In some rare occasions, a song strikes my ear in an amazing way, and makes me listen to it’s every instrument, chord, and lyric with such rapture that my imagination explodes and creates an instant animated music video in my head. Recently, one of these visions even lent itself to become a poem.

In my scramble to write down the words that came to me, I opened a web page and started writing. I got it all typed down and I copied it to my clipboard but somehow between opening a new document to save it and closing the web page, I lost it.  And to my dismay, there is no clipboard history (there really should be) so it was completely gone.

Now, thanks to modern technology I was able to buy the song from iTunes via my iPod Touch and listen to it on repeat while writing what I remembered of the poem on paper this time. I also ended up skipping my boring science class to do this. Well worth it I think. Later, I went back and did my usual editing process with about three different revisions which brought it to where it is now.

Click the link to listen to the song that inspired this all while you read the poem.

Welcome Home, Son by Radical Face

Lovers and a Pretty Song

When you hear a pretty song,
it’s like getting an unexpected hug from behind
by an unexpected lover.
You look up and smile at their face
and you see yourself, brighter than before.
They smile back and you feel warmer,
as you forget your fears from yesterday.
“Welcome home,” they whisper.
And there’s a new smile on your face
as you examine your radical feelings inside.
And the choir remains singing,
as the invisible lover leaves your back,
leaving you with their breath on your neck
and their imaginary scent,
drifting from memory.

When you hear that pretty song,
it’s like getting an unexpected hug from behind
by an invisible lover.
You look up and smile at the cloudy sky
and see your day, brighter than before.
The sun smiles back and you feel warm
as you forget the fears from yesterday.
“Welcome home,” the wind seems to whisper.
And there’s a smile on your face
as you look at the radical new colors in your world.
And the choir remains to sing
as the invisible lover leaves your back,
leaving you with the breeze on your neck
and the effervescent scent of summer,
drifting away.

A cool little application I found, FluidTunes, lets you use only a webcam to browse through music, stop and play songs by waving your hand over the projected buttons. A cute application, runs relatively well although it did crash on me once. It would be fun to use with a smaller library, but with myself it’s somewhat impractical because it uses an iTunes coverflow style and shows each song with it’s individual album cover. It takes a long time to flick through. It’s neat though, and potentially useful if you’re just listening to music and you’re not near your computer to switch tracks, but within view of your webcam.

Watch a video on how it works and download it for free here: FluidTunes.com

I can’t take credit for finding this one. I can’t even play it! This is a game for all you PC users out there. And my brother showed me the ropes on his computer so I thought I’d just share.

Audiosurf! It’s so cool I wish I could play it, but it requires Steam and a PC computer with Windows 2000 or later. What is does though, is you connect it to any music folder on your computer, including iTunes and it plays almost any song you want and makes a custom track for it. A pattern we noted, usually mellow songs have an upward slanting track, while more energetic, forceful songs have a downward track. Anyways, the obect of this game is usually to hit the colored blocks on the track while your favorite song plays. Although the specific game play somewhat differs depending on what character and level you pick before the song begins.

Either way, I think it’s a brilliant use of integration between a personal music collection and the game. And it analyzes and loads quite fast! You can even compare your score to other players online. I am very impressed. So try out that free demo, PC gamers, and tell me what you think! If you really enjoy it, it’s just $9.99 for the full version.

EDIT: Mac users, you can play this if you have Crossover Games. Just be sure you also have Steam installed!