has bestowed upon us. Rejoice and be glad.”

I was blindsided – I was already working on the song I intended to finish that week – but I took on the challenge just as many others would. My first reaction was that the title felt a bit too cliché for my taste. But I’ve found before that constraints can push you somewhere you wouldn’t have landed on your own – I talked about this in the Maytag Land entry – and this was no different. I sat with it through Monday and eventually my mind landed on past lives, which sent me back to a memory of a gal who once told me she’d had a vision of us together in a past life, in which we had held some importance. In her vision we were a king and queen and ruling together long ago. Then, as hippies do, we performed a crystal ritual in the back of a van to verify the vision. The results were inconclusive.

I’m skeptical of past life recall – I haven’t heard anything particularly compelling to suggest we’d carry memories across lifetimes, and personally I don’t have any indication of having lived before this one. That said, I’ve lived enough of this life to feel like I’ve had several in one. I find the territory interesting to write from. This was also a period where I was reading and thinking a lot about death, mortality, and the nature of consciousness – you can see that thread running through Fallen Giant and Undertow.

I wove in some core memories from my own childhood – sitting out in the sunny front lawn pulling petals one by one, she loves me, she loves me not, and an old birthday photo – then let myself wander into fantastical territory, imagining past lives, ancient temples, a kind of epic and magical existence I can’t claim to remember. It was a fun departure before returning to my earliest memories of this life, which are not particularly epic or magical – watching too much TV, playing video games, playing in the yard. From there back to the present, musing on the possibilities of a distant life and ultimately landing with focus and gratitude on the simple things we have today – a vision, a dream, a conversation, a connection.

It’s quite a different type of song than what I normally write, and I’m grateful the challenge of the title pushed me there. I wouldn’t have found this one on my own. Not everyone in the group took on the title that week but in the end this was just one of ten songs written around the title “Ring Any Bells”. I always enjoy listening to the submissions and reading lyrics every week but that week was particularly interesting, what with the collective bell ringin’ and all. I’d like to share some quotes from other submission emails:

“I gotta admit, when I read your assignment I definitely said, ‘(sigh of exasperation) goddamnit, Tim’, but I made myself have an open mind and I actually had fun with this.” — Theresa Bird

“I too was chafing a little bit this week with the assignment but it kind of put the screws on me in a good way.” — Lazarus Pearl

“It made me nervous and excited, which I enjoy leaning into. The lyrical theme constraint made me musically constrain as well.” — Micha Silvius

“I love hearing all the different creations generated from the same seedling of an idea. I feel like it also pushes me to write my best songs because I know there are listeners on the other side who are going to really dig into my songs because they are songwriters themselves. It adds a little pressure to sort of bring my A-game.” — Jack Isenhart

Here’s my “Ring Any Bells”

You say you remember what came before
What you stored in the core when you were four
Before picking daisies and tearing them apart
Saying he loves me he loves me not
Before the melancholy gaze you gave
That camera on your birthday

Were you something else entirely?
Were you the first to crawl up out of the sea?
Seems like something you would do
Were you a cloud before the sky turned blue?
And whatever you were
Were we together?

Tell me does this ring any bells?
Am I on the right track? Have I gone too far back?

Yes you say you had a vision of me
In an ancient temple I was a king
When I spoke folks listened
When I stood they kneeled
You stood by my side and we lived a long time
You were my queen and my guide
Into the afterlife

You ask me does this ring any bells?
Tell me to ask a crystal if it recalls
Me being a king and all
I have to laugh
Still I ask

You say we were in a temple, I was your king
But I was just a kid from Temple City
Raised on TV and video games
Before that I can't recall a thing

I can't say that it rings any bells
But I love to hear the stories you tell
I know just as little of before life
As I could ever know of after life
But speaking on the in between
I'm grateful you're my queen
Hey when I call you my queen does it ring any bells?