Month: November 2020

Years ago, in my early 20’s, I took out an ad in a long-gone Seattle area music magazine called The Rocket to find a songwriting partner. It was a fertile time in my life in that I had an easy-going job and little responsibility.

A girlfriend had recently broken up with me, something that, as it turns out, can generate a lot of angsty, post-adolescent song lyrics. I got a couple of replies to my ad, including one that yielded several meetings with a young singer about my age. We wrote several songs together, including one that he told me some relative of his started playing in a band in Europe.

I never really knew where that went…

Anyway, our partnership ended when my job was lost to technology and I moved from Seattle to start college. I’ve kept writing song lyrics on and off as time has passed, though. And a few years ago I reached out via an online site to Seattle-area musicians looking for a lyricist. Again, I got a couple of replies. And again, one yielded a couple of rough demos, this time of some song lyrics I wrote while in college.

Like before, other things took precedence and the potential songwriting partnership drifted away before it could solidify. About a year ago, while cleaning up some email, I found one of the demos. I listened to it and found it kind of engaging, reminding me that this itch for my creativity still wants to be scratched.

The song is called “Not to Prepared to Lose.” I wrote the original lyric in 1985 and it’s been sitting in a notebook with dozens of other songs, some pretty horrible and others with some potential merit, since. My co-writer is Bob Kopatich. He wrote the music and is doing the singing and guitar playing. He changed a couple of lines to suit his phrasing and his understanding of the song.

Take a listen:

NOT PREPARED TO LOSE — Lyrics

Here I am hanging on,
A rope around my neck
A trap door under my feet
I’ve been here a time or two
Didn’t mean to hurry back
As a single tear dances on my cheek.

Running the race
I know the next step
Can’t resist
So I double the bet
Ohhh
And I’m not prepared to lose.

Here I am rambling on,
Pen in my hand
Paper in front of me
You can’t read my mind
if I don’t write it down
So I spell it out for you to see.

Here’s the catch
I know the meaning
Down the stretch
I run screaming
Ohhh
And I’m not prepared to lose.

The thrill of the game was found when we kissed
Rolling the dice, I took on the risk
Risking romance, all for you
I bet on a second chance
And I’m not prepared to lose.

Here I am drifting off,
A dream in my mind
Hope in my eyes can’t be seen
I envision your lovely lips touching mine
As you breathe your life into me.

I count the mistakes
I know I’ve added
You raised the stakes
Bankroll padded
Ohhh
I’m not prepared to lose
I’m not prepared to lose
I’m not prepared to lose you.

There is a poetry concept in which you make a copy of a page from a book you like and blacken out most of the words. You choose the blackening mindfully, though, thus leaving behind words that form a poem. In this way and in a fashion, you are collaborating with the book’s author to write a poem.

As an example, here’s one I made from the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front:”

A clean shirt.
Yes, socks too perhaps.
The conversation becomes smutty. Intercourse. He enjoys himself.
Who isn’t smutty?
On the other side there are women, three women.

But why page 143?

The answer comes from Tom Junod’s brilliant article / interview / biography of Mr. Rogers (yes, THAT Mr. Rogers) that was published in Esquire magazine in 1998. The reader learns that for as long as he can remember when Mr. Rogers steps on his scale each day he weighs 143 pounds:

“This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three. ‘I love you.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”

So that’s the 143 part of my project.

To submit an entry, email me a picture of your blackened out page 143, not forgetting to include the title and author of the book. Including a few sentences about why you’ve chosen this book and who you are is a plus.

Assuming I’m not inundated with entries (or those not suitable for work), I’ll post all I receive at page143.org. And for context, here’s the actual blog entry for the “All Quiet” poem above so you can see how it looks.

Of interest, at least to me, is that I found the Esquire article about 15 years ago, back when I was the Director of the Puget Sound Community School. I was introducing a small group of high school students to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and chose Mr. Rogers to be the illustration of self-actualization.

I read the article to them, something that brought many of us to tears. In fact, reading the article worked so well I did it again, and again, and again in other classes. Soon, it was referred to as my “Mr. Rogers Lesson” and I was giving it at other schools.

Several students and I got so excited by the idea of promoting the 143 concept that we created a store on Café Press and started selling 143 t-shirts, hoodies and buttons. I just looked it up and the shop is still there!

Also of interest, the Esquire article was the inspiration for the Mr. Rogers movie that came out last year starring Tom Hanks.