www.writerscafe.org

I've been posting my work to an online writing community that has been helpful.  It is a place for writers to share their work.  You can have your work reviewed by other writers and review original works by others.  It's not social media- it's about the craft of writing.  It's open to poems, novels, lyrics, short stories, and just about any other form of writing.  They also have various contests that you can enter.  If you like to write and want some feedback on your stuff, you should check it out...

www.writerscafe.org  

"In the Attic" (Instrumental Version) from "Elizabethtown"

Here is an instrumental version of a song from "Elizabethtown"- the musical that I am working on with Andy Brown...

The Story of "C" by Anjani Thomas

I sat at the piano, learning his song, thinking to myself "this is so ... simple. Its too simple"
And I began to hear the possibilities, the opportunities to embellish his little song and make it something more. Suddenly, he stopped singing and turned to me.

"Anjani" ... spoken quietly, almost apologetically, ... "could you play a "C" cord there?" 

I looked at him hard. "I am playing "C"."

"Um, I mean a straight, plain C." As he said it, he drew a horizontal line in mid-air with his finger.

I paused, not understanding really, what he wanted. "A "C"? "Ah," I thought, "He's never had formal training -- he's a singer-songwriter, not a PLAYER. I'll play what he wants but doesn't know how to ask for. We resumed playing. He stopped again.

"Anjani?"

"Yes?"

"I know it's rather different, but could you keep to plain "C" there?" 

Years of training and road chops disallowed me from holding to a banal triad. I was so sure the major 7, the sus 4, the augmented, the 6/9 were better choices, musical choices. In fact, I spent the tour with him in subtle sabotage of his request. A stab of #5 here, an 11th there ... culled from my superior arsenal of notes, licks, fills -- everything for a lonely, mundane gap. Yet always, in my opinion, tasteful and necessary.
I did not care that he didn't like it. I took it upon myself to educate him by example - refining his rough-cuts into polished gems - technically, musically. And he never asked me to play "C" again, so I figured he was learning and liking it.

Ten years later I got so burned out on the business. I left music altogether and went to live by a lake. I planned a garden and felt the Texas sun on my back as I raked, hoed, planted and harvested, quietly, in silence. One day I looked up and saw a bird on a wire, and immediately, the words to his song came into my mind. And for the first time, I was struck by the power, the simplicity and purity of "C" -- alone, whole, stacked neatly a third apart. Brilliant, clean, no more, no less. Of course it was the chord of Cohen ... And I finally learned to play "like a bird on a wire ..." just as he meant to teach me.

© 1999 Anjani Thomas.

From:  

http://leonardcohenfiles.com/anjani.html

Different Sides (Leonard Cohen)